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The Gorgeous Hussy (1936)
History soup
A star vehicle for Joan Crawford, who plays Margaret O'Neal, daughter of an inn-keeper, adoptive niece of Andrew Jackson (Lionel Barrymore), hopelessly in love with Virginia Senator John Randolph (Melvyn Douglas), married first to the dashing naval lieutenant Timberlake (Robert Taylor), and then after turning down Randolph because he's intent on breaking up the Union, to steadfast John Eaton (Franchot Tone). The cast is made more lively by the presence of Beaulah Bondi as the pipe-smoking backwoods Rachel Jackson, by Sidney Toler as Daniel Webster ready to orate at the drop of a hat, by Alison Skipworth as the gossiping Mrs. Beall, and the gosh-shucks comic interludes of a very young James Stewart as Rowdy Dow. This is a sentimental melodramatic revision of history, with historical figures gravitating or (perhaps) orbiting about a beautiful, headstrong, smart young woman. But though she's smart and loyal, possessing all the same political convictions of most of the male characters, the only real scope she has is to marry, or not to marry, somebody whose politics she agrees with. And then the worst she has to endureother than the heartbreak of not being able to marry Randolph because he's an incipient secessionistis the petty nastiness of stuck-up Washingtonians who despise her because of her humble origins (she's "Pothouse Peg" to them) and because of what they imagine is scandalous behaviourespecially visiting Randolph's deathbed after he's assassinated by a really vile, sneaky rebel. Jackson intervenes, dismissing his entire cabinet, and Margaret sails with her husband for Spain.
Somehow, I have reservations about Crawford hereand not just the part written for her. True, she is very good-looking indeed, but she doesn't seem to inhabit the part as much as she moves and holds still for the camera, and employs the appropriate facial expressions, the big sad eyes, the sparky impish look, the indignant glare, the soft yielding gaze, the angry flounce. She's overdressed (by Adrian) for the part, and so is her accent. If the dialogue didn't mention it from time to time it would be hard to remember she's not supposed to be a "lady." Her carriage reflects this problem, too, until it seems that everybody else in the cast is acting while she is delivering Joan Crawford content.
And now the other problem with this movieAndrew Jackson. Lionel Barrymore does a great job making him a crusty but kind-hearted and principled backwoods original, with his colourful curses and idioms, with his corn-whiskey voice and with his bushy white eyebrows. But this is a sentimentalized Jackson, retooled in a process of romantic primitivization: he is made up of equal parts of federalist principles, loyalty to his hayseed origins and his beloved hillbilly wife, avuncular kindness to Margaret, and huffing-and-puffing temper. He is made out to be a proto-Lincoln,determined to Save the Union. I suppose he might have been, but I am so angry with the real Jackson about manifest destinythe banishment of Indians from the east and the Trail of Tearsthat I find this soppy idolatry rather creepy.
Chelovek s kino-apparatom (1929)
What the cameraman sees, what the cameraman does
A beautiful testimony to the exploratory and visionary work of the Soviet cameraman. There are countless little narrative threadstrains rushing by as the cameraman works the angles, the cameraman climbs a factory chimney, haircutting and shaving and the application of making, people at the beach, people working making cigarettes and machines, people editing film, the cranking of the camera, people sleeping, and many moreto which the camera returns over and over. Even without the rhythm of the film and the visual beauty of the shots, this would be a treasure if only as a record of daily life in the early part of the 20th-century, the romance of industrialization, the dignity of labour, the fascinating faces of every-day people. There's very little overtly Soviet propaganda beyond lending dignity to these things. Vertov says (in the prefatory titles) that this film is not theatrical or literary in intent or influence; rather, it sets out to establish a purely cinematic vocabulary. This endeavour is to a great extent quite successful: not only are there hundreds of eloquent shots and scenes, but they are edited, spliced, interwoven so they speak to each other. And throughout Vertov reminds the viewer of what the camera istoward the end the camera walks and moves its "head" with stop-frame animation. He also reminds us what the camera can do. Like a musical motif, the image of the cameraman keeps returning: up on the roof photographing traffic, walking through the crowded city streets, wearing a bathing costume walking across the beach or floating in an inner-tube, and standing in an open car photographing the passengers in a horse-drawn carriage, both going at quite a clip. Of course, so is the vehicle carrying the cameraman photographing the cameraman photographing the passengers. And for a brief, brilliant moment, a pretty woman in the carriage turns, smiling, to the cameraman. Laughing, she winds her hand in mimicry of his constant cranking.
The Taming of the Shrew (1929)
Silly tale impersonating Shakespeare's more complex play
It's hard to quarrel with this cheerful adaptation of Shakespeare's thorny play, because it sets out to do so little, and accomplishes pretty much exactly what it sets out to do. To a great extent it's a silent film in its dependence on gesture, staging, and expression. Great sets and (mostly) great costumes. Sure, there is a sound-track, including more than a few of Shakespeare's words, but the narrative depends on dialogue mostly for framing, punctuating, and moving forward the scenes. The part of Kate (Mary Pickford) is almost entirely limited to her silent-film vocabulary of flashing eyes, slow burns, and the classic knowing (or recognition) lookthe one with the raised eyebrows, smirk, and slow nod of the head, up, down, and again. She does all this wonderfully. As Petruchio, Douglas Fairbanks recycles his swashbuckling forte, complete with piratical headband and earring, heroic gestures like standing with his legs widespread or throwing out his arms as if to embrace the world, and his shirts have no buttons (there is an unfortunate pair of shorts, alas, which no patterned hem can excuse). Also flashing eyes and almost constant laughter.
The play is abbreviated to fit into the one hour (six reel?) format, like an executive summary of the plotbut there is one more outrage, one that subverts Shakespeare's entire story. Just as Katherine is beginning to succumb to Petruchio's emotional deprogramming, she overhears his monologue about how he plans to control her. We see her "Aha! Now I've got you" look, and know she's on top of things. Sure enough, as she completes an abbreviated version of the "I am ashamed that women are so simple" speech, she gives her sister Bianca a broad wink. Yeah, right.
