Track the Films You Watch (2011) - Page 16

"Sweet Karma" -

Full review/stills http://www.beardyfreak.com/rvkarma.php


A mute Russian girl named Karma (Shera Bechard) takes vengeance on the East European gang who trafficked her sister into Canada, after she vanishes....


This is modern day film making paying astute homage to straightforward, no messing vigilante/Grindhouse movies of the 70's/80's.

"Sweet Karma" provides all the goodies you expect from such a set-up, but still has time to flesh out the main characters and provide a few twists and turns along its dark, nasty, gritty path.

Newcomer Shera Bechard is more than up to the task of carrying the film on her slender shoulders.
From the dramatic scenes to the scenes of her using her sexual allure to get to the bad guys to her handling of the action scenes she is brilliant.

Violence is swift and brutal with just the right amount of bloodshed and mild gore.
Special mention must go to a grotesquely effective 'jaw smashed off its hinges' effect which is very well done.
Demise by pencil, tire iron, gun, electrical cord, knife and even a coffee table are the order of the day here.

Given the plot sex of course plays a crucial part in "Sweet Karma" and, despite the (genuine) sympathetic attitude to the women's plight, the film does deliver nude scenes in an Exploitation fashion.
Karma's pole dancing sequence is particularly memorable, and genuinely erotic, despite the serious drama context it's in.
And again, full marks to Ms Bechard!

The main point of contention with "Sweet Karma" would seem to be its very low-fi look.
But the film basically looks as it should.
It looks like the video equivalent of those old 16mm Grindhouse flicks. And the hand held, almost documentary, style of the camera work is also wonderfully effective.

Overall then, "Sweet Karma" is a vigilante flick that delivers.
It delivers a supremely hot, powerful, sympathetic female lead, some great sleazy, grim and gritty atmosphere, a frantic pace, lots of action, lots of violence and some crowd pleasingly kick-ass deaths.
It's well made, well acted and showcases a particularly stunning turn by Shera Bechard.

11/27/11: DUEL IN THE SUN {Roadshow Version} (King Vidor and, uncredited, William Dieterle, Josef von Sternberg, Sidney Franklin, William Cameron Menzies and David O. Selznick, 1946) ***1/2

This one is still best-known as a “Sex Western” (which got it dubbed as “Lust In The Dust”, a moniker later adopted by Paul Bartel for a 1985 film!) and for being movie-mogul David O. Selznick’s follow-up (in terms of grandeur and expenditure) to his colossal GONE WITH THE WIND (1939). In retrospect, the backlash it has received (incredibly, DUEL IN THE SUN is also featured in a tome dedicated to “The Golden Turkey Awards”!) is not only unfair – given that, sensibly, it should not even fall into the “so bad, it’s good” category – but seems to come from people who obviously missed the bigger picture: the erotic content may have raised eye-brows at the time but is now extremely tame and, while I concede that it frequently goes over-the-top, the film has so much else going for it that the end result clearly comes across as memorable not merely because of its idiosyncrasies and excesses! For one thing, it was among a handful of 1940s Westerns to treat the genre with maturity and depth rather than as formulaic ‘horse-opera’ fare; others in this vein were William A. Wellman’s THE OX-BOW INCIDENT (1943), John Ford’s MY DARLING CLEMENTINE (1946) and, yes, even that other controversial Western i.e. the Howard Hughes production (partly directed by Howard Hawks) of THE OUTLAW (1943). Besides, the sheer scope of its canvas (with the land-barons-vs.-railroad-builders struggle at its center) would not be seen again within the genre until Sergio Leone’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968)! In short, this remains one of the great Westerns despite everything. If anything, DUEL IN THE SUN is renowned for its gorgeous use of color (with the cinematography, capturing some of the most spectacular sunset on record, numbering no fewer than three top cameramen – Lee Garmes, Ray Rennahan and Harold Rosson), the equally remarkable production design (by J. McMillan Johnson and James Basevi) and, unsurprisingly, a rousing score (courtesy of the ever-reliable Dimitri Tiomkin).

Casting, too, is obviously first-rate: Jennifer Jones tries a little too hard as the sultry half-breed heroine but was far enough removed from the saintly girl of THE SONG OF BERNADETTE (1943) to garner another Oscar nod!; Joseph Cotten is, typically, quietly impressive; Gregory Peck is certainly notable in his first villainous role – the horse taming scenes here actually anticipate William Wyler’s THE BIG COUNTRY (1958), which the star produced himself; Lionel Barrymore is, again in his element, as the stern patriarch; ditto Lillian Gish as his long-suffering wife – amazingly, she was the recipient of the film’s sole other Oscar nomination!; Herbert Marshall in the a small but pivotal role of Jones’ father (who also harbored an open affection for Gish despite being a relative); a delightfully hammy Walter Huston, whose part as “The Sinkiller” was bigger than I remembered!; Charles Bickford as a Barrymore cowhand who takes Jones under his wing but incurs the wrath of Peck in the process (interestingly, he would upgrade to the patriarch role in THE BIG COUNTRY itself, albeit with Peck on his side); Joan Tetzel is Cotten’s virtuous fiancée; Harry Carey plays Barrymore’s former sidekick now working for the railroad; Otto Kruger is the latter’s boss and Tetzel’s father; Charles Dingle the town sheriff; Tilly Losch is Jones’ Indian mother and was also responsible for the choreography of the film’s dance numbers!; Sidney Blackmer the man whose indiscretion with the latter rendered the heroine an orphan in the first reel; and Butterfly McQueen as the Barrymore household’s soft and tortuously-spoken black maid, a role that virtually replicates the one she had played in GONE WITH THE WIND! Having mentioned Cotten and Peck, it is worth noting that this was the first Western for both; however, each would return to the genre repeatedly throughout their career with varying degrees of success: Cotten appeared in 10 more, with some of the later ones being made in Europe, and perhaps the more creditable emerging to be Robert Wise’s TWO FLAGS WEST (1950), Joseph H. Lewis’ THE HALLIDAY BRAND (1956) and Robert Aldrich’s THE LAST SUNSET (1961; in which he only had a supporting role); as for Peck, he would make 10 in all – including 2 other “Super-productions”, namely the afore-mentioned THE BIG COUNTRY (1958) and HOW THE WEST WAS WON (1962), and even a couple which have been established as Western classics i.e. William A. Wellman’s YELLOW SKY (1948) and Henry King’s THE GUNFIGHTER (1950).

Anyway, the plot (scripted by the producer, with the uncredited contribution of Ben Hecht, from Oliver H.P. Garrett's adaptation of a Niven Busch novel) basically resolves itself into a series of confrontations: between Marshall on one side and Blackmer and Losch on the other; between Barrymore and Kruger (and also involving Carey and Cotten, the feud causing him to fall out with dad Barrymore); between Peck and Bickford; between siblings Peck and Cotten; and, finally, between lovers Jones and Peck (the bout to which the title actually refers to, as unexpected at the time and forbidding in atmosphere as the Death Valley climax of Erich von Stroheim’s GREED {1924}!). Nevertheless, there are a handful of poignant moments along the way: Marshall’s parting words to Jones; the revenge-seeking Barrymore’s resignation before the Union flag he had served (waved by the soldiers who had ridden in opposition to him); Gish’s death during a thunderstorm; Barrymore’s reaction (despite having ostensibly disowned him) to Cotten’s survival from Peck’s gun-shot wound. Also, from the long list of directors attached to it, one gathers that this was an extensive and troubled shoot: however, from the notes in the picture’s entry on the TCM website, I learned that Vidor (who was no stranger to large-scale productions as earlier films like THE BIG PARADE {1925} and NORTHWEST PASSAGE {1940} and later ones such as WAR AND PEACE {1956} and SOLOMON AND SHEBA {1959} can attest) had always been the first choice and that Dieterle replaced him after he eventually walked off due to Selznick’s constant interference (while the mogul had apparently promised Dieterle a co-directing credit, the opening titles proudly announced “The David O. Selznick production in Technicolor of King Vidor’s DUEL IN THE SUN”!); von Sternberg – even if I am actually rewatching it for his sake! – was really only involved as “special visual consultant” (which would make the assumption that JET PILOT {1957} was his only film in color correct); Franklin and Menzies contributed to the Second Unit filming (officially being handled by Otto Brower – who is mistakenly added on the IMDB to that distinguished roster in charge of the Main Unit – and B. Reeves Eason); while Selznick himself would invariably have put his mark on the mise-en-scene of a film intending to showcase the versatility of his wife, Jones. By the way, the latter and Cotten (who was also under contract to Selznick at the time) had already appeared together in two pictures, SINCE YOU WENT AWAY (1944) and LOVE LETTERS (1945), and would do so again for PORTRAIT OF JENNIE (1948; which, being a transcendental tale of amour fou is said to have been admired by Luis Bunuel, my all-time favorite auteur). Incidentally, DUEL IN THE SUN was screened for The Archers (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger) who hated it but did not let their feelings show to Selznick, who later employed them for GONE TO EARTH (1950) – yet another vehicle for the producer’s wife and which, in turn, he would be dissatisfied with and have Rouben Mamoulian partly re-shoot it and even re-titling the film THE WILD HEART!

For the record, I re-acquainted myself with this (it was a regular childhood viewing) via MGM’s DVD of the “Roadshow Edition” that runs for 144 minutes – incorporating some 10 minutes of “Prelude” music, 2 more of “Overture” (uniquely featuring exposition narrated by one Reed Hadley, a role taken up by no less than Orson Welles at the start of the movie proper!) and roughly another 3 at the “Exit”, thus accounting for the discrepancy vis-a`-vis the 130-minute “General Release Version” (that is to say, there is no additional footage within the main narrative itself) which usually turns up on TV and has only been made available on disc (what is more, exclusively to R1 land) through Anchor Bay. Unfortunately, the dialogue was rather low here, especially in comparison to the thunderous sound effects and, apparently, the image was slightly cropped to boot (though not being aware of this beforehand, I took no notice of this)!


