Peter Boyle, All the President's Men 2, and Clara Bow talks! - Reviews #164

Joe (John G. Avildsen, 1970) - A bristling, unpredictable drama from Rocky director John G. Avildsen about the relationship between an advertising executive (Dennis Patrick) who's just beaten his daughter's drug dealer boyfriend to death, and the racist rent-a-gob (Peter Boyle) who admires him for it. In some ways it's a prototype Dirty Harry or Taxi Driver, though it's less bloodthirsty and more intriguing: a complex character piece, laced with pitch black comedy, that doubles as a state-of-the-nation treatise - as Falling Down would in the 1990s. I'm not sure if the film's politics are confused or just purposefully veiled, as it appears to oscillate between liberalism and fascism, but that moral muckiness rather plays in its favour, drawing us into an ugly, complex world with few easy answers; even if the ones Joe suggests are almost certainly wrong. Boyle disagreed: after hearing that audiences cheered the revenge sequences, he vowed never to make another film that glorified violence - if indeed this one does.

There are elements that seem cartoonish to a modern viewer - whether they were ever realistic, I'm not sure - but it is a fascinating film, a gripping evocation of a time in American life when the generation gap was at its greatest, a breeding ground for suspicion, outrage and contempt. America always seems to be at war with itself: in 1970 the enemies of the right were hippies, permissiveness and black benefit claimants, and it's all three that are making Joe mad. As the damaged furnace worker rising to boiling point, Boyle is absolutely sensational, even if, like Ron Burgundy, he has never heard of the phrase "When in Rome..." Incidentally, this was Susan Sarandon's first film. She's Patrick's daughter, a speed freak who ODs in a chemist after drawing all over her own face. (3.5)

***



Dick (Andrew Fleming, 1999) - From the title, I was expecting a biopic of Kelvin MacKenzie. Instead I got a passable teen comedy with a Watergate backdrop. Wouldn't it be funny if Richard Nixon ate cookies laced with weed? Not really, no. But that joke does have a clever pay-off, and the film comes equipped with some sharply satirical barbs, albeit 27 years too late. "Papier-mache is a hobby of mine," claims Nixon when his aides are caught shredding documents - actually one of his more credible lies of the period. Michelle Williams and Kirsten Dunst are ditzy 15-year-old friends who unwittingly stumble across the Watergate scandal, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Tricky Dicky, Henry Kissinger and those "radical, muckraking bastards", Woodward and Bernstein (Will Ferrell and Bruce McCulloch), who are easily the funniest thing about the film.

At its worst, it's shallow and silly - the sing-along with the Russians is a dreadfully weak concept, Devon Gummersall is wasted as a pothead, and the jokes about "loving Dick" get very tiresome very quickly - but it has an agreeably original premise, carried through with enough enthusiasm to sustain it for 90 minutes, and possesses a narrative that amusingly accounts for memorable details and enduring mysteries surrounding the scandal - including the blank 18-and-a-half-minutes on the Watergate tapes, which leads to a big laugh near the movie's close. Williams is very good as a naive, nervously-giggling nerd, and though Dunst sometimes fails to convince as her more confident friend - playing too broad, and too young for 15 - a supporting cast that includes Dan Hedaya, Saul Rubinek and Harry Shearer has fun bringing to life various infamous political figures of the early 1970s. The best thing about it, though, are those sequences riffing on All the President's Men: the sets are lovingly recreated, from the newspaper office to the garage where the investigative reporters meet Deep Throat, but now Woodward is an irritable, arrogant headline-hogger, and Bernstein is a needy, childish incompetent who keeps trying to steal his stories, and his notepad. It would be another 16 years after the film's release before Mark Felt, the FBI's former associate director, revealed that he was the pair's mysterious source, rather than two teenage girls, somewhat trashing the film's gimmick.

It's a bit too trivial and superficial, typified by a heap of annoying song choices (You're So Vain is a notably wonderful exception) and a bizarre disco coda - completely at odds with the rest of the film - in which Dunst and Williams lick lollies emblazoned with the legend "Dick" and stroke themselves, but it's still worth a look as a sporadically sharp fusion of teen comedy and political satire: two genres that are usually kept rather further apart. (The only other one that springs to mind is the exceptional Election, released four months earlier.) Just call it Romy and Michelle's All the President's Men.

***

CLARA BOW STUFF:

Films:



Call Her Savage (John Francis Dillon, 1932) - So... much... plot. Clara Bow's comeback, after her nervous breakdown in 1931, kicked off a two-picture deal with Fox. Depending on who you believe, her intention was to restore her battered reputation following a series of scandals and dud pictures, or to make as much money as possible before retiring for good. It may have been both.

