A
very young Stanley Kubrick made his first feature film, Fear and Desire (called
The Shape of Fear during production and until it found a distributor),
at the age of twenty-two. It was very much a DIY production. In many ways
it is the epitome of early independent filmmaking, the kind in which a fellow
with a camera goes out to make a movie and then worries about finding a
studio to release it. The picture was financed by family and friends, written
by a school pal (future Broadway playwright Howard Sackler), and cast with
young, struggling New York actors who were willing to work for peanuts. Kubrick
produced and directed the movie, but he also photographed and edited it
himself, too. It took a year-and-a-half to finish, and then he went about
marketing it himself.
The
astonishing thing about all this is that Kubrick was operating on chutzpah.
While he had already made two documentary shorts, he was simply “winging it”
when it came to making a feature length fiction narrative film. What he had on
his side was his cinematographic capabilities. He knew cameras, lighting, and
composition like the back of his hand, for he had spent four years after high
school working as the youngest staff photographer for Look magazine in
New York creating narrative “photo essays,” almost the equivalent of
storyboards. Editing a movie, directing actors, and telling a good story was
another matter… and something he would eventually learn how to do.
Unfortunately, while Fear and Desire looks gorgeous and is indeed a
lesson in photographic composition and lighting, it fails on all the other
aspects of movie making.
Kubrick
himself disowned Fear and Desire not long after its release in 1953. In
fact, he attempted to acquire all existing prints, including the negative, and
burn them. Luckily for film historians and Kubrick aficionados, he was
unsuccessful. The copyright in the movie was owned by Kubrick’s uncle, Martin Perveler,
a fairly wealthy pharmacy owner in California who put up most of the money and
received Associate Producer credit. The feature had disappeared for decades and
was sometimes available on poor quality bootleg VHS tapes and DVDs. It was only
since Kubrick’s death in 1999 that today’s copyright owners and the Library of
Congress made the movie available. In the USA, Kino Lorber distributed
excellent quality DVD and Blu-ray editions several years ago. Now, Kino has
released new 4K UHD and Blu-ray versions of the film, including the original
70-minute premiere cut that hasn’t been seen since 1953. (After its premiere,
Kubrick cut about nine minutes for the theatrical release, limited as that was.
It was this 62-minute cut that has been the more familiar one to film buffs.)
Another
remarkable aspect about Fear and Desire is how ambitious it was.
Kubrick’s later, more mature works are often extremely existential in theme and
tone—they are big budget art films that challenge audiences to actually think
about what they’ve seen. Kubrick is big on ambiguity, symbolism, and metaphor
in all of his later, more well-known features. Right out of the gate, Kubrick
embarked to make an extremely non-commercial art film that deals with the
meaning of existence and the futility of war. While he would later succeed with
this kind of art house contemplative head scratcher, Fear and Desire unfortunately
comes off amateurish, pretentious, and painfully like a student film.
That
said, one who knows Kubrick’s work can see glimpses of the genius underneath
this early effort. What he was attempting is quite “Kubrickian,” and there are
moments and images that are indeed striking.
The
story is thus… A four-man platoon are fighting an unnamed war in an unnamed
country. They are lost in a forest behind enemy lines. The goal is to get back
to their side. When enemy combatants are spotted in a structure, the men decide
to strike one for the team and kill off the opposition. Weirdly, the enemy
general and his sidekick look just like the platoon’s lieutenant and private
(they’re played by the same actors). Whoa, profound! And, in typical
Kubrickian fashion, one man, another private (played by young Paul Mazursky,
who would go on to be a director of note himself) goes mad, nearly rapes a
civilian (Virginia Leith), and runs off like a banshee from hell. Will the
others make it back to “civilization?” Maybe. Maybe not. As the lieutenant
says, “We have nothing to lose but our futures.”
The
same could be applied to Stanley Kubrick’s first endeavor.
Besides
Mazursky and Leith, the other actors are Frank Silvera as the sergeant (if
anyone is the protagonist here, it’s him), Kenneth Harp as the lieutenant, and Steve
Coit as the first private. Silvera would go on to play the villain in Kubrick’s
next, also independently made, feature, Killer’s Kiss (1955). Kubrick’s
first wife, Toba, has a cameo as a fisherwoman (she and Kubrick had been high
school sweethearts). Toba also worked on the crew, but the stress of making a
first film with Stanley Kubrick destroyed their already unstable marriage.
Kubrick
had flown the cast and tiny crew from New York to California in the spring of
1951 and shot the film in the San Gabriel mountains. It then took him over a
year to raise the money to do all the post-production (mostly post-sync sound).
He submitted the 70-minute cut to the Venice Film Festival in August 1952,
where an unofficial premiere took place (he wasn’t present). Only in late 1952
did Kubrick meet the international film distributor Joseph Burstyn, perhaps the
important figure of art house cinema in America at that time. Burstyn agreed
to release the movie, and it had its official premiere in March 1953. It
received mostly negative reviews, which prompted the director to delete nine
minutes to tighten the feature. There were, however, a handful of very positive
notices from the likes of critics such as James Agee and Mark Van Doren, both
of whom recognized that there was undeniable talent buried within this strange,
unsettling movie.
Kino
Lorber’s new 2-disk release of the 4K restoration comes with a UHD disk and a
Blu-ray disk of both the 70-minute and 62-minute cuts. The longer cut is
accompanied by an audio commentary by film historian Eddy Von Mueller. The
shorter cut has an audio commentary by film historian/screenwriter Gary Gerani.
Von Mueller’s commentary is quite informative about the tortured history of the
film; however he makes several odd mistakes (he says the fisherwoman is
Kubrick’s sister, not wife; he says the star of Barry Lyndon is
“Patrick” O’Neal; and 2001: a Space Odyssey is from 1966, not 1968).
Gerani’s commentary covers much of the same ground with a different
perspective. Sadly, neither pinpoints the bits that were actually cut from the
longer version of the film. It’s up to us to figure it out (this reviewer finds
that some scenes in the first half of the movie were merely shortened… there
are no full scenes missing in the theatrical cut).
The
real treasure trove in this release is that for the first time, in the USA,
that is, we get Kubrick’s early short documentaries in high definition. Day
of the Fight (1951) and Flying Padre (1951) were only available as
bootlegs in bad quality. Only The Seafarers (1953) had been released on
home video prior. Now we have all of Kubrick’s early work on one gorgeous
release.
Kino’s
new Fear and Desire package is a must-have for Stanley Kubrick fans,
because looking past the feature’s shortcomings will reveal what would come
from the master filmmaker. It’s a fascinating step back into the auteur’s
young mind.
Director
Billy Wilder was on an incredible streak during the decade of the 1950s. Some
of his most notable works were made between 1950-1959, and his 1957 courtroom
drama, Witness for the Prosecution, is one of the high points.
Based
on the 1953 stage play by Agatha Christie (which, in turn, was based on one of
her short stories), Wilder’s film version actually improves a bit on the
already engaging theatrical work. (By the way, the stage play is currently
enjoying a long and successful run in London at County Hall’s old courthouse
and actual courtroom, and this reviewer can attest that it is a magnificent
production, definitely worth seeing in those authentic environs.)
Tyrone
Power received top billing as Leonard Vole, the accused (Power, an American,
plays the role as one as well). The fabulous Marlene Dietrich is Christine, the
“witness for the prosecution.” But make no mistake—this movie belongs to
Charles Laughton, who received third billing. Laughton plays barrister Sir
Wilfrid Robarts, who is the senior counsel for Vole. As his private nurse, Miss
Plimsoll (Elsa Lanchester) declares during the trial when Wilfrid makes a
slam-dunk move, “Wilfrid the Fox! That’s what they call him, and that’s what he
is!”
The
nurse character is something that screenwriters Wilder and Harry Kurnitz
(adapted for the screen by Larry Marcus) added to the story, as well as turning
Sir Wilfrid’s character to be more of a protagonist. Seeing that Laughton and
Lanchester were married in real life, their chemistry and constant bantering
together is priceless, providing the film with comedic elements that the play
never had.
Vole
is accused of murdering a wealthy widow that he befriended. She had become
besotted with him and made him a beneficiary of her will. Vole is married to
German immigrant Christine, who at first provides an alibi for Vole. Sir
Wilfrid, despite recovering from a heart attack and is not in the best shape
for a highly publicized trial, takes the case of defending Vole. It’s a shock
to Wilfrid when the prosecution calls Christine to testify against her husband—because
she is actually married to someone else back in East Germany, dodging the law
that a wife can’t testify against a spouse. To reveal any more of the twists
and turns—and especially the surprise ending—would spoil the fun. (In fact, a
voiceover announces at the end of the movie that the “management of this
theater” suggests that the secret of the ending not be revealed to friends!)
All
three of the leads are particularly outstanding, and they are strongly
supported by not only Lanchester, but also John Williams, Henry Daniell, Torin
Thatcher, Una O’Connor, and Ian Wolfe. Wilder’s direction is a lesson in
pacing, the rise and fall of tempo and suspense, and his guidance of the
actors. Dietrich, in fact, would not agree to do the picture unless Wilder was
hired as director.
The
film was popular in 1957. It received Academy Award nominations for Best
Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Laughton), Best Supporting Actress
(Lanchester), Best Editing, and Best Sound. Curiously, the screenplay wasn’t
nominated. Lanchester did receive the Golden Globe award for her stellar
performance.
Kino
Lorber Studio Classics has issued a Special Edition Blu-ray that replaces their
earlier 2014 release. The contents are exactly the same except an audio
commentary by film historian Joseph McBride (author of Billy Wilder: Dancing
on the Edge) has been added. Previous supplements included are a short
piece of Wilder discussing the film with director Volker Schlöndorff,
and the theatrical trailer. The restoration itself looks marvelous in glorious
black and white.
Witness
for the Prosecution is
a must-have for fans of Billy Wilder, Charles Laughton, Marlene Dietrich,
Agatha Christie, and courtroom thrillers. Great fun all around.
(A
previous edition of this film was released in 2017 by Classic Flix and was
reviewed on Cinema Retro in 2020. The film has been re-issued as a
“Special Edition” from Kino Lorber Studio Classics in 2024. Much of the
following review is repeated, but updated, from the earlier piece.)
A
sub-genre of film noir is that of the so-called “docu-noir,” a
crime drama usually based on a true story and told as a Dragnet-style
procedural. Most likely there is an omniscient voiceover narrator, a focus on
the lawmen who are investigating the case, and all the other stylistic and
thematic elements associated with film noir in general: starkly
contrasting black and white photography, urban locations, shadows, gritty
realism, angst and cynicism, and sometimes brutal violence.
Eagle-Lion
Films was a British/American production company that existed for only a few
years in the late 40s, disbanding in the early 50s. There was some talent
involved, and they produced a variety of genres and pictures of varying quality
(Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes was a rare Best Picture
nominee). Many of the studio’s pictures were films noir that were shot
as B-movies with low budgets and barebones casts and crews. Anthony Mann
directed a couple of their classic crime movies—T-Men and Raw Deal,
both of which fall into the “docu-noir” category. Unfortunately, due to bad
management or negligence, many of Eagle-Lion’s titles fell out of copyright and
currently reside in the public domain. Hence, one can often find bargain bin,
cheap knock-off DVDs and Blu-rays of these films.
He
Walked by Night
is a prime example of a quality presentation of an equally impressive little
movie. Made in 1948, Walked is a true story loosely based on the crime
spree by Erwin “Machine Gun” Walker, who shot cops and committed burglaries and
armed robberies in Los Angeles in the mid-40s. In real life, Walker was
arrested and sentenced to prison, but he was paroled in the 70s. This is not the
ending to the story that is depicted in the film.
A
young Richard Basehart portrays disturbed war veteran Roy Morgan, a habitual
burglar and armed robber. An off-duty cop on the street suspects Roy of being a
burglar. Roy shoots and kills him. The POV switches to the police, especially
Lt. Marty Brennan (Scott Brady), who is based on the investigator of the true
case. He is assisted by Captain Breen (Roy Roberts), and forensics man Lee
Whitey (Jack Webb, in an early screen appearance). The story follows the police
investigation juxtaposed with Morgan’s eccentric and lonely existence, and the
criminal’s increasingly violent crimes. The big break comes when a stolen item
is recovered by an electronics pawn dealer (Whit Bissell), who has been
unwittingly fencing for Morgan.
It’s
all engaging stuff, and Basehart delivers an outstanding, creepy performance as
Morgan. The police procedural sequences are done well, such as when a composite
drawing of the suspect is created by all the witnesses to the crimes. The
climactic set piece of a chase in LA’s sewer system is exciting, atmospheric,
and pure noir. Oddly, it is similar to the ending of The Third Man,
which was released a year later.
Even
though Alfred Werker is credited as director, audio commentary speculates that
Anthony Mann stepped in to helm some of the movie. Is it one of those Christian
Nyby/Howard Hawks (The Thing) or Tobe Hooper/Steven Spielberg (Poltergeist)
controversies? No one seems to know. He Walked by Night, however, does
contain several sequences—including the final sewer chase—that are stylistic
stamps of Mann. That said, much of the credit for the picture’s success goes to
celebrated noir cinematographer John Alton.
Another
sidebar related to the picture is Jack Webb’s meeting and further networking
with the picture’s technical adviser Detective Sergeant Marty Wynn. This led to
the ultimate creation of Dragnet as a radio and television show.
Kino
Lorber’s new Special Edition Blu-ray presents a 16-bit 4K scan of the 35mm fine
grain, and it looks quite wonderful, a remarkable step-up from other public
domain transfers that are out there. It comes with English subtitles for the
hearing impaired, as well as an audio commentary by biographer and producer
Alan K. Rode and writer/film historian Julie Kirgo. New to this Special Edition
is a second audio commentary by film historian Imogen Sara Smith.
Unfortunately, the Kino Lorber edition does not contain other supplements that
the previous Classic Flix edition did, nor the 24-page booklet that accompanied
that packaging.
For
fans of film noir, police procedurals, and gritty crime dramas, He
Walked by Night is a good time at the movies.
(A
previous 50th Anniversary edition of this film was released in 2018
by Kino Lorber and was reviewed on Cinema Retro in 2020. The film has
been re-issued on Blu-ray as a “Special Edition” in 2024. Much of the following
review is repeated, but updated, from the earlier piece.)
The
late director Norman Jewison, who passed away on January 20, 2024, was on a
roll in the late 1960s. After a handful of well-received small romantic
comedies, he directed The Cincinnati Kid (1965) featuring Steve McQueen as
a Depression-era poker player, followed by the Oscar Best Picture-nominated The
Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming (1966), and then the brilliant
In the Heat of the Night (1967), which did win the Best Picture
Oscar and landed Jewison a Director nomination.
His
next project became a heist picture/romance, the story of which was pitched to
him by Alan R. Trustman, a lawyer with no screenwriting experience. Jewison was
intrigued, so, according to the excellent interview with the director that
appears as a supplement on Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray edition of The Thomas
Crown Affair, he gave Trustman a crash course in how to write a movie
script. When it was completed, Jewison got the film green-lit.
When
Jewison’s agent—who also represented Steve McQueen—read the screenplay, he
suggested McQueen for the part. Even though the actor and director had gotten
along on Cincinnati Kid, Jewison admits that he didn’t think McQueen was
right for the role because the actor never wore suits. McQueen then met with
the director—wearing a suit—and convinced him that he could be Thomas Crown.
The
Thomas Crown Affair is
a stylish, twisty-turny, clever piece of 1968 pizazz. It emphasizes the
ultra-cool cosmopolitan and fancy lifestyle of the rich during the Mad Men era
when it was actually happening. The flashy camerawork and then-innovative
split-screen/multi-screen display of simultaneous action scenes was snappy and
unique. The brilliant main title designer, the late Pablo Ferro, is credited
for much of this work, and it is this visual technique that gives the movie its
pulse.
Crown
is a former banker in Boston, a happily wealthy playboy-sportsman who decides
to pull off a complicated bank heist simply because he can. He puts together a
team of individuals (including getaway driver Jack Weston) who don’t know each
other or him, and the gang meets only at the time of the robbery inside the
bank. Crown himself isn’t there. The heist is successful, and the mastermind
gets away with $2.6 million. Detective Malone (Paul Burke) is determined to
catch whoever was responsible, but the crime was too well thought out. No evidence
or clues were left behind. An insurance investigator, Vicki Anderson (Faye
Dunaway, in her first role post-Bonnie and Clyde), is brought in and she
immediately takes control of the operation, much to Malone’s chagrin. It
doesn’t take long for Crown to come under Vicki’s suspicions—so she sets out to
entrap him by, well, having an affair with him.
That’s
the plot in a nutshell. While much of it is seemingly improbable, the story is
told with conviction and such technical prowess that it’s hard not to go along
for the ride. Jewison’s handling of the heist itself and the romantic sequences
between the dual eye candy, McQueen and Dunaway, is masterful. Both actors are
fine in their roles; McQueen especially continues to exude the 60s cool that
was his trademark.
Kino
Lorber’s brand new 4K restoration looks quite good, and it comes with two audio
commentaries—one by Jewison himself, and the other by film historians Lem Dobbs
and the late Nick Redman. Supplements
include the previously mentioned interview with an aging Jewison, who was still
sharp and talkative, an interview with title designer and split-screen maestro
Ferro, and a vintage on-the-set featurette from 1967 with the cast and crew.
The original theatrical trailer, along with other Kino Lorber releases,
complete the disk.
The
Thomas Crown Affair was
remade by John McTiernan in 1999 with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo. Was it
better than the original? Maybe yes, maybe no. Only you can decide; but
consider this—the 1968 version has Steve McQueen, a young Faye Dunaway, a
variety of really hot and nifty sports cars, and an Oscar-winning title song,
“The Windmills of Your Mind” (remember that?)! Recommended.
(A previous edition of this Blu-ray title from Kino Lorber was reviewed at Cinema Retro in 2020. This review covers a new edition released in 2024, repeating much of the previous writeup but with new material.)
The late Carl Reiner received top billing in this magnificent comedy that was released in the middle of the 1960s, when relations between the United States and the Soviet Union were tentative at best. Détente was at play, but there wasn’t much trust between the two countries. Two years after Kubrick’s Cold War black comedy, Dr. Strangelove, Norman Jewison tried his hand at a picture with a similar theme, only it was one that was much lighter in tone.
Reiner shares the movie with another acting master who recently left us. Alan Arkin made his feature film debut with his portrayal of a Russian submarine political officer. He and Reiner are joined by a marvelous supporting cast of character actors who all have comedic turns. Penned by Oscar-nominated William Rose (who had written or co-written The Ladykillers and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, and would win the Oscar the following year for Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner), The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming focuses on the conflict between a group of misplaced Soviet submariners and the panicky townsfolk of a New England island off the coast of Massachusetts after the summer tourists have left. What it’s really about, though, is communication, or rather, the lack of it, and how a series of incidents that are lost in translation might lead to misunderstandings. Director Jewison delivers that message to the audience wrapped neatly in a barrel of laughs.
Reiner is Walt Whittaker, a playwright who has spent the summer on the island with his wife (Eva Marie Saint) and two children, and the family is ready to depart. His rented house on the coast happens to be near where the Russians’ submarine accidentally runs aground. The captain (Theodore Bikel) sends Lt. Rozanov (Arkin), officer Alexei Kolchin (John Phillip Law), and seven other men to go find a boat, commandeer it, and bring it back so they can tow the sub away from the island. Things begin promisingly, and then all hell breaks loose as one mishap after another foils the Russians’ scheme. Police Chief Mattocks (Brian Keith), his deputy Norman Jonas (Jonathan Winters), and, ultimately, war veteran and head of the citizens militia, Hawkins (Paul Ford), receive conflicting reports of the “invasion” and set about investigating it in their own misguided ways (although Mattocks is indeed the sensible one). Throw in a sudden romantic attraction between Alexei and the Whittaker’s babysitter, Alison (Andrea Dromm), the antics of phone operator Alice (the splendid Tessie O’Shea), and Luther, a drunk “Paul Revere” who spends the entire film trying to catch his horse (Ben Blue), and you’ve got a recipe for a comedy classic. The climax, however, is surprisingly suspenseful when the Russians and Americans finally reach a standoff at the harbor—until an unrelated crisis occurs that shakes everyone out of the mob mentality.
The straight man role was something Carl Reiner could do well; he always brought a heightened intensity to his parts that was simultaneously boisterous and believable, and yet amusing, too. Arkin, whose dialogue is 85% authentic Russian throughout the picture, immediately proved to the world what an amazing actor he is (he received an Oscar nomination for his performance and won a Golden Globe). Winters and Ford both provide much of the insane humor. O’Shea is hilarious, especially in the scene in which she and Reiner are gagged and tied together and attempt to escape. Law, a newcomer at the time, is a striking and likeable presence, and he masters the Russian language and the accented English with aplomb.
It’s all great stuff, punctuated by Johnny Mandel’s score of American patriotic music mixed with Russian folk songs. Along with Arkin’s nomination, The Russians are Coming… was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay (Rose), and Best Editing (Hal Ashby was co-editor).
Kino Lorber’s high definition restoration looks good enough, despite some washing out of color in some places, as well as blemishes and artifacts that can be seen in many of the images. This new 2024 edition has added an audio commentary by film historians Michael Schlesinger and Mark Evanier, who complement the onscreen action with informed background. The earlier supplements of an informative and entertaining “making of” featurette with an interview with Jewison and the theatrical trailer remain on the disk.
In short, The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming is grand fun, and it’s a fitting showcase for the late, great Carl Reiner and Alan Arkin.
So… a novel by Émile Zola published in 1890 has been made into a movie no less than five times. La Bête humaine(“The Human Beast” or “The Beast Within”) is a gritty psychological crime thriller centered in the world of railway yards and train engineer life, and nearly every character, including the protagonist, Jacques Lantier, is someone with a dark soul. It wasnoir before that term was used to describe art.
A film adaptation was first made in Germany in 1920 by Ludwig Wolff. A more celebrated remake by Jean Renoir and starring the great Jean Gabin as Lantier was released in 1938. The Hollywood version, retitled Human Desire andreviewed here, was made in 1954 by Fritz Lang, the brilliant filmmaker who had fled Nazi Germany in the 30s and resumed what was already a stellar career in Tinsel Town. Two more pictures, a 1957 Argentinian version and a more well known British television reworking in 1995 entitled Cruel Train(directed by Malcolm McKay), also revisited the well-worn tale.
While Renoir’s 1938 rendition of La Bête humaineis generally considered the definitive depiction of Zola’s novel, Lang’s Human Desire is an excellent example of the kind of rough-and-ready films noir that Hollywood had been churning out through the 1940s and 50s. Lang himself had already made several that fit within the trend and style of these often cheap, always black and white, mostly cynical thrillers—Ministry of Fear (1944), The Woman in the Window (1944), Scarlet Street (1945), Secret Beyond the Door (1947), and The Big Heat (1953), among others. The hallmarks of film noir are there—cinematography patterned after German expressionism, contrasting light and dark, shadows, nighttime, smoking, drinking, violence, and, most assuredly, a femme fatale.
