I've been on holiday for a couple of weeks. Here's a round-up of everything I've seen since the last update. I know I watch a lot of movies. Post contains owls.
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FEATURES
Funny Face (Stanley Donen, 1957) - This Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn musical has a sizeable following, but to me it's one of Fred's weakest, with poor plotting and the great Gershwin song score given largely disposable treament. A real disappointment, with just some nice shots of Paris and one memorable Fred dance to compensate. (2)
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Bob Fosse (serving) hatches a plan to help Janet Leigh (in the pink).
My Sister Eileen (Richard Quine, 1955) - This blissful musical version of the 1942 film was Bob Fosse's first as choreographer. The story sees sisters Betty Garrett and Janet Leigh move into a rundown apartment in Greenwich Village and run into a host of colourful characters. It's funny and energetic, with great numbers, including an unforgettable challenge dance between Fosse and Kiss Me Kate co-star Tommy Rall. Garrett's love interest is a young Jack Lemmon, who neglects to throb with nervous energy as he would in so many comedies. Instead, he's rather appealing, and even gets the chance to sing, performing It's Bigger Than You and Me. (3.5)
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Quai des Orfèvres (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1947) is an exceptional police procedural, with inspector Louis Jouvet investigating the murder of a dirty old man, his suspicions alighting upon a stage star, her jealous husband and a female photographer caught between the two. It's witty and well-played - each character imaginatively, convincingly written - while the direction is simply startling. The setting and story reminded me of the Barbara Stanwyck vehicle Lady of Burlesque, though that's a vastly inferior film. (4)
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The Science of Sleep (Michel Gondry, 2006) tops the overrated Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (from the same director), with affecting characterisations from Gael Garcia Bernal and Charlotte Gainsbourg, great 'homemade' production design and hilarious support from Alain Chabat as the most ridiculous boss on film. The scene where he picks up one of his underlings and puts them in the bin is hysterically funny. Bernal is a graphic artist whose shyness sees him continually retreat into a fantasy world. His vivid dreams start to affect his real life, particularly when he imagines that he's written a confessional letter to neighbour Gainsbourg and must deliver it in the nude. A lovely, uncategorisable film whose emotional intensity and off-kilter sensibility should appeal most acutely to adolescents. (3.5)
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Broadway Melody of 1936 (Roy Del Ruth, 1935) was the second of four Melodys, each with a slender plot but massive musical numbers. This one begins with a spectacular take on Got a Feelin' You're Foolin set in an Art Deco hotel suite where pianos rise up through the floor. Eleanor Powell stars: her sensational solo tap sans accompaniment and climactic routine are other major highlights. But while this 1935 instalment is great fun, it took another four years for the series to strike the perfect balance between music, plot, comedy and romance. (3)
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Fur-le Oberon. Sorry. The film is in Technicolor, incidentally.
Over the Moon (Thornton Freeland, 1939) is pleasant fluff, with Yorkshire lass Merle Oberon inheriting £13m, putting her at odds with fiance Rex Harrison. It's not especially well-written and the interiors jar with the pleasant location shots, but the leads are bright and Peter Haddon is amusing in support, playing an idiotic lord. (2)
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Tirez sur le pianiste (Francois Truffaut, 1960) aka Shoot the Piano Player, is playful, joyful and ultimately heartbreaking, Truffaut's endlessly inventive direction bringing to life a fatalistic, pulpy story about a nihilistic pianist (Charles Aznavour) being pulled into the criminal underworld. (4)