12/02/11: THE RAINBOW (Ken Russell, 1989) **1/2

Apparently, the late Ken Russell’s dictum was “When in a crisis, turn to D.H. Lawrence”: in 1969 he made WOMEN IN LOVE after the critical panning of the Harry Palmer espionage saga BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN (1967), which almost killed his career (to quote the eminent British film critic Leslie Halliwell); that film, which landed him a Best Director nod at the Oscars and awarded the Best Actress prize to the up-and-coming Glenda Jackson led to the full-flowering of his movie career. However, the 1980s would see a slackening in the quality of his work, while taking his trademark vulgarity to new depths in such efforts as CRIMES OF PASSION (1984), GOTHIC (1986), SALOME’S LAST DANCE and THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM (both 1988); so it came to pass that 20 years after his first Lawrence adaptation, Russell returned to the safe prospect of a second (though he had already tried, and failed, to raise the money for it around the time of CRIMES OF PASSION) – ironically, “The Rainbow” was actually the prequel to “Women In Love”(!), and even odder is the fact that the previous year a TV mini-series had been produced based on that very source (directed by seasoned adapter Stuart Burge)! For the record, the director would return once more to Lawrence territory in 1993 with a perhaps inevitable adaptation – in the format of a TV min-series – of the author’s most notorious property, “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”, retitled simply LADY CHATTERLEY…but, although I do own a copy of it in my collection, I decided to bypass it for the present since I also have the earlier 1955 and 1981 film versions of the same sources likewise lying in my unwatched pile!

At least, Russell came to his old battleground, as it were, prepared with several cast and crew members of the earlier film: actors Glenda Jackson (as the mother of her own previous character!) and Christopher Gable (here as the heroine’s cheerful father rather than her sister’s fiancé!), cinematographer Billy Williams and production designer Luciana Arrighi; besides, he recruited other actors who had stood him in good stead in the past, such as Dudley Sutton, Judith Paris and Kenneth Colley. For the leads, then, he depended upon a couple of new alumni within his oeuvre, Sammi Davis and Amanda Donohoe (both from THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM), and a hot property of the time i.e. Paul McGann (co-star of the cult movie WITHNAIL AND I {1987}); another notable but surprising presence is that of David Hemmings (who was the first choice for the part yet, when the producers balked, Russell audaciously offered it to none other than Elton John but he proved predictably ‘difficult’ and, then, after Alan Bates – as it happens, one of the leads in WOMEN IN LOVE itself – chose to pass, the role found itself yet again in Hemmings’ lap)!

Preceded by some horrid computer-generated titles, the opening scenes feel awkward, as if the director was uncertain of his ability to pull it off, and the narrative loses steam during its last third but, to quote popular American reviewer Leonard Maltin, there are “many beautiful and striking moments” along the way. Even if Davis tries hard, her all-too-modern looks and acting style work against her and she only captures the essence of the central role (played in the sequel adaptation by Jennie Linden rather than Jackson, whose character from the 1969 film is here reduced to a wimpy, jealous sort) in fits and starts! The film’s chief bright spot, in fact, is Donohoe (though she too grows stale eventually) as the sports instructress at Davis’ school, a free spirit who influences and inspires the younger woman (towards achieving her own freedom from the shackles of convention); perhaps as a means of matching WOMEN IN LOVE’s notorious nude wrestling scene, their relationship often gratuitously resorts to nudity but is nonetheless sensitively portrayed (indeed, Russell demonstrates surprising restraint here)! While Davis is later involved with McGann in various couplings, including one by a waterfall that would grace the movie’s poster, and Donohoe herself ‘falls in with the crowd’ by marrying wealthy collier Hemmings (the heroine’s uncle), it is the two women’s scenes together that stick in the mind…even if, in true Russell style, Davis’s confused feelings are expressed in a dream in which she is pursued by both her lovers on the plains (with all three of them stark naked)! The latter romance leaves Davis pregnant but she miscarries the child following a horse scare she receives during a rain-drenched walk in the countryside. Indeed, one of the film’s more interesting aspects is the way it introduces social commentary into the mix with Davis’ sexual/artistic/vocational/philanthropic awakening is, for all its eventual disappointments, seen as being diametrically opposed to the accepted fashion of the times she lived in: her nude posing for painter Sutton here ends in disaster, she is disrespected by her pupils and lusted after by her superior after applying for a job as a schoolteacher; she stamps all over Hemmings’ orchard when she witnesses the cruelty with which the roaming farm animals are treated by his poachers, etc.

All in all, the end result (set to a notable Carl Davis score) did not disgrace the memory of the ‘original’ but neither did it provide the lease of life to his career that the director had hoped for; indeed, of the 23 subsequent projects that carried his name, only 2 were made for the big-screen and the second (2002’s by-all-accounts dreadful Poe pastiche THE FALL OF THE LOUSE OF USHER) barely got released at that!


12/04/11: ISADORA (Karel Reisz, 1968) ***

Though not especially prolific, director Reisz was nonetheless a major exponent of British cinema during the 1960s (having helmed the “Angry Young Man” drama SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING {1960}, which ‘introduced’ Albert Finney, and the “Swinging London” comedy MORGAN: A SUITABLE CASE FOR TREATMENT {1966}, which did likewise to Vanessa Redgrave). The latter was surprisingly Oscar-nominated for her performance (since the protagonist was really David Warner) and seems to have gotten along well with Reisz. Indeed, just as he re-united with Finney on NIGHT MUST FALL (1964) for his next film after SATURDAY NIGHT, he held on to Redgrave for the picture he chose to follow MORGAN with i.e. ISADORA! However, both subsequent efforts failed to live up to their predecessors, with NIGHT MUST FALL in particular being considered something of a disaster.

As for the title under review, it did land a second Oscar nod to its leading lady (she even emerged the winner at Cannes and was also given the accolade by the U.S. National Society Of Film Critics!) but, for all its surface style and undeniable (if sporadic) impact, the end result is too often heavy-going (and not merely in view of the politically-oriented last third). Because it keeps jumping back and forth between the past and the present (for no very good reason but, at least, the ageing make-up is remarkably convincing), one does not get a clear notion of the chronology of events that shaped her life. In fact, a sure measure of the film’s failing in this regard is the fact that, at a mere 64 minutes, Ken Russell’s BBC-TV program ISADORA DUNCAN, THE BIGGEST DANCER IN THE WORLD (1966) – with its semi-documentary, as opposed to flashy, approach – gives a more comprehensive picture of the protagonist’s beginnings, international career, domestic vicissitudes and downfall!

Incidentally, apart from the obvious similarities (notably the sets depicting tycoon Singer’s pool area and the house, to be converted into a dancing school, he buys for the heroine in France), there are a number of significant differences between the two versions which are worth noting: here we see her performing a vaudeville routine in exchange for being allowed to do a Greek dance; various family members tag along only to gradually vanish from the proceedings (when, in Russell’s film, surviving acquaintance Sewell Stokes had emphasized that she spent her first night in London all alone inside a cemetery!); several characters who turn up during the ‘present’ are not properly identified; on the other hand, the characters played by James Fox (the designer with whom she fathered her first-born) and John Fraser (her biographer) do not appear in the TV version; here, Jason Robards Jr. (as Singer) – and, for that matter, Fox – simply exits the picture, whereas we were specifically told in the earlier film that Singer abandoned Isadora and left her penniless (though he is seen dealing with a presumed former conquest)!; we do not see her degraded to dancing in brothels; nor is the Russian hearty chanting and energetic dancing that interrupts the protagonist’s first Moscow performance a show of contempt for her trivial and incomprehensible art but rather the reverse, a spontaneous reaction to having been moved by it!; likewise, the Russian poet she marries (despite having vowed to never tying the knot – again, not clearly addressed here) comes across merely as irascible rather than a genuine trouble-maker (who unfurls a gigantic Communist flag at every opportunity) and even steals from his own wife (for the record, this entire ‘episode’ feels weak in comparison to Fox’s and Robards’)!; here, there is also no disastrous ‘campaign’ to finance her school (so that the Soviet call accepting her demands seems to come out of the blue!) – in essence, now we think of the heroine as merely eccentric as opposed to delusional!; Isadora’s pondering on whether to trade off her love letters, too, is replaced in Reisz’ film by the impetuous selling of her flat; incidentally, apart from the afore-mentioned Fox, we are given the luxury of two more flings: one is a most improbable affair with her private “Frog” pianist she had previously found repulsive(!), and the other a young man (known only by the type of car he drives!) she obsesses with all through the picture and gets to meet only shortly before her demise (which I completely forgot to mention in my review of the earlier film!); I must say, then, that the latter and the earlier tragedy – to which there is an intermittent, if pointless, build-up in this case – of her children’s drowning (the car they were in is here shown falling off a bridge when in Russell’s version it slid down a slope into a lake!) are less effective the second time around; ditto the incident in which the dancer disrobes on-stage (which here is upstaged {sic} by her nudity, superbly lit by Larry Pizer, in Fox’s studio anyway) and causes a riot.