This time the Lantier character, now called Jeff Warren (Glenn Ford), is a much nicer fellow. The violence and rage that existed in earlier versions of the protagonist are not here.He’s a train engineer, recently discharged from the Korean War and back at his old job in the railway yards somewhere not unlike Pennsylvania. He’srather sweet on the daughter of a colleague, a “good” girl andperhaps the only innocent and squeaky clean character in the story. Carl Buckley (Broderick Crawford) also works for the railroad, but he’s a mean drunk and is fired. He has a younger wife, Vicki (Gloria Grahame), who has a questionable past. Carl gets Vicki to visit a wealthy railway customer, Owens (Grandon Rhodes), to try and get him to influence the railway boss to rehire her husband. Carl doesn’t realize Vicki has some history with Owens. Carl gets his job back, but now he’s terribly jealous. He forces Vicki to help him murder Owens during a train ride. They don’t count on Jeff also being on the train and unwittingly becoming involved in the scheme. Jeff falls for Vicki and begins an affair with her, even though he knows she’s likely “no good.” And then Vicki has plans of her own for Jeff to do something about Carl. She believes that if Jeff had killed in the war, then he could do it again. But that, as he says, is “a different kind of killing.”
Yes, it’s quite a typical adultery-murder plot that floats around films noir. We can predict the events of the story before they occur, but we don’t care. Why? Because Fritz Lang’s direction is tight, interesting, full of striking imagery, and straddles the right balance between campy and heightened melodrama. The performances, especially by Grahame, are quite good. The only problem is an ending that might be considered unresolved.
Kino Lorber Studio Classics’ new Blu-ray release of Human Desire is top-notch with a gorgeous restoration that accents the cinematography by Burnett Guffey (who had won an Academy Award for From Here to Eternity and would win another for Bonnie and Clyde). The only supplements on the disk are a nine minute video discussion about the film by, curiously, actress Emily Mortimer, the theatrical trailer, and trailers for other Kino Lorber releases.
Human Desire is for fans of film noir, Fritz Lang, and the trio of stars—Ford, Grahame, and Crawford. Oh, and if you happen to like trains, there are a lot of those in the movie, too!
The
film noir movement/trend in Hollywood was fading away by the end of the
1950s decade. Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil (1958) is often cited by film
historians and film noir aficionados as the “last true film noir.”
However, one picture released in 1959 could very well take that honor,
for it indeed exhibits many of the traits of pure film noir (black and
white photography, gritty realism, cynical and edgy characters, a heist,
and an ending that is, well, not a happy one).
Odds
Against Tomorrow was set up by actor and musician Harry Belafonte and
was made by his production company. Is it the first film noir with a
Black protagonist? This reviewer can’t think of another that preceded
it. Basing it on a novel by William P. McGivern, Belafonte hired
blacklisted Abraham Polonsky to write the screenplay. Polonsky (who had
written the great Body and Soul, 1947) had been caught up in the HUAC
investigations in Hollywood, refused to testify in the hearings, and was
subsequently blacklisted along with many other writers, producers,
directors, and actors. Polonsky, working with co-writer Nelson Gidding,
wrote the script under a front-pseudonym, John O. Killens, a living
Black novelist. It wasn’t until 1996 that the Writers Guild restored
Polonsky’s real name to the credits.
Belafonte
apparently had wanted to make a movie that was not only a gripping heist
drama but also a statement about prejudice. Of the trio of robbers who
attempt a bank robbery in the film, one is Black (Belafonte), the other
two are White, and one of the latter is terribly racist… a factor that
plays into how the caper ultimately plays out.
New York
City. Dave Burke (Ed Begley) is a disgraced former cop who needs money.
Earl Slater (Robert Ryan) is an embittered, racist war veteran and
ex-con who needs money. Johnny Ingram (Belafonte) is a musician in debt
to a gangster because of a gambling addiction, so he needs money, too.
Slater lives with needy Lorry (Shelley Winters, in one of her whiny
roles) but he has the hots for apartment building neighbor Helen (Gloria
Grahame). Johnny is separated from his wife, Ruth (Kim Hamilton) and
daughter Edie, but he desperately wants to make good and reunite the
family. When Dave learns about an upstate smalltown bank with a
vulnerability, he enlists Earl and Johnny in a scheme to steal $150,000,
split three ways. Johnny doesn’t want to do it, but the pressure from
the mobster and threats to his family force him into it. Earl is not
happy that a Black man is part of the plan, and this tension is a major
conflict in the heist proceedings. To reveal more would spoil the
excitement.
Robert Wise, a filmmaker who seemed to be
able to make a great film out of any genre, is at the helm, and he does a
terrific job. He had worked with Ryan before in the film noir, The
Set-Up (1949). Wise, of course, won Oscars for directing The Sound of
Music (1965) and co-directing West Side Story (1961), but also made such
diverse classics as The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), The Haunting
(1963), and Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)!
This
is an intense, engaging picture that generates suspense and has
something to say. The script is top-notch, and the performances are
heightened just enough to fit firmly into the film noir style. The
music, composed by John Lewis and performed by the Modern Jazz Quartet,
is phenomenally good, adding another level to the tone and feel of the
movie.
Kino Lorber Studio Classics’ new Blu-ray
presentation is sharp and clean in glorious black and white. There is an
accompanying audio commentary by author/film historian Alan K. Rode.
Supplements include Post Screening Q&A interviews with Harry
Belafonte (in 2009) and Kim Hamilton (in 2007), plus the theatrical
trailer for this and other Kino Lorber film noir titles.
Odds
Against Tomorrow is for fans of film noir, heist movies, Robert Wise,
Harry Belafonte, Robert Ryan, and other members of the sparkling cast.
Highly recommended.
The
seventh and last entry in the Road to… motion picture series is often
cited as the weakest of the Bing Crosby and Bob Hope musical romps, but it’s
actually perhaps somewhere more in the middle. This reviewer found many of the
comic bits and one-liners to be quite funny, and despite their aging personas
(especially Crosby), the duo are in good form.
The
series began in 1940 with Road to Singapore and continued through the
forties. They were huge successes for Paramount Pictures. The single title made
in the fifties (and the only one shot in color), Road to Bali (1952),
seemed to be the swan song. It wasn’t until the early sixties that Crosby and
Hope decided to do another, this time for United Artists and shot in the UK.
Interestingly, fans of the James Bond film series will spot familiar faces and
names either on camera or in the credits behind the scenes (Walter Gotell, Syd
Cain, Bob Simmons, Maurice Binder, Wally Veevers).
More
significant is that The Road to Hong Kong, directed by Norman Panama,features a spy adventure plot that is not unlike the early 007 pictures,
and its release preceded the premiere of Dr. No by a little less than
seven months! There is a SPECTRE-like villainous organization (the “Third
Echelon”) and a caper involving nuclear weapons and space travel (shades of Dr.
No and You Only Live Twice). The villains even operate from an
underwater laboratory and control room that resembles that of Dr. No's. (When
Bob Hope’s character sees all the men and women in lab coats sitting at
terminals and monitors, he quips, “Oh, look, a school for television
repairmen!”)
As
usual, Crosby and Hope are conmen, Harry Turner and Chester Babcock, who
unwittingly become involved in a MacGuffin plot to steal plans for Russian
rocket fuel so that the Third Echelon and their leader (Robert Morley) can
launch nuclear missiles at earth from the moon. Echelon agent Diane (Joan
Collins) at first works with the villains, but of course the wacky pair of
Harry and Chester win her over to their side.
Oddly,
longtime costar Dorothy Lamour is relegated to helping the boys in a small
sequence and musical number near the end of the film. It’s a shocking example
of how Hollywood viewed aging female stars. A much younger Collins was cast as
the lead this time, with Lamour pushed into what amounts to a glorified cameo.
Never mind that both Crosby and Hope are much older than Collins and are
Lamour’s contemporaries!
It's
almost impossible in this day and age not to view the film through the lens of
cultural misappropriation. Despite the movie mostly taking place in British
Hong Kong, there are very few Asian actors to be seen (and they are mostly
extras). Too many white men and women are costumed and made up to be “Asian”
(and even Harry participates thusly as part of a disguise). This kind of thing
occurred in every Road to… picture, from Singapore to Morocco to Bali.
But, as classic film aficionados know, one must approach older films within the
context of when they were made and released. In 1962, this sort of thing was
commonplace.
An
old-school audience will certainly enjoy The Road to Hong Kong. The
singing and dancing, the slapstick hijinks, the snappy and silly dialogue, and
the references to the previous Roads are enough to delight. Another fun
aspect are the many cameos from the likes of Peter Sellers, David Niven, Frank
Sinatra, Dean Martin, Jerry Colonna, and others.
Kino
Lorber Studio Classics presents a sharp-looking Blu-ray restoration in glorious
black and white (this one surely would have benefited from color). An
insightful audio commentary by film historian/filmmaker Michael Schlesinger and
archivist/historian Stan Taffel accompanies the feature. Rounding out the disk
are theatrical trailers from this movie, other Road titles, and other
Kino releases.
The
Road to Hong Kong is
for fans of the series, of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, and for vintage Hollywood
and British films of the early 1960s. Fun stuff.
(UK: Faber & Faber; ISBN: 978-0571370368; January
2024)
(US:
Pegasus Books; ISBN: 978-1639366248; February 2024)
“ANATOMY
OF AN ARTIST”
By
Raymond Benson
Several
biographies of filmmaker Stanley Kubrick have been published, as well as numerous
books on the director’s filmography, works on specific movies, and pieces of ephemeral
studies. It is said that more has been written about Stanley Kubrick than any
other important cinema artist except for Alfred Hitchcock.
Now
comes the hefty, superb tome by Robert P. Kolker and Nathan Abrams, Kubrick:
An Odyssey. As someone who has been a Kubrick aficionado since the late
1960s, having read nearly all the existing titles about him, been to his estate
in England, visited his archives at London’s University of Arts, and currently know
members of his family, I can confidently say that Kubrick: An Odyssey is
the most outstanding biographical work on this enigmatic and challenging
filmmaker to date.
Previous
biographies, while admirable, suffered from the lack of enough material, due to
inaccessibility, about Kubrick’s personal life. Granted, Stanley Kubrick was an
extremely private individual and he guarded his privacy as if it were a fortress.
Most of the books out there are simply examinations and analyses of Kubrick’s
films (and many are excellent). The closest we got to an intimately personal
look at Stanley Kubrick was the 2012 memoir by his trusted driver and
assistant, Emilio D’Alessandro (co-written with Filippo Ulivieri), Stanley
Kubrick and Me.
The
new book by Kolker and Abrams changes that. With access to Kubrick’s archives
and to family members, the authors have penetrated the mountains of
correspondence and the treasure troves of boxes that Kubrick left behind after
his sudden passing in March 1999, four-and-a-half months before the premiere of
his final feature, Eyes Wide Shut.
It’s
a big book, one that covers every aspect of Kubrick’s life from childhood to death.
Thankfully, it is not written in an academic style; Kubrick: An Odyssey is
immensely readable, it moves through the years with surprising details that
many fans have never seen before. Want to know more about Kubrick’s first two
marriages or who he dated in-between them? You can find out here! Additionally,
the authors do not fawn over their subject; they are not afraid to uncover the
warts, such as his curious battles with co-screenwriters over ownership. And
yet, overall, Stanley Kubrick comes off as a human being who was devoted to his
family, his home, and above all else, his work. This biography is an anatomy of
an artist who insisted on carving a career path according to his own rules,
convention be damned.
Devotees
of the filmmaker will learn more about Kubrick’s unrealized projects throughout
the years. Many of these we knew about, but we perhaps didn’t have insight into
how he might have made such possible films as Burning Secret, based on a
Stefan Zweig novel about a rich baron who seduces a woman at a hotel spa by
befriending her twelve-year-old son. Its themes of jealousy, illicit affairs,
and confidences might have been an early take on what much later became Eyes
Wide Shut. Kubrick had always had an interest in the subject of marital
jealousy and had wanted to create something on that topic as far back as the
1950s.
Another
tantalizing tidbit, first mentioned by biographer John Baxter, is that in 1960,
Kubrick may have been speaking to executives at MCA about adapting for
television a detective series, Dr. Brilliant, created by none other than
Ian Fleming!
The
usual tropes of Kubrick’s perfectionism and obstinate penchant for multiple
takes on movie sets are discussed, and many are put to rest as myths. The
authors cannily peel back the façade that the press and PR have painted of
Kubrick. Underneath is a man of extraordinary intellect who deeply cared about
his art. He took great pains—and lengthy amounts of time—to first choose and
then come to grips with a project in order to develop the passion he required
to invest the energy into seeing them through to fruition. Coupled with this
fervor for cinema is Kubrick’s family man persona—once he had settled into his successful
third marriage, he was surrounded by women (his wife and three daughters) and
an abundance of dogs and cats (he was an animal lover, and that says a lot
about Stanley Kubrick’s personality).
For
the films themselves, there is plenty here about the morsels that generated
Kubrick’s cult of followers—Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey,
A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full
Metal Jacket, and all the others are discussed in depth.
For
anyone interested in cinema history, exceptional filmmaking, and a director who
rightly earned the label of auteur, Kubrick: An Odyssey is an
exceptional, thorough biography of one of the most renowned and controversial
names in motion pictures.
The
British production, The Edge of the World, was acclaimed director
Michael Powell’s first important feature film. Released in 1937, it was
well-received in the U.K. and it also made something of a splash in the USA
among the more discerning critics and audiences who appreciated non-Hollywood
fare.
Powell
had been working in cinema in various capacities since the silent days as a
still photographer, scriptwriter, and director of short films. Through most of
the 1930s, he helmed over twenty pictures that had diverse levels of success, but
it wasn’t until 1936-37 that he had the chance to make a truly personal film. This
was the “big bang” breakthrough in his movie career.
The
Edge of the World is
based on a newspaper article Powell had read that documented how a remote
island, St. Kilda in the Scottish Outer Hebrides, was losing its population due
to the land’s inability to support the people, and because younger generations were
fleeing to Scotland and England for better opportunities. Powell wrote an
original script involving two families on such an island and how dramatic circumstances
change their lives.
Unable
to film on St. Kilda, Powell chose the northern island of Foula in the Shetland
Islands group. It was suitably similar in both the landscape and the people’s geo-political
issues. With a handful of known actors and by casting many characters from the
locals, Powell and cinematographers Monty Berman, Skeets Kelly, Ernest Palmer,
and Powell himself, captured (even in black and white) the beauty and awesome
grandeur of the cliffs-dominated island.
Two
dominant families on the fictional island of Hirta, the Mansons and the Grays, are
united by an upcoming marriage between Andrew Gray (Niall MacGinnis) and Ruth
Manson (Belle Chrystall). Ruth’s brother, Robbie (Eric Berry) is Andrew’s best
friend. Conflict arises when Robbie announces that he’s leaving the island to
go “see the world” because there’s nothing left on Hirta for him. Losing
someone like Robbie hurts the economy because there aren’t that many strapping
young men to do the fishing and crofting. Andrew attempts to convince Robbie to
stay, but Robbie will have none of it. Andrew’s father (Finlay Currie) is
somewhat sympathetic to Robbie and believes that the islanders’ way of life is
indeed diminishing and that they should all evacuate for the good of their
children’s children. Robbie’s father (John Laurie) disagrees and is determined
to stay, despite his son’s wishes. Andrew and Robbie challenge each other to an
age-old tradition of racing up one of the cliffs to determine if Robbie should
stay or not. The results of the contest are tragic… and this deeply affects the
futures of the two families and the rest of the story.
Michael
Powell appears at the beginning of the film as a yachtsman escorting Andrew
Gray back to the island for reminiscing (the rest of the movie is a flashback).
Short
and tight (at 75 minutes), The Edge of the World is a slice of life to
which few of us today can relate, but it is a well-made, touching depiction of
the story that Powell wanted to tell. Perhaps more important than the movie
itself is the fact that the picture’s reception enabled Powell to go on to
bigger and better projects, such as Thief of Bagdad (1940) and the
eventual brilliant partnership with co-director Emeric Pressburger.
In
fact, the making of The Edge of the World meant so much to Powell that
he returned to Foula in 1978 with a camera crew and some of the surviving
actors to make a short documentary, Return to the Edge of the World.
This half hour program is in full color and is a warm reunion between the
filmmakers and the people who still reside on the island.
Milestone
Film and Video presents a beautifully restored high definition of the feature
film (distributed by Kino Lorber) with an audio commentary by Powell’s widow,
Oscar-winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker, film historian Ian Christie, and
Oscar-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis reading from Powell’s book on the making
of the film (200,000 Feet on Foula).
Supplements
include alternate scenes; the original trailer; the documentary Return to
the Edge of the World; Powell’s short 1941 film, An Airman’s Letter to
His Mother; and Powell’s home movies shot on Foula, narrated by
Schoonmaker.
The
Edge of the World is
recommended for fans of Michael Powell, Scotland history, and early British
cinema.
One
of the more under-seen and underrated films from 1985 is John Boorman’s
impressive The Emerald Forest, which gave us an ecological message long
before that was much in the public consciousness.
Of
a more cinematic significance, this picture is a grand adventure full of action
and spectacle, much like Boorman’s Deliverance (1972) or Excalibur (1981)
before it. The production values also indicate that this was no easy feat of a
movie to make.
The
Emerald Forest was
shot in and near São Paolo, Brazil, right smack by the Amazon
River and in the rain forest. Native extras populated much of the movie, which
possibly for the first time provided to audiences of a mainstream motion
picture depictions of how indigenous tribes in the jungle live. The result is
fascinating, and the National Geographic lesson is enhanced by an
exciting tale of kidnapping, exploration, survival, and human trafficking!
Powers
Boothe is Bill, a high-ranking engineer with a corporation that is building a large
hydro-electric dam on the edge of the rain forest. He’s moved his family of a
wife and two young children—a boy and a girl—to the city. One day while
overseeing the work of clearing the area of trees, Bill and his family have a
picnic at the edge of the jungle. Little does he know that the “Invisible
People,” a tribe that has not had contact with civilization, has dared to get
close to what they refer to as “the edge of the world.” When Tommy wanders off,
he is kidnapped by the tribe. Bill thus embarks on a long process to search for
his son, but to no avail.
Ten
years later, Tommy (Charley Boorman) has assimilated into the tribe and become
one of the Invisible People. His “father” of the tribe (Rui Polanah) loves him
like a son, and Tommy loves him back, although he has dreams of “Daddy.” Now
Tommy is ready to take a mate, and he chooses young and beautiful Kachiri (Dira
Paes). Meanwhile Bill and a photographer embark deep into the jungle to look
for Tommy again. They encounter the hostile “Fierce People,” who force Bill to
become prey in a hunt through the jungle. Tommy ends up saving Bill, and the
real father and son reunite. Tommy, however, refuses to accompany Bill back to
his first home. And then the human traffickers enter the story. To say more
would spoil the tale!
There
is a lot of “Tarzan movie” aspects to this picture, but without the
unintentional racism. There is also a lot of nudity of all the indigenous
people on display, which received some criticism when the picture was released
(Dira Paes was only fifteen years old). However, this was not exploitation.
Boorman and his team took great pains to be accurate and truthful in the
depiction of the tribes’ customs and ways. Yes, the Fierce People are portrayed
as the villains and the Invisible People are ultimately shown to be good at
heart (even though they kidnapped a young white boy). There is indeed some idealism
and moral ambiguity going on in The Emerald Forest, especially when it
comes to the film’s climactic raid on a human trafficking center in the jungle.
Finally, there is the message that indigenous people are being wiped out by the
actions of white people who are cutting down rain forests.
Powers
Boothe does an admirable job here, but it is Charley Boorman (son of the
director) who steals the movie. He was around eighteen when the picture was
made, and he manages to speak the indigenous language, perform jungle stunts,
and carry on with his native costars as if he were one of them. Boorman’s
direction is notable, too, given the locale and the cast with whom he had to
work. Philippe Rousselot’s cinematography is also quite commendable.
Kino
Studio Classics’ new Blu-ray release is a welcome one, and its 1920x1080p
presentation is colorful and rich. There is an audio commentary by filmmaker
Edgar Pablos and film historian Nathaniel Thompson that sheds light on the
production. Supplements include the theatrical trailer and other Kino trailers. There is also reversible sleeve artwork.
The
Emerald Forest is
for fans of director John Boorman and of jungle exploration adventures.
Recommended.
(Three
Ages: 1923; Directed by Buster Keaton and Eddie Cline)
(Our
Hospitality: 1923; Directed by Buster Keaton and John G. Blystone)
(Cohen
Film Collection)
“KEATON
CLASSICS DOUBLE FEATURE”
By
Raymond Benson
The
availability of Buster Keaton on Blu-ray can be a head-scratcher. Kino Lorber
seems to have the monopoly on Keaton’s features and shorts, but the puzzlement
comes with more than one release of certain titles in Kino’s catalog of disks for
sale. Add to this befuddlement is the Cohen Media Group and their Cohen Film
Collection’s ownership of Keaton’s library. Cohen has also released Keaton
Blu-ray disks—and they’re distributed by Kino Lorber! (And still others
are released by Eureka Entertainment, licensed by Cohen!) Which editions are we
supposed to get?
A
new Cohen Film Collection release, available from Kino Lorber, is The Buster
Keaton Collection, Volume 5, which includes a double bill of the master
filmmaker’s 1923 features—Three Ages and Our Hospitality. (Also
available from Cohen Film Collection are Volumes 1 – 4, which likewise
contain double bills of Keaton’s features from the 1920s.)
Here
on the Cinema Retro site, I reviewed the Kino Lorber release of Our
Hospitality in 2019. Apparently the Kino versions are different
restorations from the Cohen’s restorations. The latter are performed by Cineteca
di Bologna as part of Cohen’s “Keaton Project.” Long ago, Cohen Media Group
acquired the rights from the Keaton estate, even though other companies have
had access to them. I won’t even attempt to sort out the rights issues here. Just
know that the Kino Our Hospitality disk had bonus features, whereas the
Cohen Film Collection double bill discussed here does not contain any
supplements aside from Cohen’s own trailer of Our Hospitality release
and other Cohen releases.
That
said, the Cohen restorations by the Keaton Project are likely the best to come
about. They look marvelous. Bonus features? Who needs supplements when the
feature films are the best quality available?
Three
Ages was
Buster Keaton’s first feature film (not counting The Saphead, 1920, in
which he only starred). Co-directed with Eddie Cline, Keaton presents the
“story of love,” i.e., courtship, in three different time periods—the stone
age, the Roman age, and modern times (the 1920s, of course). The same cast
portrays the same character types in each story, and the film narrative jumps
back and forth between these time periods throughout the run of the picture. Keaton
stars as the “lesser” man when compared to his more attractive, manly, and
wealthier rival played by Wallace Beery. The woman who is the object of both
men’s affection is played by Margaret Leahy (the actress made only one film,
and this is it). Beery’s character is a bully, and Keaton must overcome the
man’s physical strength and social standing with cunning and trickery. There is
certainly amusement and clever bits here, but Three Ages could be called
baby steps for Keaton as a feature filmmaker when compared to later works. Three
Ages was perhaps the Keaton film most in need for preservation, as there
are many instances—a few seconds here and there—in which visual elements are
deteriorated. The restoration folks have done the best they could, and this is
probably the finest you will ever see Three Ages. The lively score for
this release is composed and conducted by Rodney Sauer.
Of
more importance and interest is Our Hospitality, considered one of
Keaton’s greatest works, and it was only his second feature (it is co-directed
by John G. Blystone). The story takes place in the early 1800s and draws upon a
rural family feud like the Hatfields and McCoys—in this case the McKays and
Canfields. When patriarch John McKay is killed by James Canfield (and vice
versa), Mrs. McKay flees with little baby Willie McKay (played by Buster’s
real-life infant son, Buster Keaton Jr.). Twenty years later, Willie inherits
the old family estate in the south and returns to claim it, only vaguely aware
of the feud that has existed for decades. On the way he meets Virginia (played
by Keaton’s wife at the time, Natalie Talmadge), who happens to be a Canfield.