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Broadway Melody of 1938 (Roy Del Ruth, 1937) can't quite match the previous outing, despite reuniting leads Robert Taylor and Eleanor Powell and treading much of the same ground, albeit with the gossip columnist subplot replaced with one about horse racing. The main problem is that the knockout numbers are fewer in number, though chubby Judy Garland is aces in an early role, performing Everybody Sing and Dear Mr. Gable (You Made Me Love You), while Powell and George Murphy (the star of the next Melody) perform a superb routine in the rain: I'm Feeling Like a Million. (3)
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Nanny McPhee (Kirk Jones, 2005) isn't perfect, but offers sub-Poppins fun as its titular governess comes to the aid of Victorian funeral parlour worker Colin Firth and his seven naughty children. There's warmth and humour, but also some rough edges (like putting a baby in peril) and other elements that simply jar (the donkey dance, anyone?). The excellent sequel ironed out those problems. (3)
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Cry of the City (Robert Siodmark, 1948) is an unexpectedly fine film noir from a director whose ventures into the genre could be sublime (The Killers, Criss Cross) or, well, not (Christmas Holiday). The story follows a cop killer (Richard Conte), struggling to protect his innocent lover (Debra Paget) as a dragnet closes in - led by the hood's flipside, law enforcer Victor Mature. Conte, later a star of Joseph H. Lewis' immaculate crime picture The Big Combo as well as The Godfather's Barzini, gives surely his greatest performance, a devastating characterisation thats quiet malevolence creeps upon the viewer almost unnoticed, replacing a certain twinkly-eyed charm. His screen adversary, Victor Mature, was never the most compelling screen presence, but has an ideal face for the expressionist, shadow-drenched photography of noir and exudes nobility in one of his better turns. The presentation of Conte's family suffers from cliche and the plotting ultimately goes a little off-track with the appearance of muscly stick-up merchant Betty Garde, but this is a fascinating, gripping little film, blessed with a stunning central performance. (3.5)
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The Bride Came C.O.D. (William Keighley, 1941) was released by Warner Bros the same year as Torrid Zone and for 30 minutes delivers the same bruising characterisation and lightning-paced banter. But then James Cagney's plane - carrying cargo Bette Davis - crash lands and soon afterwards the plotting goes the same way, getting caught up in the desert with ghost town hotelier Harry Davenport, whose character should surely have been sad and wise, rather than sporadically malevolent. The story picks up again before the end, with a fun last 20, but remains hampered by that draggy mid-section, light in ideas. Still a (3) though.
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Love in the Afternoon (Billy Wilder, 1957) is an underrated romantic comedy from the great writer-director, stuffed full of gags inspired by his hero, Ernst Lubitsch. Like the the emphasis on doors opening and closing, the running gags with waiters and gypsy musicians and Audrey Hepburn's scheming, which cleverly inverts the plot of Lubitsch's One Hour With You. The star of that film, Maurice Chevalier, is delightful here, playing a private investigator oblivious to the infatuation of his daughter (Hepburn) with a key source of his livelihood, inveterate philanderer Gary Cooper. The age difference between Coop and Hepburn is too pronounced, but everything else about the film is just right. (3.5)
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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Elia Kazan, 1945) is impossible to fault, an utterly draining movie about teenager Peggy Ann Garner's coming-of-age in early-20th century New York. Dorothy McGuire excels as Garner's mother - hardened by poverty - with Joan Blondell superb in a rare dramatic role as the girl's oft-married aunt. Best of all is James Dunn, playing Garner's dad, an alcoholic pipe dreamer who oscillates between euphoria and desperation. His reading of the folk song Annie Laurie soundtracks one of the most wondrous sequences I've ever seen on film. This is a very special film: the direction flawless and the performances simply immense as every detail, every gesture rings true. (4)
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Melvyn Douglas in Ninotchka, released the same year as Tell No Tales.