Having mentioned the exemplary cinematography, we are also treated throughout to an unmistakable and typically sensitive Maurice Jarre score but, ultimately, the film proves tiresomely long…and, frankly, Isadora’s life did not seem to me so compelling as to merit two films (coming hot on the heels of one another to boot) by leading cinematic figures of the era! For the record, I had first acquired this via a pan-and-scan edition accompanied by forced Spanish subtitles; only last week, in the wake of my viewing of Russell’s version, I upgraded to this widescreen French print, albeit still with the occasional subtitle (for dialogue, song lyrics and even signs not in that language or the original English) but suffering as well from the odd glitch! By the way, this Hakim Brothers production was first released with a 168-minute duration under the title THE LOVES OF ISADORA; withdrawn shortly thereafter and trimmed to the current title and “General Release Version” of 134 minutes (in PAL format), the film was said to have been restored to its original length – at least, as per the “Leonard Maltin Movies & TV Guide” and the IMDB (which actually lists a “Director’s Cut” of 153 minutes) – as far back as 1987, but the additional footage seems to have gone missing all over again in the interim!
Edited by Mario Gauci - 12/9/11 at 12:09am

12/03/11: THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM (Ken Russell, 1988) **1/2

I still recall this film’s local theatrical release but never got around to watching it until now (not even as a VHS rental), due to my personal phobia of snakes! Actually, I did acquire a copy of it some years ago sourced from the Artisan DVD and, subsequent to this satisfactory viewing, presently also got hold of Ken Russell’s cheeky Audio Commentary (where he states that the garden of his home, where this was partly filmed, is crawling with snakes and also that, as a child, he had been “hypnotized” by an adder but was saved from certain death by his brother!) culled from a previous Pioneer edition! Although there are indeed reptiles involved – including the giant titular one – there is, thankfully, a curious restraint on display here on the part of the notoriously in-your-face director…so much so that it is often dismissed as a minor effort of his in some circles. Curiously enough, I have also seen it acclaimed as his “ultimate” achievement in others: maybe it was the fact that he was venturing once more into the realm of the fantastic (in almost a decade) and combining it with the erotic that instigated the hyperbole or perhaps merely that he was adapting for the screen a Bram Stoker property (only the third novel to receive this treatment but, unlike the others, just this once)!

The film proved the first teaming of Amanda Donohoe and Sammi Davis who would be reunited as one pair of lovers in Russell’s next film, THE RAINBOW (1989), that I watched earlier this month; here, however, the typically (and quite literally) vampish Donohoe is more interested in the latter’s equally virginal sister Catherine Oxenberg (from TV’s DYNASTY) – while she used to be a striking presence in that long-running soap opera, she is decidedly the weakest link in the cast that also includes a pre-stardom Hugh Grant and Peter Capaldi. At times, Stanislas Styrewicz‘s eerie electronic score was very reminiscent of the unnerving Bernard Parmegiani one for Walerian Borowcyk’s DOCTEUR JEKYLL ET LES FEMMES (1981); the evocative cinematography of the English countryside, gothic mansions and prehistoric caverns by Russell’s regular lighting cameraman Dick Bush was another big plus – although the tackiness of the nightmare sequences (that look forward to the harshness of camcorder images!) were a bit jarring if effective nonetheless.

The reptilian-cum-phallic imagery was unsurprisingly rampant – from Donohoe’s car slithering out of nowhere to a hosepipe or a piece of rope suddenly springing into life, to the Concorde in Grant’s nightmare (complete with his erectile pencil at the sight of a catfight between air hostesses Donohoe and Oxenberg!). Admittedly, the unnecessary twist ending was a bit lame but this was compensated for by a reprise of the worm’s wittily catchy theme tune sung by a folk-rock band over the end titles; they had earlier performed it at Grant’s annual ‘beggars banquet’ commemorating (with a shoddy re-enactment) his ancestor’s heroic slaying of the mythical dragon (by the way, it is baffling how the script seems to think that dragons, worms and snakes are one and the same thing!). As I said, THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM was only Grant’s fourth theatrical feature but, in a case of life imitating art, at one point his character is said to have been jailed (in an unsuccessful ploy to abduct the heroine)!

Among the film’s highlights are: Donohoe spewing venom on the crucifix; a vision of Christ on the Calvary cross being entangled by the white worm as Roman legionnaires are gleefully raping a host of nuns (including Oxenberg herself); Donohoe’s bath-tub murder of a boyscout (following a game of “Snakes & Ladders”!); the girls’ mother cut in half by Grant via his ancestral sword (incidentally, it was amusing to see the snake people like the former watching TV programmes about this form of reptile). However, the camp quotient is at its highest in Donohue’s costumes and in a sequence depicting her slithering out of a snake-basket over to Grant’s mansion to the stereophonic strains of a Turkish “snake charming” tune blasted over his sound system (even if Scottish Capaldi uses the traditional bagpipe just as effectively but, while ‘afflicted’ policeman Paul Burke answers the ‘call’ and is eventually disabled by a graphic piercing right through his left eye, Donohue has cleverly put ear-plugs in advance and she also swiftly eliminates the threat of a mongoose, reputed to be the snake’s deadly enemy!); the climactic confrontation in the cavern with a naked, blue-painted and snake-dildo-sporting Donohoe attempting to assault a tied Oxenberg before the White Worm makes its untimely appearance (the sacrificial victim it receives is not quite the one that was intended, with Capaldi then resorting to a hand-grenade in the mouth to put the monster to rest). Apart from the two female leads, of Russell’s stock company, Christopher Gable (as the girls’ missing father – in fact, he turns up only in photos and in Grant’s nightmare!) and Stratford Johns (as Grant’s butler who, asked about the whereabouts of the all-important snake-charming tune, helpfully suggests that his master try the B-side of a disc boasting “belly-dance music”) also put in an appearance.


12/05/11: SALOME’S LAST DANCE (Ken Russell, 1988) **

This is surely one of Russell’s campier ventures (also considered by some as his very worst!) – in which he appears himself, sporting an all-too-fake beard, as a photographer! The film is an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s controversial play “Salome” (for the record, a viewing of the 1923 Silent adaptation of it with, reportedly, an all-gay cast{!} is to follow) which had originally been banned in Britain (having been deemed both obscene and blasphemous!) so that its first representation took place in France – hence, the text necessitating to be translated back into English for this version!

Anyway, Russell has the notorious bisexual author (rather ineffectually played by Nickolas Grace) attend what he believes to be a typical night at a brothel on his birthday, only to have the owner, courtesans, clients and even his upper-class lover Alfred ‘Bosey’ Douglas surprise him with a clandestine staging of “Salome” (incidentally, the credits appear while he is ostensibly leafing through the programme)! Rather than be transported to the time of the narrative a` la the classic Laurence Olivier production of Shakespeare’s HENRY V (1944), here we stick to this one set – presumably so that we can gauge Wilde’s reaction to the interpretation of his text (and, in particular, Douglas’ own acting in the pivotal role of John The Baptist). However, by doing so, the thing is never allowed to rise above the level of pantomime – though I am not sure the director (who wrote the script himself) intended it to in the first place and, in any case, the proceedings are never taken very seriously (as witness the flatulent running gag, for one!).

Apart from Glenda Jackson (who, decked-out in rather impressive make-up, bravely took on the part of Herodias as a favor to Russell – even if her role is secondary to both Salome and King Herod despite being allotted top-billing), the cast is supbar, with only Stratford Johns (whom I have just watched in a memorable bit as Hugh Grant’s butler in Russell’s subsequent effort, THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM {also 1988}) attempting a real performance but, I guess, that was to be expected given the amateurish nature of the whole enterprise! As for Salome, played by Imogen Millais-Scott (a Bjork lookalike{!} while others cite Toyah Wilcox, who is more of her time), she is depicted as far more wicked than history would have it and, indeed, Herodias herself (who comes across as a dog that can bark but not bite)! In fact, the latter is not the one to suggest to Salome to ask for the head of The Baptist as a prize for having danced semi-naked before the “Tetrarch” but rather the girl’s own idea, since she had earlier seduced – and been rejected by – the prophet (indeed, Salome becomes so obsessed with the man who spoke but ill of her mother that she has no qualms about kissing the lips of his severed head)! For the record, Russell stated in the accompanying Audio Commentary that the actress was half-blind, which perhaps explains why this was her “introduction” to cinema but also her very last film!

Other notable characters here are: a legionnaire in love with Salome and who commits suicide in fear of being found out over his having allowed Salome to see The Baptist; his own (gold-painted!) servant who, serving {sic} no other function after his master’s death, takes his place beside the author and proceeds to distract him from the show (eventually disappearing behind the curtains to give vent to their passions – incidentally, the boy in real-life had been an object of contention between Wilde and ‘Bosey’, so that the latter eyes their dallying from the stage with indignation!); the two guards (there are also some females, naturally bare-breasted and prone to S&M antics!) in charge of The Baptist’s incarceration, who supply comic relief all through the picture and, ultimately, take up with Herodias (or, more precisely, the courtesan playing her) – getting down to some ‘action’ inside a trunk immediately prior to Salome’s famed “Dance Of The Seven Veils” (as it happened, the name of a controversial TV-film Russell made for the BBC in 1970, albeit about composer Richard Strauss, and which I watched earlier in my marathon tribute to the late director)!; and even a trio of bickering dwarfs dressed up as Hasidic Jews (for what it is worth, my twin brother’s ‘costume’ for Brad Pitt’s upcoming and Malta-filmed zombie epic WORLD WAR Z!).

The title under review, then, ends with Herod ordering the execution of Salome and the Police bursting in on the scene to arrest everybody (with Jackson protesting her noble lineage) – by the way, the obscenity charge leveled at Wilde here was one he would face in real life (brought up by Douglas’ own father, the Marquis of Queensberry, who frowned upon his son’s unsavory relationship with the author!) and from which he never quite recovered. Having mentioned Wilde’s trial, I still need to check one of two rival 1960 films about the case (with Robert Morley in the lead, it simply bore the author’s name as a title).