Jane Eyre (1934)
Little more than a bar of floral-scented soap wrapped in pretty bows
The reason this is not a good movie is not limited to the fact that it has eliminated the complexities of Charlotte Bronte's plot and the depth of her characters, but still more that it is little more than a bar of floral-scented soap wrapped in pretty bows. Basically, it has become a vapid story in which a poor but pretty girl marries the rich, handsome gentleman, and little else. True, the screen-writers nod in the direction of a few of the original ideas. Jane doesn't get along with her aunt's family, Jane arrives at the orphanage, Jane leaves the orphanage, the members of the Rochester household have the same names as in the Bronte novel, there is a mad wife in the attic, Jane does spend three minutes in a minister's house and she does nearly marry him, there is a fire, and Rochester is blinded. But in each of these details all the life and complexity has been entirely removed. All we have left is a very pretty Jane (Virginia Bruce) gazing soulfully at the very handsome Rochester (Colin Clive), and the inevitable conclusion. A tone of falsity runs throughout the movie, as well. The history of meanness is missing from the brief orphanage scene, so we only see the consequences in Jane's annoyance with the puppet-like schoolmaster. The costumes seem wrong: the little girls wear knee-length dresses and long ruffled pants-like undergarmentsa Victorian fetish, I think. The governess wears a fully-extended ball dress while taking tea with the master, but a plain dress at the ball. And Rochester does not take off his enormous top hat as he runs into the burning mansion. For what it is, this movie is too long at 62 minutes.
L'école de la chair (1998)
Huppert brilliantly helps Jacquot turn clichés inside out
More than a few French film-makers seem to like to take two strong characterswith different strengthsand throw them together and wait for the reactions. Jacquot's version of this procedure involves an older woman, Dominique (Isabel Huppert) involved with a younger man, the hustler Quentin (Vincent Martinez).
While this pairing suggests cliché, somehow it grows well beyond the usual fare To begin with, Dominique is a complicated character, strong, in control of her life, inclined to be merry though not entirely content with things and hating boredom. It's not entirely clear what she does professionallyperhaps a designer or owner/executive of a fashion companybut she enjoys it and is good at it. She takes her droopy friend (Danièle Dubroux) around with her, and at a nightclub she sees Quentin staring at her. The gay waiter Chris (Vincent Lindon) helps her get acquainted, and an affair begins. Quentin is fickle and stubborn and wayward, turns tricks for money, knows he's good at it, prefers women but doesn't mind men.
He isn't as strong as he looks. Though Quentin makes gestures about preserving his independence, going out, seeing others, and doling out attention according to his convenience, in fact Dominique makes the rules. When he does things that would hurt or threaten a more conventional woman, she remains unfazed. What she wants is Quentin as he is, vibrant and smoldering and vulnerable. It's interesting to watch the way his attempts to assert a bad-boy independence always wind up with him walking away from the supposedly edgy scenethe nightclub where they met, the street where the rent-boys hustlewith Dominique, or heading back to her apartment. And it's surely symbolic that he practices karate enthusiastically in the dojo, but he's not so tough outside, falling down twice in brief fights.
But when inevitably there's a crisis it's not a predictable case of him acting out the bad boy part. No, he plans to marry the pretty young daughter of Dominique's friends. Dominique has the chance to blackmail Quentin with explicit pictures of him having sex with a male client, provided by Chris (who says she wanted to be able to have power over him but not to use it. Dominique is stronger. But she burns them. And in doing so, she realizes they're finished. Quentin wants to stay with Dominique, but by this time she's exhausted. She sends him away; he sits shirtless on the floor, mourning, refusing to leave. Then a brief coda: Dominique a few years later, elegant, with longer hair, runs into Quentin outside a metro stop. He's carrying a young child, his daughter from his by now failed marriage. He gives Dominique his address, but she doesn't take it. She watches him go.
Martinez is pretty good, sneaking in boyishness under the carapace of macho sexuality, and he has a great smile. Lindon is also excellent as Chris, an elective girl with a great knowing look. There are also a couple of brief appearances by an old boyfriend of Quentin's, Soukaz (François Berléant), who is rueful and nervously dignified. The real delight is Huppert, who is simply breathtaking in this part. In other movies she has been called upon for over-the-top effects, but here she uses a subdued, subtle technique, registering emotions with small but affective expressions: boredom, curiosity, desire, joy, discomfort, hope, desperation, humour, calm, sadness, self-control. A great movie, one that turns stereotypes inside out.
Clara cet été là (2004)
A sweet coming-of-age story
It's hard to conceive of any country but France producing a movie like this for television. It's another movie about a summer holiday by the sea, this time a week at camp for a mixed group of teenagers. Clara (Selma Brook) and her friend Zoë (Stéphanie Sokolinski) are convinced this will be the occasion to "do it" for the first time, but the boys at the camp are terrible jerks. Zoë is mercurial, hurt by inattention and boorishness and meanness from the boys and then thrilled by the attention of one in particular, Sébastian (Léo Grandperret), who's perhaps the best of the lot, though arrogant and sometimes mean. On one of the first nights Clara and Zoë kiss, and then, hurt by the casual cruelty of the boys, Zoë tells Clara she loves her, but Clara turns away. The next day Zoë is back with Sébastian, and Clara is alone. For some time the movie shows her drifting on the outside of the camp's summer games, looking soulful and a little sad. Then she meets the mysterious star of the camp, Sonia (Salomé Stévenin), who seems to treat her like a real person. To Clara's horror, the boys and girls of the camp laugh at her, mocking her as a lesbian, which Clara's convinced she's not. Zoë is still more cruel in a typically juvenile way, telling her new friends that Clara came on to her, whereas really it was the other way around, and tearing into Clara for being jealous of her happiness. At a party one night Clara wanders around the fringes, uncertain, and then follows Sonia, who looks at her intensely and asks her what she wants to say. Clara is flustered and backs away from the answer that's welling up inside her. Then she lets the guitar-player from the band have sex with her on the beachshe's got to do something. The next day she seems even more disconsolate, and Sonia takes her to bed. The love scenes are discreet and joyfulbut Clara is not yet mature enough to handle it. She first invites Sonia to come with her to her sister's wedding, and then hesitates as she and Sonia and Zoë are about to get into her father's car. Sonia strides off, hurt. At the wedding Zoë surprisingly gives Clara some good advice, that is, to accept that she likes women. They rush away from the wedding party and get on the train to go apologize to Sonia and if possible bring her back. Clara imagines four or five scenarios of what might happen with Sonia at the wedding party, dancing and kissing while the parents look on in comic shock. They laugh, and the movie ends with the Clara/Sonia resolution still in the offing. As a treatment of the tentative nature of the sexuality of young women, this movie is open and gentle; it's not so gentle with the boys, who are almost all crude and exploitive and bullying. Sokolinski is small and brisk and very good at those sudden emotional reverses from despair to joy, and at smugness, too. Stévenin is also very good at seeming glamorous and aloof and assured, then vulnerable in the presence of a homophobic mob of kids, and also confident and warm as an experienced young woman testing and encouraging a shy girl to recognize her desires. As Clara, Brook is remarkable, seemingly unaware of her beauty, melancholy, pained by isolation and mockery, happy in friendship and happier still with her first real lover. The movie might seem a bit slow for some, but the frustration and hesitation and long stretches of loneliness are absolutely necessary to convey the sense of emotional urgency and longing that are central to such experiences.
