Foster on Film » Page 113

Johnny Belinda (1948)

Mar 181948

We are in the far off dark land of post-war Canada, where a deaf-mute is assumed to be unable to think and feel by the primitives that live there. Enter Doctor Noble Dogoodery (Lew Ayres). He wanders about, doing good, until he meets virginal deaf-mute Belinda (Jane Wyman). She has never been taught anything in her life, nor been shown the slightest bit of love or affection. Naturally, she’s kind, obedient, slavishly hard-working, and too darn lovable for words. She learns lip reading and sign language in about twenty minutes once Doc Dogoodery starts to teach her due to sheer goodness. She’s also better than everyone else in every way, except the perfect doctor whom I’m sure would turn down his sainthood due to humility. Having someone not treat her like a horse causes her to smile, and that gets the attention of Loudmouth the Rapey Sailor (Stephen McNally), who does his thing, leaving Belinda with child. After a brief period of pouting, she gets over the whole rape thing, as is done, and the film suggests it’s best not to go dwelling on it anyway. Doctor Dogoodery wants to marry Belinda as he has fallen into the platonic state that equates to love for him. But the primitives are going to get in the way because they assume Doctor Dogoodery, with his un-Godly medicine, must be the rapist and besides, Belinda isn’t conscious anyway. And Loudmouth has some evil to do yet as well. It all ends in a trial, because… Why not?

There’s no way for me to talk about this film seriously, though it certainly wants to be taken seriously. This is Oscar-bait in its truest form. Hey, aren’t disabled people inspirational? Isn’t getting over rape inspirational? Aren’t doctors who are saintly inspirational?

A controversial subject and inspiration is the first step to some shinny statues. Warner Bros added money and skill behind and in front of the camera, making a well shot and acted picture. Yes, this is a nicely produced movie. And it paid off with Oscar nominations: twelve of them. But then it lost all but Best Actress (come on, Wyman was playing a deaf-mute super-woman who gets raped, so she had to win) because in the end this is an unbearable film.

Where did it go so very wrong? Everything with the characterizations is a mess, but the problems came before anyone started acting. It’s the script. I can’t say if the play it is based on is horrid. My guess is only partially. I’m assuming it all fell apart due to the rape. The Production Code forbid rape (if it isn’t in a movie, no one will do it, right?), and this was the first time the subject could be acknowledged in a film—allowed because of the importance of bringing a deaf-mute character to the screen (Hollywood really loves disabilities). Since they were dealing with this never before whispered subject, everything else had to be simple. The rapist had to be evil personified. The doctor had to be goodness personified. And Belinda had to be purity personified. They couldn’t approach rape in a realistic fashion so they did…this. If they’d turned the sailor into an actual werewolf, the doctor into the Archangel Michael, and given Belinda a halo, it would have been more subtle than what they ended up with. These are not human characters.

If it was more exploitative, or made with less skill, or maybe a cartoon, it would be more watchable, but then it would never had gotten away with its subject matter (of course anything unsavory happens off screen). There have been worse films nominated for Best Picture, but I can’t think of one which is more torturous to sit through. This is the year of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and it had to compete with this tripe. Well, they both lost to Laurence Olivier mutilating Hamlet.

Miscellaneous, Overrated Films, Reviews Tagged with: One Reel

Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

Oct 081947

There is only one problem with the nice old man (Edmund Gwenn) hired to play the Macy’s Santa Claus; he thinks he is Santa Claus. When he is institutionalized, it is up to a young lawyer (John Payne) to show that the old man not only isn’t insane, but that he is Santa Claus. And it is up to Kris Kringle to show a woman (Maureen O’Hara) and her child (Natalie Wood) that a little fantasy in life is a good thing.

Quick Review: If I had to choose one movie as THE Christmas film, this would be it. It’s funny, emotional, meaningful, and good for almost any type of family viewing. Edmund Gwenn won the academy award for his performance as Kris Kringle and he deserved it. No one before or since has so inhabited the persona of Santa Clause. Miracle on 34th Street asks several questions (and answers them) about what is important in life, but it asks one question that it doesn’t answer: is there a Santa Clause? Perhaps. Perhaps not. It doesn’t matter as long as we live our lives as if he does. I’m game.