12/06/11: SALOME’ (Charles Bryant, 1923) **1/2

This is extremely faithful to the spirit and letter of Oscar Wilde’s play (at least, judging by Ken Russell’s 1988 interpretation of it in SALOME’S LAST DANCE). While I rated it higher than the latter, this is mainly because it is visually redolent of the Biblical spectacles of the Silent era (THE TEN COMMANDMENTS {1923}, BEN-HUR: A TALE OF THE CHRIST {1925} and THE KING OF KINGS {1927}, to name the more obvious examples), being a straight adaptation as opposed to a ‘performance’ – even so, while it may have readily jumped on the spectacle bandwagon, the result is unsurprisingly verbose for a non-Talkie and, in any case, its real raison d’etre was apparently as a paen to Wilde’s transgressive lifestyle since it has been stated that the entire cast was homosexually-inclined (with several prancing courtiers and even minor female roles being filled by men)!

The star is Alla Nazimova (billed only by her surname) who, at 42, appears in the title role – a character who was supposedly all of 14 years old! Though her real age is undeniably betrayed in close-ups, for the most part, her lanky figure supplies the requisite illusion of youth; to get back to its proximity to Wilde’s text (and, by extension, Russell’s rendition), Salome is made out to be something of a nymphomaniac, if not quite as gleefully wicked as Imogen Millais-Scott in the later version. For the record, of the remaining cast members, only Nigel De Brulier’s name – in the part of a rather scantily-clad John The Baptist and actually referred to as Jokanaan(!) – was familiar to me, from a number of swashbuckling Douglas Fairbanks vehicles and even THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK (1939; as it happens, directed by the gay James Whale), with the woman playing Herodias being noted, if anything, for her disheveled hair-do (though, when the scene shifts to the terrace, it then appears inexplicably combed!).

Again, the narrative of the two films are very similar: from The Baptist’s wardens pleading with Salome (by the way, an accent is inconsistently placed throughout over the ‘e’) to leave the prophet alone, with the soldier (whom the girl blinds with false promises of affection) eventually committing suicide because, as he says, he “cannot endure it”. Likewise, the latter’s servant being jealous of his attentions for the Princess and, ditto, Herodias berating her husband for his incestuous leering over the girl (having already assassinated his own brother and usurped the throne in order to win the Queen’s favors!). Perhaps the film’s mainstay are the incongruously outlandish costumes (designed by Natacha Rambova, noted wife of the even more famous Rudolph Valentino – the silver-screen’s Latin Lover prototype whom Ken Russell would himself deal with in a 1977 biopic!), from Nazimova’s bejeweled hair to the oversized outfits of her ladies-in-waiting, which conveniently obscure Salome while she is changing into her dancing attire (though the film-makers seem to have forgotten all about the Seven Veils in this case)!

The climax is somewhat confused, though: first, we have a Nubian giant (who had stood guard by the castle walls all through the picture) being asked to behead The Baptist but, when he goes down to the pit where the prophet is incarcerated, the latter’s Holy words apparently convert him. Yet, all of a sudden, we cut to Salome already with the proverbial silver platter (or “charger”, as it is called here) in hand, albeit covered-up – however, it was only after she has put in on the floor and bowed down beside it, all the while pining for Jokanaan’s red lips, that I realized the deed had already been done! Finally, after Herod gives out the order for Salome to be slain (and his spear-sporting minions dutifully oblige), the film simply ends on a long-shot of her corpse and Herodias looking upon it in horror (at least, Russell’s theatrical framework lent the whole a better sense of closure and, if anything, given the propensity of the foreword here, one would have expected at least a matching coda!).

12/09/11: VALENTINO (Ken Russell, 1977) **1/2

Although I am a big fan of Silent movies, moderately so of iconoclastic film-maker Ken Russell and a casual one of legendary Hollywood idol Rudolph Valentino, this is the first time I have watched this particular biopic all the way through – despite its having been a familiar sight in my neck of the woods for years via myriad transmissions on local, Italian and cable TV channels!

The film’s major assets are definitely its impeccable production design and exceedingly eccentric cast: Rudolf Nureyev (as Valentino, of course), Michelle Phillips (as his ambitious and possessive wife Natacha Rambova), Leslie Caron (as screen siren Alla Nazimova), Seymour Cassel (as his manager), Felicity Kendall (as scenarist/discoverer June Mathis), Carol Kane (as a Fatty Arbuckle groupie), Russell regular Jennie Linden (as Valentino’s co-star Agnes Ayres), former “Dead End Kid” Huntz Hall (as Paramount’s mogul Jesse L. Lasky!), former matinee idol John Justin (as director Sidney Olcott!), Peter Vaughn (in a belated appearance as a former heavyweight champion who challenges Valentino to a fatal boxing match), Anton Diffring (as a disgruntled restauranteur), Bill McKinney (as a sadistic prison guard) and Ken Russell regular Dudley Sutton (as a lecherous pervert cellmate of Valentino). Besides, the film also apparently features Lindsay Kemp (as a mortician) and Percy Herbert (as a studio guard) but I failed to recognize them; Russell, then, gives himself a prize uncredited bit as distinguished Irish film-maker Rex Ingram whose 1921 production of THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE (incidentally, I recently purchased a copy of the original source novel at a national book fair!) shot Valentino to stardom.

On the downside, the film displays no sympathy for its subject which, given the lavishly inventive mistreatment many celebrated artists were formerly accorded by Russell, should really come as no surprise at all. Still, this notorious penchant of the director had clearly reached saturation point by this stage as VALENTINO proved to be his last big-screen venture in this vein for some time; in fact, he would only pick it up theatrically just once more – in his re-imagining of Lord Byron/Mary Shelley/Dr. John Polidori’s “Haunted Summer” in GOTHIC (1986). Incidentally, like the latter – which conflicted with a rival production on the same theme – Russell’s biopic of Valentino had just been preceded by a TV movie, THE LEGEND OF VALENTINO (1975; with Franco Nero) and followed shortly by Gene Wilder’s spoof, THE WORLD’S GREATEST LOVER (1977; which also stars Kane!). In fact, I will be augmenting this viewing by watching the former and an even earlier biopic from 1951 – both of which I have acquired recently as a direct result of this ongoing Ken Russell tribute; besides, his character figures in at least 10 other negligible movies throughout the years…including a pornographic Joe D’Amato version!

It is interesting that the film culminates in a boxing bout since it was produced by Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler and co-scripted by Mardik Martin; all three were responsible for Martin Scorsese’s definitive boxing biopic RAGING BULL (1980), while the producers themselves had just come off with a surprising Oscar win with their sleeper hit, ROCKY (1976)! VALENTINO itself was nominated for three BAFTA awards: cinematography (by Russell regular Peter Suschitzky), art direction, and costumes (by Russell’s first wife Shirley). On the other hand, the film all-too-obviously starts with the star’s notoriously crowded funeral that ends in a virtual riot and leads into a few of the mourners reminiscing about their experiences with Valentino at the prodding of predatory reporters. We first see Valentino dancing with Nijinsky (whose own rare 1980 biopic I have just acquired after also missing out on its sole – and local – TV screening!), working as a dancing gigolo and involved with a married couple that ends in a shootout and being booted out of New York; then, he works at Diffring’s tavern but, again, gets fired after humiliating Fatty Arbuckle (portrayed as an obnoxious loudmouth prankster by William Hootkins) by dancing to a famous Argentinian anthem that I had previously heard sung in Luis Bunuel's GRAN CASINO (1947)! Valentino’s Hollywood career is dealt with in some detail (with various scenes from his more notable pictures being re-enacted rather than relying on the original footage), but there is still an unfortunate array of mistakes to be contend with: the arty Nazimova vanity project SALOME` (1923) – on which Rambova was scenarist (albeit credited under a male pseudonym!), art director and costume designer – precedes Valentino’s bullfighting epic BLOOD AND SAND (1922); a poster for the 1927 classic FLESH AND THE DEVIL is seen stuck to a wall in 1926 as FLESH OF THE DEVIL, etc.! Valentino’s unfilmed pet project THE HOODED FALCON is also given its due, and which I erroneously thought was a misinformed allusion to another vehicle of his i.e. THE EAGLE (1925)!

The film under review is listed among “The 100 Most Amusingly Bad Movies Ever Made” in a book devoted to the Golden Raspberry Awards (better-known as Razzies); in fact, although I did not hate the movie, it is a good thing that these unenviable prizes were only formally introduced in 1980 since, had they been in existence at the time of VALENTINO’s release, it would have surely been up for a handful – particularly Nureyev himself (whose pronunciation of both English and Italian leaves much to be desired)! With the allure that Valentino’s name can still evoke after all these years, Russell regales his legion of fans with a bit of full-frontal nudity by Nureyev; however, there are several allusions to homosexuality, accusations that were really leveled at the star and which were denied at first, but he later foolishly chose to defend his honor (eerily replicating Oscar Wilde’s notorious trial, a figure which Russell would also deal with). It is ironic, then, that the actor was being played by a real gay man since celebrated Russian ballet dancer/director Nureyev would die of AIDS in January 1993; he appeared only sporadically in films – apart from recorded ballet performances of ROMEO AND JULIET (1966; directed by Paul Czinner) amd DON QUIXOTE (1973; co-directed by Nureyev himself and Robert Helpmann, who also played the title role), he appeared in James Toback’s bizarre concotion EXPOSED (1983). His co-star Michelle Phillips (with whom he did not get on at all well and their romantic scenes reportedly often evolved into slapping matches!) is best-known for having been a member of the popular 1960’s band The Mamas And The Papas and for being married to fellow member John Phillips (between 1962-70) and, later, to Dennis Hopper for all of 8 days in late 1970!