Upon arrival at home, Willie continues to court Virginia, but her brothers
won’t have it. The rest of the picture is a cats-and-mouse game of Willie
avoiding being killed and at the same time wooing the woman he wants to marry.
There
are many striking aspects about the picture. Keaton’s paid great attention to
detail in the design and location shooting. Apparently, he took great pains to
create realistic locomotives and tracks that depicted early train development
in America (although he played with time period accuracy for the sake of more
interesting visuals). The final act contains some spectacular and hair-raising
stunt work by the star, including an incident of falling into rapids and almost
drowning on camera. Mostly, though, the story is well-constructed, the
characters have more depth than in the other silent comedies of the day, and,
in the end, Our Hospitality is one of Keaton’s most satisfying movies.
Interestingly,
it’s the only Keaton film to feature three generations of Keatons—Buster
himself, his previously-mentioned son, and his father, Joe Keaton, as a train
engineer.
The
Cohen presentation here is gorgeous and near perfect. Carl Davis supplied the
wonderful musical score that accompanies it.
For
Buster Keaton fans, you can’t go wrong with this double bill release (nor with
the Cohen Film Collection’s other four volumes). Highly recommended.
The
celebrated filmmaker Elia Kazan’s last picture, The Last Tycoon, was
adapted from celebrated writer F. Scott Fitzgerald’s last novel (published
unfinished in 1941). Released in 1976, the film features a stellar cast,
Oscar-nominated Art Direction, and a respectful, intelligent screenplay by
playwright Harold Pinter.
And
yet, The Last Tycoon is a noble and interesting failure. That is not to
say it’s not worth seeing. There is a lot to admire in the movie, especially
for audiences interested in Hollywood history.
Robert
De Niro plays Monroe Stahr, the production chief and creative head of one of
the biggest studios in 1930s Hollywood. Anyone who knows anything about this
era of Tinsel Town will realize instantly that the character of Monroe is
inspired by Irving Thalberg, the genius producer who held the same jobs at MGM
during its golden age. He’s young, handsome, smart, and has some health
problems… but he has a way dealing with talent and executives.
Robert
Mitchum is the head of the studio, Pat Brady, perhaps something of the Louis B.
Mayer of the story. His daughter, Cecilia (the radiant Theresa Russell in her
first film) would like nothing more than to be with Monroe, but the
moody and melancholic Monroe, a widower, has his eyes and heart set on the
enigmatic Kathleen (Ingrid Boulting in her first film), a woman of beauty and
mystery who is not part of the Hollywood scene.
Throw
in a supporting cast—the likes of Tony Curtis, Jack Nicholson, Jeanne Moreau,
Ray Milland, Donald Pleasence, Dana Andrews, Peter Strauss, Jeff Corey, John
Carradine, and even a young Anjelica Huston in a small role—and you’ve got
classic Hollywood on the screen.
So
what’s the problem? Pinter’s script does a splendid job of emphasizing the
themes of the novel and Kazan manages to present a gorgeous-looking canvas of
star power and fine acting… but the movie ends up being, well, flat. There’s
something missing.
Guess
what… the missing element is the source material. Fitzgerald’s unfinished novel
is about dreams and ambitions left “unfinished.” Monroe’s “lonely at the top”
persona is because his life and work is unfulfilled, just like the house he’s
building on the beach—it’s unfinished. It’s not even clear that he wants to
finish it.
The
main love story thrust of the movie—that of Monroe pursuing Kathleen—is
ultimately unsatisfying, even if what does occur is what naturally
should. Once again, the issue is that we are left with threads that are vague,
uncertain, and unsettled.
In
a wonderful bit in which a famous novelist played by Donald Pleasence is having
difficulty adapting his style of excessive dialogue to the movies, Monroe
improvises a scene without characters speaking by describing what a character
“sees,” and in turn, what the audience sees. When Monroe stops without
completing the scene, Pleasence asks, “What happens next?” And Monroe has made
his point that the pictures are a visual medium.
What
happens next? Exactly.
Unfinished.
There
is an intriguing subplot tease involving the possible formation of a writers
union (in which one of those “commie” organizers from New York, played by
Nicholson, attempts to come to terms with Monroe), but this, too, is never
resolved. The sequence is doubly ironic in that Kazan himself was embroiled in
the HUAC Red Scare witch hunts in Hollywood in the 1950s, and there was a large
faction in that town who had knives out for the director in later years for his
cooperation with the government.
It
was an honorable attempt to bring Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon to the
screen, though. Revisiting the picture after nearly fifty years, seeing these
actors again when they were young and vibrant, and delving into the myths and ambiguities
of the Golden Age of Hollywood is still very much worth the time.
Kino
Classics’ Blu-ray release features a handsome 1920x1080 restoration that shows
off Victor J. Kemper’s cinematography and the lush production design by Gene
Callahan, Jack T. Collis, and Jerry Wunderlich. There is an audio commentary by
film historian Joseph McBride, who shines light on the darkness of this strange
piece of cinema. Trailers of other Kino Lorber titles round out the
supplements.
The
Last Tycoon is
for fans of classic Hollywood, Robert De Niro, Elia Kazan, Harold Pinter, and
any of the other actors featured in this unusual presentation.
It
was hyped to be another film like The Sting (1973)—a clever heist caper
in a period setting with charismatic actors, witty dialogue, and a lively,
comical tone. Michael Crichton had written a historical novel, The Great
Train Robbery (published in 1975), which was based on the true story of the
first train robbery in Britain. In 1855, Britain was engaged in the Crimean War
and a large amount of gold was shipped monthly from London to pay the troops. A
fellow named William Pierce and his accomplice Edward Agar planned the robbery
and pulled it off, much to the dismay of the British authorities.
Crichton
was keen on getting a film made based on his book, so he went ahead and wrote
the screenplay himself. He also changed the character names to Edward Pierce
and Robert Agar and added a lot more “fun” to the proceedings for a romp of a cinematic
experience. Dino De Laurentiis picked up the film rights and it wasn’t
difficult to get the thing financed and distributed by United Artists. Released
first in the U.K., the title was changed, oddly, to The First Great Train
Robbery. However, in the United States and rest of the world, the picture
bore the simpler title from the book, The Great Train Robbery.
Pierce
(Sean Connery) is a man-about-London with high society connections, but he’s
also a con man with his own cadre of pickpockets and small time crooks. Among
them is Agar (Donald Sutherland), who is adept at lock-picking and copying keys,
and Miriam (Lesley-Anne Down), who has the talent to assume several
personas—usually, though, that of sexy bait for unsuspecting victims. The bank
manager, Fowler (Malcolm Terris), has loose lips and reveals the secret about
the gold’s security on the train—the safes can be opened only with four
different keys, each carried by different people. Pierce sets about instigating
elaborate schemes to first obtain each individual key, making copies of them, and
then to infiltrate the train and snatch the gold. Every step of the way, Agar
pronounces, “That’s impossible!” to comical effect, only to follow Pierce’s
instructions to the letter, succeed, and move forward to the next challenge. To
reveal more would certainly be a spoiler!
The
movie is entertaining and good enough—but it’s not the equal of The Sting. Much of the
film’s strength comes from watching Connery in action in a role that is similar
to the certain suave operator we all associate with the actor, only he’s been
transported to 1855 England. Dressed in the height of fashion for the time,
Connery is charming, dapper, and looks marvelous. There are moments, though, in
which it seems that Connery isn’t totally comfortable in the role. This might
be due to weaknesses in the dialogue and direction, which sadly do not always rise
to the occasion. Sutherland is also winning, although his British accent goes
in and out throughout the movie. Perhaps the most engaging performer is Down,
an extremely attractive and talented actress who unfortunately didn’t retain the
early success of her appearances in the late 70s and early 80s.
The
cinematography (by Geoffrey Unsworth), along with the production and costume
designs, are all exquisite. However, despite winning an Edgar Allan Poe Award
from Mystery Writers of America for the screenplay, it is the dialogue which
causes one to wince at its over-the-top instances of risqué innuendo. The
direction, too, is of journeyman quality; the picture could have benefited from
a Nicholas Meyer or even a Spielberg. That said, Connery allegedly performed
the top-of-the-train stunts himself, which, given that revelation, is
surprising. While not in the same league as top-of-the-train stunts today (i.e.,
Skyfall, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Mission:
Impossible—Dead Reckoning, Part One), for 1978 the stunt work is
impressive.
Kino
Lorber has issued a new Blu-ray disk that looks gorgeous and contains an archival audio
commentary by the late writer/director Crichton. The only other supplements are trailers
from other Crichton features and Kino Lorber releases. There is also a reversible artwork sleeve.
The
Great Train Robbery is
for fans of Connery and Sutherland, and it will hopefully remind viewers of Lesley-Anne
Down’s formidable gifts.
The
1957 romantic comedy, The Prince and the Showgirl has likely received
more press about what went on behind the scenes and the notorious animosity
that existed between the two stars, Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier. The
latter was also producer and director of the picture, although the production
company was the first title made by the newly-formed Marilyn Monroe
Productions. The 2011 picture (was it that long ago?), My Week with Marilyn,
featuring Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branagh, depicted the stormy relationship
between Monroe and Olivier and how Monroe behaved rather, well, erratically and
irrationally toward her director/co-star, other actors, the cinematographer,
the costumer, and nearly everyone else on the set. The actress even brought
something of a “support coach” with her every day in the form of Paula
Strasberg, who, with her husband Lee, ran the Actors Studio.
Unless
one had actually seen the real movie, The Prince and the Showgirl,
one came away from My Week with Marilyn with the impression that Monroe
was a mess, that Olivier hated her guts, and that the movie they made was a
disaster.
The
Prince and the Showgirl is actually a charming, well-acted, funny, and
touching piece of work. This reviewer is happy to say that Marilyn Monroe is marvelous
in the role of Elsie Marina, a chorus line showgirl of a musical playing in
London’s West End in 1911, when the picture takes place. Monroe displays impressive
comic timing and wit, does a pratfall or two with aplomb, and categorially
holds her own against the likes of renowned thespian Olivier. He, too, is quite
winning, even though his accent as a “Carpathian” prince regent (from the
Balkans) sometimes causes one’s eyebrows to rise. But make no mistake—this
movie belongs to Monroe, and this reviewer would easily cite her performance
here ranked in her top five.
Funny
how the bad rep of a movie and its making clouds what one really sees on the
screen.
Granted,
The Prince and the Showgirl was received with lukewarm praise upon its
release. The BAFTAs honored it with several nominations, including Actor,
“Foreign” Actress, Screenplay, and British Film. It received no Academy Award
nominations. The film did very well in the UK, likely due to Olivier’s presence.
Perhaps the picture’s indifferent reception in the USA was due to its rather
slow pace, length (a few minutes under two hours), and the fact that the story
takes place mostly in static one-room sequences of the Carpathian Embassy.
That’s not surprising, because the movie is based on a stage play, The
Sleeping Prince, by Terrence Rattigan, who also penned the screenplay.
Perhaps Rattigan adhered too closely to the conventions of the stage. All of
these things are indeed flaws in the motion picture.
Still…
this is a worthwhile romantic comedy on the strength of the two leads,
especially Monroe’s luminous performance. Not only does she look fantastic, as
always, but she truly does light up the screen with charisma, warmth, and
delight. Other standouts in the cast would include Richard Wattis, who nearly
steals the movie as the frustrated foreign office suit who is charged with
keeping the prince happy during his stay in London, Sybil Thorndike as the
prince’s dowdy but often frank mother-in-law, and Jeremy Spenser as the
prince’s son, King Nicolas, who to this reviewer resembles what Quentin
Tarantino might have looked like at the age of sixteen.
The
Warner Archive has released a region-free, beautifully rendered, restored presentation of
the feature film in high definition. That 1950s-era Technicolor pops out, and
the costumes are undeniably gorgeous. Unfortunately, the only supplement on the
disk is the theatrical trailer.
The
Prince and the Showgirl is enthusiastically recommended for fans of Marilyn
Monroe. Fans of Olivier, who does what he can when someone so appealing is
sharing the screen with him, will find it interesting. For this reviewer’s
money, The Prince and the Showgirl is far more enjoyable than My Week
with Marilyn, which now seems to be a rather sordid coda to this romantic
comedy bauble.
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Poor
Orson Welles. After the critical success but box office failure that was Citizen
Kane (1941), it seemed as though the “boy genius” could never again get his
ultimate vision on the screen when he was working in Hollywood. The studio
butchered his second picture, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), although
the version released is still pretty much a masterpiece and earned an Oscar
Best Picture nomination. Still, it didn’t make money. After that, Welles was persona
non grata in Hollywood, at least as a director. The studios were happy to
have him as an actor.
Nevertheless,
he continued to squeeze his way in and make more Hollywood pictures. He
produced, co-wrote, and acted in Journey Into Fear (1943), and the story
goes that he directed some of it uncredited (Norman Foster was the credited
director). Welles then made The Stranger (1946) as an attempt to prove
he could deliver a movie under budget and on time—and he did. The Stranger is
perhaps Welles’ most “conventional” motion picture and it made money.
Unfortunately, RKO (the studio that had made his previous three films) still
turned its back on Welles.
The
filmmaker’s next title, The Lady from Shanghai (1947), was made for
Columbia Pictures. Legend has it that Welles, who in 1946 was producing with
Mike Todd a Broadway stage musical based on Around the World in Eighty Days,
needed $50,000 to complete the budget so that the musical could open. He called
Harry Cohn, the head of Columbia, and offered to write and star in a movie for
that amount of money,and direct the picture for free and with no credit. Cohn
asked, “What do you have in mind?” It may be an apocryphal story, but Welles,
who was calling Cohn from a phone booth, either saw a woman reading a pulp
paperback or he spied it on a rack of books. It was called If I Die Before I
Wake, a 1938 potboiler by Raymond Sherwood King. Welles, off the cuff,
grabbed the book and read the blurb on the back to tell Cohn what the movie was
about, but he improvised the title, calling it The Lady from Shanghai. (And,
indeed, Welles does not receive a credit for directing—there is no directing
credit at all.)
Cohn
made the deal, but on one condition—it had to star Rita Hayworth, who was at
the time Columbia’s biggest star. The problem with that was that Hayworth and
Welles were married, but their union was on the rocks. They were estranged from
each other.
But,
hey, both Welles and Hayworth were professionals. They could work together. And
they did. Welles assembled the cast, wrote the script, and proceeded to film on
location (New York, San Francisco, out at sea) so that no one would interfere
with the work. Of course, he went over budget and delivered a movie that was
three hours long. Cohn went berserk, took the film away from Welles, and cut it
down to approximately 90 minutes. Once again, Welles’ “vision” was hijacked.
And
yet… AND
YET… The Lady from Shanghai is a MARVELOUS motion picture! No, it wasn’t
well received by the critics or the public in 1948 when it was finally released
(it had premiered in France in 1947)… but time is often kind to movies made by
Orson Welles, and today The Lady from Shanghai is considered a film
noir classic.
Film
noir (not
a term used at the time) was big in the late 1940s. Movies like Double
Indemnity, The Big Sleep, The Postman Always Rings Twice, The
Killers, and Out of the Past were coming out fast and furiously. The
Lady from Shanghai and The Stranger are Welles’ contributions to
that stylistic movement of dark shadows, high contrast lighting,
Expressionistic design, cynical and hard-boiled characters, and crime that
doesn’t pay.
Michael
O’Hara (Welles) is an out of work seaman who meets gorgeous Elsa Bannister
(Hayworth) in Central Park one evening. He immediately falls for her, even
though she is married to one of the country’s most accomplished defense
attorneys, Arthur Bannister (Everett Sloane). O’Hara is hired to be a crewman
on Bannister’s yacht as the couple sails around North America, through the
Panama Canal, from New York to San Francisco. Along the way, Bannister’s sleazy
business partner, George Grisby (stage actor Glenn Anders, in an extraordinary,
eccentric performance), asks O’Hara to “kill” him in a plot to fake his own
death. O’Hara would be paid enough money for he and Elsa to run away together.
Ah, but nothing is what it seems. Grisby is, of course, setting up O’Hara for a
big fall, and Elsa is, you guessed it, a femme fatale.
The
plot is rather complex and there was much critical lashing at the time of the
movie’s release that it was “incomprehensible,” but this is simply not the
case. Even though Columbia deleted 1-1/2 hours from Welles’ rough cut, the
story still makes sense… and as film noir expert Eddie Muller explains
on one of the Blu-ray disk’s supplements, what isn’t explained in the movie can
easily be interpreted by audiences who are somewhat intelligent. (He calls it a
“film noir poem.”)
The
most memorable sequence is the famed climax that takes place at an abandoned
amusement park outside San Francisco. The chase and ultimate shootout in an old
fun house made up of a mirror maze has been copied many times in subsequent
motion pictures (Enter the Dragon and The Man with the Golden Gun,
for example). But the surreal quality of Welles’ direction of this sequence
reminds one of the surrealist paintings of Salvador Dalí, and it is masterfully presented. Supposedly the scene was
to have lasted nearly twenty minutes. If only we could see what ended up on the
cutting room floor!
The new Blu-ray edition from Kino
Lorber looks exquisite. The glorious black and white cinematography (by the
credited Charles Lawton Jr., with uncredited work by Rudolph Maté and Joseph
Walker) is sharp and clear. There are three different audio commentaries
one can choose to accompany the film: one by film historian Imogen Sara Smith,
another by novelist and critic Tim Lucas, and another by filmmaker Peter
Bogdanovich, who spent a lot of his later career commenting on Welles’ life and
work. An additional video supplement is an interview with Bogdanovich about the
making of the movie. A video interview with Eddie Muller shines a light on the
apocryphal tales of the movie’s production. Finally, the theatrical trailer
rounds out the package.
The Lady from Shanghai is a top-notch gem, and the new Kino Lorber release is a
good way to experience it. For fans of film noir, Orson Welles, and Rita
Hayworth. Highly recommended.
Forgive us for being a bit self-indulgent, but we wanted to draw readers' attention to an article in the prestigious Chicago Tribune about Cinema Retro's very own Raymond Benson, who is riding high with the rave reviews of his new Covid-era mystery-thriller "The Mad, Mad Murders of Marigold Way." Regular readers know that Raymond was once chosen by Ian Fleming's estate to write six official James Bond novels. He has also written many other well-received thrillers that are unrelated to Bond. The article provides interesting insights into Raymond's early days and how he became enthused about the 007 films. Raymond has been an important contributor to Cinema Retro from our very first issue in which he initiated his popular column that examines various aspects of film history.
Preston
Sturges’ filmmaking career in Hollywood between 1940-1944 is unparalleled. He
is often called the first “writer-director” who would helm his own screenplays
(actually this is untrue, since Charles Chaplin had been doing it since 1914,
and Orson Welles was also doing it in the early 40s), but there is no question
that Sturges became an auteur of sorts in those glorious five years. His flame
burned brightly for that short period, and then it sadly weakened and
eventually blew out.
One
of the reasons for the filmmaker’s demise was the unfortunate production of The
Great Moment, a biopic of a 19th Century dentist named Dr. William Thomas
Green Morton, who is (mostly) credited as discovering the use of ether as an
anesthetic for surgery.
Sturges,
who was known for his acerbic comedies like The Great McGinty (1940), The
Lady Eve (1941), and Sullivan’s Travels (1942), was apparently
obsessed with Morton’s story and had been working on a script as early as 1939
to be directed by Henry Hathaway. That project was shelved, and then Sturges
began his run of directing his own scripts in 1940. He resurrected the Morton biopic
on his own in 1942. It was based on the book Triumph Over Pain (1940) by
René Fülüp-Miller,
and that also became the title of Sturges’ script. The film was shot before the
making of The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek and Hail the Conquering Hero!
(both released in 1944). But Paramount, Sturges’ studio, didn’t like the Morton
biopic Sturges had made, and they took control away from the writer-director,
retitled it The Great Moment, and re-edited it. The film was finally
released two years after its production in 1944, after Miracle and Conquering
Hero. By then, Sturges had already left Paramount in disgust. The Great
Moment bombed at the box office and critics hated it. Sturges made a few
more films for other studios, but his career never regained the peak of his
earlier Paramount successes.
The
Great Moment exhibits
how Dr. Morton (Joel McCrea) discovers that ether allows him to successfully
pull a tooth from patient Eben Frost (Sturges’ stalwart character actor William
Demarest), so he develops a specially shaped bottle from which patients can
inhale the ether vapors. History has shown that Morton pulled pieces of his
“idea” from other doctors and his mentor, surgeon Professor Warren (Harry
Carey), and the story illustrates this. After Morton’s discovery, he endured
attacks to his claim, especially when he attempts to patent the process. The
medical profession is quick to condemn Morton for what they perceive as
“monetizing” the method by patenting it, even though Morton has no intention of
making a profit. He simply doesn’t want to reveal the ingredients of what’s in
the bottle. Morton and his wife, Elizabeth (Betty Field), withstand hardships
as Morton stubbornly pursues his claims in courts and even in a petition to the
president of the United States.
Doesn’t
sound like a comedy, does it? Well, it isn’t. There are humorous bits and
pieces in The Great Moment (mostly from Demarest), but the studio was
correct in determining that the film was not in keeping with the previous
“Preston Sturges Comedies.” Never mind that Sturges had likely made a good
biopic with a message about sacrifice. Paramount deleted scenes, rearranged the
narrative flow, and emphasized the few comic bits—and then they marketed the
film as if it were a Preston Sturges Comedy. It’s no wonder that
audiences were disappointed.
In
viewing The Great Moment today, one can see that it’s not a good film. It
really is “anesthesia on celluloid.” It is, as the late filmmaker Peter
Bogdanovich calls it in a supplement included on the new Kino Lorber disk, a
“mess.” The thing is, Sturges can’t be blamed for it. But for Preston Sturges
fans, it is an interesting document. We can see that there are indeed Sturges’
fingerprints all through the picture, and many of the Sturges “stock company”
are present (such as Franklin Pangborn, Porter Hall, and others). The irony and
bite that is pure Sturges is often there in the dialogue.
In
short, The Great Moment is a great failure, but one that illustrates how
Hollywood tended to squash talented auteurs who bucked the system in the 1940s
(like Sturges and Welles).
Kino
Lorber’s new Blu-ray edition looks pristine and sharp in its glorious black and
white. The disk includes the previously mentioned supplement, “Triumph Over
Pain: A Celebration of Preston Sturges,” which is a three-way Zoom call between
Tom Sturges (Preston’s son), Bogdanovich, and film historian Constantine Nasr. This
is a lot of fun and very informative (perhaps more entertaining than the
feature film!). Also of interest is a lengthy Introduction by Nasr, which goes
into the history of the problematic production. The theatrical trailers for
this and other Sturges’ releases round out the package.
The
Great Moment is
for fans of Preston Sturges, to be sure, but also for historians interested in documentation
of Hollywood’s miscalculations and bone-headed decisions when it came to
filmmakers who likely knew much more about what they were doing than the
studios behind them.
David
Lynch’s challenging 1997 feature, Lost Highway, has had a tortured home
video release history. After an initial VHS release, and then one on DVD,
rights issues and a lack of interest by media companies prevented a Blu-ray
release in the USA for many years. Less-than-ideal quality imported Blu-ray
editions from various countries were circulated among Lynch fans and collectors.