After years of being shoved around by Paramount, who increasingly put her in inferior vehicles with nothing co-stars, her new contract at her new home gave her the final say on material, cast and director. What she chose first was this absurd Pre-Code melodrama - as Pre-Code as Pre-Code gets - which introduces her braless and furious, bullwhipping the hell out of "half-breed" Gilbert Roland in a sexually-charged frenzy. While the film can't maintain the breathless momentum of that classic, bizarre sequence, it does take in adultery, venereal disease, prostitution, paedophilia and attempted rape, as well as the first gay bar in cinematic history and more melodrama than you can crack a whip at.

And for anyone familiar with Bow's tragic life, the film is even odder than it may look at first glance. Her heroine makes a glib reference in a party scene to "a nervous breakdown", bursts into tears at the mention of mental illness - Bow's mother and two aunts were all institutionalised, as she had just been - and falls into destitution, the life of grinding poverty that would have been the actress's lot had she not won a magazine contest in 1921. She talks about mending her promiscuous ways and settling down - precisely the life that she had mapped out for herself at this juncture of her life - and is begged by her best friend (Bow's former fiancee, Roland) to try to sleep, recalling the insomnia that plagued the actress's life, after her mother attacked her in her sleep, aged 16.

As with so many of the star's films, this one also tried to head off or cash-in on scandals in her colourful private life, resulting in a perverse scene where her character frolics on the floor with a Great Dane. For those who need to brush up on their tabloid smears of the 1920s, it's a reference to an allegation that Bow frequently copulated with her dog - also a Great Dane - a claim that ultimately cost its author eight years in prison.

As a stand-alone film, rather than a historical curio, Call Her Savage is rather less compelling. Though it has superb moments, including a thrillingly-directed opening that sees a bunch of marauding Native Americans attack a wagon train, Bow's unforgettable entrance, and a slew of short sequences in which arguably cinema's finest silent actress gets to emote without those troublesome words, it's a haphazard movie that jumps from one rather unconvincing development to the next, buoyed only by its censor-hurdling tawdriness and Bow's charismatic performance. I'm not sure that, taken as a whole, her combustible character makes for a convincing human being: her fiery temper, fiery hair and plunging neckline seem to be the only constants across her various contrasting personas. But she does command the attention most of the time, and if she's hardly the force of nature that she was in silent films like It and Mantrap, she's still a fascinating performer.

Sadly, she isn't helped in her noble bid to defeat the dodgy material by a flat, uninteresting supporting cast. I bow to no man in my admiration for Willard Robertson, the lawyer-turned-actor who graces my favourite movie, Remember the Night, as a flamboyant defence attorney, and gave one of the coolest characterisations of all time in the comic Western, Along Came Jones. Here, asked to play an authoritarian father, he's just completely dull, an affliction that he shares with every one of his fellow cast members, aside from Bow. Even the smouldering Roland and the usually reliable Thelma Todd fail to spark much interest, perhaps because of the company they're keeping, but almost certainly because the script and story - while loaded with adult themes and moments of unspeakable tragedy - are so terrifically pedestrian in execution.

So, if you're after a '30s movie that still stands up well today, look elsewhere. But if you're a film historian, a Pre-Code buff or a Clara Bow fan, then this incredibly miserable movie - endlessly preoccupied with "the sins of the father" - is worth 85 sordid minutes of your valuable time. (2)



Hoop-La (Frank Lloyd, 1933) - Clara Bow gives one of the greatest performances I have ever seen in this, her final film, an otherwise standard carnival romance. Movies set around this seedy, colourful world were ten-a-penny in the '30s, from Borzage's dreadful Liliom (based on the same play as Carousel), to Tod Browning's Freaks and The Mind Reader, Ruth Chatterton in Lilly Turner, and a couple of films starring the extraordinary Lee Tracy: Carnival and Fixer Dugan. This adaptation of a popular Kenyon Nicholson play, filmed before in 1928 as The Barker and twice later by Tokyo Story director Yasujiro Ozu, tells the story of a sexually-savvy dancer (Bow) who agrees to seduce the carnival manager's callow son (Richard Cromwell) for a hundred bucks. Naturally, she falls in love with him, putting her at loggerheads with her boss - and the broad who stumped up the dough.