Christmas, Reviews Tagged with: Five Reels

Out of the Past (1947)

Oct 061947

Jeff (Robert Mitchum) runs a gas station in a small town and is dating the local good girl. His life is interrupted when a gangster’s hit-man shows up to tell him that his boss, Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas), wants to see him. Jeff used to be a detective, hired by Whit to find his mistress, Kathie Moffatt (Jane Greer), who’d shot him and ran out with $40,000. Jeff had found her, but fallen for her and doublecrossed Whit. Now, Jeff has no choice but to deal with his past.

Out of the Past may be the purest Film Noir. I can’t think of another that could claim the title. Every more famous Noir either deviates from the tropes or introduces something new. Out of the Past just delivers those tropes, one after the other, and lets them fly wherever they may. We have a dangerous world, marked by Venetian blind lighting. A sense of doom hangs over the picture. There’s the world-weary PI who takes on a questionable case where all is not as it appears. We’ve got murderers and gangsters all around. There’s the femme fatale who can, for a time, control any man and whose motives are blacker than the hired killers. We’ve got a plot that twists into absurdity to the point that Mitchum said (perhaps joking) that a couple pages of the screenplay were lost. Everyone speaks in a snappy style, often dropping bits of philosophy into mundane conversations, if any conversation can be considered mundane. A few people get shot and a few get knocked out. And there is no hope for our “hero” or any of those from his past. That’s pretty much the definition of Film Noir.

Mitchum is his normal lackadaisical self—he was never an energetic actor—and for this story, that works. Jeff has accepted his fate before we start, only with the caveat that if he has to die, he’s “going to die last.” Douglas is better, making his villain surprisingly sympathetic. He’s tightly controlled, but there’s a buzz under his skin and I was waiting for him to explode. Best of all his Greer who makes Kathie one of the most evil of the many despicable femme fatales that dot the genre. She’s sexy and almost appears innocent for a time…almost. The film hums when all three are on screen together.

Out of the Past has been re-evaluated in recent years, rising out of its B-movie roots to be considered one of the finest Noirs, but it doesn’t deserve the acclaim. It is a passably good film and if I wanted to teach a class on what Film Noir is, then this would be in the syllabus, but it isn’t anything special. If you know the genre, you know how it will all play out, except from time to time when people act particularly stupidly (or when a fishing pole becomes more lethal than a pistol). Jeff may fit the picture, but isn’t engaging. I didn’t care what would happen to him. And the symbolism is even more heavy handed than is normal for Noir: Small town, daylight, and nature equals truth and goodness; City and night equals corruption. I could have done with one less fishing scene. Out of the Past is more educational than enjoyable, but if you ignore the hype, it will do.

Director Jacques Tourneur is best remember for his horror films Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, and Curse of the Demon.

Film Noir, Reviews Tagged with: Three Reels

Crossfire (1947)

Feb 191947

Two soldiers murder Samuels (Sam Levene), a Jewish man. While police captain Finlay (Robert Young) is in the apartment of the victim, Montgomery (Robert Ryan), show up. He’s one of a group of recently returned servicemen that had met the victim the night before. His story sets the police after Mitchell (George Cooper), the most innocent and depressed of the soldiers. Sergeant Keeley (Robert Mitchum) doesn’t buy it, and sneaks Mitchell away. Mitchell’s account of the previous night doesn’t help matters, as it involves mental breakdowns, lost time, and a club girl (Gloria Grahame).

Crossfire flirts with greatness, but can’t quite nail it. When Mitchell is roaming alone at night in a nightmare world, trying to get the attention of a prostitute (dime-a-dance girl due to the production code) and running into a man who might be her husband, might be a stalker, or might be something unknowable, that’s when the film soars. That’s when Noir style meets a Noir world, where the rules don’t apply and nothing makes sense. But that brilliance vanishes. For most of the running time, this isn’t a Noir film; it just looks like one. There are lots of good people: Finlay, Keeley, Samuels and his girl, the wife. And plenty of friendship and support. Only when Mitchell is on his own, and when we focus on Montgomery, do things get dark. The rest of the time this is a procedural mated to a message pic, and it is generally OK.

It’s shot well, edited better, and is reasonably well acted (Ryan, Grahame, and Paul Kelly as the odd man all excel while Mitchum is passable but bland), but Crossfire suffers from basic structural problems. It needed to decide on a lead: Finlay, Keeley, or Mitchell. We don’t get enough detective work for Finlay to be our protagonist, but too much for him to be a supporting character. For Keeley, we needed more on his relationship with the other soliders; without that he’s an unnecessary second detective. And with Mitchell we should have seen the world from his point of view, be given a chance to feel his loss and needs. We get too little from one of these three, and way too much from the other two. Because the filmmakers were so focused on the message, they didn’t bother to work out whose story they were telling.