Kino Lorber finally put out a decent Blu-ray in 2019, but it was criticized by
home video review sites and by Lynch himself as having inferior quality, as it didn’t
go through the stringent approval process to which the director was accustomed.
Cinema Retro reviewed that edition, finding it not terrible and
certainly adequate enough since it seemed that it was all that we were ever
going to get.
Now,
however, The Criterion Collection has issued a new, director-approved 4K UHD
edition that is an astonishingly gorgeous digital restoration with a new 5.1
surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack and an alternate one of uncompressed
stereo. Criterion’s Lost Highway can be purchased as a 2-disk set
containing a 4K UHD disk of the film alone plus a Blu-ray disk of the film and
all the supplements, or in a single disk Blu-ray package.
Much
of what this reviewer has to say about the film itself is repeated from the
earlier 2019 review.
Lost
Highway is
a disturbing and surreal work of art from Luis Buñuel’s heir apparent,
and it’s a doozy. Lynch described the film as a “psychogenic fugue,” which is a
fancy term for a dissociative disorder. The story concerns musician Fred
Madison (Bill Pullman), who is having marriage trouble with his beautiful wife,
Renee (Patricia Arquette). An outside force seems to be watching and harassing
the couple by leaving intimate videotapes of themselves on their
doorstep. Throw in some nightmares and the appearance of a “mystery man” (the
very creepy Robert Blake) with powers that could only exist as dream logic, and
Fred eventually loses it. Suddenly he’s arrested for killing his wife. But
then—uh oh—while he’s sitting in a jail cell, he becomes… someone else.
The cops find Pete Dayton (Balthazar Getty) in Fred’s place. Puzzled, they let Pete
go, since he’s not the man they want. Now there’s a kind of alternate universe
thing going on, because Patricia Arquette now plays Alice, the mistress of the
cruel Mr. Eddy (Robert Loggia), who may in truth be a porn producer named Dick
Laurent.
Confused?
Many audience members were baffled at the time of Lost Highway’s initial
release. The picture marked the first in what might be called the “fugue
trilogy” (the other parts being Mulholland Drive and INLAND EMPIRE),
in which main characters become other people during the flow of the tales.
After a second or third viewing and examining Lynch’s narrative conceits in the
other movies, one can get a sense of what it’s all about.
And
this reviewer is not going to tell you. Just know that Lost Highway is
about a man who murders his wife, and he is unable to live with himself—or
inside his own mind—because of it. The film generates a good amount of dread,
and it is pure Lynch. It marks a transition from earlier, more
narrative-friendly pictures, to more dreamlike, experimental works of art that
defy description—other than that they are “David Lynch Films.”
Peter
Deming’s cinematography is fully exploited in Criterion’s new restoration. His
use of light and shadow is remarkable, and the bits in which Fred walks into a
dark hallway and disappears, and then later reappears from the
blackness, are canny metaphors for the themes in the movie.
As
opposed to the earlier Kino disk, Criterion has included some choice
supplements. Most notable is the 1997 feature documentary, Pretty as a
Picture: The Art of David Lynch, which served as a behind-the-scenes
“making of Lost Highway” piece as well as a look at Lynch’s career as an
artist (painting/sculpture) and filmmaker. Highway cast members and crew
are interviewed along with Lynch himself, and there are clips from earlier
films, too. An audio-only excerpt from the audiobook of Lynch and Kristine McKenna’s
biography, Room to Dream, covers the period in the mid-90s when Highway
was made. Two archival featurettes about the making of the film and
interviews with cast/crew are also welcome. The theatrical re-release trailer
rounds out the package. The booklet feature interview excerpts from the
publication Lynch on Lynch. Note that the feature film does not have
chapter breaks, in keeping with other Lynch-approved Blu-ray and DVD releases.
Lost
Highway has
become more mysterious and admirable with age, and Criterion’s new release does
the work justice. For fans of David Lynch, dark—very dark—crime dramas,
surreal cinema, and bravura filmmaking.
The
filmmaker Sean Baker, who most recently gave us (along with co-producer
Shih-Ching Tsou) such striking independent features as The Florida Project (2017)
and Red Rocket (2021), began his career modestly with extremely
low-budget indie pictures that take on a cinema veritéstyle (a type of documentary-like filmmaking that is
improvisational and attempts to capture “reality” in all of its harsh and spontaneous
truths). Baker co-directed with Tsou his second feature film, released in 2004,
Take Out, which is a slice of life tale that takes place within the
twelve hours of a single day.
Ming
Ding (Charles Jang) is an undocumented Chinese immigrant living in New York
City’s Chinatown. He had come to America in search of a better way of life,
leaving his wife and son in China until a later date when he could afford to
bring them over legally. Unfortunately, he owes a great deal of money to an
unscrupulous loan shark, whose muscle men show up at Ming’s apartment of
squalor (where several immigrants also live) and demand that a payment of $800
be made by the end of the day or else Ming’s balance owed will be doubled. They
strike Ming in the back with a hammer to emphasize their seriousness. Ming
already has $500—his entire savings—so he must find $300 over the next several
hours. Ming works as a delivery boy for a take out Chinese restaurant on the
Upper West Side. One of his co-workers, Young (Jeng-Hua Yu), gives him $150. Thus
begins a frantic, and tension-filled race against the clock for Ming to deliver
enough orders to customers in an attempt to make $150 more in tips. Seeing that
many customers barely tip anything at all, the task is definitely a challenge.
Compounding
the situation is that Mother Nature has decided that this would be a day in
which torrential rain must plummet New York all day long. So poor Ming must
ride his bicycle in the downpour back and forth from the restaurant to
customers’ residences. Sometimes the elevator in high-rise buildings is out of
order. Many times he must trek up the stairs to walk-up apartments. Customers
run the gamut—some are nice and friendly; more are cranky or racist or
cheapskates or all of the above- and, this being New York City, Ming must also
be wary of criminals who might target him for the money he’s carrying.
This
is a riveting piece of cinema that is not only suspenseful but also quite
revealing. Those of us who have ordered take out Chinese food in the big city
perhaps do not appreciate what a difficult job it is for the delivery guy. It
is hard, thankless work. We also get to see how a storefront Chinese take-out
place (not a sit-down restaurant) works behind the scenes. The manager and
counter person, Big Sister (Wang-Thye Lee), is the conduit between the kitchen
and the public. She speaks English perhaps better than any of the other
employees, but she’s not beyond throwing insults to or cursing out rude
customers in Mandarin that the recipients don’t understand.
Shih-Ching
Tsou, who has collaborated with Baker as a producer on his subsequent pictures,
was instrumental in bringing Take Out to life. She not only co-produced
the movie, but also co-wrote and co-directed it with Baker, who cannot speak
Mandarin or Cantonese. The script was written in English, but Tsou translated
it into Chinese for the actors, who were, for the most part, amateurs. Baker
did all of the striking camerawork himself along with the editing. Take Out is
truly a “homemade” production.
The
acting is remarkably potent. Charles Jang as Ming doesn’t say much in the
movie, but his inner turmoil and frustrations are clearly evident in his
charismatic demeanor and stoic facial expressions. He rarely reveals his pain,
but we know what he’s feeling. Of special note is Wang-Thye Lee as Big
Sister, who is in many ways the beating heart of the film. She is a pleasure to
watch in action.
The
Criterion Collection’s Blu-ray release presents a new 4K digital restoration,
supervised and approved by Baker and Tsou. It has an uncompressed stereo
soundtrack and comes with an audio commentary by Baker, Tsou, and Jang. There
are new English subtitles, as well as English captioning for the hearing
impaired. Supplements include a fascinating new documentary on the film
featuring interviews with Baker, Tsou, Jang, Lee, and Yu; a vintage documentary
on the making of the film; deleted scenes; Jang’s screen test; and the
theatrical trailer. The booklet comes with an essay by filmmaker and author J.
J. Murphy.
Take
Out is
for fans of Sean Baker’s work, New York City locales, and independent
filmmaking with a bite. Highly recommended.
Kino
Lorber has been releasing the W. C. Fields catalog in high definition, upgraded
from previous releases on DVD, and two more have come to the fore—You’re
Telling Me! and Man on the Flying Trapeze, two titles that don’t
immediately come to mind when one thinks of top tier, classic Fields pictures,
but never fear—they’re hilarious and worth a look.
You’re
Telling Me!
preceded The Old Fashioned Way and the brilliant It’s a Gift (both
previously reviewed here at Cinema Retro), all three of which appeared
in 1934, while Fields (real name—William Claude Dukenfield) still had a working
contract with Paramount Pictures. Man on the Flying Trapeze was released
in 1935, a return to a “Fields comedy” after the actor took a sidetrack sojourn,
courtesy of Paramount, into more high-brow fare (David Copperfield, an
Oscar Best Picture nominee,and Mississippi, a musical starring
Bing Crosby).
In
Telling Me, Fields is Sam Bisbee, an optometrist and amateur inventor (one
of his inventions is a “nose-holder-upper,” which pulls one’s nose up to open
the nasal passages when in bed). As usual, he’s married to a shrew of a wife (Louise
Carter), who is embarrassed by the family’s social status of living “on the
wrong side of the tracks.” Their daughter, Pauline (Joan Marsh), is sweet on Bob
Murchison (Larry “Buster” Crabbe), who comes from a wealthy, upper class
family. Bob’s snobby mother (Kathleen Howard) will not allow her son to marry
Pauline, mainly because of her contempt for “low life” Sam. However, Sam by
chance meets Princess Lescaboura (Adrienne Ames) on a train. The princess is a
visiting dignitary, and she is impressed by Sam’s woeful story of his troubles.
Sam is under the mistaken impression that the princess (“Call me Marie”) was
about to commit suicide when he meets her, and she plays along to earn his
friendship. Marie can see there’s a good man there, so she takes it upon
herself to visit his town and make things right between him and his family and
the community.Click here to order from Amazon.
Man
on the Flying Trapeze has no flying trapezes, but the title possibly suggests
the precarious tightrope act that is the life of Ambrose Wolfinger (Fields).
He, too, is married to a shrew (Kathleen Howard again, something of the
“Margaret Dumont” of W. C. Fields films). Fields has a daughter, Hope (Mary
Brian), from a previous marriage, but the second Mrs. Wolfinger’s uptight
mother (Vera Lewis) and lazy brother (Grady Sutton) live with them, too. No one
in the household can stand Ambrose—in fact, they make his life hell—except for Hope,
who adores him. Ambrose loses his job as a “memory expert” because he takes a
day off to attend a wrestling match, and it’s one of many things that goes
wrong in Ambrose’s world. Luckily, Hope is on hand to steer luck his way.
There
are some classic comedic bits in both films. Telling Me has a wonderful
golfing sequence toward the end, in which Fields shares the screen with
longtime foil Tammany Young (here as a caddy). Flying Trapeze is packed
with funny bits. The opening involves two burglars (one being Tammany Young,
again, plus a young Walter Brennan!) who get drunk in Fields’ cellar and start
singing. Later, the chase of a runaway tire after getting a flat takes Fields
onto the railroad tracks provides some laughs, along with the wrestling
sequence (featuring a young Tor Johnson as a heavily bearded “Russian”
wrestler).
Throughout
it all in both films, W. C. Fields maintains a command of the material. The
camera loves him, and he obviously loves the camera. This is a period when
Fields’ popularity was at its highest, with excellent examples of his impeccable
comic timing, slow burns, drunken confusion, and outrageous dialogue.
Both
Kino Lorber disks, sold separately, are 2K masters that are indeed an improvement
over previous DVD releases. Oddly, both Blu-ray editions feature the same bonus
supplement—an episode of the old “Wayne and Shuster” TV show (Johnny Wayne and
Frank Shuster, comics of the 40s and beyond, who had some success on television
in the 50s and early 60s). The segment focuses on the life of Fields. This same
supplement also appeared on the Never Give a Sucker an Even Break Blu-ray
disk from the same label. One might have thought that Kino could have found
some different supplements to spread around the various Fields titles on
release, but that is not the case. Theatrical trailers for both films, and
other Kino products, fill out the packages.
You’re
Telling Me! and
Man on the Flying Trapeze are both worthwhile additions to your W. C.
Fields library. They are snapshots of a comic genius in his prime. Click here to order from Amazon.
The
late Peter Bogdanovich called it “the first great detective movie.” That
statement is possibly arguable, but there is no question that the 1941 version
of The Maltese Falcon was the beginning of something new. Film
historians will forever debate what the first film noir might have been,
but Falcon is one of the contenders. The film presented a cynical, hard
boiled detective in Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart), utilized German expressionism
in its cinematography and design (low camera angles, high contrasting black and
white photography, shadows, and angular architecture), and a pessimistic tone. Falcon
also truly launched Bogart into the A-list. Prior to this (and, some say, High
Sierra, released the same year), Bogart usually played villains in crime
pictures, third billed or ever further down the line.
The
Maltese Falcon is
of course based on Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 novel, originally serialized in 1929.
Warner Brothers immediately bought the film rights, and an initial adaptation
was made and released in 1931 (also called The Maltese Falcon). This
version starred Ricardo Cortez as Spade and Bebe Daniels as Ruth Wonderly. The
picture definitely can be termed “pre-Code,” as it is rather risqué and isn’t a
very faithful adaptation of the novel. Warners remade the material five years
later as Satan Met a Lady, starring Warren William as “Ted Shane” and
none other than Bette Davis as “Valerie Purvis.” This version is played mostly
for laughs and is even less faithful than the first.
Enter
John Huston, who had been working in Hollywood in the late 1930s as a respected
screenwriter. He wrote the script for High Sierra (1941, directed by
Raoul Walsh), which starred Bogart. The two men became friends. Huston made it
known that he wanted to write and direct. Legend has it that Orson Welles
suggested that Huston try a faithful adaptation of The Maltese Falcon,
since the material was crying out to be done properly. Huston apparently wrote
the script and left it on Jack Warner’s desk. Then, on condition that no
“stars” were cast and the budget remain ridiculously low, Huston got the job to
make the film. At the time, Bogart was not a star. Co-star Mary Astor had been
a big star in the silent era and early 30s, but some personal scandals had
stymied her career by the 40s—so casting her was not expensive. The two other
(now) big names in the movie, Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet, were also
considered low risks. Lorre had been making cheap horror films and mysteries,
Greenstreet, a stage actor, had never made a movie. The picture also brought us
Elisha Cook, Jr., Gladys George, and Lee Patrick.
The
story is typically complex with many twists and turns, and it is always
surprising. It is about one of cinema’s greatest “MacGuffins,” a statue of a
falcon that is allegedly made out of gold and covered in rare jewels—but to disguise
it, someone covered it in black enamel. It seems everyone in the tale wants the
thing, except for private investigator Sam Spade (Bogart). He gets involved in
the hunt for the trophy when his partner, Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan) is
murdered at a rendezvous set up by a new client, “Ruth Wonderly” (Astor). It
turns out Wonderly’s real name is Brigid O’Shaughnessy (maybe), and she’s in
league with some sinister characters to buy—or steal—the statue. The “fat man,”
Kasper Gutman (Greenstreet) is the top villain here, and his sidekick, Joel
Cairo (Lorre), provides icky support. All Spade really wants to do is find out
who killed his partner and deliver that person to the police, but in doing so
must become embroiled in the intrigue and puzzles surrounding the coveted
Maltese Falcon.
Besides
the acting and direction, Huston’s script contains memorable lines of dialogue.
“When I slap you, you’ll take it and like it.” “Don’t be too sure I’m as
crooked as I’m supposed to be.” And of course, “The stuff that dreams are made
of.” The film received three Academy Award nominations—Best Picture, Best
Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor (Greenstreet), but failed to win
any of them.
The
Warner Home Video Blu-ray edition of The Maltese Falcon was released over
ten years ago, but its timeless appeal makes it appropriate to review. It is a
marked improvement over the 2000 DVD release, which was bare bones. A further
2006 3-disk DVD release contained all of the extras ported over to this Blu-ray
edition. The high definition transfer looks great and is without blemishes. The
movie comes with an audio commentary (by Bogart biographer Eric Lax).
Supplements
abound: There’s an interesting, nearly half-hour featurette on the history of
the film; a collection of Bogart trailers narrated by the late Robert Osborne
of TCM; a blooper reel of Warners pictures; makeup tests; a 1941 newsreel; an
Oscar-nominated short (“The Gay Parisian”); two of the greatest Looney Tunes
cartoons (Bugs Bunny in “Hiawatha’s Rabbit Hunt” and Porky Pig in “Meet John
Doughboy”); trailers for Falcon and other Warners films of the era; and three
audio-only radio adaptations, two of which feature the movie’s original stars
and one with Edward G. Robinson). The only thing missing from the Blu-ray
edition is the inclusion of the previous two Falcon feature adaptations,
which were included in the 3-disk DVD set.
The
Maltese Falcon is
fabulous entertainment, a spectacular example of film noir, a showcase
for Humphrey Bogart’s star power, and one of the great Hollywood films of the
1940s. Highly recommended.
This
is a little-known gem of a film from producer Louis de Rochemont, the man best
known for introducing The March of Time documentary newsreels to cinemas
that ran from the 1930s until the early 1950s. He also produced several
mainstream pictures, and one of these from 1951, The Whistle at Eaton Falls,
is an underdog-battles-severe-odds tale of the highest caliber.
Directed
by Robert Siodmak and starring Lloyd Bridges, Whistle might be described
as Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, only with unions. Yes, this is a union
drama along the lines of On the Waterfront or, much later, Norma Rae.
In
a tight 96 minutes, Siodmak brings us a riveting story—the kind that gets an
audience riled up against the injustices thrown at a protagonist. The suspense
builds to a breaking point as we wonder how it’s all going to play out.
The
writing credits are a bit complicated. J. Sterling Livingston wrote the
original story, but then a story treatment was developed by Lawrence Dugan and
Laurence Heath. This was next turned into a screenplay by Lemist Esler and
Virginia Shaler (de Rochemont’s wife), with additional dialogue by Leo Rosten!
Whatever it took, the movie is well-written and engaging.
Supporting
Lloyd Bridges in the cast is a host of young, future character actors such as Murray
Hamilton, Ernest Borgnine, Arthur O’Connell, James Westerfield, Parker
Fennelly, and Anne Francis. Second billed, though, is Dorothy Gish (actually in
a small role). Carleton Carpenter, a crooner/actor of the period, has a showy
role as a younger union member who sings a number with Francis (“Ev’ry Other
Day”). Each cast member displays a down-home small town persona that works very
well with the location filming in New Hampshire, where the story takes place.
In
the hamlet of Eaton Falls, a whistle signals the beginning and end of the work
day. But there’s trouble. A shoe factory had to close down, laying off its
workers. Now, the Doubleday Plastic Factory is losing money and must cut costs
to stay in business. Brad Adams (Bridges) is the head of the union, and he is
determined to make sure no one gets laid off; and yet, Mr. Doubleday may be
forced to cut some workers as more modern machinery is purchased to pave the
way for the future. When Doubleday dies in an accident, his wife and now-owner
of the plant (Gish), appoints Brad the new president. This doesn’t sit well
with some of the crankier union members, like Al Webster (Hamilton, in one of
his typical “hothead” roles). To make things worse, the slimy production
manager, Hawkins (Russell Hardie) and his cohort, the company’s treasurer (Helen
Shields), plot to ruin Brad and convince Mrs. Doubleday to sell the company.
This would, of course, be a disaster for the town. Brad soon finds himself at
odds with his loyalties to the union and his responsibility as “management.”
Eventually, the plant must temporarily close while Brad and his few allies
scramble to find solutions to keep the company running while the malcontents
threaten upheaval and violence.
This
is potent stuff and while it doesn’t have the depth and grit that On the
Waterfront brought to the subject three years later, Whistle is
still a serious and tension-inducing winner. The cast is marvelous and the
black and white cinematography by Joseph C. Brun is striking.
Flicker
Alley/Flicker Fusion presents an impressive product. Great care was made to
restore the little-seen film to a 2K master, undertaken by the de Rochemont
estate and spearheaded by Tom H. March and David Strohmaier, the same team that
brought us the Flicker releases of the Cinerama and Cinemiracle films. There is
an audio commentary by author and film historian Alan K. Rode.
Supplements
include a short remembrance of de Rochemont from his grandson, L. Pierre de
Rochemont; a featurette on the restoration of the picture; an isolated score
track (music by Louis Applebaum); archival single recordings of Carleton
Carpenter’s “Ev’ry Other Day” and (presumably) the B-side, “It’s a Million to
One You’re in Love,” and the theatrical trailer. A nice insert contains an essay
excerpt from Richard Koszarski’s Keep ‘em in the East—Kazan, Kubrick and the
Post-War New York Film Renaissance.
The
Whistle at Eaton Falls is a surprise treasure from Flicker. For fans of
Hollywood post-war social problem dramas, and of the spectacular cast.
Recommended.
There
are a handful of Hollywood movies out there that successfully combined comedy
with the horror genre. Surprisingly, truly good ones are few and far between. Abbott
and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) is perhaps the quintessential example
of the genre mashup. It provided genuine thrills and some frights mixed in with
hilarious comedic bits. A more recent one that comes to mind is of course the
1984 megahit, Ghostbusters. There is no question that this Bill Murray
vehicle owes a great deal to the 1940 romp, The Ghost Breakers,
considered one of Bob Hope’s most beloved early pictures.
Based
on the 1909 stage play, The Ghost Breaker, by Paul Dickey and Charles W.
Goddard, the 1940 movie is actually a remake of previous adaptations. Both
Cecil B. DeMille and Alfred E. Green made silent films of the play in 1914 and
1922, respectively, and both of these versions are considered lost. In turn,
the 1940 The Ghost Breakers was remade by the same director, George
Marshall, as Scared Stiff (1953), which starred Dean Martin and Jerry
Lewis, and it is arguable that Marshall also helmed a very similar picture in
1945 entitled Murder, He Says, which starred Fred MacMurray.
After
the success of The Cat and the Canary (1939), yet another good example
of a Hollywood horror-comedy that starred Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard, the pair
was brought back a year later for The Ghost Breakers. Also starring
Richard Carlson, Paul Lukas, a young Anthony Quinn, and African-American comic
actor Willie Best, The Ghost Breakers was a popular hit that solidified
Hope’s place as one of the coming decade’s great talents.
Mary
Carter (Goddard) has inherited a spooky old mansion on an island off of Cuba,
and she plans to sail from New York to the island to inspect the place. Other
sinister forces—a foreigner named Parada (Lukas), the twin Mederos brothers
(Quinn, in both roles), and others not named here for the sake of spoilers,
also want the mansion because of a secret hidden within. Apparently it is also full
of ghosts, or so the legends say. During a classic situational and comedic
mix-up of mistaken identities, radio star Larry Lawrence (Hope) finds himself
trapped in Mary’s steamer trunk that has been loaded onto the ship to Cuba. Larry’s
loyal valet and friend, Alex (Best) stowaways to keep track of his boss. Once
on the island, Larry assumes the role of a “ghost buster,” since he’s obviously
fallen for Mary and wants to protect her from the bad guys. Throw in a handsome
historian, Geoff (Carlson), and the cinematic stew has enough complications and
plot twists to keep one entertained for the film’s brief 83 minutes.