Bow, despite frequently sporting a risible hairdo that makes her look plump and 50, is absolute dynamite, shifting between playful sensuality, heartfelt emotion and coarse threats in the blink of an eye, taking what's little more than flax, and spinning it into pure gold. As usual, she's hilarious and sexy (despite the hairdo), but there's also that wonderful sincerity and vulnerability in this performance that lights up her very best work. In sound films like The Wild Party and Call Her Savage, she seemed to be succeeding in spite of the new-fangled need to vocalise her feelings. Here, she's finally at ease with the medium, producing a stunning, startling characterisation that leaps off the screen and proves that the talkies were hers for the taking, if only she'd had the temperament to go with her talent. Instead, she bowed out at the top of her game, leaving us with this: a dynamic starring role that dominates the movie to the point of parody and recalls the very best of her silent work, but, y'know, with talking too.

The rest of the cast is thrown into shadow by the brilliant Bow and her sparkly bikinis, but Cromwell - equally adept as a pure-hearted juvenile (Emma) or an appalling coward (The Lives of a Bengal Lancer) - makes for a likeable leading man, and I was extremely surprised by how good the often bland Preston Foster was as his father, navigating the rather overwrought material with considerable skill. Minna Gombell, who essentially played the same role throughout the '30s, is also well-cast as Bow's pal, a spoilt, selfish fellow dancer who wants her to win Cromwell, so she can get back to boffing his dad. When Clara's off-screen, Hoop-La looks like a conventional carnival flick, with a decent, nicely-detailed backdrop, but a slightly pat, cliched story. But when she's centre-stage, and she usually is, it's something else entirely: a mesmerising, affecting, often exhilarating ride, and a staggering swansong for one of the greatest actresses ever to grace the silver screen. (3.5)

Book:



Clara Bow: Runnin' Wild by David Stenn (1988/2000) - The definitive Bow book is a brilliantly-researched account of her desperately sad life, written with a fair amount of style, and only detracted from by a slight sensationalism and some excessive armchair psychology. The enduring impression is of a sad, haunted soul with a miraculous gift whose career - and life - were destroyed by rampaging inner demons fuelled by her heartbreaking upbringing. The manipulative, selfish Paramount executive B. P. Schulberg comes out of the book terribly, though not as badly as Bow's hateful father. Ironically, when MGM made a fun film loosely based on her life in 1933, Bombshell starring Jean Harlow and Lee Tracy, he was portrayed by popular character comic Frank Morgan as an affable bumbler. (3.5)

***



Louie Bluie (Terry Zwigoff, 1985) - This was the first film from Ghost World director - and blues buff - Terry Zwigoff, an odd little documentary about the leader of America's last black string band, Howard "Louie Bluie" Armstrong, a painter, pornography afficionado and tall-tale teller whose suspect anecdotes (usually directed at someone who has heard them before, such are the necessities of the medium) are alternated with exhilarating jamming sessions featuring many of his wizened, laid-back contemporaries. In striving for intimacy, the film suffers from a distinct lack of context - despite a nice effect which sees his stories accompanied by his evocative artworks - and though we hang out with Louie, playing cards, shooting the breeze and buying a poster of a dragon, we never really get a sense of the man beneath the bullshit. Still, while the audience is kept at arm's length, and Armstrong can unquestionably be a bit irritating, he remains an interesting character, and it's hard not to admire a man with such a cool signature, such a colourful lexicon, and acquaintances called things like Bumblebee Slim. The music, which is stunning throughout, climaxes with a beautiful version of Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams, performed on a Chicago street in front of 20 people and a sign about lampshades. (3)

***

Another from the Treasures V: The West box-set:



Womanhandled (Gregory La Cava, 1925) - A sporadically entertaining comedy about pampered New Yorker Richard Dix pretending he's a Western he-man to impress a woman he met in the park (Esther Ralston). He heads out to his uncle's lamentably modern ranch and then, when she decides to follow, tries to make it all seem a bit more "Western". The version on the Treasures V box-set is only 55 minutes long, as it's missing both the lost "cattle stampede" climax and a scene that the compilers cut out because they thought it wasn't very interesting (what the hell?!), but it has a few laughs - including a fun bit in which the ranch hands try to ride horses for the first time - and a couple of nice meta gags ("All the real cowboys have gone into the movies," laments Dix's uncle). It's all very reminiscent of Doug Fairbanks' 1917 film, Wild and Woolly - an embryonic version of those trick-the-visitor outings like Seducing Dr Lewis or Local Hero - but not as good. Dix's clean-cut appearance and sprightly manner may surprise those who only know him as a tired-looking '40s B-actor in films like the Whistler series and Val Lewton's The Ghost Ship, and he does a fair job with what he's given. Sadly the script, co-written by director Gregory La Cava, is rather hit and miss, with too much time given over to a destructive little kid who isn't very funny. Still, there was enough about Womanhandled for Variety to say of its director: "It is safe to predict he is going a long way in making the pictures of the future", and they weren't wrong. Within 12 years, La Cava would have made both My Man Godfrey and Stage Door, two of the defining achievements of '30s American cinema. (2)

***

Thanks for reading.