*SOME SPOILERS*
Tell No Tales (Leslie Fenton, 1939) is a crisp B picture that shoots out of the blocks but fails to maintain that momentum. It's still well worth seeing, with a fast-moving plot and some bravura moments, including a powerful sequence set at a black boxer's wake that features the great African-American actress Theresa Harris. The plot has Melvyn Douglas as a newspaper editor trying to save his paper by solving a kidnapping case. This is probably your only chance to see Halliwell Hobbes (who almost always played butlers) as a psychotic cuckold. He's scarier than familiar Golden Age villains Gene Lockhart and Douglas Dumbrille put together. (3)
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Let's Make It Legal (Richard Sale, 1951) isn't as bad as you might have heard... but it's still not great. Claudette Colbert, newly-divorced, starts dating old flame Zachary Scott, as ex-husband Macdonald Carey, daughter Barbara Bates and son-in-law Robert Wagner buzz around. The script is strictly standard and the best joke is accidental - an overbearing breakdown of just how young grandmother Colbert is (the actress was notoriously touchy about her age) - though the cast gives it a decent shot. Marilyn Monroe appears briefly as a bathing beauty trying to crash the jet set. (2)
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Indiscreet (Stanley Donen, 1958) features Cary Grant at his most unbearable, stuck in that pre-North by Northwest rut where the lightness of his early performances had been replaced by vanity, superficiality and a big, smug magohany face. He's a banker who wins the heart of actress Ingrid Bergman, but says he can never marry her. It isn't until the final 20 minutes that the film really delivers as a comedy. Until then it's just a miserable romantic drama: uninspired and uninvolving. David Kossoff (the tailor in A Kid for Two Farthings), Cecil Parker and Phyllis Calvert offer notable support. (2)
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Roman Holiday (William Wyler, 1953) is, by contrast, an absolute wonder: escapism of the highest order, with journo Gregory Peck romancing incognito princess Audrey Hepburn during one glorious day in the Italian capital. It's funny, moving and full of fine location work. The leads are an utter joy and Eddie Albert is hilarious as Peck's photographer pal. (4)
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The Cowboy and the Lady (H.C. Potter, 1938) is thin, but saved by the cast. As the 1998 action-comedy Rush Hour boasted the tagline: "The fastest hands in the East meet the biggest mouth in the West", so this one could have gone with: "The smallest mouth in the East meets the slowest mouth in the West". In the event they opted for: "Straight-shooting GARY meets flirting MERLE - and it's the fireworks! Battle of the sexes! Man and girl in East vs. West love duel!", which is also pretty cool. As you may have guessed, Gary Cooper is the taciturn cowhand who finds love with "maid" Merle Oberon, little realising she's the daughter of a Presidential hopeful (Henry Kolker). Kolker and Harry Davenport (as Oberon's black sheep of an uncle) are both fine providing pathos, though Patsy Kelly is a bit underused. Cooper's mime scene is great fun. (2.5)
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La gloire de mon père (Yves Robert, 1990) aka My Father's Glory charts the early life of playwright Marcel Pagnol, his idolising of his schoolteacher father and the forging of his character during a long summer holiday in the wilds of Provence. Based on the writer's memoirs, it's light, entertaining and utterly true, with sumptuous photography and first-rate acting across the board. There's a scary owl, too. (4)
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Confessions of Boston Blackie (Edward Dmytryk, 1941) is one of the best B movies of all time, and featured in the Top 100 I compiled last year (see #89). Chester Morris is the former crook chasing a gang of murderers in a bid to clear his name. A fun script and a neat double-ending provide serial-like thrills, while all the series regulars are at their best in this, the second of 14 Blackie films. (4)
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Born to Dance (Roy Del Ruth, 1938) - or Broadway Melody of 1939, as it was really - follows the usual template, with starry-eyed hoofer Eleanor Powell making good, and finding love, on the Great White Way. The big draw for classic movie fans will be the chance to see screen titan Jimmy Stewart singing and dancing - his take on Cole Porter's Easy to Love was a smash hit - along with the usual big budget production numbers. A host of familiar faces appear in support, including Una Merkel, Raymond Walburn, Virginia Bruce, Alan Dinehart, Buddy Ebsen and Sid Silvers. This is a notch above the Broadway Melodys of '36 and '38, thanks to funny running gags and consistently strong dance showcases. (3)
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Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932) is a peerlessly witty Lubitsch comedy, with jewel robber Herbert Marshall forced to choose between thief Miriam Hopkins and heiress Kay Francis. The whole film exists on a heightened plain, where lush romanticism jiggles for space with thousands of sex jokes. (4)
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We're not sure what this is or why it's in Mexican.