Hope
is terrific, and one can easily see the development of his coward-with-bravado character
that he adapted for himself in pretty much all screen appearances, including
the “Road” pictures with Bing Crosby. Goddard is also winning, a perfect comic
and gorgeous foil for the tale. While the rest of the cast is admirable, one
must single out the great Willie Best, an actor who unfortunately was misused
by Hollywood—very typical in those days—to display a stereotype of the comic
black man with bulging eyes and slow dialogue delivery. (“Is you in there,
zombie?” he asks, knocking on a door.) That said, it is apparent that Best is brilliant
in comic timing, handling the demeaning characterization with utmost
professionalism. If The Ghost Breakers has a flaw, it is this. In
today’s climate, Best’s Alex is wince-inducing, but one can still appreciate
the man’s talent and competence.
Director
Marshall keeps the picture moving at a brisk pace, and the creepy aspects—while
certainly not scary today—are effective enough. Noble Johnson’s zombie is an
interesting take on that relatively rare creature (for the time), three years
prior to the Val Lewton masterpiece, I Walked with a Zombie.
Kino
Lorber’s new 2K master looks quite good in high definition, despite the age of
the material. There is an audio commentary by author and film historian Lee
Gambin that fills in listeners on all the trivia behind the movie. The only
supplement is a “Trailers from Hell” piece on the title by Larry Karaszewski,
and the theatrical trailer for this and other Kino releases.
The
Ghost Breakers is
for fans of Bob Hope, Paulette Goddard, Hollywood horror-comedy, and those
distinctive pre-war pictures that provided solid enjoyment in less than ninety
minutes.
Canadian
filmmaker David Cronenberg has always managed to push the envelope with nearly
every one of his striking pieces of work since he appeared on the scene in the
mid-1970s. Known at first as primarily a director of unique “body-horror” films
(The Brood, 1979, or The Fly; 1986), Cronenberg spread his wings
in the 1990s and moved away from the genre to tackle more dramatic and varied
subjects. His 2007 crime picture about the Russian mafia operating in London, Eastern
Promises, stands as a milestone title in the director’s filmography.
Kino
Lorber Classics has released a superb 2-disk (4K Ultra and Blu-ray) package of
the film, and the results are impressive. The picture quality is so sharp and
clear that it could be used as a demonstration product for high definition
televisions.
Anna
Khitrova (Naomi Watts) is a British-Russian who lives with her parents, Helen
and Stepan (Sinéad Cusack, and filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowsky in
an acting role). Stepan is an ex-KGB officer, and the family emigrated to the
U.K. some years ago. Anna works as a midwife in a London hospital, where she treats
a teenage Russian girl who dies in childbirth. The girl has a diary, written in
Russian, as well as a business card for a well-known Russian restaurant. Anna
is determined to find the girl’s family so that the baby can have a proper home.
She visits the restaurant and meets the manager, Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl),
but he is really an elderly but powerful Russian mafia chief. Semyon has a
brash and reckless son, Kirill (Vincent Cassel), who runs brothels in London
stocked with women trafficked from Russia. The family’s bodyguard/chauffeur is
Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen). He is a formidable killer who insists he’s “just the
driver,” and yet there is something good inside Nikolai that transcends his
menace. As Anna digs deeper into the mystery, she discovers the truth about the
organized crime going on in her city, and she also develops a dangerous mutual
attraction with Nikolai. When Kirill authorizes a hit on a rival Chechen gangster
without Semyon’s approval, a war between the two groups ensues, and Anna and
her parents are caught in the middle.
Eastern
Promises,
written by Steven Knight, is one of the better organized crime pictures ever
made. Cronenberg and Knight seriously did a deep-dive into the realism of the
piece, and star Mortensen went so far as to hang out with real Russian mafia
soldiers to learn the lingo and especially study the all-important tattoos that
adorn the men’s bodies.
Viggo
Mortensen is fabulous in his portrayal and he was Oscar-nominated for his
efforts. For this reviewer’s money, he should have won (Daniel Day-Lewis scored
the trophy for There Will Be Blood). For the fight scene in the bath house
alone, in which an entirely nude Mortensen fights two clothed men armed with
knives, the actor deserved every accolade on the planet. The sequence is the
centerpiece of the film, and it’s one of the best directed and choreographed
fight scenes of the last twenty years.
Watts
is terrific, as always, and Mueller-Stahl delivers a chilling turn, too. However,
the movie belongs to Mortensen and to director Cronenberg.
For
Kino Lorber’s HDR Dolby Vision Master of the movie, Peter Suschitzky approved
and color graded his own cinematography. It looks simply marvelous. There are
several short vintage featurettes included as supplements, also in HD: interviews
with writer Knight and director Cronenberg; a piece on the tattoos and their
significance; and looks at the bath house scene and Naomi Watts’ motorcycle
riding, plus two theatrical trailers and other Kino Lorber trailers.
Eastern
Promises is
for fans of riveting crime dramas, the films of David Cronenberg, actor Viggo
Mortensen, and actress Naomi Watts. Highly recommended.
By
1939, comic superstar W. C. Fields (real name William Claude Dukenfield) had a
love-hate relationship with Hollywood. While he was still something of a box
office draw and enjoyed immense popularity, Fields’ relationship with the
bottle was causing more problems for the actor, and he had lost his contract
with Paramount, the home of his earlier talkies. After a resurgence in
admiration due to radio broadcasts with ventriloquist Edgar Bergen (and his
dummy partner, Charlie McCarthy), Fields signed a new contract with Universal.
The first picture out of the gate was a team-up with Fields and Bergen/McCarthy.
You
Can’t Cheat an Honest Man can’t be counted among Fields’ best pictures, but it’s
entertaining and funny enough. It is arguable that Bergen and McCarthy steal
the show based on Bergen’s charm and good looks, and Bergen’s is the most
likable character in the story. While Fields has some great signature lines in
the picture, Bergen and McCarthy have a great deal of funny dialogue.
The
movie’s story is by Fields (using the pseudonym Charles Bogle), with a
screenplay by Everett Freeman, Richard Mack, and George Marion, Jr. George
Marshall received screen credit as director, although historians have claimed
that Marshall and Fields did not get along. Hence, Edward F. Cline was brought
in to exclusively work with Fields on his scenes; Cline was then hired to
direct Fields’ next films with Universal. Furthermore, second unit director B.
Reeves Eason did more than his share of action and chase sequences. Remarkably,
the film, with three directors, came out all right.
Fields
is Larsen E. Whipsnade (Larsen E.? Get it?), a traveling circus proprietor who
cheats his own staff by not paying them. The law is after him, too, and the
circus is one step away from bankruptcy. He has grown children not involved in
the circus—Vicky (Constance Moore) and Phineas (John Arledge). Phineas wants
Vicky to marry wealthy but boring socialite Roger Bel-Goodie (James Bush) so
that Phineas can get a job in Roger’s company, but Vicky isn’t keen. When she
visits her father at the circus, Vicky meets Edgar Bergen (playing himself, as
one of the circus acts), who is never without his dummy, Charlie. Edgar
immediately falls for Vicky, and while Whipsnade has no problem with Edgar, he
can’t stand Charlie (a “termite’s flophouse!”). Vicky eventually agrees to
marry Roger in order to become wealthy enough to save her father’s circus.
During the final half hour of the film, Vicky and Roger’s engagement party at
the posh Bel-Goodie mansion becomes a chaotic disruption as Whipsnade manages
to insult and frighten the elder Bel-Goodies, while Edgar/Charlie have been
cast adrift in a weather balloon. Will Vicky and Edgar get together? Will the
circus be saved? Who cares, it’s all just a vehicle for the brilliance of W. C.
Fields’ comedic antics and Edgar Bergen’s talent at ventriloquism.
Kino
Lorber’s new Blu-ray 2K master looks and sounds fine, certainly an upgrade from
previous DVD releases. There is an informative and humorous audio commentary by
film historian Michael Schlesinger, plus the theatrical trailers for this and
other Kino Lorber releases.
You
Can’t Cheat an Honest Man is for fans of W. C. Fields, Edgar Bergen, and late 1930s
Hollywood comedy. As Larsen E. Whipsnade’s grandfather Litvak used to say, “You
can’t cheat an honest man. Never give a sucker an even break or smarten up a
chump.”
Finally,
a high definition Blu-ray disk of Robert Redford’s 1980 masterpiece, Ordinary
People, has been released. To date, the film has existed on home video only
on VHS and DVD, and the new Paramount Presents edition is most welcome.
People
was
Redford’s directorial debut, and at the time audiences and critics expected it
to be good, but they didn’t count on it being that good. It took the
Best Picture prize at the Academy Awards, along with a trophy for Redford for
Direction, one for Alvin Sargent’s Adapted Screenplay (based on Judith Guest’s
wonderful novel), and a most deserved Supporting Actor Oscar for Timothy
Hutton. Granted, Hutton’s character, Conrad Jarrett, is really the protagonist,
i.e., the lead in the movie, so it’s one of those infuriating cases in
which an actor is nominated in the wrong category. (That said, there’s no way
Hutton would have won over Robert De Niro’s blistering once-in-a-lifetime
performance in Raging Bull, so the studio was smart to offer up Hutton
in the Supporting category, where he’d have a better than fighting chance.)
Mary
Tyler Moore also received a nomination for Best Actress, and Judd Hirsch a nod
for Supporting Actor (competing with Hutton). They are both brilliant, too.
Moore plays against type, portraying a woman with a cold heart who has
forgotten—or never knew—how to love, and Hirsch is the psychiatrist with whom
we all would want to spend two sessions a week. Missing from the Oscar awards
tally was Donald Sutherland, who, for this reviewer’s money, provides the
performance of his career. In many ways, he’s the center of the picture. We
slowly see that his stable assuredness is also cracking from the pretense going
in his family. Why Sutherland wasn’t at least nominated is a head-scratcher.
The
story is about a mid-to-upper class family living in the Chicago suburb of Lake
Forest. Everything should be as Beth Jarrett (Moore) believes it is—that their
family is happy and their world is perfect. “Neat and easy,” as her husband,
Calvin (Sutherland), describes how she keeps their lives. But under the
polished veneer, all is not well. Not one bit. The Jarretts recently
experienced a tragedy. The oldest son, Buck, drowned in a boating accident
while out on the water with his younger brother, Conrad (Hutton). Not long
afterwards, Conrad attempted suicide and ended up in a psychiatric hospital for
four months. Now he’s home, and Conrad is having a very difficult time
adjusting. He can’t relate the way he once did to his high school buddies. He
can’t feel as if he’s part of the school swim team, the way he could prior to
the incident. Worst of all, his relationship with his mother has deteriorated. Calvin
can see the conflict between them and does his best to play referee and
understanding father, but this only begins to drive a wedge between him and
Beth. It’s only after Conrad starts seeing a psychiatrist, Dr. Berger (Hirsch),
that the teenager embarks on an excruciating but necessary emotional journey
toward wellness.
The
script is an honest and canny depiction of how families bury truths and put up
facades. Redford’s direction is sensitively nuanced, and the acting all around
is impeccable. This is powerful stuff. Ordinary People also provides one
of the better positive depictions of psychiatry ever put on celluloid, and this
reviewer challenges anyone viewing the film not to have welling eyes during the
scene in which Dr. Berger tells Conrad, “I’m your friend.”
Beyond
the quartet of principle stars, Elizabeth McGovern is striking as a high school
romantic interest for Conrad, a young Adam Baldwin is effective as one of the
teen swim team pals, M. Emmet Walsh has a turn as the clueless swimming coach,
and Dinah Manoff has a short but significant scene as a fellow hospital
patient, now out in the real world like Conrad.
But
the movie belongs to Timothy Hutton. Ordinary People was his first
feature film (he had made only one television movie earlier in the year, and
appeared uncredited, briefly, as a child in a picture in the 1960s.) His Conrad
is a virtuoso piece of acting.
The
Paramount Presents feature is remastered from a new 4K film transfer overseen
by Redford, and it looks crisp and colorful. The only supplements are two new,
short featurettes with interviews with Hutton and author Judith Guest, plus the
theatrical trailer.
Ordinary
People merited
every honor it received. It is an emotional roller-coaster that elevates the
Hollywood family drama to an unprecedented high. Enthusiastically recommended.
Some
personal observations and opinions here. There have been critics over the years
(Siskel and Ebert, for example) who have claimed that Ordinary People “stole”
the Oscar from Raging Bull, which is often cited not only as the “best”
movie of 1980, but of the entire 1980s decade.
I
love Raging Bull and consider it a magnificent example of bravura
filmmaking from Martin Scorsese. It’s slick, gorgeously shot in black and
white, brilliantly edited (by Oscar winner Thelma Schoonmaker), and it contains
not only powerhouse performances by Joe Pesci and Cathy Moriarty in supporting
roles, but the crowning screen appearance of Robert De Niro’s career. There is
no question that De Niro’s Jake LaMotta is one of the most accomplished acting
displays ever.
Yes,
Raging Bull is a great film… and I also find it unpleasant as hell. The
brutality is visceral, and of course, that’s the point. It’s about a man who can’t
control his rage. I may love the film, but I can’t say I enjoy it,
if that makes any sense.
Ordinary
People
is not a happy story, either—that’s true. While it’s without physical violence,
it is an emotionally violent tale; but it is so elegantly rendered with
intelligence and, yes, beauty, that I, personally, am always movedby
it. For me, it tugs at the heartstrings and the tear ducts. And while the fate
of the tale’s family is a tragedy, there is the hint of hope at the end that
all will be well for young Conrad Jarrett. I adore Ordinary People more
every time I see it.
Ordinary People deserved the Oscar for Best Picture in 1980.
A
Star is Born has
been made many times—as four Hollywood feature films, one television movie, and
one Bollywood picture. The 1937 original, produced by David O. Selznick,
directed by William A. Wellman, is often forgotten amongst the more recent
versions, such as the celebrated 2018 remake starring Lady Gaga and Bradley
Cooper.
For
this reviewer’s money, the 1937 A Star is Born is superior to them all.
Granted, it is obviously dated and one must place oneself within the context of
the period in which the movie was released. It is also not a musical, as all
the others are. The first version also deals exclusively with the motion
picture industry. The second one, released in 1954 and starring Judy Garland
and James Mason, did as well… but following adaptations went more into the
music professions of the characters and incorporated Grammy Awards rather than
Oscars. If you want A Star is Born without musical numbers, and there is
ample support that the piece works more realistically without them, then the
1937 version is for you.
The
Oscar winning story, by William A. Wellman and Robert Carson, was the basis of
all the remakes, but here it was the origin, turned into a screenplay by Carson,
Dorothy Parker, and Alan Campbell. The tale is by now familiar ground—a young
woman becomes a star overnight while simultaneously her husband experiences ruin.
A rise and a fall, all in lovely Technicolor!
Esther
Blodgett (Janet Gaynor) is an innocent but bright-eyed farmgirl who is intent
on making her way to Hollywood to become an actress. Against her father and
aunt’s wishes, but encouraged by her grandmother, Esther leaves the nest and
goes to Tinsel Town. She quickly learns that things are not so easy. With the
help of a neighbor, Danny (Andy Devine), who happens to be an assistant
director, she is placed in positions where she can “meet” people. Sure enough, she
encounters a big star, Norman Maine (Fredric March). Unfortunately, Norman’s
glory days seem to be behind him as the bottle has dictated a gradual descent in
popularity. Nevertheless, Norman is struck by Esther and finagles a screen test
for her with his producer, Oliver Niles (Adolphe Menjou). Oliver immediately
sees Esther’s potential, gives her the more marketable name of “Vicki Lester,” and
she is off and running. Promising to quit drinking, Norman asks Esther to marry
him, and she accepts. But as Esther/Vicki becomes more successful, Norman falls
off the wagon and their relationship goes off the rails.
There
is one scene that exists in all the versions of A Star is Born, and that
is when the husband embarrasses his wife during her moment of triumph at an
awards ceremony—here the event is the Oscars, as it is in the 1954 edition. The
moment is powerful and excruciating, and it is one of the reasons both Gaynor
and March were nominated for Best Actor and Actress for the film.
Producer
Selznick was known for overseeing lavish, gorgeous productions, and A Star
is Born fits the bill. Beautifully photographed in that distinctive, vivid
1930s Technicolor by W. Howard Greene (who received an Honorary Oscar for his
achievement), the picture displays the glitz and glamour of that bygone,
mythical Hollywood era. Director Wellman was nominated for his efforts, and the
movie was up for Best Picture (the category was called Best Production then).
Gaynor
is especially good, and March is always brilliant. The supporting cast—Menjou,
Devine, May Robson, Lionel Stander, and Edgar Kennedy—is stellar.
The
picture, while assuredly a drama that takes a hard look at the alcoholism
destroying Maine, is also striking for the amount of humor it contains. There
are many Hollywood in-jokes, such as when Gaynor impersonates several leading
actresses of the day when she is waitressing at a star-studded party. Stander,
Devine, and Kennedy, known for their comedic turns, also provide much of the
levity.
The
Warner Archive Blu-ray is a new, meticulous 4K restoration from the original
nitrate Technicolor camera negative, and it looks absolutely fantastic. In
keeping with Warner disks that employ “A Night at the Movies” supplements, this
one contains a treasure trove of extras. The 1938 cartoon, “A Star is Hatched,”
is one of those Looney Tunes that features Hollywood star caricatures, and it’s
hilarious. A 1937 comic short featuring Joe Palooka and Shemp Howard, “Taking
the Count,” is amusing, and two other vintage shorts—“Mal Hallett and His
Orchestra” and “Alibi Mark”—are also entertaining and indicative of the type of
fare one would see at the theater in those days. The disk also incudes two
different Lux Radio Theater broadcasts of the story—one from 1937 featuring
Janet Gaynor and Robert Montgomery, and one from 1952 starring Judy Garland and
Walter Pidgeon. The theatrical trailer rounds out the package.
This
new region-free Blu-ray edition from Warner Archive is a must for fans of any version
of A Star is Born. The 1937 original, though, is and will always be
grand entertainment. Highly recommended.
(NOTE:
Much of this review is repeated from an earlier Cinema Retro review of a
previous Blu-ray release.)
In
the world of the Jewish Conservative Orthodox community, a divorce is truly
final only when the husband presents his wife with a “get”—a document in Hebrew
that grants the woman her freedom to be with other men. Likewise, the wife must
accept the get before the man can re-marry, too.
This
is the crux of the story behind Hester
Street, an independent art-house film that appeared in 1975, written and
directed by Joan Micklin Silver. Starring Carol Kane, who was nominated for
Best Actress for her performance as Gitl, a newly arrived immigrant to New York
City in 1896, and Steven Keats as her husband Yankl, who, in an attempt to
assimilate, in public goes by the name “Jake.” Jake has been in America for a
while and isn’t looking forward to the arrival of his wife and son from Europe,
for he has begun an affair with a wealthy, assimilated actress in the Yiddish
theatre named Mamie. When the very traditional Gitl arrives with her son, the
marriage disintegrates.
Luckily,
Gitl meets Bernstein, an Orthodox man who is much more suited for her
requirements, seeing that Jake has become something of a capitalist cad.
Therefore, she needs a “get” from Jake so that both husband and wife can
divorce and go their separate ways. That’s when Mamie’s money comes into play.
Silver
beautifully rendered this period drama on a miniscule budget. Location shooting
took place in and around New York’s lower east side, where much of the flavor
of the late 19th Century Jewish Orthodox community is still pretty much the
same. Replace the cars with horses and buggies, get the correct vintage
costumes, and you’re more than halfway there. The dialogue is mostly in Yiddish
(with English subtitles), thus making it an American foreign language film—an
oddity in 1975, to be sure (although Coppola’s The Godfather Part II appeared a year earlier with a great amount
of its dialogue spoken in Sicilian).
Keats
plays Jake as a rake and a rascal, but our perception of him is not that of a
villain. In many ways, he is the generic immigrant who came to America and
sincerely tried to assimilate, become “American,” and leave the Old Country
traditions behind. His fault is that he dreams of making big money in the States and this becomes his all-consuming desire,
forgetting that he has a wife and son. Kane’s character and spot-on portrayal
not only illustrates the role of females in the Orthodox community, but in many
ways is a commentary on the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s.
Hester Street is a terrific little
film that went out of print on DVD years ago and became a collector’s item on
the resale market until a Blu-ray release appeared in 2015. With that also now
out of print, Cohen Media Group has issued a welcome new edition in a 4K
restoration. Filmed in black and white by Kenneth Van Sickle, the picture is
grainy and flat—much like the early silent cinema of the that era!—which
actually is quite appropriate for the movie’s setting. That said, the new
restoration considerably sharpens the images and the display is the best seen
since the movie’s 1975 theatrical release. The feature comes with an archival
audio commentary with director Silver and producer Raphael D. Silver.
Also
new to this release is supplementary material not present on the previous
Blu-ray. Approximately eight minutes of an alternate opening sequence, with
commentary by Daniel Kremer (author of an upcoming book about Silver and her
work), is an interesting find. There are two relatively recent video
conversations with director Silver and film historian Shonni Enelow about the
making of Hester Street and Silver’s career as a filmmaker (Silver died
in 2020). There are also vintage interviews with Carol Kane, Doris Roberts, and
both Joan and Raphael Silver, likely ported over from the old DVD release. The restoration
trailer rounds out the package.
Hester Street is an excellent synagogue
discussion-group item for American Jews who want to explore the immigration
scene and the topics of tradition and assimilation; but it is also a good
educational piece for non-Jews who want to learn a little bit about New York
history and the Jewish Orthodox religion. Recommended.
One
of the more popular Hollywood movies of 1954 was The Country Girl,
written and directed by George Seaton, adapted from a stage play by Clifford
Odets. The Academy liked it well enough to nominate it for Best Picture,
Director, Actor (Bing Crosby), Black and White Art Direction, and Black and
White Cinematography (John F. Warren). The movie won Oscars for Actress
(Grace Kelly) and for the Adapted Screenplay by Seaton.
The
Academy sure loves it when a beautiful actress dispenses with any hint of
glamour and presents herself in a dowdy, plain, or even “ugly†appearance. And
while Grace Kelly could never not be beautiful, her role as Georgie
Elgin is not known to emphasize her timeless attractiveness and sensuality.
Furthermore, she delivers an outstanding performance that was good enough to surpass
the likes of Judy Garland (A Star is Born), Dorothy Dandridge (Carmen
Jones), Audrey Hepburn (Sabrina), and Jane Wyman (Magnificent
Obsession). Whether or not Kelly deserved the awardr over these four equally
superb performances is one of those forever debatable Oscar quandaries.
Besides
Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly, The Country Girl features a fine
performance by William Holden, who is really the protagonist of the film (oddly
placed at third billing). The movie is basically a triangle between the trio,
with Kelly’s Georgie as the object of both conflict and adoration between the
two men.
Bernie
Dodd (Holden) is a successful Broadway theater director, whose new musical, The
Land Around Us, has lost its leading man after one week of rehearsals.
Scrambling to replace him, Dodd wants Frank Elgin (Crosby), but producer Philip
Cook (Anthony Ross) objects. Elgin is allegedly a washed up alcoholic who could
no longer carry an entire production. Nevertheless, Dodd gets his way and Elgin
is hired. It soon becomes apparent that Elgin is completely dependent on his
younger wife, Georgie (Kelly), to give him moral support, prop him up, keep him
in line, and dictate what he should do or not do. Dodd interprets the couple’s
relationship as detrimental to Elgin, seeing Georgie as the reason for the
actor’s decline. Elgin presents a different position—that Georgie depends on him
and that he could never leave her. Thus, Georgie accompanies her husband to
rehearsals, interferes in production decisions, and annoys both the director
and producer in the process. Things come to a head when Elgin succumbs to the
pressure and starts to drink again. What happens next would spoil the story,
but suffice it to say there is much melodrama, a switcheroo of affections, and backstage
intrigue.