Of course that message is important, particularly in 1947, when Hollywood was finally working out that maybe dealing with anti-Semitism was a good idea. Crossfire gets preachy at the end. Artistically that’s a problem, but socially it is probably for the best. Subtlety doesn’t work for the average movie-goer, so subtlety was cast aside, allowing Finlay to make speeches about racism.

In the novel, it wasn’t anti-Semitism, but homophobia that led to the murder. The filmmakers didn’t forget that, shaping the events leading to the murder to fit the mode of a gay pickup. At the bar, Samuels goes over to speak privately with Mitchell, the most effeminate of the soldiers. The two leave together for his apartment and the murderers follow. Crossfire can be talking about one form of hate as easy as another.

Film Noir, Reviews Tagged with: Three Reels

Black Narcissus (1947)

Feb 141947

Five nuns are sent into the Himalayas to turn an ex-pleasure palace into a nunnery. A previous attempt to make it a monastery had failed for unstated reasons. Youthful and arrogant Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) is made mother superior. She is given: Sister Philippa (Flora Robson), to run the garden; Sister Honey (Jenny Laird), because she is well liked; Sister Briony (Judith Furse), for strength; and Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron), because she needs something she isn’t currently getting as a nun. They are aided by “The Old General” (Esmond Knight), who rules the area, and his son (Sabu), who sees himself as a cultured Western man, Angu Ayah (May Hallatt), the caretaker who’d rather have a harem inhabiting the building once again than nuns, and Mr. Dean (David Farrar), an English adventurer who’s made the local village his home. Conditions, including the altitude, make their task difficult, including having to look after Kanchi (Jean Simmons), a sexually charged orphan. But it isn’t physical and social issues that cause them the greatest problems, but something harder to define, that tears at their carefully controlled view of the world.

Here is a film I feel inadequate to describe, because one needs to be a poet to even approach it. Black Narcissus is the most beautiful film ever made. It is a masterpiece of amorous color. It is the height of cinema art, and is on the short list of the greatest films of all time. It is gorgeous to look at, subversive, and like nothing else.

The filmmaking team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, along with cinematographer Jack Cardiff knew what they wanted—a film that was direct kin to paintings. Cardiff took Dutch painter Vermeer as his starting place. This drove the advisors from Technicolor to distraction (Technicolor is/was a very complicated system and the company always kept their own people on set, dictating lighting and colors). The filmmakers pushed the procedure past its edges, creating imagery like no other. One day the Technicolor folks announced that the previous days shots were unusable and projected them to show the team how they were a disaster; they were perfect, simply not the norm.

While Powell has been told by people who’ve been to the Himalayas that they’ve seen where the film was shot, it was actually all on a sound stage (and in an English park). The mountains and valleys are all map paintings. They look real, and yet the entire picture has an unreal feeling that is greatly to its benefit.

Strangely, what comes to mind while watching Black Narcissus is Lovecraft, and only partly because it turns into a horror film in the last act. Mainly it is because the movie gives us a feeling of this vast unknown world, that is terrible and wondrous and very dangerous. We live in a lie, a construct we’ve built around ourselves to keep the universe ordered. To some extent we need this lie as we cannot comprehend what is beyond it. Of course it cuts us off from what really matters, what truly exists, but it also keeps us sane. You have a choice, to either dive into the real world and become lost in it, to flow with it, never looking too far or questioning it, or get the hell back into your fake box and stay there. Attempting to impose your will, your construct, onto the larger world will not end well for you.

With that running through the film, its two themes are easy to see, and both have to do with repression. The nuns are clearly repressed (that’s why you make a film using the iconography of nuns), but it isn’t a religious matter. They are repressed much like every other English man or woman. We are all repressed, hiding from the sensual, the carnal that pulls us, and we lose so much. But Black Narcissus isn’t dealing purely with the individual, but also with colonialism, making this a very odd film for its day. A lascivious, anti-colonial British film was unknown in 1947. The British had, for centuries, attempted to mold the world in their image. In the end, it simply mangled societies. It’s not just a morally problematic thing to do; it is impossible.