Les anges du péché (1943)
Overcoming the pride of wanting to help others
To a Dominican convent with a special mission of accepting ex-prisoners comes Anne-Marie (Renée Faure), strong-willed, devout daughter of a wealthy family. She is convinced that she has a mission to help recover the souls of the despairing, and she works enthusiastically to be allowed to visit the prison. When she does, she encounters a woman, Thérèse (Jany Holt), anything but a model prisonershe screams and tries to escape. Thérèse confides in Anne-Marie that she has served two years in prison for some one else's crime, and hints that she will seek revenge. An intervention at the time of her release fails; Thérèse leaves the prison, buys a pistol, and kills the man who betrayed her.
Not long afterwards she arrives at the convent door. She is accepted by the Mother Superior, and Anne-Marie takes her under her wing. But she does so too much, treating Thérèse like a pet or a prodigy. Thérèse is mostly silent while Anne-Marie gushes. Here's where the tricky part arises: from the start Anne Marie is anything but humble. She is driven by a vain, arrogant sense of the importance of her mission, and this leads her into negligence of her assigned duties, failure to submit to authority, and assuming she is exceptional. Her insubordination grows worse, and Thérèse spitefully tells her that one of the chief nuns likes her and the other does not. The latter has a cat, and Anne-Marie takes exception to it. Soon it is difficult to tell whether she is mad or singularly blessed, but when she refuses to do an assigned penance, she is expelled from the convent.
Anne-Marie does not return home, but hides in a barn by day and prays in the convent cemetery by night, until she collapses on the founder's grave in a rainstorm, almost dying of hunger and exposure. The sisters bring her inside to die. Near the end, she holds onto Thérèse, saying that she must die because she has failed to do the task she undertook, that is, to convince Thérèse of the joy of god's love. And Anne-Marie confides in Thérèse that she had no regrets because she loves her. At this point Thérèse becomes angry, telling Anne-Marie that she is just turning to friendship because the strategy of superiority has failed. Her heart is not just hurt, but dead, she says, and cries out as she leaves, why can't I be alone? You already are, Anne-Marie says softly, and that's why your pain is so great. Thérèse returns to her bedside.
As the nuns gather to witness Anne-Marie's death, and the police arrive downstairs, the mother superior offers her the opportunity to take her vows. When she cannot speak, Thérèse, holding on to her, speaks them for her. Slowly she rises, smiling, kisses her feet, and walks calmly through the crowd of kneeling nuns. The movie ends with her advancing, wrists crossed, and the click of handcuffs.
What has happened here? For one thing, Anne-Marie has done everything wrong, at least by the rules of the Dominican order, for she has placed her own will above everything else, and has been guilty of great spiritual pride. But she has also been humbled by her failure to become a true nun, by her expulsion from the convent, and by the failure of her attempt to give Thérèse the gift of peace. Until nearly the end of the story, Thérèse has been skeptical and bitter. When Anne-Marie says that one thing could make her livethe change she hopes for in Thérèsethen at last she seems to understand that Anne-Marie does not want to take over her life. Anne-Marie, she understands at last. really longs for her happiness. Her love for Thérèse survives failure and humiliation, and it is this love, with the egotism burned out, that succeeds where her hyperactive will to do good has failed. Though Thérèse returns to prison, she is calm and resigned, her heart and soul at rest. Within the confines of the cloister this subtle spiritual drama unfolds relentlessly, and the two principle actors always fascinating to watchFaure is smiling and radiant, Holt wild-eyed in prison and steely calm in the convent. The other nuns are all fine, and they furnish a context of rigor and forgiveness. The movement and setting and photography and the use of light and shadow are all austere and beautiful.