Melancholia, Ryan Gosling and the boy who lived - Reviews #84

Here are some of the things I've been watching lately. For some reason I've started swearing (I think it's for attention), so if that's likely to offend, don't read on. Otherwise, buckle up for the destruction of planet Earth...



*SERIOUS SPOILERS*
CINEMA: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011) – We start at the end – the end of the world, and a series of surreal, dreamlike images, set to Wagner, depicting the possible final moments of two sisters, a young boy, a few dozen birds and a horse. One sees Kirsten Dunst's Justine with her hands pointing skywards, spindly tassles of electricity crackling from her fingers – among the most arresting moments of the year. Another, which shows Charlotte Gainsbourg's legs disappearing into a golf course, is less successful. You imagine these passages will also close the picture, but they don't – they seem to belong to a parallel universe. This is a von Trier film after all, and he's a contrary bastard. He's also got a handheld camera fetish, and no sooner has he wowed us with those painterly, uber-ambitious snapshots, than he snaps back and we're in firmly Dogme-ish territory.

The first half – titled "Justine” – is set at the character's wedding, where the fantasy nuptials are interspersed with her decidedly erratic behaviour. The napping, sobbing and selfishness nails the banality and crippling exhaustion of clinical depression, but while there is no rationalism in mental illness, a sex scene with a stranger in a golf bunker seems fraudulent and thrown in for attention. The director's barbs at the PR industry, amusing as they are, also distract from what should be the focus: the relationship between Justine and her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), who suffers from depression's own stressy sister: anxiety. All in all, the wedding contains several very powerful scenes, including a heartbreaking sequence in which Dunst unthinkingly abandons a symbolic gift from her husband, but also too many plot threads that lead nowhere and a general feeling that we've been here before – not at the end of the world, but at the wedding of a troubled young woman (Breaking the Waves), peopled by a family that hate each other's guts (the superb Festen). This lengthy set-piece is anchored by an impressive performance from Dunst. I don't think she's perfect – for one thing, there's a gaping chasm between her tremendous visual expressiveness and her vocal delivery, which is passable at best – but the dialogue-light screenplay suits her, and the manner in which Justine's mask slips and then evaporates is poignantly, effectively realised. Like George Cukor and William Wyler, von Trier is a great director of actresses – Emily Watson, Björk and Nicole Kidman have all done their best work for him – and Dunst's meaty characterisation is an eye-opener, if not a complete triumph. He also draws a fine, though less showy, performance from Gainsbourg, and while John Hurt and Charlotte Rampling are a touch underused (neither is on top form anyway, so perhaps that's no great loss), there's some unexpectedly strong work from Kiefer Sutherland as Gainsbourg's wealthy, secretly fretful husband.

The second half – "Claire” – is like a Bergman film, if Bergman had a thing about horses and was a Neanderthal, though the often uninspired domestic wranglings are lifted by strong acting and a handful of masterful scenes: Justine beating her cherished stallion to within an inch of its life, a harrowing, realistic sequence in which her depressive is flatly terrified of taking a bath, and a neat bit of gimmickry that sees the approaching Melancholia looming large over a homemade "are we all going to die?” device. Yup, looks like it. Whatever flaws the film has, and there are clearly many, they're compensated for by a final 15 minutes that's extremely memorable, and a final 10 seconds that might be the most extraordinary thing I've ever seen in the cinema: the incoming planet dominating the horizon, dwarfing the three figures in the foreground, before a wave of fire rolls in, obliterating the land and finally swallowing up the screen. Not a great film, then, but a film with truly great moments. (3)