For the record, I have watched just 5 of Valentino’s movies so far, with a half-dozen more awaiting viewing – although several others (mostly from his pre-stardom days) are also readily available online. With respect to the film itself, I scored a R2 DVD copy (albeit full-frame) when the majority of Russell’s more renowned (and rewarding) works remain unavailable in his home market!


12/08/11: THE BOY FRIEND {Extended Version} (Ken Russell, 1971) **1/2

To begin with, I had missed out on a local TV broadcast of this one back in 1988 as part of a series of MGM musicals; I do not know which version was shown, but it may well have been the original 125-minute theatrical release. I acquired it not too long ago via a recording of a TCM UK screening with a running-time of 130 minutes in PAL format (which would make it 135 at 24 frames-per-second); for the record, it was recently released on DVD via the “Warners Archive” Movies-On-Demand label at 136 minutes (including an intermission card with musical accompaniment) – though this is supposedly the “Director’s Cut”, some online sources extend that full-length further by a couple more minutes!

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that I did not enjoy this as much as I expected to, though it certainly lives up to its reputation as a stunning-looking film (cinematography by David Watkin, production design by Tony Walton and costumes by Shirley Russell, the writer-director’s first wife). I admit at the outset to not being a fan of Musicals, especially the archaic ‘Puttin’ On A Show’ variety which THE BOY FRIEND is, at least in Russell’s version (Sandy Wilson’s original, in fact, follows a traditional plotline) – thus making it a precursor to SALOME’S LAST DANCE (1988) in the film-maker’s oeuvre, which employs a similar framework (even bringing in author Oscar Wilde into the proceedings in its case!).

The film was not a critical or box-office success and, of course, it is miles removed from the classic MGM style of the 1940s and 1950s – if anything, Russell’s approach harks back to Busby Berkeley’s over-the-top production numbers of Warner Bros. musicals from the 1930s which I am not exactly crazy about (such as having a dance here conducted over a gigantic turn-table)…except that the narrative is actually supposed to be taking place even earlier than that, i.e. the 1920s (for the record, the original show opened in 1953)! Mind you, the ensemble cast is winning (ingénue lead Twiggy, a dual Golden Globe award winner, and various Russell regulars – Christopher Gable, Max Adrian, Vladek Sheybal, Bryan Pringle, Murray Melvin, Antonia Ellis, Georgina Hale and even an uncredited Glenda Jackson as the injured star of the show whom Twiggy steps in for…even if there is “Carry On”’s Barbara Windsor to contend with!) and, though the songs themselves are hardly memorable for the most part, they are pleasant enough under the circumstances.

What I felt bogged the film down was the schizophrenic and, frankly misguided, nature of the handling (bafflingly, Russell was named Best Director by the National Board Of Review for this – which is more ironic when you consider that the movie was trimmed down to 109 minutes for U.S. release – and also, more deservedly, the same year’s THE DEVILS!). Never one to be cramped by budgetary limitations (the troupe involved is supposed to be on the skids), he has characters dream ever more ostentatious numbers, often in outlandish costumes (the nadir is a tie between a forest bacchanal with satyr Adrian holding court and a stroll through what seemed like a leprechaun village)! Indeed, it is the more intimate songs that work best – such as Twiggy and Gable’s “I Could be Happy With You” (reprised several times along the way) and Adrian and Hale’s “It's Never Too Late To Fall In Love” (incidentally, Sheybal is a movie producer called Cecil De Thrill who comes to the show to sign up prospective talents, so, much of what goes on has actors, singers and dancers all trying to upstage one another to curry his favors and, in fact, during this particular number, the pretty but raspy-voiced Hale forsakes her place on the stage and goes up to the producer’s box!). However, the one to make this craving for attention most obvious is Ellis who, by the end, is sure De Thrill will choose her…but the enthusiasm he shows is for having found his long-lost son, a lanky tap-dancer whose contribution actually comes closest to the musical style of old.

Ultimately, a sure measure of Russell’s gall and, worse, misinformation is the fact that he has Sheybal tell Adrian at the end “I think I’ll do ‘Singin’ In The Rain’ instead” when there is no stage musical by that name, certainly not in the 1920s, since the beloved 1952 film merely assembled a host of Arthur Freed/Nacio Herb Brown songs for its now-classic soundtrack – two of which, “You Are My Lucky Star” and “All I Do is Dream Of You” are incongruously incorporated here (WTF!?) and, frankly, display greater sincerity than practically the entirety of Wilson’s score! In the end, I have just learned that Russell was yesterday scheduled to introduce a screening of the film at London’s NFT but, of course, it was not to be!


12/08/11: THE LEGEND OF VALENTINO (TV) (Melville Shavelson, 1975) **1/2

I was only vaguely aware of this one, so much so that I added it to the Ken Russell tribute schedule (since he also made a film about Valentino) at the very last minute! Interestingly, Russell’s big-screen biopic was released a mere 2 years after this TV-film, just as Karel Reisz’s 1968 version of ISADORA came hot on the heels of Russell’s own for the small-screen from 2 years previously!

Like those 2 biopics, there are the expected similarities but also major differences between each version: Shavelson’s background in scriptwriting serves him in good stead (especially as delivered by Suzanne Pleshette, playing a scriptwriter herself i.e. June Mathis who is credited with giving Valentino his big break). However, here, we are supposed to believe that the actor (played by Franco Nero – a fellow handsome Italian, at least, but who managed to transcend the Latin Lover image fairly early on) became an instant star upon entering the movie industry when he had really languished in the medium for a good 7 years prior to making THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE (1921): with this in mind, his lead role in the film is described as small but significant(!) and, what is more, since he is caught by Pleshette – who immediately notices his magnetic qualities and iconic possibilities – burgling her house (his very first line of dialogue, in fact, is the Italian cussword “stronza”!), she fakes an aristocratic background for him on the spot!

As with the Russell version, the script plays around with the chronology of events (1925’s THE EAGLE – incongruously shown in a montage via snippets of the genuine Valentino footage – comes before BLOOD AND SAND, made a full 3 years prior to it!). Incidentally, judging by the titles that are mentioned, one would think that the star made nothing but exotic costumers, when this is clearly not the case and that he knew beforehand just what properties would suit him (since no sooner is HORSEMEN released that he is already discussing the acquisition of CAMILLE, actually as Alla Nazimova’s leading man – his future wife Natacha Rambova had been a close collaborator of hers and possibly even lover, BLOOD AND SAND and MONSIEUR BEAUCAIRE!). While Rambova is shown being superstitiously influenced by runes in the Ken Russell picture, here she persuades Valentino to attend a séance in order to communicate with his mother (who passed away during the shooting of CAMILLE, as per this version and while he was still on HORSEMEN according to Russell’s)!

While he is also shown being involved with his leading ladies, this one commits the cardinal sin of making Rambova (as played by a dark-haired Yvette Mimieux) a total bore and utterly unsympathetic to boot – while Michelle Philips from the later film may not have looked anything like the genuine article (but, then, neither did Rudolf Nureyev), her striking looks at least make us accept his dependence on her! Indeed, as already intimated, Pleshette comes across much better (with the film’s best scene – which does not appear in Russell’s biopic and is probably a complete fabrication – being the one towards the end when Nero presents Pleshette’s Mathis as the real force behind the Valentino image). Despite the fact that some of Valentino’s directors appear here (notably Rex Ingram), they are not played by recognizable faces as in Russell’s film, but we do get Milton Berle as Paramount head Jesse L. Lasky and Judd Hirsch in more or less the part played by Seymour Cassel in 1977. Besides while the actor’s effeminacy (“finocchio”) is brought up, oddly enough, the boxing match held in order to uphold his manliness is omitted – as is, for that matter, the 2-year sabbatical he took from movie-making after the failure of the expensive THE YOUNG RAJAH (1922; which, regrettably, is currently unavailable for appraisal)!


12/09/11: VALENTINO (Lewis Allen, 1951) **

I had owned a copy of this one, given by a friend (since it features beloved Maltese character actor Joseph Calleia as a dish-washer who, being a paisan, is eventually appointed as Rudolph Valentino’s personal secretary!), but it was messed-up, playing the movie out of order and, when it finally got started, stopping around the half-hour mark!; knowing I would have to watch it as a companion piece to its 1977 namesake movie by the late Ken Russell, I managed to obtain a workable copy in time!

Wartime Hollywood seems to have been stricken with nostalgia for its past entertainment industry (if anything, it made for a sure-fire morale booster), so that we had a rush of biopics (mostly but not all of popular songwriters) and this one about the legendary but short-lived Latin lover continued in this vein. Unsurprisingly, it also upheld the tradition of white-washing its subject so thoroughly that little of the real facts in his life end up on the screen! One beggars the question, “Why bother then?” but, let us not forget that censorship was still in full force at the time and, consequently, the unsavory aspects of these luminaries’ lives were largely kept under wraps especially since, like I said, Hollywood was eager to celebrate its history not expose it!

Columbia returned often to this format – making two of the more durable examples, the Chopin biopic A SONG TO REMEMBER (1945; which I will be checking out presently, since its director Charles Vidor would make another about Liszt, and Russell would too!) and THE JOLSON STORY (1946) though they also turned out the occasional dud, notably THE EDDIE CANTOR STORY (1953) and, coincidentally, the film under review. In comparison to the other two Valentino biopics I watched (the other being the 1975 made-for-TV one starring Franco Nero), this one plays the greatest havoc with the star’s life and career – mind you, it needs to be excused because Valentino’s ex-wife Natacha Rambova was still alive at the time (but not in the 1970s) and, since she had always been accused of being domineering and an altogether negative influence on Valentino, she probably objected to being demonized in the film (after all, Al Jolson’s wife Ruby Keeler had done likewise for his biopic but, in its case, even the man himself was still around!) but, then, there is no Rex Ingram either, or Alla Nazimova, or Jesse L. Lasky – hell, even MGM has been renamed “Metropolitan”, presumably in order to avoid a lawsuit!