Subtext rules Black Narcissus (the title comes from a cheap British cologne that the Young General douses himself). The story is not the plot, though they travel in parallel, and much of what happens in the plot is explained by the subtext. Sure, you can say that stress and altitude sickness is what starts to break the nuns, but the colors and shots say something different.

The Academy gave Black Narcissus the Oscars for cinematography and art direction (they’d have looked pretty silly if they hadn’t), but nothing more. It should have won for Brian Easdale’s other-worldly score. The climax was filmed to match the already composed music, and not the other way around. Similarly they ignored Deborah Kerr who should have won for Best Actress, but far worse, Kathleen Byron for Best Supporting Actress. Byron’s Sister Ruth is one of cinema’s greatest characters, and it is her, putting on red lipstick, escaping through the forest to a beat straight out of I Walked With a Zombie, and her crazed appearance in the doorway, that is seared into my brain.

Black Narcissus is a stunningly erotic film, with little flesh on display. Only Mr. Dean removes his shirt, yet it feels like a hot house in the middle of an orgy. And if you haven’t seen it, you need to.

Miscellaneous, Reviews Tagged with: Five Reels

Dead Reckoning (1947)

Feb 041947

Capt. Rip Murdock (Humphrey Bogart) and his buddy Sgt Johnny Drake (William Prince) are headed to Washington DC to receive a pair of medals when Johnny jumps a different train to avoid the publicity. Rip follows and quickly discovers Johnny had enlisted under a false name as he was on the run from a murderer rap. Johnny ends up dead and Rip decides to find out who did it and why. His leads are Johnny’s girl, Dusty Chandler (Lizabeth Scott), local criminal boss Martinelli (Morris Carnovsky), and a hulking thug (Marvin Miller).

It’s like clever kids stole the contract of the best Film Noir actor of all time, so decided to make a movie. Adults couldn’t have made the choices on screen. It is amazing how many wrong turns this thing takes.

OK, Dead Reckoning has Humphrey Bogart, and this isn’t uncertain or undeveloped Bogart. This is Bogart at the height of his career being asked to be Bogart. There’s no way that isn’t going to be worth a look. But from there, it all goes haywire. The plot is made up of pieces from other Noirs without any regard for how they fit together. Elements are pulled from Double Indemnity, Murder My Sweet, Gilda, The Big Sleep, and, The Maltese Falcon—in that final case, with “borrowed” dialog. There’s a love triangle involving a casino owner, but it is vague and impossible to figure how it is supposed to work. Rip falls for the girl when it makes no sense to. He gets knocked out (twice) at the wrong times and for the wrong reasons. He tells the story as a flashback, but the flashback ends two-thirds of the way through—and the character he was speaking to vanishes from the picture. Police come and go willy nilly throughout.

There are five writers and I wonder if they ever interacted. The flashback begins with all sorts of stuff about Rip and Johnny having been wounded and traveling to get their medals, etc. Why? Why doesn’t the film start with Rip showing up in town and finding his friend dead? That’s clearly the beginning. But then Rip himself makes no sense. Outside of a tendency to bend the rules, he appears to be an upstanding guy who owned a taxi company (that was somehow destroyed by Pearl Harber…?). OK. Great. So he’s a normal, good guy with military and business skills. But when needed for the “plot,” he’s suddenly best friends with “good” mobsters who can get him in touch with a friendly safecracker—one who has retired but is instantly loyal to Rip and who happens to have napalm grenades and all the guns anyone could need. Rip, the mob boss, and Dusty all have “plans” but none of them are coherent and it is laughable that even they’d think they would work

And that’s just the start of the nonsense. There’s no getting around how derivative Dead Reckoning is, but a good deal of the foolishness could have been forgiven if the characters worked. After all, The Big Sleep didn’t make much sense (although the characters did) and it is a masterpiece. But then the leads would need chemistry and there is none. I put that on Scott, who is some kind of lifeless doll-thing. I think she was trying to do a Lauren Bacall imitation, assuming she was human and so, could have intentions. She’s a beautiful woman, but I don’t believe for a minute that all these men would fall for her. Or that she is a living being.

I’m not sure if I laughed more at the stolen dialog (“When a guy’s pal is killed, he ought to do something”) or the newly written gibberish. There’s this weird conversation that is supposed to be playful, romantic banter but is just bizarre:

“I’ve been thinking: women ought to come capsule-sized, about four inches high. When a man goes out of an evening, he just puts her in his pocket and takes her along with him, and that way he knows exactly where she is. He gets to his favorite restaurant, he puts her on the table and lets her run around among the coffee cups while he swaps a few lies with his pals… Without danger of interruption. And when it comes that time of the evening when he wants her full-sized and beautiful, he just waves his hand and there she is, full-sized.”