***



*LOTS MORE SPOILERS*
CINEMA: Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011) – With its neon credits, synth-led song score and obscenely hip lead performance from Ryan Gosling – another movie psychopath from whom we can all take fashion tips – Drive is an instantly iconic film. It’s also a near-classic, a potent fusion of actioner, crime flick and doomed romance that needed just a stronger script to nudge it into that top bracket. Gosling is a Hollywood stunt man and getaway-driver-for-hire whose lonely life is changed by a chance meeting with neighbour Irene (Carey Mulligan). He falls for the doe-eyed waitress and develops a cosy rapport with her son, Benicio. But when her husband comes home from prison and finds he’s still in debt to some bald gangsters (one of whom looks really like White Power Bill from Arrested Development), Gosling decides the only way he can protect the woman he loves is by going vroom-vroom for the hoods. Fuck me, that’s a good set-up. The comparisons to Shane have been made, but there’s another obvious parallel with Taxi Driver – seemingly referenced in the poster – as it slowly dawns on us that this guy we’ve been driving around with is a bit unhinged, and the plot also borrows from ‘70s classic Charley Varrick, another film in which our anti-hero accidentally swipes laundered money and finds that the mob is quite annoyed.

Drive is a great experience – with a matchless feel, a killer performance from Gosling (simply the best actor around today) and fine chemistry between him and Mulligan. It intelligently mirrors his shifts between coldness and warmth, while containing frenzied bursts of the old ultra violence – I’d never seen anyone offed with a knife and fork before. But the film is undermined by its comparatively uninteresting subplots featuring Bryan Cranston (who’s good in a clichéd part), Ron Perlman, Albert Brooks and Christina Hendricks, and the central character’s muddled code of ethics – bleeding into bloodlust – which can make him hard to side with, even when he’s chewing that toothpick in such a cool way. But if it’s not quite the masterpiece I was greedily anticipating, it’s still one of the year’s best and another key credit for an actor who’s proving to be infallible. All together now: “A real human being, and a real hero...” (3.5)

***



CINEMA: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (David Yates, 2011) – I only just caught up with the series and missed them all at theatres, so I hopped on a train to see the last one on the big screen. In 3D. On my own. My first solo cinema trip ever, I think. I'm not sure it's as streamlined or as adept at juggling the disparate elements as Azkaban or The Order of the Phoenix, but it offers one excellent set-piece after another and considerable emotional clout thanks to Rowling's touching plotting and some fine work by Rickman, Maggie Smith and Ciaran Hinds. Asked to carry the piece, Radcliffe oscillates between profundity and am dram-level scowling – what a strange actor he is. Fiennes fiennally gets it right as Voldemort (though the way he holds his wand above his target has always been a ingenious little detail - nailing the character's arrogance, contempt and malice, and making him look that bit more threatening). For all its flaws, I've got a lot out of this series. Including a free poster. Go me. (3.5)



Harry Potter: Films 1 to 7 (Various directors, 2001-2010) - I never saw these, as I didn't want my imagination colonised by the films before the books had all come out. A few thoughts:
- Chamber of Secrets is underrated as both a book and film.
- Using Ron as a kind of idiot comic relief in the earlier movies is a hideous error of judgement that completely undercuts the central friendship.
- All the kids playing Riddle do a fine job.
- Azkaban is the best both on page and screen, though Kloves excises several of the most potent passages and ideas.
- Richard Harris is a fantastic Dumbledore. Gambon is lacklustre in the role - a weakness as the series progresses.
- Order of the Phoenix is the second best picture, but hampered by a fucking ridiculous giant that looks like it's been made out of plasticine.
- Half-Blood Prince is a poor adaptation but a very good film.
- Radcliffe and Watson turn into halfway-decent actors; Rupert Grint doesn't. He does, however, turn into Mickey Rooney when he's fed a love potion.
- Oldman and Thewlis are both pretty good, belying the notion that they were replaced by replicants in 1993.

***



CINEMA: Crazy, Stupid, Love (Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, 2011) - I really enjoyed this. Don't be put off by the terrible title, it's probably the best mainstream romantic comedy since Just Like Heaven (shut up, you are wrong): funny, romantic, surprising and with a knockout performance by the mighty Ryan Gosling as a womanising slickster who decides to teach the cuckolded Steve Carell - also excellent - how to pick up girls. Is there anything Gosling can't do? Apparently not. (3.5)

***



CINEMA: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (Tomas Alfredson, 2011) - Well, it's not as multi-layered (or as good) as the TV series, but then how could it be? Well, they could have cut out all the footage of Smiley just walking around, which is still in there. The good news: Gary Oldman has remembered how to act! Repeat: GARY OLDMAN HAS REMEMBERED HOW TO ACT. He underplays brilliantly, then cuts (slightly) loose in three wonderful scenes. Best of the lot: his monologue about meeting Karla, employed less effectively as a flashback on the small screen. All in all, it's an extremely well-directed thriller with a deliciously chilly atmosphere. The only real shortcomings: Tom Hardy's curiously wooden performance as Ricki Tarr, changing Connie's line about Empire to something about WWII (oh look, there's the point all the way over there) and an explanation of the culprit's motivations that's far less memorable than in the series. A high (3).