Oh—and
it wouldn’t be a Bing Crosby vehicle without some songs, so musical numbers
were added to the script by Ira Gershwin (lyrics) and Harold Arlen (music) to
accompany Victor Young’s somewhat overwrought score.
The
Country Girl is
pure melodrama, for sure, and all three actors give it their all. Crosby is
quite effective as the pathetic and insecure Elgin, Holden is dynamic and
forceful as Dodd, and, yes, Kelly is full of surprises as the dowdy woman who
in reality is stronger than either man. If anything, the picture is worth
seeing for the three actors that carry it.
While
any motion picture should be evaluated within the context of when it was made
and released, The Country Girl does suffer from being dated in its
sensibilities about marriage and the relationships between men and women. Audiences
today might cringe at the blatant misogyny, especially exuding from Holden’s
character. (In referring to wives, he says they “all start out as Juliets and
wind up as Lady Macbeths.â€) In short, the movie emphasizes the old adage that
“behind every man stands a (fill in the blank) woman.â€
Additionally,
there is a kiss—and subsequent confession of affection—that occurs at a crucial
point in the story that is so unexpected, out of the blue, and unbelievable,
that one wonders if some sort of foreshadowing or clue to this development was
missed. And therein lies the biggest flaw of the film.
Imprint’s
new 1080p high definition presentation in Blu-ray looks quite good, and
Warren’s cinematography wonderfully captures the light and dark of a Broadway
theater (Georgie: “There’s nothing quite so mysterious and silent as a dark
theater, a night without a star.â€) The feature comes with a new audio
commentary by professor and film scholar Jason A. Ney. A 1987 hour-long
documentary, Grace Kelly: An American Princess, is a welcome supplement,
along with a photo gallery and the theatrical trailer.
The
Country Girl is
for fans of Grace Kelly, for sure, as well as Bing Crosby and William Holden,
for fans of Broadway theater storylines, and of 1950s Hollywood melodramas.
The
decade of the 1950s is generally considered to be director Alfred Hitchcock’s
most glorious period, stocked with some of his acknowledged masterpieces of
cinema (Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, Vertigo, North
by Northwest, etc.). Those ten years didn’t begin so promisingly, though.
In
the late 1940s, Hitchcock had finally broken away from the smothering contract
he had under producer David O. Selznick, and he had set out with a partner to
form his own production company, Transatlantic. The company made two box office
losers—Rope (1948, a failure despite being quite a good movie), and Under
Capricorn (1949, no question one of the filmmaker’s weakest pictures).
Transatlantic bombed, but Hitchcock continued to work with Warner Brothers, the
studio that had distributed these two titles.
Stage
Fright was
made at Elstree Studios in England and employed an all British crew and cast except for
the two female leads, Jane Wyman (under contract at Warners) and veteran star
Marlene Dietrich. The male leads were filled by reliable Michael Wilding (who
had been in Under Capricorn) and Richard Todd. Stealing the movie in a
supporting role, however, is Alastair Sim, the great comic actor who was very
popular at the time. Oddly, Sim’s first name is misspelled as “Alistair†in the
opening and closing credits of the film!
Eve
(Wyman) is a budding young actress, a student at the Royal Academy of Dramatic
Art, whose friend, Jonathan (Todd) has found himself in a pickle. Eve is sweet
on Jonathan, although the relationship is mostly platonic, for Jonathan is in a
relationship with the flamboyant star of the stage, Charlotte Inwood
(Dietrich). The problem there is that Charlotte is married… until her husband
is lying dead on the floor of their house, allegedly killed by Charlotte
herself. Jonathan has helped her cover up the crime, but he believes he was
seen by Charlotte’s housekeeper, Nellie (Kay Walsh). Jonathan, now the prime
suspect, gets Eve to hide him from the police, so Eve enlists her father, the
“Commander†(Sim) to help. Despite the Commander’s doubts as to what really
happened, he dutifully works with his daughter and Jonathan to avoid suspicion
from Detective Smith (Wilding). As the plot unfolds, Eve decides to do some
investigating herself and manages to bribe Nellie to go away for a while, and
Eve takes her place as Charlotte’s new Cockney housekeeper, “Doris.†Things get
complicated when Eve begins to fall for Detective Smith (and he for her). Eventually,
of course, the truth is discovered and the real killer is pursued through a
theatre building in grand Hitchcock style.
When
Stage Fright was first released, it received some criticism because the
film begins with a flashback narrated by Jonathan, explaining what happened at
Charlotte’s house with footage that “re-enacts†the crime. It’s not a spoiler
to say that this flashback turns out to be untrue. Hitchcock deliberately lets
us believe events occurred, when they really didn’t. Audiences and critics at
the time felt this was something of a cheat. However, this is a perfect example
of a trend that has cropped up in film and mystery novels quite often in the
last twenty years—the “unreliable narrator.†Is Stage Fright the first
instance in which the unreliable narrator device was used in cinema? Perhaps
not, but in 1950, it was perceived as new and unsettling. Now, this device is
fairly commonplace. It just goes to show how Hitchcock really was ahead of his
time!
That
said, Stage Fright is only middle-tier Hitchcock. It never reaches the
highs of the later masterpieces of the 50s mentioned earlier. The plot is
rather unbelievable, especially when Eve pretends to be the Cockney maid and
becomes a sleuth on her own. Wyman is fine in the role, but one questions her common
sense in sticking with Jonathan and his legal problems. The great Marlene Dietrich
performs exactly how one would expect… as the great Marlene Dietrich. She
exudes a deliciously sinister subtext to her actions, but we can see right
through it from the beginning. Richard Todd is never believable as an innocent
man, and this is a stickler. However, Alastair Sim is such a delight as Eve’s
crafty father that the movie is worth a watch just for him. Even weak Hitchcock
can be good fun.
Warner
Archive’s new Blu-ray release is a port-over from their previous DVD edition
from several years ago. The feature film looks marvelous in glorious black and
white high definition, and the London and English countryside locations are a
treat. The supplement “making of†documentary is also ported over from the DVD
release, along with the theatrical trailer.
Stage
Fright is
for fans of Alfred Hitchcock, Jane Wyman or Marlene Dietrich, and especially Alastair
Sim.
Click here to order the Region-Free Blu-ray from the Cinema Retro Movie Store.
The
early 1970s was a time of experimentation and risk-taking in Hollywood. Studios
were more willing to allow filmmakers to take a project and run with it, just
to see if something thrown at the wall would stick. After all, this was the
period of “New Hollywood,†maverick young directors just out of film school,
and pushing the envelope when it came to what was permissible on screen since
the Production Code was gone and the relatively new movie ratings were in
place.
Playboy
Enterprises got into the movie making business in the early 70s (see Cinema
Retro Vol. 2, issue #5 from 2006 for the magazine’s exclusive interview with
Hugh M. Hefner about Playboy’s film productions). After the critical success of
Roman Polanski’s Macbeth (1971), Playboy produced The Naked Ape (1973),
loosely adapted from Desmond Morris’ 1967 best-selling non-fiction book.
Morris’
book was an entertaining anthropological study of man’s evolution from primates
and how social norms and mating rituals, especially between males and females
for procreation, have more or less never changed since prehistoric times.
Morris had relatively nothing to do with the film adaptation, for the
filmmakers decided to make a “hip†comedy out of the concepts in the book,
illustrating how “unchanging evolution†still dictated man’s behavior.
The
idea probably looked good on paper. Perhaps the box office success of Woody Allen’s
loose, comedic adaptation of Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (1972),
which was also parodied a best-selling non-fiction book, was an inspiration. However,
The Naked Ape, directed by avant-garde filmmaker Donald Driver, does not
possess the wit and brilliance of a Woody Allen or a Mel Brooks, who also might
have done wonderful things with the material. Instead, The Naked Ape is
a head-scratching curiosity that might have played somewhat well as a “midnight
movie†for college-age audiences in altered states of consciousness.
Johnny
Crawford (who had played Mark McCain in the TV series The Rifleman, now
grown up and looking hunky and handsome) is Lee, a college student infatuated
with Cathy (Victoria Principal, in an early film appearance), a tour guide in a
natural history museum. Through a series of fantasy vignettes, both live action
and animated, the film takes us through the couple’s courtship, marriage, and
subsequent relationship, as well as Lee’s stint in the army and the pair’s
experience in school (they are in an “erotic literature†class together). The
animations, usually narrated by Cathy, interrupt the flow of the loose storyline
to comment, in a humorous fashion, on the proceedings from an anthropological
viewpoint.
Both
Crawford and Principal are attractive on screen (yes, there is nudity; after
all, this is a Playboy Production), but the script is, frankly, subpar. While the
actors do their best, the movie is just not as clever as it thinks it is. The
animations, made by Murakami-Wolf Studios, are somewhat interesting (Frank
Zappa’s album cover artist, Calvin Schenkel, is one of the animators). Vocal
rock songs by Jimmy Webb help liven up the action.
This
reviewer became friends with Johnny Crawford (who passed away in 2021) over the
years. Crawford was always a kind, soft-spoken gentleman who had numerous
stories about his Hollywood years, such as having a studio mailbox right next
to Joan Crawford’s and the two of them often accidentally receiving each
other’s mail. Whenever The Naked Ape was brought up in conversation,
Crawford would simply shake his head, roll his eyes, and smile.
(Photo courtesy of Raymond Benson.)
Kino
Lorber has distributed Code Red’s presentation of The Naked Ape in 1080p
high definition, and that distinctive 1970s film stock looks good enough. There
are English subtitles for the hearing impaired and a theatrical trailer, but
otherwise no other supplements.
The
Naked Ape is
for fans of Johnny Crawford and/or Victoria Principal, early 70s experimental
films aimed at the college crowd, and, ahem, amateur anthropologists.
One
of actor/comedian Bob Hope’s most cherished films is Monsieur Beaucaire,
a 1946 remake of a Rudolph Valentino silent picture from 1924, both of which are
based on a 1900 novel by Booth Tarkington. Hope’s version, directed by George
Marshall, is certainly a loose adaptation because it turned what was a
historical romantic drama into a flat-out comedy.
Woody
Allen has been known to cite early Bob Hope movies as an inspiration for his
onscreen persona in the director’s early “zany†comedies like Bananas and
Sleeper. When one views something like Monsieur Beaucaire or My
Favorite Blonde (1942), the comparison is strikingly apt. Hope creates a
persona of nervous mannerisms, lack of self confidence masked by bravado, clumsy
but endearing interaction with the opposite sex, and witty one-liners. Beaucaire
exhibits Hope in fine form, producing a good deal of laughs as well as
swashbuckling action.
The
tale is set sometime in the 1700s. Beaucaire (Hope) is the royal barber to King
Louis XV (Reginald Owen). King Philip V (Howard Freeman) of Spain has suggested
a solution to prevent war between their two countries—marrying off Princess
Maria (Marjorie Reynolds) of Spain to a suitor of Louis’ choosing. Louis
decides that Duc le Chandre (Patrick Knowles), a dashing swordsman and lady’s
man, to be the lucky groom. Actually, Louis wants le Chandre out of France
because they both have eyes on the same woman, Madame Pompadour (Hillary
Brooke). Never mind that Louis is still married to the queen (Constance
Collier). Beaucaire is in love with scullery maid Mimi (Joan Caulfield), but
Mimi has loftier goals of seducing the king himself and being one of his mistresses.
After a series of mistaken identities, the king banishing both Mimi and
Beaucaire to Spain for something they didn’t do, and le Chandre being forced to
go into hiding because of another mix-up, the duke and Beaucaire trade places
and travel together while impersonating one another. In Spain, nasty Don
Francisco (Joseph Schildkraut) is determined to stop the marriage between Maria
and le Chandre because he wants war between Spain and France so that he
can usurp his king. Once in Spain, Beaucaire—as le Chandre—must juggle several
risky situations to keep up the subterfuge, help le Chandre and Maria (who do
end up falling in love), and finally win over Mimi.
As
with most Bob Hope vehicles, there are musical numbers, slapstick routines,
and, here, some swashbuckling set pieces, all in period costumes with those
wacky powdered white wigs (in fact, one early comic piece involves Beaucaire,
the king, and the powder). Joan Caulfield is a worthy foil for Hope, and
Patrick Knowles provides adequate straight man/dashing hero duties. The always
reliable Joseph Schildkraut makes a good slimy villain, and there are plenty of
other supporting folks who add merriment to the proceedings. Director Marshall
keeps the picture moving at a brisk pace, and the script by Hope regulars
Melvin Frank and Norman Panama is clever and sharp.
Kino
Lober’s new Blu-ray release is a high definition transfer that looks good and
does the job. Unfortunately, there are no supplements on the disk apart from
theatrical trailers from this and other Bob Hope titles.
Monsieur
Beaucaire is
for fans of Bob Hope, Hollywood comedies of the 1940s, and excuses to while
away approximately 90 minutes with a smile on the face.
One
of the defining Hollywood gangster movies of the 1930s is the magnificent Angels
with Dirty Faces, directed by the versatile Michael Curtiz, and starring
the inimitable James Cagney in a signature role. For years afterwards,
impressionists would perform Cagney’s twitching mannerisms along with the
oft-repeated line in the film, “Whaddaya hear? Whaddaya say?†Cagney would
never live it down.
Interestingly,
Cagney nearly didn’t make the film. He had been afraid that he would be
typecast forever in “tough guy†roles, when at heart he was really a song and
dance man. He had already revealed his diversity to the world after his big
breakthrough in 1931 (The Public Enemy) by appearing in some musicals
like Footlight Parade (1933). However, even pictures like G-Men
(1935), in which Cagney played a law enforcement officer, was still a tough guy
outing for the actor. After some contract and studio conflicts, walking away
from Warner Brothers, further haggling, and the actor’s eventual return, Cagney
finally accepted the part of Rocky Sullivan.
In
the story’s ending, Sullivan is to be executed in the electric chair, and his Catholic
priest best friend, Father Jerry Connolly (Pat O’Brien) convinces him to “act
like a coward†so that his influence on younger hoodlums (played by the “Dead
End Kidsâ€) would be broken and they would no longer emulate him. At first Cagney
didn’t think that was a good idea for his tough guy image on screen, even
though he really wanted to get away from it. Then he came to his senses and
realized this was an opportunity to stretch his acting chops and show the
audiences yet another side of James Cagney—emotion and tears. As a result, the
actor received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for Angels
with Dirty Faces.
Rocky
and Jerry are juvenile delinquents in the early 1920s (uncannily cast by
younger lookalike actors Frankie Burke and William Tracy, respectively). Rocky
gets sent to reform school and then later is arrested for armed robbery. His
co-conspirator in that job was lawyer/gangster Jim Frazier (Humphrey Bogart, in
one of his pre-star gangster roles) who convinces Rocky to take the rap.
Frazier promises to give him $100,000 of the stolen money upon Rocky’s release.
Now, years later in the 30s, Rocky is free and he wants his money. Jerry has
become a priest who oversees the parish where the Dead End Kids (Billy Halop,
Bobby Jordan, Leo Gorcey, Gabriel Dell, Huntz Hall, and Bernard Punsly) are
teenagers on their way to become professional gangsters. Rocky becomes a mentor
to them, much to Jerry’s chagrin. Also in the mix is Laury (Ann Sheridan),
Rocky’s love interest who has known him since they were kids and is now his
landlady. When Rocky goes to Frazier to get his money, trouble ensues, for
Frazier has become more corrupt. Rather than give Rocky the money that he was
promised, Frazier would rather bump off the guy. Rocky, despite pleas from
Jerry and Laury, declares war on Frazier and his underground syndicate.
Angels
with Dirty Faces is
successful on all counts, from the casting and acting, the direction, and the
writing (by John Wexley and Warren Duff, from a story by Rowland Brown). As
mentioned, Cagney received a Best Actor Oscar nomination. Curtiz received a
Best Director nomination and had to compete with himself, for he was also
nominated for Four Daughters the same year! These were Curtiz’s first
official nominations—he had been a “write-in†candidate in 1935 for Captain
Blood. Rowland Brown also received a nomination for Best Story (a category
that no longer exists). For this reviewer’s money, the movie itself should have
been a Best Picture nominee.
A
word about the Dead End Kids… These talented young actors got their start in
Sidney Kingsley’s 1935 Broadway play, Dead End, which was made into a
film in 1937 by United Artists. Because the actors were troublemakers on the
set, their contract was sold to Warner Brothers, where the boys made six
features in two years, including Angels with Dirty Faces. In 1939,
Warners kicked them out because of more destructive antics on the sets. This
didn’t end their careers, though. Other studios picked them up in various configurations
and names—the Little Tough Guys, the East Side Kids, and the Bowery Boys. In
total they made 89 feature films!
The
new Warner Archive Blu-ray is a direct port-over from the studio’s previous DVD
edition, except that the feature film is in high definition and looks marvelous
in glorious black and white. It comes with a commentary by film historian Dana
Polan. The supplements are one of Warner’s Leonard Maltin-hosted “Night at the
Movies†compilation that mimics what audiences might have seen in 1938 when
going to the theater. It begins with a newsreel, followed by a musical short
(“Out Where the Stars Beginâ€), a cartoon (“Porky and Daffyâ€), a theatrical
trailer, and finally the feature film. There is also a featurette about the
movie, and an audio-only radio production with the film’s two stars.
Angels
with Dirty Faces is
grand entertainment, a representation of the Golden Age of Hollywood at its
best, with a magnificent James Cagney performance, and exciting, riveting
gangster flick action. Don’t miss it.
The
mid-1960s were full of motion pictures that capitalized on the exotic,
globe-trotting James Bond adventures. Even if they weren’t particularly spy
films, they had the same flavor, or at least they attempted to capture a
similar magic. Cinema Retro has reviewed several of these movies in
recent weeks (e.g., Masquerade, Arabesque), and Gambit,
released in 1966, is another one.
Directed
by Ronald Neame, Gambit is a top notch caper flick, and a clever one to
boot. Written by Jack Davies and Alvin Sargent, from a story by Sidney Carroll,
the film might remind viewers of the excellent Topkapi (1964), which was
also an international heist tale.
Shirley
MacLaine receives top billing over the up-and-comer Michael Caine, whose star
was rising rapidly in those days. They make a wonderful pair, and the film’s
electricity derives solely from their chemistry together. Add the shrewd
script, Neame’s able direction, a lively score by the great Maurice Jarre, and
beautifully faked foreign locations (the movie was made in Hollywood, despite a
few second unit establishing shots), and the results are a winner.
One
of the more unique things about the script is that the first twenty minutes or
so depict the caper as it is planned to work. The entire heist is acted
out without a hitch, and our protagonists get away with a priceless antiquity.
But all that was only Harry’s (Caine) plot, being told to his accomplice, Emile
(John Abbott). The rest of the movie is the enactment of that plan, which of
course, goes wrong every step of the way. This is a movie about being forced to
throw the plan out the window and improvise, with the stakes much higher and
more dangerous.
Harry
wants to steal an ancient Chinese sculpture of a woman’s head. It just so
happens that Nicole (MacLaine), an exotic dancer in Hong Kong, looks exactly
like the face of the woman. The owner of the relic is allegedly the “richest
man in the world,†Shahbandar (Herbert Lom), who lives in a fictional Middle
Eastern country not unlike Egypt. It also just so happens that Shahbandar’s
deceased wife greatly resembled the statue, and thus, Nicole, too. Harry
promises Nicole a payment of $5,000 and a British passport if she will
cooperate in his scheme. Nicole is to dress in flashy Middle Eastern garb and
pose as Harry’s wife, and Harry fenagles a visit with Shahbandar. Harry is
counting on the rich collector to be so entranced by Nicole’s looks that Harry
will be able to case the house, steal the statue, and escape in less than a
day. Unfortunately, Shahbandar is not the pushover Harry thinks he is. The man
is one step ahead of the thieves, and Harry must quickly alter his scheme on
the fly. And, naturally, neither Harry nor Nicole expected to fall in love with
each other, either!
This
is fun stuff, and it’s all presented in a playful, tongue-in-cheek manner that
is characteristic of the genre and the era in which these types of movies were
made. The heist sequence is especially smart. Who knew Shirley MacLaine was so
flexible? (You’ll have to see the movie.) Incidentally, the film was nominated for three Oscars: Art Direction, Sound and Costume Design.
Kino
Lorber’s new Blu-ray showcases Clifford Stine’s colorful cinematography, and it
looks lovely. The movie comes with two different audio commentaries—one an
archival track by director Neame, and a newer one by film historians Howard S.
Berger, Sergio Mims, and Nathaniel Thompson. The theatrical trailer is
included, along with other Kino Lorber trailers.
Gambit
is
for fans of Shirley MacLaine, Michael Caine, 1960s-era crime adventures, and
old-fashioned romps at the movies.
(Note: the film inspired a quasi-remake in 2012 starring Colin Firth, Cameron Diaz and Alan Rickman.-Ed.)
The
1964 action-adventure picture, The 7th Dawn, is a solid piece of work that
features an exotic location (it was filmed in Malaysia), a couple of big stars
(William Holden, Capucine), a fairly “new†one (Susannah York), and, for the
year it was released and its budget limitations, moderately spectacular action
sequences.
However,
today, the movie might be memorable because of its links to James Bond films. It
was directed by Lewis Gilbert (who helmed You Only Live Twice, The
Spy Who Loved Me, and Moonraker), it co-stars TetsurÅ
Tamba (“Tiger Tanaka†in You Only Live Twice), is photographed by
Freddie Young (credited here are Frederick Young, DP of You Only Live Twice),
the main titles are by Maurice Binder (veteran of the 007 films for three
decades), it was released by United Artists, and the movie is produced by
Charles K. Feldman (responsible for the non-EON 1967 Casino Royale)!
The
7th Dawn is
based on the 1960 novel, The Durian Tree by Michael Keon, and was
adapted to film by Karl Tunberg. It’s the story of the path to Malayan
independence from British rule after World War II, especially during the
chaotic and violent years of the early 1950s.
Three
close friends—American Ferris (William Holden), Malayan/French Dhana (French actress
Capucine), and Malayan Ng (Japanese actor TetsurÅ Tamba) fight with
the Malayan army against the Japanese during World War II. Both men are sweet
on Dhana, but at the end of the war, Ng graciously retreats and allows Ferris
and Dhana to live together while he goes off to Russia to further his education.
Cut to 1953, when Malayan guerrillas—led by Ng—are attacking both the British
forces and Malayans in terrorist acts to force the British to leave. Ferris,
who simply wants to live in peace on his rubber plantation, is persuaded by the
British leader, Trumpey (Michael Goodliffe), to find Ng and convince the man
that the British eventually do want to grant the Malayans independence. Dhana
leaves Ferris to join Ng’s guerrillas, making room for Trumpey’s daughter,
Candace (Susannah York), to set sights on the American. When Dhana is arrested,
tried for terrorist acts, and sentenced to death, Candace is kidnapped by Ng’s
forces. Ferris then has seven days to find Ng and Candace in the back country before
Dhana is hanged.
It’s
all fairly exciting stuff, and it’s a colorful display of mid-1960s Hollywood
production values depicting warfare in a jungle setting. Holden is fine as the
stalwart and stubborn former mercenary turned businessman. Capucine, although
lacking Asian heritage, is convincing enough as being half Malayan (her skin
color appears to have been artificially darkened), and Tamba exhibits why
director Gilbert likely chose him to play Tiger Tanaka in You Only Live
Twice. York is also a screen presence who, being the only blonde in sight, attracts
audience attention. She had just come off her appearance in the award-winning Tom
Jones, so her star was quickly rising.