So, there’s that.

Dead Reckoning is shot well. Nothing is outstanding, but overall the crew all knew their jobs. And this is Bogart, so I have to say see it, but don’t spend your nickels.

Film Noir, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

The Spiral Staircase (1946)

Oct 301946

A serial killer is murdering women with “imperfections” and everyone agrees that Helen (Dorothy MCGuire), mute from a childhood trauma, is in danger, such that the good and rather pushy new Dr. Perry (Kent Smith) insists she leave town with him. The night of the most recent murder, Helen returns from the silent movies to the home of ailing Mrs. Warren where she’s employed. Also in the house is Warren’s stepson, respected Professor Albert Warren (George Brent), and her playboy son, Steve (Gordon Oliver), recently returned from Paris. The household is filled in with staff and servants: secretary Blanche (Rhonda Fleming), Nurse Barker (Sara Allgood), and Mr. & Mrs. Oates (Rhys Williams & Elsa Lanchester). On this rainy night, the constable stops by to warn them that the killer has been traced to the immediate area.

One day after complaining about the drabness of the house in the Old Dark House film Before Dawn, The Spiral Staircase present me with this magnificent building. Sure, it doesn’t have secret passageways, but then it doesn’t need them as it’s so twisty. There’s windows and cellar doors aplenty to pop open when the killer needs to get around or the potential victims decide to foolishly wander off. It’s beautiful art design, and looks fantastic in high contrast, deep focus B&W. Nothing could happen and I’d still be entertained looking at that house.

The Spiral Staircase is absent from most lists of Old Dark House films (and often called a Noir simply because it’s a B&W crime movie—it’s not Noir as it’s not set in a hopeless world filled with amoral, evil people and the occasional antihero; it just has one killer). My guess is it’s because the sub-genre tends toward low budget B-films, while The Spiral Staircase is a lavish affair created with care and precision. But it definitely fits the category. The entire story takes place in one night, with a vast majority of time spent in the house. There’s a storm outside and inside shadows loom large. The characters are a bit quirky, with Mrs. Warren making ominous predictions from her deathbed, Steve oozing sleaziness, both Steve and Albert submerged in daddy issues, and alcoholic Mrs. Oates swiping booze from her boss. And there’s voyeurism and screams. Yes, this is an Old Dark House film, and one of the best.

Helen is a well drawn character, but better as our opening into the film. Because she’s mute, she can’t scream, can’t yell for help, can’t be heard by the others, just like the audience. She isn’t helpless, repeatedly makes reasonable and sometimes surprisingly forceful choices, but she’s mostly on her own, with us. We know what she’s thinking, but no one else seems to (and she rolls her eyes with us as Dr. Perry keeps treating her like a child).

Barrymore nearly steals the picture. Mrs. Warren is mystery and strength and death all rolled up, and she is the heart of the house. She lays in her gigantic bed in her elaborate room, and everything revolves around her. Her statements tend to bite, but can be kind, depending on to whom she’s speaking and what is behind her words. It’s a great performance.

The Spiral Staircase is a tense thriller, filled with creaking gates, thumping shutters, and flickering candles. It’s atmospheric first, but it has a story to tell too, and if the look of it is more compelling than the substance, it’s only because the elegant cinematography is so striking.

Dark House, Horror, Reviews Tagged with: Four Reels

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)

Oct 181946

In a town ruled by the wealthy Ivers family, on a stormy night, run-away Martha Ivers is brought back to her domineering aunt. The night ends with the aunt dead, tough kid Sam gone, and weak kid Walter at Martha’s side. Years later, Sam (Van Heflin) passes through town and meets recent parolee, Toni Marachek (Lizabeth Scott). Martha (Barbara Stanwyck) now runs the town and is married to an alcoholic Walter (Kirk Douglas).

Categorized as a Film Noir, The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers starts like like a gothic melodrama: a dark, grim mansion, a thunderstorm as background (rain is a motif), a malevolent aunt, and murder. But this is Noir. Evil hums through the streets of Iverstown. The citizens are corrupt, weak, and cruel. Sam is our hero, and as good as this world has, and he is a gambler with a list of crimes probably only partly invented, who is brash, holier-than-thou, and stupid. A smart person would know to get the Hell out of Iverstown and never look back.