Macho Dancer (1988)
The innocence of whores
A frank, sad story of the sex trade in the third-world. Pol (Allan Paule) leaves his small village after his American friend goes home, goes to Manila, and becomes a macho dancer at Mama Charlie's nightclub. He stays with Noel (Daniel Fernando), another dancer and call-boy, obsessed with finding his missing sister Pining (Princess Punzalan). They're assisted by beautiful call-girl Bambi (Jacklyn Jose), and find they're up against a powerful police-officer/gangster called Kid. Noel is shot while rescuing his sister from a tough brothel, and Pol stakes out the killer and shoots him on his doorstep. A newspaper headline reads "Sparrows kill Policeman." Along the way, Pol has had his first experience with a girl, fallen in love, and lost herBambi is certain there can be no happy endings, but she weeps after she has sent him away. Pining leaves Manila with the money Noel had saved for her; Pol goes home; Bambi stays in the life. This movie is not for the squeamish: it features soft-focus gay sex acts, erotic dancing, and violence both explicit and narrated. Pining, shaking with sobs, tells of being captured, drugged, and raped multiple times; the dancers talk of a boy killed in a motel room; the boys are kept in their place by threats of violence and the constant presence of powerful criminal/police; at a party two high, laughing boys flirt with suicide; and Bambi tells Pol how she got into the tradeher father beat her up and then forced her, paying her a nickel for keeping silence. This last scene is the most powerful moment in the film. Bambi faces away from Pol, jaw set, eyes brimming with tears, hands trembling, as she forces the words out with a hardened, dry tone. Now she is determined to be freeas free as a whore can be. Jose is compellingly beautiful, and her portrayal of Bambi is very moving. She's balanced by the open-faced innocence of Paule's face, especially his gentle smile. Nearly all the boys are innocent, even when they are at workthere's no sneering or crudeness, and no sense of shame. Some of the scenes take note of the sordidness of the trade, especially in a club where the entertainment consists of seven or eight naked young men sitting on high stools on stage caressing their genitals. Their faces are mostly distracted or blank. This serves to make the erotic shows of the macho dancers more accessible. Throughout the movie, finally, there is a marked absence of censoriousness about the sex trade itself, while the causes of virtual (and actual) slavery in poverty and criminal profit-making enforced by violence are always present in the background, and from time to time they erupt into the foreground to destroy or maim the innocent.
Mr. Moto Takes a Chance (1938)
The Caucasian Asian detective spy forestalls destabilization
A curious Oriental/Occidental pulp romance, in which various spies appear in a tiny eastern country not far from Cambodia. One spy is Mr. Moto (Peter Lorre), disguised as a timid archaeologist, and the other is aviatrix Victoria Mason (Rochelle Hudson), who fakes a crash landing in the kingdom. Round this out with two Yank movie guys, one handsome and in charge, the other something of a comic sidekickhe takes one look at Moto and says, "If that guy was in movies, he'd be cast as a murderer." There's also the supposedly dim Raja (J. Edward Bromberg) and an oily, conniving high priest, Bokor (George Regas). High priest of what? The god Siva (pronounced "C-vuh"). Moto discovers a German-supplied arms cache, the Rajah, not so dim after all, intercepts Moto's passenger pigeons and steals a march on Bokor. Moto also assumes a full head-mask and intervenes as a holy man from the top of the world. Bokor wants to throw out the French and all Europeans and keep Asia for the Asians; the Rajah wants to become a real Rajah; they both want the German weapons, but they both die in the explosion, and so the good news, apparently, is that the Germans haven't managed to destabilize the region. As Stephen Crane might say, the natives aren't even nouns, they're only adverbs. Though amusing, this movie is also a bizarre patchwork Orient, with Balinese-costumed dancers, a national religion worshipping Shiva, a Rajah named Ali, soldiers with uniforms like the Chinese around the time of the Boxer Rebellionno match for the bonhomie and natural prowess of the Yanks and their clever Japanese friend. Another white man playing a clever oriental. Anyway, they all four sail off in a small ship. They're wearing suits and making jokes.
The Girl from 10th Avenue (1935)
Differences in social class can't divide them
Well-heeled lawyer Geoff Sherwood (Ian Hunter) stands in a crowd waiting for the bride and groom to come out of the church. He's drunk and talking about making a scene and detectives decide to have him hauled off to Bellviewbut Miriam Brady (Bette Davis), a young woman who sews labels on clothes, takes his arm and moves him out of danger. A couple of his friends follow along and ask her to stick with him. His ex-fiancée Valentine has just gotten married. They drink, and by next morning they're somewhere in upstate New York, married too. Miriam, being an extraordinarily decent girl, tells him she'll disappear, but he asks her to stay around. They stay married, move into an apartment in a nice building owned by the redoubtable Mrs. Martin (Alison Skipworth), who sort of adopts Miriam. The Geoff-Miriam arrangement appears to be working, at least to him, but when Valentine reappears and sets out to recapture Geoff, Miriam won't stand still. She tricks Valentine into making a scenethrowing a pineapplein a tony restaurant. But Geoff is easily led and prepares to leave Miriam; she leaves first. But in the process he realizes... well, it ends happily. Hunter is somewhat self-contained, neither a loud drunk nor a loud arguer. Miriam is right when she says he hasn't thought things through very well. Davis is just the right combination of toughness and uncertainty, much more of the former than the latter, and though she's not the most beautiful actress of her day, she knows how to light up the screen and shake the definition of beauty until it collapses at her feet and she rises above it, glowing.
The Dark Horse (1932)
All the wrong reasons for success
The fast-talking, deeply dishonest trickster gets the girl. What kind of a plot is that? The point seems to be to showcase Warren William, as Hal Blake, the promo man who can elect a radish. The radish is Zachary Hicks (Guy Kibbee), a moon-faced Progressive Party delegate who gets the nomination in a failed trick to break the convention deadlock. The party officials are aghast, when in steps secretary Kay Russell (Bette Davis) telling them to hire Blake, once they've bailed him out. In jail for missing alimony payments, Blake has organized the inmates into singing Hicks supporters. So he's hired, helps Hicks, prevents a frame-up, has to remarry his mean wife (Vivienne Osborne), and almost loses Kay, but his next job is in Nevada, so he can get a Reno divorce. William is tall, with a noble profile and shifty eyes. He plays the smooth-talking, poised, elegant lady's man a lot. Kibbee is utterly wasted here, playing a genial simpleton who grins and grins, like the great bobblehead of the 30s. Davis is pretty smashing in her small role, tough, fast-talking, smart, and terrifically pretty.
The Raven (1935)
Metapoe meets the Horror Genre Formulas!