For this reason, scriptwriter George Bruce (who usually adapted or concocted swashbucklers for independent producer Edward Small, also engaged here – but, then, Valentino had done his fair share of actioners, so it was all in good faith!) stuck to the rumor that a black-clad woman was seen putting flowers on Valentino’s grave for years afterwards on the anniversary of his death (by the way, this was made a quarter of a century after the star’s passing). However, the way things play out in this version, one would think that Valentino had only one producer (played by Otto Kruger), one director (Richard Carlson), one leading lady (Eleanor Parker, who married her taskmaster even if she really loved her co-star) and one substitute for the latter (Patricia Medina, whom he even eloped with, in order to save face, when the consummation of his great romance would have jeopardized everybody’s career)!

Again, movies are inexplicably (and irritatingly) switched around so that THE SHEIK, made the same year as the original 1921 version of THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE (which had turned him into a star to begin with), comes much later – it is true that Valentino’s last film was a sequel to it but, then, so much is made of the famous rape scene (which, apart from the legendary tango in HORSEMEN, is virtually what the Valentino myth is all about) that the two films cannot possibly be confused (at least, though, this version does incorporate the filming of some of his lesser vehicles rather than concentrate solely on the more recognizable titles)! For the record all three film versions of Valentino’s life depict these iconic moments – but the way Valentino is shown crashing a party here dressed in gaucho garb so as to secure for himself the starring role certainly takes the cake! Unfortunately, the events in Valentino’s life were turned here into exactly the type of melodrama he would have been likely to star in, especially with the overbearing presence of Lloyd Gough as a scoop-seeking reporter!

Incidentally, the film also cheats with respect to how films were shot during the Silent era: it is a well-known fact that, if proficient lip-readers were to be asked to determine what was really being spoken on any given set, they would end up with a litany of foul language…but here we get real dialogue, and terminally banal at that (though it is just as bad to hear Valentino utter the occasional witticism when in the later biopics he would have been more prone to slip agitatedly into Italian)! If anything, Anthony Dexter (albeit wooden) bears the closest resemblance to the real star and, needless to say, his slick-haired gigolo antics are depicted as every other man’s envy rather than suggesting effeminacy. Dexter’s intended star career (this was his official debut) was run into the ground almost instantly with a clutch of lowbrow costumers (though I own and would love to watch Phil Karlson’s THE BRIGAND {1952}, in which Dexter played dual roles) and he also appeared as Christopher Columbus in Irwin Allen’s notoriously misguided all-star charade THE STORY OF MANKIND (1957)!
Edited by Mario Gauci - 12/10/11 at 4:02pm

AWESOME work Mario!
Much appreciated.

RIP Mr Russell, indeed.



"Joshua" -

70's Fred Williamson Western vehicle that has some interesting sequences, some classic 'how the hell did that ever get a PG' moments (a body with a spear through the neck, the fact the plot has a kidnapped woman raped multiple times by different men - even though not shown she does scream a lot and has her clothes ripped - and that it contains dialogue like "I've not had this much fun since I raped my 9 year old Sister"!) and Williamson just oozes black clad coolness.

But the plot is paper thin, the droning, repetitive music drives you mad and for a good half of the film nothing happens except for seemingly endless scenes of men slowly riding along on horseback as said maddening music drones on and on and on.
Fact is, for most of the time, most of the film is achingly dull.
Shame.



"Captain America" -

A rather slow build (far too much time taken to hammer home the fact Steve is a physical wimp but has a mighty heart) leads to some superbly designed, exceptionally well made, big budget action and Superhero hijinks.
A solid cast does well, the baddies look great (Nazi-chic is always an aesthetic winner whether people like to admit it or not!) and there's a good mix of drama and humour.

It sits in the new, unfolding, 'Marvel' movie universe nicely and gets you eager for the (tightrope of a movie for Joss Whedon to walk) upcoming "Avengers".

But it's also a bit dull at times. The slow build, the 40's period ambiance, the polite acting and typical Joe Johnson lack of directing flair make this the least overall dynamic of the 'Avengers' films so far.
Still good though, with some great moments and excellent FX and overall look.

Thanks for reading, Dave...I thought nobody cared about this thread/site anymore!! I still have 3 more Russell reviews to post...which I'll probably get to by tomorrow since it's a National Holiday over here:)!


P.S. I'm glad you've gotten hold of a copy of CUT-THROATS NINE at long last...

While I almost never contribute, I find this thread to be essential reading. The contributors here see way more movies than me so it's great to read their views about a movie that I've haven't seen or never heard of, etc.

12/09/11: WHORE (Ken Russell, 1991) **1/2

Although he continued to work profusely in the medium which gave him his start, this was the last proper theatrical film for Ken Russell until 2002’s semi-amateurish THE FALL OF THE LOUSE OF USHER (which, perhaps unsurprisingly, did become his feature-length swan song for the silver screen); given its theatrical origins as a British play called “Bondage” – written by a former taxi driver and basing it on stories he was told by his own streetwalking customers! – it is not as visually stylized as the movies the director is most renowned – or vilified – for but he still opens it out somewhat by shooting it on location in Los Angeles. Appropriately enough, it stars American actress Theresa Russell (no relation to the director) who, at the time of shooting, was married to Ken’s chief rival for the title of the most visionary British film-maker of his era, Nicolas Roeg who, like Ken, had a penchant for turning pop idols into tentative and temporary film stars!

The seedy world of pimps, prostitutes and "tricks" is right up Ken’s alley and one he had already visited more effectively 7 years previously in one of his most notorious films, CRIMES OF PASSION; tellingly, this more realistic treatment went by almost unnoticed. In fact, Theresa tells her story in flashback and often resorts to interacting with the audience (as it were) by directly speaking to the camera in lengthy monologues. Among the episodes in her past life that are depicted is a marriage to a boozing hunk (hilariously, he comes home one day, when she is almost at the end of her pregnancy and, despite her having diligently prepared his meal, he proceeds to puke into his salad bowl!); earlier on, the first ‘client’ she meets is a puking tramp lying on the pavement and then a colored, perennially barefooted street-performing masochist (played by Antonio Fargas from TV’s STARSKY AND HUTCH) who becomes a recurring presence throughout the film…as does an Indian bike-rider who insists Theresa foregoes the ‘rubber’ if she agrees to take him on as a customer (which, naturally, doom his prospects)!

After much abuse suffered from plying her trade on the streets – getting gangbanged in a van and thanklessly dumped on the pavement, after which she is cared for by a kindly Jack Nance – she is ‘tricked’ [sic] (through the staging of a rescue from a would-be attempted rape inside a car) into employing a seemingly classy but sadistic thug as her pimp (Benjamin Mouton); he takes her out to an elegant dinner (served by an uncredited – and sarcastic – Ken Russell himself!) but, obviously, she is no ‘fair lady’ and proceeds to make an ass of him in front of the other diners. He soon pays her back with dividends by brutishly interrupting the temporary idyll with a friendly dyke into which she had eventually escaped. Like Kathleen Turner’s character in CRIMES OF PASSION before her (incidentally, as an in-joke, a porn movie on the marquee is called “China Blue” – which had actually been the title under which that film was released in Italy!), “Liz” is also into servicing old men: one is a regular inside an old people’s home – with a bunch of nearby resting residents as gleeful ‘witnesses’; the other dies on the ‘job’ – at which point the pimp reappears…but so does Fargas who swiftly saves the day by slitting the latter’s throat!

For the record, the most notable films to revolve exclusively around the milieu of prostitutes are most of Kenji Mizoguchi’s films featuring downtrodden geishas, Federico Fellini’s NIGHTS OF CABIRIA (1957), Jean-Luc Godard’s VIVRE SA VIE (1962) and Luis Bunuel’s BELLE DE JOUR (1967); this is not to say that WHORE in any way ever approaches their level of artistry but, one thing it certainly has that they do not is an amusingly crude and sexist Ska theme tune called “Doing The Bang” sung over the opening and closing credits by an anonymous band called Fascinating Force! By the way, for this viewing I again had to acquire at the very last minute a superior copy to the one I had originally owned (since the latter was evidently edited – running 78 minutes against its official length of 85) and, for what it is worth, the film is also available in one full segment on “You Tube”!


12/10/11: CRIMES OF PASSION [Unrated Version] (Ken Russell, 1984) ***

I recall watching this film’s theatrical trailer (retitled CHINA BLUE, after the protagonist’s pseudonym) on a daily “Forthcoming Attractions” programme on Italian TV; back then, it seemed to me like the ne-plus-ultra of celluloid sleaze and, in fact, even the official U.S. theatrical trailer (tacked on at the end of the copy I watched) dubs it “the most talked about picture of the year”! Besides, it was also shown as a midnight screening on U.K.’s “Bravo” channel in the mid-1990s but I had missed that…even if, in all probability, they would have screened only a much-edited print anyway! Since I had acquired a copy of the film some time ago which did not include Ken Russell’s audio commentary, I managed to get hold of another one which did in time for this viewing; unfortunately, this ‘upgrade’ was accompanied by intermittent jerkiness in the picture which I have not encountered in similarly sourced titles in quite a while!