Walter’s insecurities make him vicious in the way only a broken man can be. Yet I sympathize with him. He does the best he can as a sniveling fool in love with a monster and afraid of everything. Martha is a monster made by a monster. Her childhood turned her into what she is, but she wants something more. She wants the escape she failed to achieve when a kid. And she’ll never get it unless something happens. At least that is what she tells herself. But no, she’ll never escape as her prison is self-maintained. They are villains that see villainy in everyone else, and they are only half wrong, but their mistaking what Sam has become will cost them.

This is Barbara Stanwyck at her steely best. I can’t think of another femme fatale that hits me this hard. Her Martha is twisted and as broken as Walter, in a different way. Kirk Douglas is as good. It was his first screen performance, and his best. He is the personification of sickness. Heflin and Scott pale in comparison, but that was inevitable.

The production code purifies Sam’s and Toni’s relationship to an irritating degree—and with music fit for a fluffy romance. It also puts a less dark ending on a story that was going to be dark. Though the censors can’t be blamed for the title that belongs on a weepy. But those are minor complaints for a top notch Noir.

Film Noir, Reviews Tagged with: Four Reels

The Time of Their Lives (1946)

Oct 111946

During the revolutionary war, Melody Allen (Marjorie Reynolds) and Horatio Prim (Lou Costello) are mistaken for traitors, shot, and cursed. In 1946, the ghosts of Melody and Horatio have a chance to remove the curse, with the help of five people, including Dr. Ralph Greenway (Bud Abbott), a descendent of a man who wronged Horatio.

Here is an Abbott and Costello movie where Bud Abbott and Lou Costello barely interact. Most of their films have little in the way of stories, being just vehicles for their standard routines. This makes the first movie of theirs you see pretty funny, but each successive one less and less so. The Time of Their Lives was an attempt to do something different, putting them in an actual story, and letting jokes arise naturally. And it almost works. Almost.

Bud Abbott shows he could have made it on his own. Playing a double role, his revolutionary butler is a slightly meaner version of his standard persona, but as Dr. Greenway, he’s a pleasant and noble, if misguided and foolish man who is the victim, not the perpetrator of petty cruelties. Abbott’s turn at playing something different results in him being far more humorous and engaging than normal. For most of the film, he interacts with a nondescript group of characters, except for Gale Sondergaard’s psychic; Sondergaard, who often played sinister parts, could never be considered nondescript and puts in another excellent character performance.

But Lou Costello’s ghostly tinker is just the same Costello from his other films and gets tiring quickly. He falls down, runs into walls, wiggles about, and acts frightened of everything. It just isn’t funny. He spends most of the film with Marjorie Reynolds, who plays the straight-woman (more or less). It’s refreshing to see him interacting with someone else for a change, but in addition to refreshing, it needed to be humorous.

The script creates far more frustrations than jokes. Almost every problem that pops up could easily be solved by the ghosts being ghosts, but for some reason, they ignore their strengths. When the police show up to take an important piece of furniture, the ghosts could have grabbed it themselves, or taken the cops’ weapons, or done a million things, but all they do is tug on hats.

For an afternoon matinee with the kids, The Time of Their Lives will do, particularly with young kids around Halloween. I first saw it when I was five or six, and enjoyed it, but even then, it wasn’t anything special.

Ghost Stories, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

Ziegfeld Follies (1946)

Oct 061946

Plot? There is no plot. Famous producer Florenz Ziegfeld (William Powell), looks down from heaven, thinking how nice it would be to put on one more review. That’s the story, and Ziegfeld is never heard from again. What you get are unrelated musical numbers and comedy sketches, each introduced by a title card and featuring MGM’s biggest stars: Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, Lena Horne, Cyd Charisse, Esther Williams, Lucille Ball, Red Skelton, Lucille Bremer, Kathryn Grayson, and Keenan Wynn.

An anachronism in 1946, Ziegfeld Follies’s format would again become popular in the 1960s with TV: The Jackie Gleason Show, The Red Skelton Show, and The Carol Burnett Show. (Ah, gentle readers, my past is showing.) And like those shows, this film isn’t hit or miss, but near hits, misses, and complete misfires. If anything might be considered a saving grace, it’s Fred Astaire. If you’re not a huge fan of his, stay far away. If you are, I can name fifteen movies to seek out first.