Two elements make this 30s horror genre piece interesting. The story itself is standard fare: a great surgeon (Bela Lugosi), retired to contemplate his Poe collection, is called back into the operating theatre to perform a nearly impossible operation to save a young beauty (Irene Ware), and when she has recuperated he has fallen in love with her. Her father intervenes. Meanwhile, an escaped convict (Boris Karloff) shows up, begging the surgeon to change his face, which he doesvery much for the worse. The surgeon, who turns out to be an aficionado of torture, wants the convict to help in his evil scheme before the face will be fixed. He's got a cellar filled with Poe devices; the most remarkable of these are the clockwork pendulum and the metal room whose walls move inward to crush the victimforty years before the Star Wars trash compactor. The convict won't go along at the last moment, because the beauty has spoken kindly to him, and he stops the doctor at the cost of his own life. The film, only an hour long, has some continuity problems, both in dialogue and plot development. Probably not intentional. And some lines don't make much sense, such as the last lines when the beauty's fiancé tells her he'd better finish the job (what job?), and she replies, laughing, "So you're the Raven now!" They snuggle as he says yesand fade to black.
Now for the interesting bits: 1) the interpretive dance the beauty performs while somebody (Karloff?) reads Poe's poem and a full orchestra plays. 2) the strange way the movie is about Poe and not about Poe. It's Metapoe. Or you could say Poe's stories are mostly just a schtick, a set of literary allusions that a character, the mad doctor, attempts to bring to life in his own demented way. He says he is sure that torturing his enemies will banish the torture inside him, and thus he will become the sanest man who ever lived.
Right. Cue mad scientist laughter, fright-house grimaces.
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)
Not quite
An ambitious, imaginative, precious, earnest flop. There is much to like about this version of my favourite play, but nearly everything likable is freighted with bad ideas. It might have been a good idea to cast Mickey Rooney as Puck, and he moves well, is cute and utterly amoral, and has a strangely growly voice for a kidbut then he adds an utterly impossible shrieking burbling laugh that makes him sound like a tiny delegate from the mad scientist bureau. And he doesn't seem to differentiate between mischief and harm. The fairies are both wonderful and obnoxious. They are moth-like sprites, little children, gnome musicians, ballerinas, and sometimes they look like kids dancing in the yard with sheer curtains stolen from the house around their necks, and sometimes they look like a ballet corps with a big gauze budget. Sadly, they sing, usually in a fluttery neurasthenic manner, Hippolyta (Verree Teasdale) is just as pretty as she should be, but somebody told herthey were wrongthat she should half-croon, half chant her lines, and from time to time slip her voice up an octave. Oberon (Victor Jory) is partly menacing, partly sylvan, and Jory looks great in dark robes and a tall, branching crown. The two young women are suitably fetching, Helena (Jean Muir) tall and blonde, and Hermia (Olivia de Havilland) clear-eyed and actually luscious, and she's quite convincing, except when the directors tell everybody to laugh, which they do obligingly, because it's a comedy. This is probably bad judgment. What is worseso much worse that the word that leaps to mind, "catastrophic," just seems understatedis the presence of the vile Dick Powell as Lysander, grinning his incessant chipmunk grin, laughing in what he apparently imagines to be a charming, cavalier, devil-may-care manner, but is in fact nothing more than fleering and smirking and grimacing. He laughs "ha ha!" They even let him sing. That's entertainmentoh, wait a minute. No, it's not. The Mechanicals, by comparison, do a good job. Perhaps they shouldn't make the grand character actor Hugh Herbert giggle so much, but he's still a charming Wall. Joe E. Brown is bizarre as Flute/Thisbe, but funny. James Cagney turns in a surprisingly solid Bottom/Pyramus, with just the right amount of quizzicality and bluster. Because so much of the story takes place at night, it's pretty dark most of the time and hard to see; this might be less of a problem with a good print shown in a theatre. The use of sparkly little lights and swooshy white garments is nice. Somebody thought it would be a good idea to improve on the Mendelssohn incidental music: they add swooshy choral singing on top of the orchestra, they stick themes in at the wrong time, they let people sing who shouldn't, and they cause the fairies to chirp and shriek, which is abominable. Don't get me wrong. Whenever the movie is not annoying it's rather fun to watch. But if you have to choose one Midsummer Night's Dream, watch another one. Watch the 1999 Michael Hoffman version instead.
Becky Sharp (1935)
Not fair! Not Vanity Fair!
Thackeray's Vanity Fair transmogrified into a star vehicle for Miriam Hopkins. Nearly all of the other plots are cut away, leaving only traces in brief appearances of various characters. The story is revised, too, but in such a way that it's not always possible to tell what Ms. Sharp intendsdoes she love her husband Rawdon Crawley (Alan Mowbray) or not? or perhaps in a convenient way, that allows her to keep him and dally with others. Her connection with Lord Steyne (Cedric Hardwicke) is ambiguous, but she shows reluctance to let him proceed, and appears sad when her husband catches them together and leaves her. The presentation of her rise is too ambiguousthey do live "on nothing a year," but Mrs. Crawley's sharp practices are minimized, as if she were getting by on sheer cleverness and charm. Perhaps it's just that the Hays code won't let the screenplay even suggest an exchange of sexual favours for support, and this means that the glossing over of Becky Sharp's vicious streak turns the story into a costume drama featuring a determined and gay (in the old sense) young woman, taking on the snobs for her own advantage. And settling on bumbling Jos Sedley (Nigel Bruce) in the end, to escape with him to India or somewhere. Or perhaps it's just Miriam Hopkins, probably miscast. She affects a histrionic tone to her voice, perhaps so we will know she is acting. Not even her fine, unusual eyes redeem the messy business of this movie. She can't twinkle her way through this one.