***



The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Niels Arden Oplev, 2009) - An unforgettable character study channelled into a gripping mystery, as the eponymous figure (Noomi Rapace) - a damaged young woman with myriad gifts - helps a crusading journalist re-open a 40-year-old murder investigation. The whodunit is interesting and cleverly uncovered (even if the culprit is a tad too obvious for fans of the genre), but where the film really excels is in Rapace's phenomenal characterisation. Her portrait of a woman plagued by unstinting mental anguish is shockingly real. She entertains, enthralls and beguiles, while emerging as perhaps the strongest symbol of female empowerment ever to grace the screen. It's a while since I was so shaken up by a performance. If only they'd rolled the credits as she exited the prison - the coda seems to have wandered in from Oceans Twelve or something. Still, I'll be getting hold of the sequels as a matter of urgency. (4)

***



William + Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (Baz Luhrmann, 1996) – The central premise – updating the setting while keeping the dialogue – works well, DiCaprio is dynamic (I don't think he has ever delivered on the promise of his '90s work, despite being taken more seriously nowadays) and once more Claire Danes displays that wonderfully idiosyncratic, unselfconscious acting style, exploding in moments of sudden and complete emotional expression. She's a terrific actress. In other news: Mercutio is shit until he stops dressing as a woman, at which time he becomes quite good. That speech about the hazelnut is still utter drivel, but it was early Shakespeare, so we'll let him off. Luhrmann overdoes the stylistics to begin with, then settles into a more steady, less distracting pattern, making the later concessions to bombast much more effective – particularly DiCaprio's dash to the church, which is fantastic. Good stuff. (3)

***



American: The Bill Hicks Story (Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas, 2009) - The odd unearthed clip aside, this documentary is a strangely unilluminating affair, utilising a pretty amateurish effect that brings old photos to unconvincing life. You'd be better off reading the Cynthia True book and picking up the records and DVDs of Hicks' act instead. His routines are still pretty damn great; well, when he's not babbling on about subjective consciousness like a stoned adolescent. The film itself isn't bad, just kind of ordinary. (2.5)

***



My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964) - Distressingly mediocre rendering of the Lerner and Loewe musical (based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion), with an artifical atmosphere, unimaginative staging and a critical absence of heart. Rex Harrison makes a good Professor Higgins and a couple of the best numbers remain largely unscatched (Wouldn't It Be Loverly, On the Street Where You Live), but Hepburn is completely miscast - the dubbing of her vocals is infuriatingly distracting - and Stanley Holloway, who I'm usually rather fond of, is unbelievably irritating as her dad. Still, while I'm Getting Married in the Morning might be the most boring and annoying thing I've seen this year, the biggest letdown is I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face, an absolute gem of a song that's just tossed away. I shouldn't imagine I'll ever sit through this again. Not while there's the glorious Howard/Hiller Pygmalion out there. (2.5)

***



Step Brothers (Adam McKay, 2008) - I have no idea if this is any good. Probably not. Adam Scott provides most of the the best moments - he really is a wonderful comedian; Ferrell offers a few laughs. John C. Reilly's not very funny. It's all a bit too nasty and stupid and unfocused. (2), or something.

***



The Aristocrats (Paul Provenza, 2005) - Shit joke, shit film. (1)

Marie Antoinette, Mickey Rooney and real estate salesmen - Reviews #42

Glengarry Glen Ross (James Foley, 1992) – David Mamet’s searing study of alpha males on the brink has one of the best ensembles ever assembled. Jack Lemmon is the desperate, pitiful Shelley “The Machine” Levine, hot favourite for imminent redundancy at a realty office that straddles the line between pushiness and con artistry. He’s one of four salesmen given a sobering ultimatum: buck up, and get a Caddy, or fall down and get the chop. Ed Harris is Monk, whose sense of persecution is getting of hand, and Alan Arkin the meek George, an obvious fall guy should a planned break-in go ahead, with Al Pacino rounding out the quartet as hotshot Ricky Roma – first shown putting the moves on scam fodder Jonathan Pryce in a brightly-lit bar. Their boss is Kevin Spacey – apparently in the post due to nepotism. One minute he’s superior, the next like a shamed child.