While Russell (predictably) does indeed pile on the erotic content and handles the material stylishly as befits the role-playing themes running throughout, thankfully the film is visually less dizzying than those he made during his 1970s heyday; in fact, it is somewhat surprising to find here two actually good performances by Kathleen Turner and Anthony Perkins (as her seriously disturbed savior/stalker), two sympathetic ‘heroes’ (in the shape of married couple John Laughlin and Annie Potts) and an interesting electronic score by Rick Wakeman (formerly of prog-rock band Yes and best-selling solo artist in his own right) that is sarcastically based on Dvorak’s “New World Symphony” as a dig towards its very production company, i.e. Roger Corman’s New World Pictures – complete with an amusing mock-video, in which Wakeman also appears, of Maggie Bell’s recurring “It’s A Lovely Life” tune! Ironically enough, the film’s funniest and campiest moment is provided not by one of China Blue’s charades (which includes posing as a “T-W-A-tea” air hostess!) but a joke played by Laughlin on his houseguests during a supposedly wholesome All-American barbecue: dressing up as an “HP” – Human Penis – with external balls attached to his feet and spewing white liquid from his mouth, all set to Richard Strauss’ “Thus Spake Zarathustra” (which, needless to say, had already featured in Russell’s own banned 1970 TV biopic of the German composer, DANCE OF THE SEVEN VEILS and was here clearly satirizing Stanley Kubrick’s iconic use of it in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY)!! Speaking of Kubrick, the very last line of CRIMES OF PASSION (delivered by Laughlin straight to camera) anticipates the equally crude one that closes EYES WIDE SHUT (1999) and, by extension, his celebrated film career.

The duality in Turner’s character – a classy fashion designer by day and a kinky hooker by night – reminded me of a book I had read earlier this year (that I borrowed from a dear female friend of mine), being the memoirs of a real-life British mother who moonlighted as an escort while doing a secretarial job during the day-time; besides, a similar case made the headlines recently when an British scientist was also revealed to be working as a high-class prostitute under the alias of “Belle De Jour” – not coincidentally, the quintessential cinematic treatment of ‘the oldest profession’! Turner’s first appearance has her dressed as the Statue of Liberty with legs spread wide apart and a customer’s face stuck between them as she spouts patriotic trivialities(!); Laughlin’s, then, is at a sex therapy session in which he insists that nothing is wrong with his marriage and that he is merely there to accompany recently separated buddy Bruce Davison – however, he goes into a rant the minute his own marriage is debated!; Perkins’ seedy preacher is first seen inside a booth constantly sniffing some illicit substance and peeping onto the pathetic naked gyrations of a skinny dancer!

Among Turner’s customers are a masochistic police officer – in, probably, the film’s most disturbing scene and the one most redolent of prime Russell in the way it was shot and its obvious intention to shock; a married couple who ‘abduct’ her off the streets into their limousine but keep discussing their marketing strategies even as they are having their way with her; and hired by the wife of a moribund man, played by Gerald S. O'Loughlin, to be with him for a final fling (as a going away present, perhaps?) – an episode which moves her enough to have her shed her costume (an appropriately blue dress and a blonde wig) and identity at night for the first time. In fact, Laughlin ‘meets’ Turner when he is engaged by a businessman friend to spy on her since he suspects her of industrial espionage; even after Turner is cleared, Laughlin is in too deep and still keeps following her around, becomes her client and (eventually) lover, leaving his wife for her. On his part, Perkins had periodically tried to employ Turner’s services (to her constant contemptuous rejection including when dressed up as a nun and inspecting ‘the tools of the trade’ he carries around with him in a bag) until he manages to insinuate himself in her apartment – complete with his favorite toy: a razor-sharp vibrator with which he intends to bludgeon her to death but, ironically, it ends up his own comeuppance, dressed in her full “China Blue” regalia in a clear nod towards Perkins’ most famous movie role i.e. Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO (1960)…but not before he had tied Turner to a table and sang Judy Garland’s Christian-tinged “Get Happy” number from SUMMER STOCK (1950) to her on the piano!!

Finally, the film exists in three distinct versions: the 101-minute “Theatrical” one prepared for U.S. general consumption (rated ** by Leonard Maltin), the “R-rated” 107-minute one that garnered a *½ from Roger Ebert and the “Unrated” 112 minutes which made the rounds in Europe and is the one that was eventually released by Anchor Bay and R2 DVD. The former edition, apart from the aforementioned Audio Commentary, also includes 6 deleted scenes totaling 15½ minutes of footage which, unfortunately, were unavailable to me for viewing and reviewing. Still, according to the recorded chat between Russell (who, we are told, leaves halfway through to catch a flight back to London!) and writer-producer Barry Sandler, it is revealed that the second therapy sequence was added only after a preview screening to satisfactorily wrap up the story and that Perkins’ character was originally to have been first a shoemaker and then a film buff psychiatrist before the actor himself suggested they make him a reverend (which is quite telling given that Perkins would really be ordained a minister a few years later). Besides, according to the IMDb, Kathleen Turner won 2 acting awards for her brave performance here and that Cher was also considered for the role at one point; on the other hand, first choice Jeff Bridges left after a salary dispute and future stars Alec Baldwin and Patrick Swayze were subsequently up for the male lead!
Edited by Mario Gauci - 12/13/11 at 12:21pm

12/11/11: LISZTOMANIA (Ken Russell, 1975) **1/2

To begin with, 2011 marks the 200th anniversary of Hungarian composer Franz Liszt’s birth, and I had entertained the idea of watching LISZTOMANIA earlier this year for that very purpose; however, I hardly expected it to really follow so soon, in the wake of Ken Russell’s demise! Anyway, this was the most notorious among the controversial director’s host of classical musical biopics for the big-screen, and the film where he was pretty much given up by the commercial cinema. In essence, it is his most outlandish, undisciplined and bizarre venture and, in retrospect, the least achievement in this vein – though far from his artistic nadir, mind you (to be sure, I enjoyed it rather more than I had anticipated!).

The fact was that, by relying on pop/rock music performers for the lead roles of Liszt and fellow musician Richard Wagner, he rather scuttled his chances of doing something more substantial. The earlier THE MUSIC LOVERS (1970), about Tchaikovsky, and MAHLER (1974), at least, featured a narrative that could be followed amidst the expected flights of fancy; even so, in the accompanying Audio Commentary, Russell immediately stated that his intention was to make a satire here, having already approached so many of these in a straightforward fashion! Roger Daltrey, lead singer of The Who, was retained by Russell from his previous work – the highly successful (and Oscar-nominated) 1975 filmization of the rock-opera TOMMY by The Who’s Pete Townshend (originally released as a Double Album in 1969). Apparently, Daltrey looked quite a bit like Liszt (which, I guess, excused this particular casting choice!) but, while he would be up for a Golden Globe award thanks to TOMMY itself, his work here is less impressive because, even if he was playing a real-life figure, the star is utilized merely as a fabric around which Russell could weave his increasingly eccentric (and tasteless) fantasia! The director says he had intended the film as a follow-up to TOMMY all along, to be savored by its legion of fans…but readily admits that the style was perhaps too extreme for it to be appreciated to the same extent!

Given Daltrey’s arena-performing stature, Russell staged Liszt’s musical pieces very much like rock concerts – complete with screaming fans; while The Who frontman was not familiar with the composer’s work beforehand, he soon learned to play it on the piano (to Russell’s delight) and, happily, this also seemed to lend itself well to a modern (i.e. pop) arrangement with newly-minted lyrics from Daltrey and others! Incidentally, Daltrey’s movie career would continue fitfully thereafter, with a brief role in the horror film THE LEGACY (1978), the lead in the gangster biopic McVICAR (1980), and even the starring role in a TV version of THE BEGGAR’S OPERA (1983). Towards the beginning, we get a scene where Liszt meets several of his contemporaries, but during which his behavior towards them is far from gracious – for instance, replying to Brahms’ greeting with a “Piss Off!”; another character to appear is Lola Montez (played by Anulka from the cult erotic horror VAMPYRES {1974}!), but Richard Wagner is also first seen here (dressed in a Russian sailor’s outfit as a means of externalizing his revolutionary ideals).

Paul Nicholas is Wagner, who was a pupil and, subsequently, a rival of Liszt; he is played as an out-and-out villain (the Pope even describes him as the Anti-Christ at one point!) who, not only seduces one of Liszt’s daughters but, growing ever more unhinged, is revealed as first a vampire(!) and later a Nietszchean mad scientist, eventually unleashing a shooting-guitar-sporting Frankenstein monster dressed-up as Hitler (after a Thor prototype had proven unreliable)!! On a personal note, I recently acquired 2 biopics of his own i.e. MAGIC FIRE (1955; in which he is played by Alan Badel) – that is to say, the inevitable “Hollywood” rendition – and the star-studded TV mini-series WAGNER (1983; with Richard Burton in the lead). Anyway, Nicholas himself was featured in a number of musicals of the era: STARDUST (1974; with David Essex), TOMMY itself, SGT. PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND (1978) – the disastrous all-star movie transposition of The Beatles’ seminal album, and THE JAZZ SINGER (1980; starring Neil Diamond).

Apart from the two leads, we get a couple more pop/rock stars in ex-Beatle Ringo Starr (undeniably amusing as the Pope, whose costume is ‘fitted’ with celluloid stills of movie-people who influenced the director over the years – including Laurel & Hardy! – just as Daltrey’s own suit in an earlier scene had prominently displayed piano keys!) and Rick Wakeman (a member of the Prog-Rock band Yes who later went solo: here, he also contributed to the soundtrack and played both of Wagner’s creations i.e. a belching, pissing Thor and the Frankenstein Monster; for the record, he would be re-united with Russell on CRIMES OF PASSION {1984}, which actually preceded this viewing). The rest of the cast, then, includes Fiona Lewis (as Liszt’s companion and mother of his children), Aubrey Morris (in a bit part early on) and Nell Campbell (from the contemporaneous THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW as another of Liszt’s conquests), as well as numerous alumni from Russell’s past work: John Justin (as Lewis’ foppish husband), Murray Melvin (as Berlioz), Kenneth Colley (as Chopin: incidentally, this was followed by a viewing of his own Hollywood biopic A SONG TO REMEMBER {1945, in which Liszt himself plays a significant part!), Andrew Faulds (as Johann Strauss), Georgina Hale and even an uncredited Oliver Reed as a palace servant!