Capote (2005)
Interviews with a sad monster
The name of this film is slightly misleading, in that it suggests an entire life when in fact it is limited to one arc in that life. An important arc, no doubt, and while this powerful and beautifully acted movie gives us an unusually deep experience of that arc, it isn't the story of Capote's life, and so perhaps some other title might be more appropriate, though I don't have any suggestions. It begins with the author's first interest in the Kansas murders of the Clutter family and ends with the completion of the book after the hanging of the killers. So it's a movie about Capote researching and writing In Cold Blood, and this would seem almost superfluous, since the book itself documents the making of the book, except that the portrayal of Capote is so subtle and nuanced. Credit for this must go to Philip Seymour Hoffman in the title role. Hoffman assumes the stance, the voice, the look of his original, and while Capote's thin, affected voice and mannerisms might lend themselves to caricature in a lesser actor, Hoffman uses them as a bridge to Capote's sporadic humanity. Capote's instinct that the Clutter murders would make a good story is borne out; with the help of Harper Lee (Catherine Keener), he gets what he needs from the community, reluctant though they are to deal with somebody of that sort. Especially notable among the townsfolk is Chris Cooper as Alvin Dewey, the detective whose face registers the pain the killings cause him. The acting throughout is superb; indeed, this is one of the best-cast movies I can remember. The killers are like day and night, the shallower, genial Dick Hickock (Mark Pellegrino) and the dark, sensitive, tormented one, Perry Smith (Clifton Collins, Jr.). A bond between Smith and Capote develops, each masking his sense of his own power to manipulate the other, and yet each feeling the connection of mutual experience as outsiders. Capote needs Smith to tell what happened that night, and he resists until practically the eleventh hour. It comes as something of a surprise that he initiated and carried out the killings in a few seconds of rage while "Ricardo" just watched, stunned. Capote has his book, but he must also pay for his connection to Smithhe attends the execution, at Perry Smith's request. At the end of the film one senses the terrible burden of achieving closeness with a condemned man and his crimes, something the film-makers emphasize with the after-titles that say Capote never finished another book. The movie pushes us into the same corner into which Capote found himself pushedwe are torn between wanting to like the killer and our dread of his act. Capote tells Smith he needs to know everything for his book; otherwise, Smith will go down in history as a monster. Smith's story explains everything, the bitterness of abandonment as a child, the hard life he lived, and the sudden rage at a world in which a good man like Mr. Clutter would be afraid of him. Telling Capote about the killings hurts all over again, because the sense of being pushed out of the good world was not allayed by the murders, nor is Smith's pain lessened by confession. So Capote wasn't telling him the truthlying to Smith seems to be something he does easilyfor he portrays Perry Smith as a damaged man, deeply wounded by life. These factors do not extenuate the crime. Smith is still a monster.
The Devil Is a Woman (1935)
Predictable, clichéd Dietrich potboiler
A sadly predictable, clichéd story about a woman who was no better than she should have been. Sadly, too, the screenplay is by the once-great experimental novelist John Dos Passos, from an original by French exotic potboiler Pierre Louys. This time Marlene Dietrich is Concha, a manipulative, cold-hearted Spanish beauty. Don Pasqual (Lionel Atwill) raises her from the cigarette factory, but she ditches him. He warns his tall young friend Antonio (Cesar Romero) against her, but to no avail. A duel ensues, Concha reproaches Pasqualito for trying to kill the only man she ever cared for, so he doesn't: he points his pistol at the sky, but Antonio shoots him. But instead of going off to Paris with the young victor, she goes back to the man who would have died for her. With an unexpected bit by Edward Everett Horton as a Spanish Governor. Dietrich plays the part of a Spanish woman by moving constantly, twisting at the waist and posturing and then twisting back, flouncing, tossing her head, and so forth. And she makes faces, and has a curl in the middle of her forehead. The photography is strangely crowded: no outdoor scene can be shot except through a tangle of bare trees, no interior scene can be shot without so much busy detail that it's almost impossible to follow people moving across a room, no consecutive scene of Dietrich can be shot without a major wardrobe change. The carnival scenes are so full of confetti and streamers it's almost like an underwater scene in the Sargasso Sea.
Candy (1968)
Sub-par for satire, sub-par for sexiness
Not so good. The premise is simple enough, and it came pretty close to working in the novel by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg: take Voltaire's Candide and set it in 60s America, with an innocent girl in place of the innocent young man, and, of course, make sex the central matter. The novel's Candy is led farther and farther into lovemaking because she embodies sympathy. This sympathy involves sensing the need men have for her without ever really understanding it, and so the joke is, apparently, that she has sex with various men because she misunderstands their lust for a deeper spiritual needand this, the novelists suggest, is itself the essence of male sexuality: the wish for a compliant, innocent beauty. It's complicated satire, because at the same time it promotes and mocks arousal. Does the movie do this? No. The movie offers a series of comic bits, each featuring more or less great actors, encountering Candy: Richard Burton as the poet McPhisto, Ringo Starr as the Mexican gardener Emmanuel, James Coburn as the surgeon Dr. Krankheit, Walter Matthau as General Smight, Charles Aznavour as the hunchback, and Marlon Brando as the guru Grindl. Other parts: Anita Pallenberg, John Huston, John Astin, and Sugar Ray Robinson. The title part is played by Ewa Aulin, a young Swedish actress who's in over her head. She's pretty enough, but hardly subtlemore of a blank slate. The story, with a screenplay by Buck Henry, is mostly a picaresque sort of romp, with skits going on too long, so that the movie, despite its billing, is neither very sexy nor very funny. It's as if it were aiming for a sexier subject matter but a similar satirical approach as Dr. Strangelove, but it misses the mark nearly all the time.