Mamet’s script is pungent, littered with acerbic one-liners, trenchant observation and four-letter words, while the sting in the tale elevates the film – adapted from a Pulitzer Prize-winning play – to the level of epic tragedy. The highest praise I can think of is that it recalls Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, which also ripped apart the American Dream, along with Barry Levinson’s fascinating Tin Men, though that work was more reconciliatory and less abrasive. The direction is claustrophobic if a little limited, relying as it does on just the one camera-manoeuvre, but it’s the acting you’ll remember, with exceptional performances across the board. If I had to pick a stand-out, I’d go for Lemmon. In this, and the following year's Short Cuts, he was faultless. (4)

***



The Human Comedy (Clarence Brown, 1943) is a wonderful slice of Americana about a small western town living in the shadow of war. Ray Collins is the fond father, two years dead, who introduces us to his family: wife Fay Bainter and sons Marcus (Van Johnson), Homer (Mickey Rooney) and Ulysses (the great child star Jackie “Butch” Jenkins, making his debut). Johnson is being shipped abroad to fight, while Homer has to shoulder new burdens as the man of the family - and isn’t sure he can cope. Ulysses, meanwhile, is confused about the disappearance of his father and his brothers, but finds solace watching the railroad. Homer’s night shifts at a telegraph office introduce us to soft-hearted manager James Craig and alcoholic operator Frank Morgan, along with Craig’s sometime girlfriend Marsha Hunt, as Marcus crosses paths with rootless orphan John Craven, who longs for his friend's sense of belonging.

The film effortlessly juggles its diverse elements, encompassing romantic comedy, coming-of-age tale and Home Front drama in its sentimental, episodic manner. Heady sing-alongs jostle for space with pre-marital patch-ups and scenes of school life, while a cinema trip becomes not just an escape from the every day - but from the horrors of war. Countless passages show the gutting, life-changing intrusion of conflict, and of the adult world it represents. The highlights are frequent and enduring: Jenkins’ opening scene, Rooney’s classroom spat with his love rival, Johnson and Craven’s night-time chat about Ithaca, and the heartbreaking ending, which recalls C. Aubrey Smith welcoming his son into Heaven in Beyond Tomorrow’s finest passage. Best of all is Rooney’s devastating chat with his mother about the pain of adulthood (“it seems like everything you learn is sad”), after he returns from delivering a telegram to a Mexican woman whose son has died in action. The movie's sole misstep is a drive-thru celebration of the many cultures within America, but you can see why it was included in time of war. There are few films I’ve seen that so poignantly, potently juxtapose light and dark, balancing knockabout comedy with crushing emotional blows. This is what we are fighting for, it says, but a lot of you are going to get hurt.

The characterisations are uniformly superb, with Jenkins at his most appealing, Johnson never better and Rooney delivering one of his two greatest turns (his other was for director Brown in the following year’s National Velvet, also featuring Jenkins). Morgan, who had a lifetime contract at MGM, is best remembered today as The Wizard of Oz in the 1939 film, but he was a staggeringly gifted, versatile performer, and he’s great again here. Among those turning up in small roles are an alarmingly young, short-haired Robert Mitchum – who resembles a seven-foot lizard – and Our Gang’s Carl ‘Alfalfa’ Switzer, playing the leader of a small gang nicking apricots from an old man’s yard.

That exquisitely-judged sequence typifies this tender, richly atmospheric, superbly-observed movie, which qualifies for the top bracket of Americana alongside such exalted hymns to disappearing or imagined worlds as Stars in My Crown, The Vanishing Virginian (which stars Morgan), On Borrowed Time and One Foot in Heaven. Superbly-scripted, wonderfully acted and with transcendent use of music, it's an emotionally draining experience - and one I'll be revisiting many times over the coming years. (4)