The
musical score by Riz Ortolani is of note with lush melodies and sweeping
strings. The theme song, sung by The Lettermen, became a hit standard in the
decade.
Kino
Lorber’s high def transfer is acceptable; it certainly shows off that
distinctive look of 1960s film stock, and Freddie Jones’ cinematography
captures panoramic vistas of Malaysia and its jungles. There are no other supplements
other than a theatrical trailer and optional English subtitles for the hearing
impaired.
The
7th Dawn is
fine fare for fans of any of the cast members, action-adventure in exotic
landscapes, and 1960s Hollywood sensibility in widescreen Technicolor.
The
Academy Awards certainly overlooked this well made and superbly acted drama
when it was released in 1948. All My Sons is tightly-adapted from the
1947 stage play by Arthur Miller, and it deserved some recognition, especially
for some of the actors and perhaps the screenplay by Chester Erskine, who also
produced the movie. It was directed by Irving Reis, who had earlier in the
decade come into his own in Hollywood with the first few “Falcon†detective
pictures starring George Sanders.
All
My Sons
was Arthur Miller’s first significant hit play, his second produced on Broadway
(the first one flopped), and it won the playwright a Tony award. Erskine and
Universal Pictures quickly secured the rights and got the movie into production,
streamlining the three-act play into a roughly 90-minute movie. It works
extremely well.
It’s
very typical Arthur Miller angst, the kind of family drama that the playwright
would explore often. And here, in All My Sons, the Miller angst is faithfully
represented.
Edward
G. Robinson delivers a powerful performance as Joe Keller. It is Oscar worthy,
and the sad thing is that Robinson was never nominated for an Academy Award
throughout his long career. He did receive an honorary Oscar in 1973, but he
died two months before it was presented. This is one of those “shame on youâ€
footnotes in the history of the Oscars, for Robinson always approached his
roles with professionalism and skill. His Joe Keller in All My Sons is a
pivotal piece of the film’s success.
Burt
Lancaster, still fairly new to the industry, is also quite effective as the Good
Son who is ready to leave his career at the factory for the girl he loves if
his parents don’t accept the union. Louisa Horton is also very good, and All
My Sons is her debut film performance. Horton didn’t make many movies, but
she did a lot of television and was then married to filmmaker George Roy Hill
for a couple of decades. Mady Christians, a longtime veteran of films since the
silent days, holds her own, too. Unfortunately, Christians became a victim of
HUAC—the House Un-American Activities Committee—shortly after the release of
the movie and her career ended after four decades. HUAC certainly had its
tentacles on several elements of the movie. Robinson had some unpleasant
dealings with them, Elia Kazan (original director of the Broadway play and
co-producer of the film) was a major figure in the investigations into
“Communist infiltration†of Hollywood, and, most of all, Arthur Miller himself
was an outspoken adversary of the committee.
Kino
Lorber’s new Blu-ray release presents a high definition transfer that shows off
Russell Metty’s black and white cinematography quite well. It comes with an
informative audio commentary by film historian Kat Ellinger and author/film
historian Lee Gambin. The only supplements are the theatrical trailer and other
Kino Lorber trailers.
All
My Sons is
highly recommended for fans of Arthur Miller, Edward G. Robinson, Burt
Lancaster, and for late 1940s Hollywood fare. Just be ready for the angst.
Most
film historians agree that the great Alfred Hitchcock became the Master of
Suspense with his British production, The Man Who Knew Too Much. But
Hitchcock had been directing movies since 1925—nine silent titles and seven
sound features preceded that 1934 landmark. While a couple of these earlier titles
are quite good, such as The Lodger (1927) and Blackmail (1929),
the rest are mostly oddballs that don’t reflect the types of films for which
Hitchcock would be known.
Rich
and Strange,
released in Britain at the end of 1931 and in America (retitled East of
Shanghai) in early 1932, is one of these oddities. That is not to say it’s
an unworthy entry in Hitchcock’s filmography. While it will never be considered
one of his numerous masterworks, Rich and Strange is such a curiosity
that it’s interesting and entertaining enough for the discerning Hitchcock fan
or vintage film buff. Everyone else, though, will assuredly stop watching after
thirty minutes.
Based
on a 1930 novel by Dale Collins, the screenplay was written by Alma Reville
(Mrs. Hitchcock) and Val Valentine. Hitchcock also worked on the script
uncredited. Allegedly it is somewhat inspired by a round-the-world cruise the
Hitchcocks had taken. Is it autobiographical? Some historians claim that some
elements might be, but it’s more likely that Rich and Strange is the
couple’s shared fantasy of a marital misadventure.
Billed
and marketed as a comedy, the movie does contain humorous moments in the vein
of Hitchcock’s sardonic wit and sometimes rather prurient sensibility. The
first third is certainly more comic than the rest, the middle becomes
tragically serious, and the final act is action-adventure on the high seas.
Yes, it’s an oddball movie.
Fred
and Emily Hill are a middle-class married couple who are happily married, and
yet they don’t realize they’re happy. Fred (Henry Kendall) is bored with his
job in London and dissatisfied with their living conditions. Em (Joan Barry) is
a bit shrewish but only because of Fred’s malaise. Then, out of the blue, Fred
receives a large early inheritance from an uncle. The couple ditches it all and
goes on a round-the-world cruise. From the get-go, Fred discovers that he
easily succumbs to seasickness aboard the ship, which puts a damper on the
festivities. In Paris, they are shocked by the Folies Bergère.
By the time they get to the Mediterranean, Em has become infatuated with handsome
Commander Gordon (Percy Marmont). Fred, too, begins an affair with a sexy
German “Princess†(Betty Amann). Thus, the Hills’ marriage is threatened by
their attractions to other partners. It takes the sinking of a tramp steamer,
where they end up after losing all their money, and being captured by Chinese
pirates, to save it.
Rich
and Strange could
be called a warm-up to Hitchcock’s 1941 Hollywood comedy, Mr. and Mrs. Smith,
which also revolved around a bickering couple played by Carole Lombard and Robert
Montgomery. While even that picture is not held in high regard in Hitchcock’s
filmography, it’s much better than Rich and Strange. True, there is a
ten year difference in technical advancements and in Hitchcock’s development as
a director. In fact, Rich and Strange seems to still have one foot in
the silent era. Quite a bit of the movie has no dialogue and there is an
abundance of unnecessary title cards. Obviously, when Hitchcock made Rich
and Strange, he was still learning—and experimenting with—how to make sound
pictures.
Kino
Lorber’s Blu-ray is the 4K restoration recently done by the BFI and it looks
the best this reviewer has ever seen it. In the USA, the title has mostly
appeared on knock-off bootleg compilations on VHS and then DVD in poor quality.
The movie comes with optional English subtitles, and an audio commentary by
film historian Troy Howarth. The only supplements are an introduction (in
French with subtitles) by Noël Simsolo, and an
audio excerpt about the film from the famed Hitchcock/Truffaut interviews. The
theatrical trailer and more Kino Hitchcock trailers complete the package.
Rich
and Strange is
for Alfred Hitchcock completists and fans of early British cinema.
Harold
and Maude,
which was directed by Hal Ashby (his second feature film) and released in 1971,
is one of those initially critically stomped box-office bombs… and yet years
later became a cult hit in revival houses, on television broadcasts, and home
video releases. It’s one of many examples that illustrate how critics don’t
always know everything and how some motion pictures are ahead of their time. Harold
and Maude now resides in the top 50 of the AFI’s list of 100 greatest
comedy films.
Written
by Colin Higgins, who simultaneously turned his original screenplay into a
novel (also published in 1971), the movie was unquestionably a counter-culture,
rebellious black comedy that from the get-go had the potential to offend some
folks. The main character’s fake suicide pranks aside, the theme of a
May-December romance—this time with the woman being the older one in the relationship—was
sure to be off-putting to the moral majority. One often hears the justification
for couples in which one person is much older than the other is that “age is
just a number.†In the case of Harold and Maude, Maude’s number is 79,
while Harold’s is 19. That’s a sixty year difference. Okay, then!
Most
everyone by now knows the story. Harold (Bud Cort) is a cynical young man who
lives with his wealthy, snobbish mother (Vivian Pickles). He is a misfit who is
obsessed with death. He constantly stages gory suicides for shock effect, which
of course upsets his mother as well as any blind dates that she sets up for her
son. Harold also attends funerals for people he doesn’t know, and that’s where
he meets Maude (Ruth Gordon). It turns out that Maude, a concentration camp
survivor, also likes to go to strangers’ funerals, but her outlook on life is
much different than Harold’s. She is wild, happy-go-lucky, and full of life.
She’ll commit misdemeanors like stealing cars for the fun of it. The two develop
a fast friendship, and together they have some misadventures, all set to the
lively music of Cat Stevens. Romance blooms between the two, and Harold
ultimately announces that he will marry Maude. The movie takes a poignant left
turn at this point, and to say more would spoil it for those who have never
seen the picture.
Director
Ashby has always been something of an iconoclast in Hollywood. He started out
as a successful editor who transitioned to directing. He found a niche in the
swinging early 1970s as a helmsman of fringe anti-establishment titles like The
Last Detail (1973) or Shampoo (1975). The failure—and then cult
reputation—of Harold and Maude solidified Ashby’s place as a quirky, but
talented, director. His work here is obviously eccentric, inventive, and
perfect for the material.
Bud
Cort is winning in his role as Harold, but it is of course Ruth Gordon who is
the heart of the movie. Without her screen presence, charisma, and enthusiasm in
the role of Maude, the film would not have worked.
Another
element that elevates the film is the soundtrack full of songs by Cat Stevens.
Most of the tunes were taken from previously-released albums, but two numbers
were composed and recorded specifically for the movie.
Harold
and Maude has
appeared several times in home media, including a now out of print Criterion Collection
edition. A more affordable new release from Paramount Presents is the item on
display here, and the remaster from film transfer looks quite good. It comes
with an entertaining audio commentary by Larry Karaszewski and Cameron Crowe.
The only supplements, though, is a short interview with Yusuf/Cat Stevens and a
couple of theatrical trailers.
For
fans of Hal Ashby, Ruth Gordon, Cat Stevens, and those free-wheeling early cult
films of 1970s Hollywood, Harold and Maude is for you.
(Note:
Portions of this review appeared on Cinema Retro in 2014 for an earlier
Kino Lorber edition.)
Robert
Altman was a very quirky director, sometimes missing the mark, but oftentimes
brilliant. His 1973 take on Raymond Chandler’s 1953 novel The Long Goodbye is a case in point. It might take a second viewing
to appreciate what’s really going on in the film. Updating what is essentially
a 1940s film noir character to the
swinging 70s was a risky and challenging prospect—and Altman and his star,
Elliott Gould as Philip Marlowe (!), pull it off.
It’s
one of those pictures that critics hated when it was first released; and yet,
by the end of the year, it was being named on several Top Ten lists. I admit
that when I first saw it in 1973, I didn’t much care for it. I still wasn’t
totally in tune with the kinds of movies Altman made—even after M*A*S*H, Brewster McCloud (an underrated gem), and McCabe & Mrs. Miller. But I saw it again a few years later on a
college campus and totally dug it. Altman made oddball films, and either you
went with the flow or you would be put off by the improvisational, sometimes
sloppy mise-en-scène that the director used. And the sound—well, Altman is
infamous for his overlapping dialogue (one critic called it “Altman Soupâ€). If
you didn’t “get†what the director was doing with sound, then you would
certainly have a hard time with his pictures.
Yes,
Elliott Gould plays Philip Marlowe. A very different interpretation than
Humphrey Bogart or Dick Powell, obviously. And yet, it works. Gould displays
the right amount of bemused cynicism, as if he had been asleep for twenty years
and suddenly woken up in the 1970s. And that’s exactly how Altman, screenwriter
Leigh Brackett (who co-wrote the 1946 The
Big Sleep), and Gould approached the material. Altman, in a documentary
extra on the making of the film, called the character “Rip Van Marlowe.†He is
an anachronism in a different time. For example, Marlowe can’t help but be
bewildered by the quartet of exhibitionist hippie lesbians that live in his
apartment complex. And he still drives a car from his original era. And therein
lies the point of the picture—this is a comment on the 70s, not the 40s or 50s.
The
plot concerns the possible murder of the wife of Marlowe’s good friend, Terry
(played by baseball pro Jim Boutin), who is indeed a suspect, as well as a
suitcase of missing money belonging to a vicious gangster (extrovertly portrayed
by film director Mark Rydell), an Ernest Hemingway-like writer who has gone
missing (eccentrically performed by Sterling Hayden), and the author’s hot
blonde wife who may know more than she’s telling (honestly played by newcomer
Nina van Pallandt). The story twists, turns, hits some bumps in the road, and
finally circles back to the initial beginning mystery.
It
may not be one of Altman’s best films, but it’s one of the better ones. It’s
certainly one of the more interesting experiments he tried in his most prolific
period of the 70s.
Kino
Lorber already put out a Blu-ray release several years ago, but it didn’t
really improve much on the original DVD release prior to that. The company has
now re-issued the film in a brand new 4K master that is a vast step-up from the
previous release. It looks great. The soft focus cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond
is no longer a hazy gaze but is instead a crystal transfer of that distinctive
1970s film stock imagery. The movie now comes with an informative audio
commentary by film historian Tim Lucas.
Some
of the extras are ported over from the previous Kino Lorber release, such as
the aforementioned “making of†documentary, a short piece on Zsigmond, an
animated reproduction of a vintage American
Cinematographer article, the trailer, and a few radio spots. New to this
edition are featurettes with film historian/critic David Thompson on Altman and
the film, author Tom Williams on Raymond Chandler, and author/historian Maxim
Jakubowski on hard-boiled fiction in general. There is also a “Trailers from
Hell†segment with Josh Olson.
If
you’re an Altman fan and don’t already own the out of print DVD or previous
Blu-ray, you may want to pick up the new, improved The Long Goodbye. It
probably won’t be long before this, too, like Philip Marlowe himself, is a rare
collector’s item.
One
of the great Alfred Hitchcock’s normally derided pictures from his early
British period that the Master of Suspense made prior to gaining that moniker
is the 1932 comic thriller, Number Seventeen. It is a short work,
running only 63 minutes, and its brevity is one of its few strengths.
For
some reason, Hitchcock’s British films, made between 1925 and 1939, have all
turned up on various home video labels in the USA over the years, mostly of
dubious quality ranging from bad to terrible. They often show up on bootleg “bargain
collections†and such. This is despite the fact that none of these movies are
in the public domain, as is commonly thought. Thankfully, certain boutique
DVD/Blu-ray producers have taken the reins to correct this horrid practice.
StudioCanal or the BFI have restored most of the titles and they are slowly
making appearances in America (the UK is way ahead in this regard).
Kino
Lorber has recently released a few of these works, usually port-overs from the
StudioCanal restorations. The new Blu-ray edition of Number Seventeen is
a 4K restoration by the BFI. In this reviewer’s experience, viewing this title
in the past has been an unpleasant endeavor because of poor video and sound
quality on those previously-cited wretched home video releases. Not anymore.
The Kino Lorber edition of Number Seventeen looks and sounds as if the
film is almost brand new.
Alas,
it ranks near the bottom of Hitchcock’s output. The problem—and Hitchcock
himself admits it in an audio interview with François Truffaut—is that
he wanted to make a comedy, or a parody, of a thriller. Unfortunately, it
doesn’t quite work as a comedy or a thriller. The story is mind-bogglingly
confusing, and in the end it’s much ado about nothing. Of particular interest
to Hitchcock aficionados and film buffs, though, is the final twenty minutes,
in which there is indeed an exciting chase involving a train and a bus. This
sequence utilizes miniatures rather than real vehicles, the latter assuredly unaffordable
to the studio and production team. To today’s audience’s eyes, there is no
question that we’re watching many miniatures; it’s as if we’re eye level with a
model train set. In 1932, however, this may very well have been a dazzling
piece of cinematography and visual effects.
The
story? Hmm. The “number seventeen†refers to a house that’s a creepy old place
that appears haunted. A detective, who at first calls himself “Forsythe†(John
Stuart) enters the house and discovers a squatter named Ben (Leon M. Lion). There
is also a dead body, or at least they think it’s a corpse. It turns out, he’s
the very much alive father of Rose Ackroyd (Ann Casson), who is somehow
involved with thieves who are after a diamond necklace. These people arrive,
and one of them is Nora (Anne Grey), supposedly a deaf mute. After much
mistaken identity shenanigans, gun-pulling on each other, and other head-scratching
(for the audience) action, the thieves get away to catch the train to Germany.
The detective, who eventually reveals that he’s really the “Barton†whom
everyone has spoken about throughout the movie, pursues with the aid of Ben,
who is suddenly and surprisingly adept at derring-do.
Since
the whole thing takes up just an hour of one’s time, Number Seventeen is
worth a look to see early studio playfulness by Hitchcock. However, the acting
is nothing to note—Leon M. Lion, especially, chews the scenery with an
outrageous Cockney accent and mugging.
That
said, the Kino Lorber 4K restoration does looks marvelous and is a revelation
to anyone who has seen only inferior quality versions of the movie. The feature
comes with an audio commentary by film historian and critic Peter Tonguette.
Supplements
include an introduction—in French with subtitles—by Noël
Simsolo, which isn’t very enlightening. Of more interest is the
nearly-hour-long documentary—again in French with subtitles (it was made by
StudioCanal in France)—about Hitchcock’s early years. There is also a short
excerpt from the Hitchcock/Truffaut audio interview regarding Number
Seventeen. The theatrical trailer, along with other Kino trailers, complete
the package.
Number
Seventeen is
for fans of Alfred Hitchcock, early British cinema, and for anyone who has
always wondered what the movie was really supposed to look and sound like after
seeing it horribly bootlegged.
From
the directorial eye of Lewis Milestone (All Quiet on the Western Front)
and a script by playwright Clifford Odets (plays Waiting for Lefty and Awake
and Sing!) came the odd and mysterious adventure-spy picture, The
General Died at Dawn. Released in 1936 by Paramount Pictures, the movie
seems out of place for the time. Hollywood output in the thirties, for the most
part, was all about entertainment and lifting an audience out of the doldrums
of the Great Depression. There were some serious dramas from Tinsel Town, to be
sure, but General is decidedly dark, moody, and rather cynical fare.
This
was Odets’ first screenplay (from a story by Charles G. Booth). He would go on
to write None but the Lonely Heart (1944) and Sweet Smell of Success (1957),
which are also rather gloomy and acerbic pictures. Combined with Milestone’s
own flare for peeling back the light and revealing what is, in protagonist O’Hara’s
words, “a dark year and a hard night,†The General Died at Dawn is not feel-good
material.
O’Hara
(Gary Cooper) is an American mercenary in war-ravaged China. The evil warlord,
General Yang (Akim Tamiroff) is overrunning the land and leaving behind
starving (or dead) peasants. O’Hara works for the opposition, and his
assignment is to deliver a beltful of money to Mr. Wu (Dudley Digges) so that
the resistance can buy arms with which to fight Yang’s forces. Another American
expat, Peter Perrie (Porter Hall), is ill and desires to get back to America at
any cost. He’s in cahoots with Yang to stop the resistance from receiving those
funds—for a price. Perrie thus orders his beautiful daughter, Judy (Madeleine
Carroll) to seduce O’Hara and get him to take the train to Shanghai instead of
a plane. It is there that Yang and his soldiers have set a trap for O’Hara. Other
spies, both Chinese and Westerners played by the likes of Philip Ahn, J. M.
Kerrigan, and William Frawley (!), enter the fray with motivations of their
own.
What
happens to the money and to the cast of motley characters provides a little
over ninety minutes of action, adventure, and melodrama that doesn’t totally
gel as one might wish. The plot is overly complex, and it isn’t often clear why
some of the personnel do what they do. Granted, the movie was made in 1936 and
the action takes place mostly within the interiors of train cars. There is
certainly an awful lot of talking going on when at any point General Yang could
have simply pulled out a gun and shot his nemesis or just torn open all the
luggage to find the dough.
That
said, this is Hollywood “exotica†in all its politically incorrect glory. Two
actors—Armenian Tamiroff and Irishman Digges—wear Chinese makeup to play Yang
and Wu (and Tamiroff received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor,
the first year that category was offered). And yet, all the other Chinese
characters are played by Asian actors. One supposes that because Yang and Wu
were indeed supporting roles, then they had to be played by Westerners.
(Sheesh.) But this was Hollywood in the 1930s, after all, and it was par for
the course. For what it’s worth, Tamiroff is very good in the role.
Gary
Cooper spends most of the movie carrying his pet monkey, Sam, who crawls all
over Cooper as if the man was the primate’s long lost mother. It’s endearing,
though, and Sam almost steals the movie. Nevertheless, Cooper exhibits the
requisite hero qualities. He assuredly caused swooning among a certain
selection of audience members. Carroll, who had recently made the move from the
UK to Hollywood, holds her own, but the script unfortunately doesn’t fully
develop her character.
Kino
Lorber’s new Blu-ray restoration looks remarkably good, given the picture’s age
and the Oscar-nominated soft focus black and white photography (by Victor
Milner). There is an audio commentary by author/film historian Lee Gambin and
actress/film historian Rutanya Alda that sheds some light on this dark picture.
The only supplement is the theatrical trailer, nestled among other trailers
from Kino.
The
General Died at Dawn is
for fans of 1930s Hollywood, adventure and spy thrillers, and the ever handsome
Gary Cooper.
James
Jones is mostly known for his debut novel, From Here to Eternity. His
second novel, published in 1958, was Some Came Running, a 1,200-page
potboiler that blows the lid off small town America. It was a more adult Peyton
Place, if that was possible for the time. Colorful, sometimes sordid,
characters populate the book, and it didn’t do as well as that classic first publication.
Nevertheless, MGM immediately scooped it up and managed to turn it into a
motion picture by the end of the same year.
Frank
Sinatra found the material appealing, and he saw himself as the story’s lead,
Dave Hirsh, a prodigal son of sorts from fictional Parkman, Indiana. Discharged
from the army, Hirsh arrives in town with a hangover and a party girl he picked
up in Chicago, Ginny Moorehead (Shirley MacLaine). His brother, Frank (Arthur
Kennedy) is a big shot in Parkman. Frank owns a jewelry business and is on the
board of one of the two rival banks. Dave and Frank have been estranged for
years, especially since Frank put younger Dave in a boarding school when their
parents died, instead of having Dave come live with him and his wife, Agnes
(Leora Dana). Dave once fancied himself a writer and had published two books.
While deep down he hopes to write again, his cynicism for just about everything
keeps him from doing so. Dave meets Bama Dillert (Dean Martin) in the town bar,
and they hit it off. Bama is an alcoholic, but he’s an amusing companion who,
like Dave, likes to play poker games. Dave eventually meets and falls in love
with the creative writing teacher at the school, Gwen French (Martha Hyer)—but
Ginny, who has stayed in town to be near Dave, is a constant obstacle to that
match. Other disreputable goings-on complicate the plot, such as Frank’s
daughter (and Dave’s niece), Dawn (Betty Lou Keim), catching her father parked
in the “lover’s lane†with the jewelry shop secretary, Edith (Nancy Gates).
Will Dave find the love he wants and needs? Will the gangster from Chicago, who
is in town to cause trouble for Ginny and Dave, resort to serious violence?