The comedy routines are a mystery to me. Did anyone, ever, think that it was funny to watch Keenan Wynn argue with a phone operator about repeatedly being connected to wrong numbers? The others are no better. Victor Moore and Edward Arnold tell a very, very long lawyer joke. Fanny Brice and Hume Cronyn try to retrieve a lottery ticket from William Frawley, and Red Skelton gets drunk while advertising alcohol. These are some of the lamest routines put on film, and there’s nothing that is worth a smile.

But then I’m equally mystified by the one-time popularity of Esther Williams swimming about in a tank. Here she swims and smiles, and that’s it. It isn’t bad, just tedious.

To go with the Ziegfield name, there are several large production numbers which are politely referred to as dated. The first, Here’s To the Beautiful Girls, includes multiple 40s-era hotties, dressed in pink, posing for the camera, along with the requisite circular staircase, and for no reason I can figure, horses. To make it properly surreal, Lucille Ball snaps a whip at dancing girls in cat outfits, which sounds a lot more entertaining than it is. The other big number has Kathryn Grayson, in wonderful voice, singing a forgettable number while soap bubbles gurgle up and Cyd Charisse dances in toe-shoes. It might stick with you due to its weirdness, but for no other reason.

Lena Horne does her best to sex things up, but the song, Love, is too weak. Judy Garland, not yet showing the effects of her drug addiction, sings A Great Lady has an Interview, which is more a joke than a song. It beats the comedy sketches, which isn’t an overwhelming recommendation. There’s also an out-of-place opera segment, which is nicely done, and would have been even better in an opera.

Which leaves the three Astaire vignettes. Lucille Bremer is an attractive partner for him, in two pantomimes. First he’s a jewel thief, sneaking into a fancy event to swipe the lovely lady’s bracelet. It’s fine ballroom, but more attention was lavished on the over-blown sets than the choreography. Later, Astaire and Bremer ignore how foolish it looks when Caucasians pretend to be a different race. They are Chinese (ummm, I don’t think so). After an excessively long opening that involves Astaire standing around a lot, he dreams a ballet which could only be more garish if blinking neon signs were added. Finally, in the only scene worth the cost of the film used to record it, Astaire teams up for the first time with Gene Kelly. The song, The Babbitt and the Bromide is not one of the Gershwins’ better compositions, and seeing these two masters kick each other in the butt is embarrassing, but the meeting is historic. Since it was included in the compilation That’s Entertainment!, there’s no reason to sit through the rest of Ziegfeld Follies.

My other reviews of Gene Kelly films: : Cover Girl (1944), Anchors Aweigh (1945), The Pirate (1948), Words and Music (1948), On the Town (1949), Summer Stock (1950), An American in Paris (1951), Brigadoon (1954), It’s Always Fair Weather (1955), Les Girls (1957), The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967).

Musicals, Reviews Tagged with: One Reel

Road to Utopia (1946)

Oct 041946

Duke and Chester (Bing Crosby, Bob Hope) find themselves in snow-covered Alaska, disguised as killers and innocently carrying a stolen treasure map. The real owner of the map, Skagway Sal (Dorothy Lamour), attempts to seduce the map from them. The local gangster, Ace Larson (Douglass Dumbrille), and the killers, Sperry and McGurk, also want the map, and their way of getting it is much less pleasant.

The fourth of the seven Road Pictures, the trio of Hope, Crosby, and Lamour are all in excellent form. There are no surprises and the formula developed in the previous films is followed with only one minor variation. Hope and Crosby, technically playing new characters, but ones that are once again shady-but-nice, toss insults back and forth, talk directly to the camera, obviously adlib, and repeat gags from the other pictures. Crosby gets a solo ballad; Lamour sings and shows some leg, and Hope and Crosby do a friendly number together. There is a fair amount of slapstick, some topical humor, and more one-liners than plot. The change is that Lamour is shown away from the boys. Apparently, all three were jostling for screen time and with Lamour on her own, she had a chance of getting in a word or two.

The Road Pictures are classics of American film comedy, and Road to Utopia is a solid entry in the series. But it isn’t a good place to start as it refers to the earlier flicks. If you haven’t seen these films, start with Road to Singapore or Road to Zanzibar, and be sure to catch Road to Morocco, arguably the best of the seven. Then its time for Utopia, at which point you’ll know if you’re going to enjoy it.