This Thing Called Love (Alexander Hall, 1941) is a cut above the rest of those Columbia comedies directed by Hall and starring Melvyn Douglas, like The Amazing Mr Williams and Good Girls Go to Paris. Comedienne Rosalind Russell plays an insurance agency statistician who believes marriage should begin with a three month trial period free of sex. Douglas is her fiancee, who consents to act as guinea pig, thinking he can win her round through sheer charm. The first hour is terrific - smart, sophisticated and packed with laughs - before the film settles into standard farce. Douglas, by this time tired of such roles, must have recognised the superior quality of the script, as he gives it his all. This was Lee J. Cobb's first movie, he plays a Peruvian financier who's obsessed with parenthood (not the film). (3)
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Affectionately Yours (Lloyd Bacon, 1941) is a daft but amiable comedy about foreign correspondent and all-round affable rogue Dennis Morgan trying to win back ex-wife Merle Oberon from under the nose of Ralph Bellamy (who else?). The script isn't that sharp, but it's all very pleasant and Rita Hayworth offers fine support as Morgan's scheming admirer. Oddly, the ending is virtually identical to that of the Ann Sothern-Gene Raymond RKO film The Smartest Girl in Town. For a livelier movie about an amoral roving reporter messing womenfolk around (this time in Stalinist Russia), catch the incomparable Lee Tracy in Clear All Wires! (2.5)
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TVM: The Iceman Cometh (Sidney Lumet, 1960) is a televised record of the Broadway adaptation that sparked interest for the first time in Eugene O'Neill's then-neglected masterwork. It's a phenomenal reading, blessed with arguably the greatest actor of the 20th century - Jason Robards, Jr. - at his zenith. He plays the pivotal character, salesman Hickey, who looks to reform his barfly pals, the gallery of lost souls baffled by his unwavering commitment to abolishing their "pipe dreams". It's difficult - perhaps even fruitless - to compare this with Frankenheimer's cinematic version 13 years later (see #35 in my Top 100), as both are so special in their own way. So see both, if you can. (4)
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SHORTS
A bouncing sheep confronts the harsh realities of life in Pixar's Boundin'.
I rented the Pixar Shorts, Vol. 1 DVD and watched a heap of those. The Adventures of Andre and Wally B (Alvy Ray Smith, 1984, 2) has a single joke, and it's not very funny, though the establishing shot is great. Luxo, Jr. (John Lasseter, 1986, 2.5) explains how Pixar got its lamp - and provides a bit of pathos. Red's Dream (John Lasseter, 1987, 3) is oddly melancholy, creating an impressive universe but offering no glimmer of hope for its dreaming unicycle. The first film with the recognisable Pixar sense of humour is Tin Toy (John Lasseter, 1988, 3), a clever, funny short dated by its computer technology, including a primitive take on a baby that's frankly terrifying. Geri's Game (Jan Pinkava, 1997, 3) is a smart film about an aged chess fanatic (and "cleaner" - see Toy Story 2) playing a game against himself - and using every trick in the book to win. For the Birds (Ralph Eggleston, 2000, 3) passes in a blaze of appealing sight gags, DTV: Mike's New Car (Pete Docter and Roger Gould, 2002, 3) is top slapstick, but runs out of gas before the end, while Boundin' (Bud Luckey and Roger Gould, 2003, 3.5) is sentimental Americana of a sort, a narrative poem about a dancing sheep, with spirited presentation. DTV: Jack-Jack Attack (Brad Bird, 2005, 3) - a spin-off from The Incredibles - is good value, providing several belly laughs. Happily, as WALL-E and Up! are among Pixar's very best features, so their shorts continue to improve - recent additions Lifted, Presto and Partly Cloudy are my three favourites.
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The Jane to Johnny Weismuller's Tarzan, Maureen O'Sullivan, appears in this next one. So does Chico Marx.
Hollywood - The Second Step (Felix E. Feist, 1936) is a self-obsessed short that repeatedly appears as if it's about to disillusion any young starlets watching, before reverting to the slightly irresponsible contention that anyone can become a star. It also blends fact and fiction in a confusing manner: central focus Jane Barnes was a real Hollywood bit player, but she never did get the lead role she's promised here. (2)
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And a couple of early works from one of my favourite moviemakers, the great Humphrey Jennings (standing):
S.S. Ionian (Humphrey Jennings, 1939) is an odd propaganda film from the future master of the medium, which follows a merchant boat around the globe, repeatedly observing in an off-hand manner that the British sure do have a lot of warships positioned absolutely everywhere. There are a couple of glimpses of the filmmaker's genius, including a shot of a crew member simply re-arranging his hat that gives real insight into his character, but this is generally little more than a politically-charged travelogue, and it's hampered by a stolid voiceover. (2.5)
Spring Offensive (Humphrey Jennings, 1940) is a portrait of rural Britain readying for war, similar in some respects to Powell and Pressburger's A Canterbury Tale. It ebbs and flows, and the non-professional actors are wooden as anything, but just as the country was finding its feet in our time of need, so was the country's greatest state filmmaker: the passages here fusing music and image are nothing short of wonderful. (3)
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