06/22/09: M (Joseph Losey, 1951) ***
I commemorated the 25th anniversary from the death of director Joseph Losey (which occurred on 22nd June 1984) by watching his two best (and, ironically, rarest) Hollywood movies, both [I]noirs[/I]made in 1951 – THE PROWLER and M. Fritz Lang's original 1931 version of the latter is not only generally considered to be its director's masterpiece but, on a personal note, is also included in my all-time Top 20 movies. Therefore, I had always been particularly interested in seeing how Losey (another director I admire a great deal) had tackled the daunting task of remaking – and relocating to L.A. – such an iconic German movie. Boasting the original’s own producer, Seymour Nebenzal, the 1951 remake has been almost impossible to see and, actually, I only managed to track down a mediocre-looking print a few months ago; even so, I am certainly grateful to have been given the opportunity to catch up with it…especially in view of the fact that Sony's long-rumored Joseph Losey box set on R1 did not materialize after all! Perhaps inevitably, the film's initial stages (the murder of little Elsie) closely resemble those of Lang’s film – even down to the choice of camera set-ups: the high angle shot down an eerily desolate flight of stairs, the close-up of the vacant breakfast table, the tell-tale shots of a solitary flying balloon and a rolling ball – but Losey nevertheless manages to gradually make the film his own, culminating in a trademark hysterical finale that highlights a new character not featured in the original: Luther Adler’s alcoholic attorney who is, ill-advisedly, moved to turn against his boss Martin Gabel after the baby-killer’s confession. David Wayne – best-known until then for playing lightly comic roles – is quite good in his own right (especially during the aforementioned trial sequence) if, understandably, falling short of Peter Lorre's unforgettable original characterization; similarly (and effectively) cast against type, Howard Da Silva makes for a fine Chief of Police, while the sterling supporting cast includes Raymond Burr (also atypically amusing as a raspy-voiced, leading underworld thug), Steve Brodie (as a sadistic cop), Glenn Anders and Jim Backus (as the mayor)! Interestingly enough, two directors-to-be were employed in minor capacities on this film: assistant director Robert Aldrich and script supervisor Don Weis. Allegedly, Fritz Lang balked at Nebenzal's offer to direct the remake himself and never forgave Losey for daring to touch his [i]magnum opus[/i]…he must have conveniently forgotten the fact that he had himself remade in Hollywood two Jean Renoir classics – LA CHIENNE (1931) and LA BETE HUMAINE (1938) – as SCARLET STREET (1945) and HUMAN DESIRE (1954) respectively!
06/22/09: THE PROWLER (Joseph Losey, 1951) ***1/2
My second tribute to Joseph Losey, following hot on the heels of M (which was actually shot afterwards) is the director’s own favorite among his Hollywood work and also crime novelist James (L.A. CONFIDENTIAL) Ellroy’s all-time favorite film! Van Heflin has one of his best-ever roles as the embittered cop who forces himself onto lonely housewife Evelyn Keyes and eventually contrives to shoot her night-time radio personality husband in self-defense. As a matter of fact, for its first half, THE PROWLER (a clever misnomer of a title and decidedly no relation to the 1981 Joseph Zito exploitation flick) plays almost like a role-reversal rehash of DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944) but Losey admirably turns the whole thing on its head with the climactic ghost town section. Indeed, the surfeit of chatter and intermittently disjointed editing of the film’s first half hardly prepare one for that extraordinary high-pitched finale which already serves to crystallize Losey’s uniquely nihilistic world-view so early in his career. Being another film of the director’s that is very hard to come by, I guess one has to feel glad that, following a very hazy start, the copy I got my hands on settled nicely into a much more satisfactory viewing experience than M. Similar to that later film, the crew of THE PROWLER is made up of some notable names: Robert Aldrich and Don Weis are once again employed in the same capacities of assistant director and script supervisor respectively – but also producer Sam Spiegel (billed, as was his current custom, under the pseudonym of S. P. Eagle) and, as screenwriters, an uncredited Dalton Trumbo and Hugo Butler – soon-to-be exiled (like Losey himself after all) for their past Communist affiliations – both of whom would go on to work with my all-time favorite film-maker Luis Bunuel on, respectively, Trumbo’s own JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN (1971) and ROBINSON CRUSOE (1952) and THE YOUNG ONE (1960)…not to mention Losey’s later, ambitious but ill-fated arthouse venture EVA (1962)!