***



One Sunday Afternoon (Stephen Roberts, 1933) is a small masterpiece, vastly superior to its better-known remake, The Strawberry Blonde – which starred James Cagney. Gary Cooper plays a dentist besotted with the flirtatious, hateful Fay Wray. When she marries his rival, Cooper weds sweet-hearted admirer Frances Fuller, but he’s unable to forget his great love. Then, years later, she walks back into his life. Cooper was a fine comic performer, adept at screwball fare like Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife, but also able to inject humour into his straighter work. He’s ideally suited to this wonderfully-scripted movie, an incisive marital drama laced with irony that offers considerable concessions to character comedy. Stage star and future acting teacher Frances Fuller is arguably even better in a rare screen role: loving, faithful and stoic, though she knows her husband's heart lies elsewhere. As the other woman, Wray is only fairly good, possibly overdoing it in the last scene, though Roscoe Karns offers his usual combination of laughs and laconic sentiment in support. The film has a singular feel, with the plot concisely, intelligently handled, allowing each scene to play out effectively, despite the short running time. It is book-ended by contemporary scenes showing the greying Cooper plagued by his nagging wife, shown only in silhouette, making us complicit in his bitterness – at least at first. One Sunday Afternoon is short but not slight: delightfully played, perfectly-formed and with a lovely message somewhat atypical of ‘30s Hollywood. (4)

***



Marie Antoinette (Sofia Coppola, 2006) looks great, and has some interesting directorial touches, like Coppola’s handheld camera following queen Kirsten Dunst backwards down a corridor, into her quarters and up against a door, where she stands, sobbing. Sadly the central conceit, presenting Antoinette as a simple, fun-loving teenager with no real concept of her duties to state or humanity, doesn’t really work and the script is extremely weak, engendering no empathy for its empty characters. With nothing invested in the protagonists and no clear dramatic tension in a story that should be loaded with it, Coppola’s film is ultimately completely disengaging, with just a handful of bright spots amidst the deadening, sparkly tedium. (1.5)

***



TVM: The Evacuees (Alan Parker, 1975) is a little gem from the pen of Jack Rosenthal, based on his experiences of leaving Manchester for Blackpool during the dark days of World War Two. Gary Carp and Steven Serember are the youngsters who are casually brutalised after changing the city for the seaside, but resolve to keep their unhappiness from their put-upon mother. The film has moments of levity and humour, particularly in the opening minutes, but emerges as a much darker and more troubling work than Rosenthal’s teleplay set in the aftermath of war: the joyous P’tang Yang Kipperbang. Its considerable impact is aided by acute observation and the sense it has been ripped from life, exemplified by the quietly horrifying scene in which the boys are forced to eat pork by their unthinking hosts. As well as being an insightful look at a phenomenon of wartime not ill-served by popular culture, the film doubles as a portrait of an inner-city Jewish community, with Rosenthal fashioning a gutting contrast with the plight of Jews being heaped onto trains in other countries – one of their orphaned children a recent arrival in Manchester. Such heavy subtexts are balanced by showing the story largely through the eyes of children, meaning we also get several scenes based around the older boy’s picture of a woman in a swimsuit and an escape sequence set to the strains of the Dick Barton theme, in which the boys wear one roller-skate and one shoe each. This intensely personal, doggedly unsentimental film, which grabbed a BAFTA for the year’s best script, is slightly disjointed and loses some momentum in the final third, but it’s full of lovely little touches and there are superb turns from Maureen Lipman – as the boys’ mother – and Paul Besterman, playing the boys’ resourceful pal Zuckerman. He cropped up in Parker's Bugsy Malone the next year, as Yonkers. (3.5)

***


Pretty good, eh? Imagine what it looks like in glo-ri-ous Technicolor.

Million Dollar Mermaid (Mervyn Le Roy, 1952), which gave splashy star Esther Williams the title of her autobiography, is a standard Hollywood biopic lit by several stupefying water ballet set-pieces. Williams is Annette Kellerman, the Australian swim star who became an international celebrity after first tackling the Thames and then outraging American society with her one-piece swimsuit. Victor Mature is the rough diamond of a promoter who takes her close to the top, then bails – wanting to prove it’s he, not she, who’s the architect of that success. Walter Pidgeon plays Kellerman’s supportive father, a music teacher who's dreaming of his own conservatory once more, while Jesse White is particularly strong in his sympathetic supporting part. Williams does quite well in a role that demands more than her usual pouting and foot-stomping, though to quote the script: “Wet, she’s sensational; dry, she’s just a nice girl who should settle down and get married.” The main draw, as ever with Williams' work, are the swimming showpieces. The ones here are particularly good, including a gilded number commencing Kellerman’s residency at the New York Hippodrome, and Busby Berkeley’s 'Fountain and Smoke', which is just spectacular. Berkeley, who pretty much invented the kaleidoscopic musical number in films like 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933 - each routine stuffed with surreal overhead shots of dancing girls moving in sync - is here employed as a sort of ‘specialty director’, contributing just one extraordinary number – perhaps because his eye-popping extravaganzas were so expensive to film. (2.5)