Will Bama ever take off his hat, which he insists on wearing all the time, even
in bed? You’ll have to see the film to find out.
That
plot summary might sound like the outline of a soap opera, but never mind that—Some
Came Running is a fascinating, searing, well-acted, and beautifully-directed
drama. The director, Vincente Minnelli, was on a roll in 1958—he won the
Academy Award for Director for Gigi (it won Best Picture, too), also
directed The Reluctant Debutante, and ended the year with Some Came
Running. For this reviewer’s money, Minnelli got the Oscar for the wrong
film. Yes, Running is that
good.
For
one thing, Frank Sinatra has never been better, his Oscar-winning turn in From
Here to Eternity notwithstanding. It’s shocking that, after receiving a
nomination for his performance as a drug addict in The Man with the Golden
Arm (1955), he was not up for Best Actor for Running. He commands
every frame of film he’s in. Secondly, Dean Martin is terrific in one of his
early “Dean Martin Persona†roles he fashioned for himself after the cinematic
partnership with Jerry Lewis splintered. Finally, Shirley MacLaine is a delight
as the not-so-bright, trampy, but good-natured Ginny—and she received her first
Best Actress Oscar nomination for the performance. Kennedy and Hyer also both respectively
received Supporting Actor and Actress Oscar nominations.
The
movie is an insightful character study of lost souls reaching for a place
called “happiness†by pretending that they’re already there. In many ways, the
small town is a character, too, for it has the façade of Americana at its
finest, and yet there are those pockets that exist in every town of skid row
neighborhoods, seedy bars, loose women, and crime. It’s in the latter locations
where Dave finds himself, no matter how much he aspires to be in the
“respectable†parts of town life. Nevertheless, he knows, and the audience
eventually learns, that there is one class of people in town who may be
prosperous but are really phonies, and a lower class that is sleazy and yet
sincere. What you see is what you get.
Some
may find the dialogue and attitudes toward women—especially from Martin’s
character, who calls all women “pigsâ€â€”to be sexist and even misogynistic. This,
however, is part of the James Jones milieu, as well as a major aspect of the locale,
the class structure, and the era in which the picture takes place. What the
movie really has to say about women is far more significant and auspicious.
Warner
Archive’s new Blu-ray release looks gorgeous in its vivid widescreen Technicolor.
There’s not a blemish in sight. Supplements include an informative 20-minute
documentary on the film’s history and making, and the theatrical trailer.
Some
Came Running
is an underrated, overlooked gem that should be re-evaluated. For fans of Sinatra,
MacLaine, Martin, Minnelli, and James Jones. Highly recommended.
The
genius of Stephen Sondheim is usually reserved for the Broadway stage as the
creator or co-creator of multiple award-winning and classic musicals (West
Side Story, Gypsy, Company, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in
the Park with George, etc.). The presence of Anthony Perkins is usually earmarked
for screen and stage appearances as an actor (Psycho, Catch-22, Murder
on the Orient Express, etc.). So, who would have thought that these two
would team up to write a murder mystery screenplay—with no musical numbers
within earshot—that would be filmed by director Herbert Ross, and then win an
Edgar Allan Poe Award from Mystery Writers of America for the script?
The
Last of Sheila,
released in early summer 1973, seems to be a precursor to the series of Agatha
Christie all-star-cast pictures that launched in the mid-70s (e.g., Murder
on the Orient Express). It’s an original story, though, concocted by
Sondheim and Perkins, allegedly inspired by real “scavenger hunt†party games
that were thrown by their friends in those days. Starring (alphabetically)
Richard Benjamin, Dyan Cannon, James Coburn, Joan Hackett, James Mason, Ian
McShane, and Raquel Welch, the cast of seven is not as large as those Christie
extravaganzas, but you get the idea. In a way, it is also an antecedent to the
whodunnit, Knives Out (2019), which has a similar structure.
Movie
producer Clinton (Coburn) is married to Sheila (Yvonne Romain in a cameo), who is
killed by a hit-and-run driver after a late night party in Hollywood. A year
later, Clinton invites six close friends to a week of sailing on his yacht in
the Mediterranean. These include writer Tom (Benjamin), his wife Lee (Hackett),
director Philip (Mason), casting agent Christine (Cannon), actress Alice
(Welch), and her husband/manager Anthony (McShane). Clinton is a lover of
parlor games, and he has concocted an elaborate murder-mystery-game in which
the six contestants must compete as a condition for joining the cruise. Each
player is given a card that reveals a “secret†that may or may not be a true
one. For example, one card reads, “You are a shoplifter,†or “You are an
ex-convict.†Each night at a port of call, the contestants must run around the
village ashore and hunt for the answer to who holds that night’s particular
card. Clinton provides the clues. On the first night, the object is to find out
who holds the “shoplifter†card, and so on. It is revealed later in the picture
that one of the cards reads, “You are a hit-and-run driver,†indicating that
Clinton wants to reveal who killed Sheila.
Thus
begins a game of musical chairs, as Christine puts it, with the tale twisting
and turning and real secrets emerge. Director Ross—and the script—keeps us
guessing, especially when one “solution†turns out not to be correct. The
entire affair is told with a light touch, much like the future Agatha Christie
all-star vehicles, but there is a seriousness underlying the proceedings that
makes for a good caper.
The
cast is excellent. Coburn is especially winning—there is one bit where is
dressed in drag and it’s a shock! Benjamin, Hackett, Cannon, and Mason also
display a command of the screen. A very young Ian McShane is almost
unrecognizable from the man we know today. Welch is gorgeous, as always, and
she competently stands her own with the others.
The
new Warner Archive Blu-ray looks marvelous and comes with a DTS-HD Master Audio
soundtrack in 2.0 mono. An entertaining but somewhat meandering audio
commentary by stars Benjamin, Cannon, and Welch accompanies the feature. The
only supplement is the theatrical trailer.
The
Last of Sheila was
supposed to have been the first of several screenplay collaborations between
Sondheim and Perkins, but this ended up being the only one. It’s a surprisingly
good curio, though, and worth checking out, especially for fans of any of the
cast members, mystery whodunnits, and the lush South of France locations.
Anything
that originated from the mind of celebrated mystery novelist, Cornell Woolrich,
is worth one’s perusal, and the 1948 film adaptation of the author’s 1945 work,
Night Has a Thousand Eyes, mostly measures up.
Directed
with confidence and style by John Farrow, Night is a film noir that
ticks a lot of boxes that define that Hollywood cinematic movement of the late
1940s and early 50s. There’s a cynical and disturbed protagonist who is haunted
by the past, cinematography (by John F. Seitz) that highly contrasts light and
shadows, voiceover narration, flashbacks, and, of course, crimes. It’s short (81
minutes) and it’s intriguing. The picture’s faults might be that it can be
overly melodramatic at times, and there are a couple of weak casting choices
that prevent Night from being a classic. It’s good enough, though.
Robinson
is effective as Triton, although it’s one of his seriously sincere roles (like
in Scarlet Street)in which he wrinkles his brow a lot and seems
to be on the verge of crying. Unfortunately, the two supporting actors, Gail
Russell and John Lund, are both duds. They move through the picture with low
energy, and Lund is especially wooden. Luckily, William Demarest livens things
up when he enters the movie.
The
story is compelling, although it’s not quite clear why Jean wants to commit
suicide at the beginning of the film, the catalyst for the rest of the tale to
unfold.
Kino
Lorber’s new 2K master looks quite good, considering the picture’s relative
obscurity. It comes with an audio commentary by film historian Imogen Sara
Smith. The theatrical trailer, along with other Kino trailers, complete the
package.
Night
Has a Thousand Eyes is
for fans of film noir, Edward G. Robinson, Cornell Woolrich, and
mysteries with a supernatural bent.
This
compelling 1949 melodrama—it can’t quite be called film noir due to a
lack of many of the traits associated with that cinematic movement—would have a
field day in the era of #MeToo. It was made during 1948 (released in January
’49) while the Production Code was still in effect. While it was taboo to say
that the protagonist, Dr. Wilma Tuttle (Loretta Young), is “sexually assaultedâ€
by one of her students at the college where she teaches psychology (it’s
obvious that this is what occurs in front of our eyes on the screen), it’s
perfectly fine for the investigating homicide detective, Lt. Dorgan (Wendell
Corey), to make harassing sexual innuendos and sexist remarks about the woman
he suspects of murder, not only to her face but to all the other men in the
room while she’s present. But it was 1948, not that this is an excuse.
That
said, The Accused, directed by William Dietele and produced by the
inimitable Hal B. Wallis for Paramount Pictures, is fairly riveting,
well-acted, and superbly written (by Ketti Frings, based on the novel Be
Still, My Love by June Truesdell). Note that both the novel and the
screenplay are written by women, making The Accused somewhat a rare
feminist statement for the time.
Wilma
(Young) is harassed by student Bill Perry (Douglas Dick), a handsome but
arrogant womanizer who has perhaps already gotten a fellow student (Suzanne
Dalbert) “in trouble.†In the interest of counseling Perry, Wilma agrees to be
given a ride home. Instead, Perry takes her to a secluded cliff in Malibu
overlooking the ocean, where he proceeds to enact an attempted rape. Wilma
clobbers him on the head, killing the young man. Obviously, she was defending
herself. She panics, though, and decides to stage the death by making it appear
that Perry jumped and committed suicide. Later, Perry’s “guardian†and
attorney, Warren Ford (Robert Cummings), appears to settle Perry’s affairs and
becomes embroiled in the police investigation. Ford meets Wilma and falls in
love—and she with him, too. However, Wilma is besieged by guilt and flashbacks
of the “crime,†sometimes inexplicably speaking hints of what she’d done as if
she were talking in her sleep. Lt. Dorgan (Corey) suspects her, but he also
wants to date her, and there is a bit of rivalry with Ford for her hand. As the
story progresses, evidence is uncovered that points to Wilma as Perry’s killer…
will she be arrested? And if so, can she convince a jury that she had acted in
self-defense?
Loretta
Young had just enjoyed great success as the lead in The Farmer’s Daughter (1947).
She was cast in The Accused, replacing Hal Wallis’ intended casting
choice, Barbara Stanwyck (she refused the part). Then, Young won the
Oscar for The Farmer’s Daughter, elevating her stock even higher. Would
she have taken such a potboiler role in The Accused had she known she
would soon be an Oscar-winning actress? Who knows… That said, Young is quite
good in The Accused, although her character seems to wilt in fear and
uncertainty way too often.
Robert
Cummings is fine, but Wendell Corey is a bit too slimy and predatory for
believability. Maybe in 1949 it was realistic for a cop to come on to his
suspect, but now it just feels creepy. Douglas Dick is frightening as the
sociopathic student, and Sam Jaffe is always fun to watch (here he is the
police forensics guy).
The
ending is surprisingly ambiguous as to whether Wilma walks away free from her
trial. No spoilers here, but Lt. Dorgan has a final line that points to how
this is going to go. A message to women everywhere regarding assault and
self-defense? Perhaps. Very bold for 1949.
Kino
Lorber’s new Blu-ray looks satisfactory in its restoration. It comes with an
audio commentary by film historian Eddy Von Mueller. The only supplement is the
theatrical trailer, along with other Kino trailers.
The
Accused is
for fans of Loretta Young, melodramatic crime pictures, and Hollywood in the
late 1940s.
Crime
stories about twins are usually compelling, despite the sameness (no pun
intended) about them. Among the Living, a 1941 potboiler from Paramount, is a short (only 69 minutes!) thriller that, with a few cuts, might
have been an episode of an Alfred Hitchcock Presents or similar
anthology television program. It moves quickly, holds interest, and contains a
reasonably dynamic performance from Albert Dekker as twins—one of them
“normal,†and the other insane.
Dekker
had an admirable career in Hollywood for three decades, usually working in
supporting roles. He is perhaps best known as the titular character in Dr.
Cyclops (1940). Landing a dual starring part in Among the Living was
likely a result of his appearance in Cyclops.
The
old Raden home is supposedly haunted, barely looked after by the elderly Black
caretaker, Pompey (Ernest Whitman). Old man Raden, who owned the town textile
factory, a hotel, and other businesses, has died. He was not a popular man. His
son, John (Dekker), arrives for the funeral with his wife Elaine (Frances
Farmer). Family friend Dr. Saunders (Harry Carey) delivers a bombshell to John.
John’s twin brother, Paul, who allegedly died and was buried at the age of ten,
is still alive. Paul (also Dekker), has been kept a prisoner in a room in the
old house, looked after by Saunders and Pompey. Paul is stark, raving mad—but
he is also naïve about the world outside. Paul murders Pompey, escapes, and
runs loose in town, where he rents a room at a boarding house. There, he meets
Millie (Susan Hayward). At first there might be the beginning of a romance, but
Paul’s ignorance about the ways of society are eventual red flags to Millie.
When Paul murders a bar girl because she screamed “like his mother did,†the
manhunt is on. And since innocent John looks exactly like Paul, you know
who gets accused of being the murderer…
Among
the Living isn’t
going to win any awards, but it’s a quick and entertaining flick with some
twists, albeit predictable ones. Dekker is fine in both roles, and his Paul is
effectively played as a child inside a killer’s mind. Hayward, still in her
early rise to stardom in those days, is gorgeous and bubbly as the daughter of
the boarding house landlady. The movie sparkles when she’s on the screen.
It’s
not quite a film noir, but the photography by Theodor Sparkuhl, and the
look of the picture, infuses enough German Expressionism in it to hint toward
what was to come in Hollywood crime pictures. In a way, it owes much more to
its studio’s horror series.
Kino
Lorber’s new Blu-ray release looks remarkably good, given the picture’s age and
obscurity. It comes with an audio commentary by professor and film historian
Jason A. Ney. The only supplements are the theatrical trailer and others from
Kino releases.
Among
the Living is
for fans of early Hollywood crime flicks… and Susan Hayward.
Continuing
the examination of Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray releases of the W. C. Fields
catalog of classic comedies, we now look at The Bank Dick, easily one of
the actor/comedian’s greatest works.
Released
in 1940 (titled The Bank Detective in the U.K.), Fields was starting to
wind down, whether he knew it or not. Alcoholism was taking its toll, and it
wouldn’t be long before his amazing run in cinema since the silent era would soon
come to an end. He still had some surprises in his pockets, though, and The
Bank Dick was one of them.
Written by Fields (as Mahatma Kane
Jeeves—“my hat, my cane, Jeeves!â€), the picture contains an abundance of the
actor’s funniest lines and comebacks. He is also surrounded by numerous other
wacky character actors, creating a theatre of the absurd that culminates in one
of the craziest car chases put on film. Director Edward Cline was no slouch
when it came to comedy—he had collaborated with Buster Keaton in the 1920s, as
well as with Fields, most recently on the Fields/Mae West co-starrer, My
Little Chickadee. Cline’s control of the action and the anything-can-happen
antics of his star is impressive. It’s no wonder that Cline and Fields were a
good team.
Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray release looks
appropriately grainy but with a sheen that previous DVD releases were without.
The feature comes with an audio commentary by the knowledgeable film historian
Michael Schlesinger, who always gives good gab. The theatrical trailer, along
with other Kino Lorber titles, completes the presentation.
The Bank Dick is priceless comedy. It’s one of the two or three titles
that belong in a time capsule sporting the identifying label: “This was
W. C. Fields.†Highly recommended.
The
year 1934 was a good one for comic actor W. C. Fields (whose real name was
William Claude Dukenfield). Fields made six pictures in 1934, and by the time
that It’s a Gift appeared in November, he had made sixteen sound movies
(and he had been making silents prior to the sound era).
Kino
Lorber has begun releasing new Blu-ray restorations of many of Fields’ better
films from the 1930s, which was the decade in which he prospered the most. Today,
Cinema Retro looks at two key new releases, with likely more reviews to
come as we receive them.
It’s
a Gift,
directed by Norman McLeod (who was also responsible for the Marx Brothers’ Monkey
Business and Horse Feathers in 1931 and 1932, respectively), is
easily one of W. C. Fields’ most beloved and acclaimed pictures. It showcases
Fields at his best and before alcoholism began to derail his career. In fact,
Fields is in shape and rather slim here and in the other title from 1934 that
we’re examining, The Old Fashioned Way. Remarkably, he was already 54
when these two films were released by Paramount Pictures, the studio that often
pushed the envelope when it came to comedy.
In
Gift, Fields (Harold Bissonette) is a grocer married to the
forever-nagging Amelia (Kathleen Howard). She insists that Harold pretentiously
pronounce their last name as “Bisso-nay.†They have two children, an older
daughter and a bratty pre-teen (Jean Rouverol and Tommy Bupp, respectively).
Harold has dreams of buying an orange grove in California and moving from their
cramped and squalid housing in whatever state they’re in. Neighbors in the same
building include the Dunk family, a member of which is Baby Elwood (Baby LeRoy,
in his third and final appearance with Fields). When Howard finally buys his
orange grove, the family does move—only to find that the track of land is a
barren plot. Amelia and the kids threaten to leave him until a stroke of luck
intervenes.
True,
there isn’t much of a plot here, but that doesn’t matter. It’s a Gift is
a gem for its series of gags, sketches, and routines that Fields perfected over
the years in vaudeville, and they are on full display here. One extended
sequence involves Howard attempting to take an afternoon nap on his front porch
swing—but he is constantly disturbed by noises from the various neighbors, visitors
from the street, and other external stimuli. The results are hilarious. All the
set-pieces, such as when Howard must deal with a blind man in the grocery store,
are equally funny, and they emphasize why W. C. Fields is remembered today as
one of the great genius comics of his day.
The
Old Fashioned Way,
directed by William Beaudine, was released four months earlier than It’s a
Gift. It is lesser Fields, but it still has its moments of fun. Of
particular interest is Fields’ juggling demonstration, a rare moment of the man
showing off this talent on film. Back in the vaudeville days, Fields was not
only a comedian and vocalist, but also an accomplished juggler. His act here
with balls and cigar boxes is simply amazing, and funny, too.
Fields
plays “The Great McGonigle,†a theatrical troupe impresario and actor in the
1890s who is constantly in trouble for not paying his bills. He leads his
company out of every town before the law catches up with him. His troupe
includes his daughter, Betty (Judith Allen), as well as familiar Fields co-star
and foil, Mr. Gump (Tammany Young). Baby LeRoy makes his second appearance in a
Fields movie as the child of the rich society woman, Cleopatra Pepperday (Jan
Duggan). Pepperday desperately wants to join the McGonigle troupe and perform,
even though she is terribly untalented—but McGonigle is not averse to promising
her a role in exchange for funding. A romantic subplot involving Betty and
actor/singer Wally (Joe Morrison) and Wally’s father (Oscar Apfel) intermingles
with McGonigle’s conning of boarding house proprietors, theater managers, and
sheriffs.
Both
Kino Lorber titles, available separately, look quite good in their high
definition restorations, and each come with optional English subtitles for the
hearing impaired. Audio commentaries by film historian James L. Neibaur, author
of The W. C. Fields Films, accompany both features, along with the
theatrical trailers for these and other Kino Fields releases.
For
fans of W. C. Fields, classic cinema comedy, and old Hollywood, It’s a Gift and
The Old Fashioned Way serve up grand entertainment.
The
decade of the 1950s is the Golden Age of science fiction movies. Prior to that,
the genre was mostly ignored on film in favor of horror. Of course, the two
genres often overlapped, especially in the 50s, when audiences were worried
about nuclear war, UFOs, alien invasions, and the dangers of radioactivity. We
got pictures with giant bugs, flying saucers, amphibious creatures, Martian
invaders, and mole people. With few exceptions, most of the science fiction
fare from the period is godawful but usually fun for a drive-in movie
experience or late-night “creature feature†material on television.
The
exceptions have proven to stand the test of time and are considered classics
today—The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), The Thing from Another
World (1951), The War of the Worlds (1953), Invasion of the Body
Snatchers (1956), Forbidden Planet (1956), among others.
The
Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) is one of these gems. Conceived and written by the
great Richard Matheson, the movie was brought to the screen by Jack Arnold, one
of the more under-appreciated filmmakers of his day. While Arnold specialized
in “creature features†in the fifties (he brought us The Creature from the
Black Lagoon in 1954 and Tarantula in ’55, for example), he went on
to be a successful hard-working craftsman for dozens of popular television
shows in the 60s and 70s.
Matheson
wrote the initial story and simultaneously penned a novel (The Shrinking Man)
published in 1956. He sold the rights to Universal on the condition that he be
hired to write the screenplay. Matheson’s script followed the structure of his
novel, which used flashbacks to tell Scott Carey’s story. Arnold and the studio
preferred that the story be told linearly, so Richard Alan Simmons got the job
to re-write the screenplay as such. Both Matheson and Simmons share screenplay
credit, while Matheson receives story credit.
The
tale is well-known. Scott Carey (Grant Williams) is in a loving marriage with
Louise (Randy Stuart). One day they are out on a boat. While Louise is below
deck, a strange mist envelops Scott. As time passes, Scott notices that his
clothes no longer fit him—he’s becoming smaller. Doctors are befuddled. Scott
shrinks some more. Eventually this affects the marriage and Scott questions his
manhood. He becomes a media curiosity, and he continues to diminish in size.
Ultimately, he is alone in his house and must first battle the family cat, and
later, in a climactic sequence, a tarantula. And still, he continues to grow
smaller…
The
Incredible Shrinking Man is one of the most thoughtful, mind-bending, and
existential science fiction films ever made—and it was certainly a milestone of
the period. Its cosmic ending, which studio executives wanted to change to a
happier one, was kept intact by director Arnold—and this is what elevates Shrinking
Man to a BIG picture.
The
visual effects, while crude by today’s standards, were cleverly done in
1956-57. Arnold utilized split screens, rear screen projections, oversized sets
and furniture, and trick photography to achieve the illusion of Scott’s
condition against an enlarging hostile world around him. As Arnold states in a
wonderful vintage 1983 interview that is a supplement accompanying the film,
the secret to this and all the director’s work was “preparation.†He was a
believer in storyboards, and he created these to fully imagine the picture
prior to shooting a frame of film. Much like the outline some authors pen prior
to drafting a novel, Arnold’s storyboards allowed him to try out different
ideas and erase them if they didn’t work.
The
Criterion Collection presents an outstanding package for Shrinking Man.
The film is a 4K digital restoration that looks amazingly fresh. It comes with
an uncompressed monaural soundtrack. There is an optional and informative audio
commentary by genre-film historian Tom Weaver and horror-music expert David
Schecter.
Supplements
abound. A new featurette on the film’s visual effects hosted by FX experts
Craig Barron and Ben Burtt is a lot of fun. A very entertaining conversation
about the film between filmmaker Joe Dante and comedian/writer Dana Gould is
fabulous. A remembrance on the film with Richard Christian Matheson (Richard
Matheson’s son) is also superb. Of particular interest to film buffs might be
the previously mentioned footage from 1983 of Jack Arnold interviewed about the
film. Also of great significance is a “director’s cut†of a 2021 documentary
about Arnold, Auteur on the Campus: Jack Arnold at Universal. And if all
that weren’t enough, we get two 8mm home video short presentations of the film that
circulated in the 1960s, a feature on missing musical cues, a vintage teaser
narrated by none other than Orson Welles, and the theatrical trailer. The
booklet contains an essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien.
The
Incredible Shrinking Man is a must-have, buy-today, excellent release from
Criterion. For fans of 1950s science fiction, Richard Matheson, Jack Arnold,
and giant spiders. Sublime!