Mad Love (1935)
Lorre's master work
More subtle than its plot line might suggesta brilliant scientist, Dr. Gogol (Peter Lorre) obsessed with Yvonne. a beautiful actress (Frances Drake), and is distressed by her plans to leave the theatre where he has been in attendance every night. He manages to purchase a wax statue of her from the closing show, and calls her Galatea. Later Gogol has the opportunity to help her by operating the hands of her pianist husband Stephen Orlac (Colin Clive) injured in a train wreck. Gogol transplants the hands of a recently executed knife-throwing killer Rollo (Edward Brophy). Eventually the hands prove more skilled at knife-throwing than piano-playing. Gogol, growing steadily more and more deranged, brilliantly disguises himself as Rollo with his head reattached and prosthetic hands, and convinces Orlac he's killed his stepfather, a crime he committed himself to drive Orlac mad. It almost works, but the fingerprints on the knife match the executed killers, as do those on Orlac's hands. Reagan, an American reporter (Ted Healy) makes the connection with Gogol, and the police and everybody rush off just in time to save Yvonne from being strangled: Gogol has heard a voice telling him that every man kills the thing he loves. Orlac throws a knife through an opening in the locked door and Gogol dies. A good deal of effort has been made to render this movie even more Gothic, especially the play in which Yvonne performs: we see only one brief scene, in which she is strapped to a rack and tortured. Ever shot is shadowed and angled in the best expressionist/horror tradition, and much of the action occurs at night. Lorre's head is shaved and his odd looks exaggerated. There's comic relief in Gogol's frowsy old housekeeper (May Beatty), who drinks a great deal and walks around with a white cockatoo on her shoulder. Some of the acting is surprising good, especially Clive as the noble artist damaged by a cruel fate. Drake is lovely but she delivers her lines too theatrically. The Americans indicate their Americanness by talking briskly in New York accents while chewing gum. Lorre himself is marvelous. He transforms his part into a near tragedy, the story of an unattractive man whose great achievements bring him no closer to the love he needs. Lorre's face registers hurt and longing and resignation, and he is convincing as a kind and altruistic man in his work, exemplified by his manner with a little girl whose ability to walk he restores. He treats his colleague Dr. Wong (Keye Luke) with respect. It's only in this one part of his life that disappointment, and then madness, comes. The balance of sympathy and revulsion shifts. It's bound to end in tears.
Fired! (2007)
Getting fired is no joke. Or is it?
Annabelle Gurwitch's take on getting fired from a play by Woody Allen. It's sort of a satirical documentary, opening with shots of New York in a spirited Allen parody, and then a scene with Gurwitch and an Allen impersonator acting out the firing. To this is added some bits by various comedians about work, getting fired, depression, and surviving getting fired. There are lots of people more or less in the business either performing in a show Gurwitch devised doing riffs on getting fired. Some celebrities are interviewed, or something, and some of them are really quite funny. Gurwitch consults some scary specialists and interviews people she's encountered at open-houses for the recently fired. Toward the end there are some serious points made by economists about the collapse of companies taking thousands of jobs while executives leave with ten million. Disgusting, the man says. The last ten minutes offer a lot to think about, and so Gurwitch manages to sneak social commentary into her movie. And then back to funniness.
Barbary Coast (1935)
Gold-rush melodrama-western-gangster movie
Atmospheric piece (lots of fog) with elements of the western, the gangster movie, and romance. Mary Rutledge (Miriam Hopkins) is a young woman set to marry a gold-rush millionaire; she arrives in foggy San Francisco only to learn her intended is dead, killed after making a fuss when he lost everything gambling. Mary is intent upon doing well, and joins forces with gambling boss Luis Chamalis (Edward G. Robinson), running his crooked roulette wheel. Chamalis compares her to a swan, and so she's known as Swan from then on. He wants her to return his affection; she doesn't. Chamalis owns the whole town, and his gunman Knuckles (Brian Donlevy) shoots bad losers in the back, as well as brave newspapermen. Swan is unhappy about the killings and wanders off alone; taking refuge from the rain in a cabin, she meets Jim Carmichael (Joel McCrea), a prospector who's struck it rich and is heading back to New York. After a short interlude of pleasant talk, they part ways. But instead of leaving he shows up at the saloon, and she cheats him out of all his gold; he is bitter and sarcastic and then unconscious. When he wakes up he's a spittoon-cleaner and waiter. Meanwhile the town is getting anxious about Chamalis's killings and form a band of vigilantes. They capture Knuckles and hang him and break up the saloon. Chamalis is fixated on Swan's love for Carmichael and chases them. Carmichael is wounded and Swan promises to love Chamalis if he will allow Carmichael to leave on the ship. He agrees, and then, as she's crying, he sends her away too, just as the vigilantes come for him, and she runs up the gangplank. A noble act from an unexpected quarter produces a happy ending. There are some interesting sub-themes: freedom of the pressChamalis suppresses itand vigilantism spun positively as a law-and-order answer to crime. Hopkins is exceedingly pretty, especially about the eyes, which are curiously shaped and inclined to twinkle. Her acting is acceptable; oddly, she does the hard gambling woman better than the melting woman in love. McCrea is his usual dependable self, tall, pleasant, cast as the knowing innocent. Walter Brennan does a turn as "Old Atrocity," an utterly amoral but amusing hanger-on. The surprise is Robinson, who dresses like an early 19th-century Italian dandy with curly hair and long sideburns and an ear-ring. He's ruthless enough, and even though he slips easily into his gangster accents, he pulls off the small town tyrant beautifully.
Meet Boston Blackie (1941)
It could be better
The first installment of a third-rate detective series, featuring a former safe-cracker, Blackie (Chester Morris), his sidekick the Runt (Charles Wagenheim), and the impatient Inspector Farraday (Richard Lane). Crimes get pinned on Blackie so he has to sort them out. This time he acquires a pretty lady (Rochelle Hudson) when he commandeers her car, and she's almost a match for him. With a modicum of witty repartee, some excellent carnival locations, and an unusual villain (a master spy whose cover is playing a sideshow mechanical man), this one might have ascended from third to second rate, were it not for Morris's acting (mostly a matter of flashing a grin that looks too wide for his face) and his hat (its too-small brim accentuates his big square face and makes him look stupid amongst all the elegant, wide-brimmed hats worn by everybody else, even the weaselly villains).
A Tale of Two Cities (1935)
Ronald Colman at his best
With the exception of one or two moments, this is probably the best of the Dickens adaptations. Most of the strength of the movie comes from Ronald Colman's performance as Sidney Carton. He has the appropriate reckless charisma, desperate cynicism, and careless wit, and the way he manages to hold the attention of other characters, to hold their consideration despite his urbane drinking and shockingly irreverent speechall this works because Colman can show the melancholy behind the careless front. He excels at showing how the existence of Lucy at once transforms his life by opening up the possibility of happiness and leaves him without a chance of attaining that possibility.
The happy couple, Lucy (Elizabeth Allen) and Charles Darnay (Donald Woods) have less to do; Woods is rather a stick figure, an actor standing up in costume, filling a place in the plot, and all Allen has to do is to radiate loveliness and goodness, which she does competently enough.