While most of the action takes place in the snow, there’s very little of Christmastime about Road to Utopia. I’m not even sure if the story takes place in December. However, when the boys are out on a dog sled in the middle of nowhere, they run into Santa on his sleigh. He has their Christmas presents, but they reject the notion, being too old for such childish things. Santa shrugs and takes off, as his sack opens and two hot babes pop out, singing “You’ll be sorry.”

The other Road Pictures were Road to Singapore (1940), Road to Zanzibar (1941), Road to Morocco (1942), Road to Rio (1947), Road to Bali (1952), and The Road to Hong Kong (1962).

Christmas, Christmastime, Reviews Tagged with: Four Reels

Lady in the Lake (1946)

Sep 291946

At Christmastime, Detective Philip Marlowe (Robert Montgomery) is hired by magazine editor and femme fatale Adrienne Fromsett (Audrey Totter) to find her boss’s (Leon Ames) wife, in the hopes that the wife has done something illegal and Fromsett can take her place. Marlowe follows the trail to Chris Lavery (Dick Simmons), the wife’s supposed boyfriend, but he turns up dead and the local police, Captain Kane (Tom Tully) and Lieutenant DeGarmot (Lloyd Nolan) blame Marlowe. With bodies stacking up, it is clear that DeGarmot and an ex-nurse named Mildred Haveland (Jayne Meadows) are somehow connected to the killings, and it looks like Fromsett might be involved as well. Marlowe must solve the case before he is arrested for murder or killed.

This is a horrible film. And I’m recommending it.

Well, I’m recommending it if it comes on TV or you can rent it cheap. It isn’t any good, but it is fascinating. It is an experiment that failed in a “I wonder what will happen if I hold two pieces of uranium and smash them together” kind of way, which makes it a part of film history. Everyone should see it once, but once is quite enough.

The idea must have sounded clever: shoot the film in first person. The audience will see what Marlowe sees and nothing more. It will pull the viewer into the film, making him part of the action. Except it doesn’t. It’s hard to think of a film that pushes away the viewer so completely. It feels like playing a broken first-person shooter video game (with only minimal shooting). When Marlowe opens a door, you see his hand. When he gets kissed, you see the puckered lips approaching. The only time you see Marlowe is when he looks in the mirror (and in three short speeches made to the camera). With this approach, I kept wanting to use a joystick to make him do something other than what he was doing.

The technique fails in so many ways. At any time, the contrivance of it would draw attention away from the story, but in 1946, the technology didn’t exist to make it just tedious. There were no steadicams. Movie cameras were bulky affairs more often wheeled very slowly. This leads to Marlowe never going where the camera can’t roll, and never moving faster than it can be pushed. So he spends a lot of time slowly strolling down hallways and sitting. Even in a fight (which looks particularly preposterous), he is forced to move like molasses. While much of the mystery takes place in a mountain resort, we never see any of that (the camera would never be able to “walk” up the hills). Everyone he meets stands unnaturally still and directly in front of him. It looks like they are posing for a series of family portraits.

The acting is universally horrendous. It sounds exactly like what you get in a video game, with everyone taking their cue from the camera’s orientation and then reading their lines very s-l-o-w-l-y a-n-d c-l-e-a-r-l-y. I can’t recall worse performances in a Hollywood film. As the cast had some skilled members, it was apparently style that threw them: “Now Audrey, you are sexually excited by this camera lens. Go at it!” No wonder they were lost.

Robert Montgomery, who was trying to change his fluffy image, directed and starred, so much of the blame can be dumped on him. He could hardly help the other actors as he didn’t know what do to himself. His performance is one of the worst in the film, and most of it is voice only. But then he was a poor choice for Marlowe. He was too slight for the hard-bitten PI, and his faked “tough-guy” accent is comical. The plot calls for Marlowe and Fromsett to fall for each other, but nothing Montgomery or Totter do makes that believable.

It wraps up with a particularly unlikely conclusion that is so silly, it fits perfectly with the absurdity that came before.

The other actors who have portrayed Philip Marlowe on the big screen are: Dick Powell in Murder My Sweet (1944), Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep (1946), George Montgomery in The Brasher Doubloon (1947), James Garner in Marlowe (1969), Elliot Gould in The Long Goodbye (1973), and Robert Mitchum in both Farewell, My Lovely (1975) and The Big Sleep (1978).

Christmas, Christmastime, Film Noir, Reviews Tagged with: Two Reels

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