06/25/09: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT (Josef von Sternberg, 1935) ***
For his first Hollywood movie, Peter Lorre – billed as “the great international star” – personally chose to play the lead in an adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s masterpiece, although he is curiously second billed to the film’s nominal star Edward Arnold (appearing in the film’s latter half as his nemesis, the Chief of Police). The film has been justifiably criticized for being a greatly oversimplified and condensed version of Dostoyevsky’s mammoth novel but, not having read the book myself, I was satisfied with (and found much to admire in) von Sternberg’s typically pictorial direction which highlights Lucien Ballard’s atmospheric chiaroscuro lighting. Peter Lorre is perfectly cast as the arrogant genius Roderick Raskolnikov whose tracts on criminology has made him a household word with the police authorities but, perhaps due to an excess of pride, apparently also reduced him to a bottom-of-the-barrel social status; a casualty of the film’s ruthless editing of the original source is the fact that Raskolnikov’s fall from grace (from a master pupil to a bum) is never properly explained. Meeting up with a lovely gamine (Marian Marsh) at a heartless pawnbroker’s and fully confident in his own superiority ‘above the law’, he soon puts his theories into practice by doing away with the latter; picked up for questioning by the Police, Arnold (also excellent) soon requests his assistance on the murder investigation itself upon learning of Lorre’s true identity and, before long, an innocent neighbor (FRANKENSTEIN [1931]’s Michael Mark) is brought before them as the prime suspect. The cast also includes Gene Lockhart (as Lorre’s pompous brother-in-law-to-be) and Douglas Dumbrille (as a former employer of Lorre’s sister who is now seemingly hounding his steps). Reportedly, von Sternberg did this merely as a contractual assignment and is said to talk disparagingly of it in his famous autobiography, “Fun In A Chinese Laundry”; whatever the case, it was a good start for him after the termination of his celebrated long-running collaboration with Marlene Dietrich. There have been several film adaptations of the Dostoyevsky novel over the years but the most intriguing one that I would like to catch up with is Robert Wiene’s 1923 German Expressionist Silent version RASKOLNIKOV which, for better or worse, was recently released on DVD by Alpha under the novel’s more recognizable title.
06/26/09: THE LOST ONE (Peter Lorre, 1951) ***1/2
Following a period of rehabilitation where he managed to beat his addiction to morphine, character actor [I]extraordinaire[/I] Peter Lorre felt confident enough not only to leave his secure employment as a lean, sleek villain in myriad Hollywood noirs and go back to his native Germany after almost 20 years (which, like many compatriots, he had fled when the Nazis came to power) but also to embark on his sole foray behind the camera. Adopting an unfussy technique but a compelling flashback structure, Lorre turned out a truly remarkable piece of work that, equally unsuccessful on its first release as Charles Laughton’s THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (1955) and Marlon Brando’s ONE-EYED JACKS (1961), has yet to have its somewhat maligned reputation vindicated in the same unequivocal manner as these two ‘one-hit wonders’ by actors-turned-directors. A chubbier, infinitely world-weary Lorre gives a haunting central performance as the dedicated, real-life scientist Dr. Karl Rothe who, being told by his superiors that his discoveries were being passed on to the allied forces by his beautiful (and much younger) fiancée, strangles her in a moment of silent rage upon returning to the lodgings he shares with his mother-on-law and her cat; the actress playing Lorre’s first victim (Renate Mannhardt) makes such an indelible impression on the spectator that, upon a second viewing, one is surprised to discover how brief her appearance in the film actually is. Changing his identity and now serving as a medical doctor in a refugee camp, Lorre is brought once again face to face with his inner demons in the shape of his assistant during WWII who, apart from having carried on an affair with Lorre’s wife, was secretly also an important Party official investigating the infamous “Night Of The Long Knives” conspiracy (which is rather murkily dealt with in the film’s latter stages); another enigmatic aspect of Lorre’s personality that is somewhat oddly thrown into the mix is his troubled dealings with other women over the years, culminating in another murder committed in a stationary train carriage. Interestingly, the film opens with a shot of a moving train out of which emerges the tiny figure of Lorre walking towards the refugee camp and ends in a devastating medium shot of Lorre, one hand clasped dejectedly to his face, standing stationary on the railroad tracks as a locomotive rushes headlong in his direction! As one can surmise from this synopsis, THE LOST ONE’s lack of critical and commercial success ought to be attributed more to its utter grimness and thoroughly defeatist view of post-war Germany than to any jinx the production might have been vested with (the film’s producer, Arnold Pressburger, died in mid-production, the original negative was lost in an editing suite fire and the film survives via a reconstructed print, etc.) and, indeed, should be much better known even among film [I]connoisseurs[/I]. Personally, I had first come across a copy of the film at a priceless DVD rental store on Santa Monica Blvd. in Hollywood in January 2006 but I have since added it to my collection in a seemingly restored version (albeit sporting distractingly ungrammatical English subtitles).