Characteristically for this era of film-making, the secondary and character actors are uniformly brilliant, especially the reliable Edna May Oliver as Lucy's companion, Miss Pross; the terrifyingly grim Blanche Yurka as Mme. Defarge; the almost impossibly smooth villainy of Basil Rathbone as the Marquis de St. Evremond; the cartoonish Walter Catlett as the no-good Barsad; and Reginald Owen as the bumbling barrister Stryver, who depends on the wit of his subordinate Carton. Many others, too.
It's typical of Dickens that sympathy for the downtrodden falls victim to horror at the outrages of the revolution, and the aristocrats dying with dignity provide a troubling contrast with the raging, jeering, blood-thirsty clamor of the mob.
With all this fine film-making, it seems almost unsporting to cavil at small faults, but the fake piety the film-makers impose on the filmthe pseudo-Dickensian emphasis on Christmas, and the unconscionable imposition of an extraneous scriptural tag (I am the resurrection and the life) as a moral tag on the end of the filmall detract from the story. This fake piety misrepresents Sidney Carton's heroism as a kind of religious martyrdom, which it decidedly is not. Not all virtuous actions are religiously motivated. It is true that he lays down his life for some one he lovesLucybut it is a personal, romantic heroism. While it might be nice to think such a sacrifice should be rewarded, that flights of angels might sing him to his rest, that's not the point. Carton himself makes it clear that the act carries with it its own reward, a sense of having at last done something worthwhile. He goes to his rest content.
Tian lun (1935)
A Confucian fable
The theme of this movie is filial piety in the Confucian tradition, bringing the director in line with China's "New Life Movement," dedicated to a return to traditional morality. The Chinese continued to make silent movies long after other film-making centres had moved on to sound. Here the film has a soundtrack of traditional Chinese music, which is appropriate, and intertitles in Chinese and English.
The story is simple enough. A man races across the country to his father's bedside, arriving just in time for his father's blessing and his own promise to raise his son in the same way, and to treat all aged people with respect as if they were elders of his family, and to treat children as his own, too. Years pass, and the man's son is grown, but he's turned the wrong way in the city, and is given to drink and gambling. The father laments his failure and determines to take the family back to the country. He does, but the son and daughter-in-law arrange a party supposedly to honour the father, but actually an opportunity for carousing with city friends. After this, the son, his wife, and their sonmuch attached to country life and his grandparentsgo back to the city. Time passes, again, and the grandson, grown, writes hi father to urge him to visit the grandfather, who's very ill. The young man shows up at the house, the grandfather rises, and they go to the orphanage the old man has founded where the grandson becomes the new master. Finally the bad son returns to beg forgiveness, and all is reconciled.
The photography is very interesting, and though the interiors are sometimes rather dark, the rooms and furnishing and the costumes and the way the people moveall this gives a fascinating glimpse of a China that has completely disappeared. And the story itself embodies the Confucian principle of family and honour. The film was made in Shanghai in 1935, and a version with English intertitles was released in the U.S. in 1936. The movie is 65 minutes long; there is an abbreviated version floating around that lasts just a little under 50 minutes.
Tarzan and His Mate (1934)
Sexy, romantic, and bloody
Like Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), only more so. There's more of everything, more animals, more varied African tribes, and scenes in which the thought must be, if this was good with three or four lions, forty would be better. Tarzan wrestles with crocodilesthe the crocodile machine spins in the water like a rolling pin, around and around, jaws flapping. Tarzan can kill it with his ubiquitous knife if the blasted saurian would hold still. Tarzan kills lions and rhinos and a steadily increasing number of animals. His friends are real chimps, people wearing larger ape costumes, and elephants. In fact, they use Indian elephantsfar more friendly and trainable than African oneswith costume ears attached to their heads. The human story: another white man, worse than the rest, shows up to join with Holt to go after the ivory from the elephant graveyard. Tarzan won't show them the way, so the bad guy shoots an elephant so they can follow it to its deathbed. Tarzan intercedes, and the bad guy shoots himbut, of course, he survives and returns to save Jane. Everybody else dies, Holt and the bad guy and every single one of their "boys." People are expendable, especially Africans, and there doesn't seem to be much distinction between the black fellows who die because they work for the white men travelling through taboo country and those black fellows who kill them. This must be the last Tarzan movie before the Hays Code made Jane wear more clothes. There are a number of underwater scenes in which Jane swims nude, and though the light is flickering the movement and the glimpses are very appealing. Apparently one of Weismuller's friends from the Olympic swim team did the nude scenes, and not Maureen O'Sullivan. She, however, moves through the movie wearing the same sort of loincloth Weismuller wears (plus a bikini top), showing a splendid glimpse of thigh and hip. They still don't need to talk a lot. They sleep together and hang out with cool animals and stay away from cities. No wonder they're happy.
Six of a Kind (1934)
An amusing collection of comic bits strung together
The title refers not to a questionable poker hand, but to six comic players. They come in twos: Charles Ruggles and Mary Boland as a couple driving to California for a second honeymoon, George Burns and Gracie Allen as another couple who go along to share expenses, and W.C. Fields and Alison Skipworth as a sheriff and a hotel-owner in a tiny Nevada town. No attempt is made to fashion a coherent narrativeit's a collection of comic bits strung together. All the first couple want to do is spend time together, but Burns and Allen's characters aren't married, so the men bunk together, as do the women. There is a bit of a plot: a bad guy plants $50k in the suitcase Pinky (Ruggles) is taking out of town, but because the expedition is being guided by Gracie, the loot cannot be found. The bad guy shows up in Nevada and Fields accidentally captures him. A bunch of pleasant bits, Ruggles' confused expression, Gracie's batty, breakneck talk, and Fields playing billiards with a corkscrew cue and doing a fluttery, craven, backwards-stepping double-take when he's threatened, and his wonderfully distinctive way of lingering over words. And trying to remember the name "Gracie," he tells Skipworth, "Hmm. Starts with a K... McGonigle." She answers, "Oh no, no, no, no..." "Mmmm. Wangahanky!" "No, no, no, no no. Oh, Gracie." "Yes, that's right."