Among the film’s indelible moments are: the comical swordfight between Daltrey and Justin; the following scene (straight out of a “Tom & Jerry” cartoon!) in which the latter first straps Daltrey and Lewis inside the piano and plays it like a maniac and, then, has his men place the piano on the railway tracks to be crushed by an oncoming engine!; Daltrey and Lewis’ life together, depicted in the manner of a Chaplin pastiche, with Lizt in full “Little Tramp” costume and Hitlerian moustache!; the “phallic overtones” (to quote Russell himself) in the set design of the court of a Countess Liszt calls upon, and where she tries to emasculate the womanizing composer (his notorious exploits having being ostensibly published in book-form by Lewis under the title “Lisztomania”!) via guillotine: here, we also get in-joke appearances – in iconographic form! – by Daltrey’s fellow The Who member Townshend and contemporaneous rocker Elton John, who was himself featured for one song in TOMMY and was almost in Russell’s D.H. Lawrence adaptation of THE RAINBOW {1989}!)

The extended climax (set in Wagner’s castle) begins with the clichéd (but hilarious, under the circumstances) view of frightened villagers when Liszt asks them directions; incidentally, Liszt had taken monastic vows and was hereby sent by the Pope to exorcise Wagner: however, despite giving him holy water to drink, the villain is eventually killed via a generous dose of Liszt’s own music (which Wagner has come to hate) played by the composer himself on a piano-cum-cannon which literally brings the house down on his nemesis (at which, having fallen under Wagner’s spell, Liszt’s daughter – played by Veronica Qulligan – torments Daltrey by way of a voodoo doll)! Prior to all of this, we had seen Nicholas’ major rock performance, which evokes the Biff character (whose make-up and motions had also emulated the Frankenstein Monster!) from Brian De Palma’s own stylized rock-opera PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE (1974). Here, too, we have a brood of Hitler Youth at Wagner’s feet, perversely replacing the sign of the cross with a swastika (all predictably accompanied by the familiar strains of Wagner’s “Ride Of The Valkyrie”)! The film, then, ends with Liszt going up to Heaven where he is reunited with his entire family and serenely sits playing the harp (whether intentionally or not, Daltrey’s natural curls immediately associate him with Harpo Marx!), followed by a spoof on the Flash Gordon comic-strip/serials (they all take off in a spaceship!), and with the whole capped by 2 minutes of “Exit Music”.

By the way, I am not sure from where Russell’s sporadic Audio Commentary was culled (probably an earlier Laserdisc edition?) since the recently-released R2 DVD was a virtually bare-bones affair. As has been the cases with a number of other Russell films, I acquired this more than once in a brief span of time – in its case, a DVD-R which I had actually tried to watch at one point but wound up aborting the viewing after only a couple of minutes because the disc kept ‘skipping’! Ultimately, I should mention that this viewing is to be augmented by (and compared with) SONG WITHOUT END (1960), the more typically romanticized Hollywood view of the same composer’s life, loves and work and in which Liszt was played by Dirk Bogarde.


12/11/11: A SONG TO REMEMBER (Charles Vidor, 1945) ***

I am kind of ambivalent about watching classic Hollywood biopics: though I enjoy the evident professionalism at work, most of the time the backstories are almost complete fabrications and bear little resemblance to its subject’s life! This one (emanating from Columbia and dealing with Polish composer Frederic Chopin), then, proved such a box-office smash that it spawned a whole series of pictures about the lives of famous composers – even so, 7 years previously, MGM had already done a sterling job on THE GREAT WALTZ (a biopic about Johann Strauss); indeed, the trend kept on intermittently through 1972 and, probably unintentionally, actually came full-circle with a remake of THE GREAT WALTZ!

As I said, A SONG TO REMEMBER captured both the critics’ (copping 6 Oscar nominations, including one to Cornel Wilde for Best Actor, though it eventually went home empty-handed) and public’s fancy – the latter due, in no small measure, to its patriotic zeal (do not forget, WWII was still waging when this emerged). That said, the film’s lack of fidelity to the facts (filtered with such potentially risible moments as the as-yet-unknown hero playing proficiently at a soiree’ in a darkened room, then being revealed for who he is to the astonishment of one and all, by way of a candelabra: incidentally, this scene is said to have inspired Liberace’s own flamboyant stage act!), Paul Muni’s overstated performance as his teacher Professor Joseph Elsner, and also the unusual – albeit entirely authentic – depiction of Chopin’s lover (played by Merle Oberon) sporting both a male name and clothing, has rendered the film pretty much a camp classic.

Consequently, its reputation has taken a beating with the passage of time – with this in mind, it was only released on R1 DVD (and without much fan-fare to boot) last year; by that time, I had already acquired a copy through ulterior sources, presumably derived from VHS (resulting in slightly washed-out colors, certainly in comparison to screen-grabs I have seen from the DVD edition)! However, to put things into perspective, in no way does A SONG TO REMEMBER really deserve this treatment; if anything, I was more impressed with Muni’s performance (who mugged no worse than in his heyday, when he was himself playing famous historical figures and collecting various accolades for them!) than Wilde’s glum and rather stiff Chopin (though this latter quality actually stood him in good stead during the climax when he literally played himself to death – incidentally, the star ‘mimicked’ throughout to Jose’ Iturbi on the piano – for the Polish cause…and there goes another untruth and genuinely over-the-top sequence!). On a personal note, I own all but 3 of Muni’s 22 films (though have actually only watched 9 thus far!) – his first two, THE VALIANT (which is scheduled for a TCM screening in a couple of days’ time!) and the presumed-lost SEVEN FACES (both 1929), and the inexplicably ultra-rare THE WOMAN I LOVE (1937).

As for Oberon (perhaps still best-known as the wife of British movie-mogul Alexander Korda, whom she actually divorced a few months after the film under review was released!), in the role of the controlling George Sand (thus echoing the Rudolph Valentino/Natacha Rambova relationship in 3 biopics I have just watched on the Latin Lover prototype!), this was her most popular Hollywood effort since that other tragic romance – namely the William Wyler version of Emily Bronte’s WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1939). The supporting cast, then, includes Columbia contract players Nina Foch (as Chopin’s Polish girlfriend) and George Macready (as author Alfred De Musset; an unfamiliar name to me but, apparently, one of his plays supplied the inspiration for Jean Renoir’s masterpiece LA REGLE DU JEU {1939}!), reliable character actors George Coulouris (as Chopin’s publisher), Ian Wolfe (as the latter’s clerk), Howard Freeman (as a music critic whom Muni insults over his failure to recognize Chopin’s genius), and even a debuting Darren McGavin (whom I failed to recognize as a music student!).

By the way, I watched A SONG TO REMEMBER (unsurprisingly, the title is meaningless!) in conjunction with a tribute to the late controversial director Ken Russell, who made several films for both TV and the cinema about great classical composers – though, oddly enough, not one specifically about Chopin himself; in fact, he was briefly featured in his idiosyncratic LISZTOMANIA (1975), which actually preceded this viewing…while, here, that film’s subject i.e. Franz Liszt has been given a sizeable part (played by Stephen Bekassy)! Speaking of Liszt, the director of this one would be assigned to a traditional Hollywood biopic on his life – SONG WITHOUT END (1960) – but, unfortunately, he died early during production (with George Cukor stepping in to complete the movie)! For the reccord, their is another Chopin biopic I am interested in checking out – Polish film-maker Andrzej Zulawski's German production THE BLUE NOTE (1991) – which promises to be as hysterical as any of Ken Russell's biopics of famous composers...but, alas, I have not yet managed to locate an English-friendly copy!


12/13/11: SONG WITHOUT END – THE STORY OF FRANZ LISZT (Charles Vidor and George Cukor, 1960) **1/2

Film critic David Thomson in his inestimable tome “A Biographical Dictionary Of The Cinema” wrote that Vidor went into this picture as if it were his very next assignment after the director’s other musical biopic of a famed classical composer, A SONG TO REMEMBER (1945), about Frederic Chopin. Incidentally, since the latter and the subject of this one – Franz Liszt – were friends, each figure assumes a supporting role in the other movie (but, while Liszt is shown as already established when Chopin was starting out, in SONG WITHOUT END, it appears that it is Chopin who is the one to ‘help out’ in Liszt’s re-establishment: oddly enough, despite its hefty running-time, the film begins with the composer already past his prime, at least as a concert pianist!). To get back to Thomson, one would think that his statement intimated that SONG WITHOUT END was thoroughly old-fashioned and that it was primarily intended as ‘family entertainment’ (which the Chopin biopic essentially was), but he has not taken in consideration how much the cinema had matured in the intervening 15 years and, indeed, the Liszt film incorporates – with reasonable sensitivity – such previously problematic subjects as adultery (the relationship having also borne illegitimate children), divorce (which when not accorded by the Czar, has the lovers seek an annulment directly from the Vatican!) and philandering (Liszt is shown being involved with 2 different women, both married at the time of their liaison with the composer). Another ‘big’ theme here is religious faith, which the protagonist often found himself in conflict with, but which he eventually fully embraced (going so far as to take monastic vows)…though the script presents it very much as a last resort!

Also tying the two SONGs together is the fact that they were both directed by the same man, Charles Vidor (who, like Liszt himself, was Hungarian) – however, as Fate would have it, he died of a heart attack relatively early during production, albeit retaining sole credit (with his successor, George Cukor, being merely thanked for his “generous contribution” in the credits)! Similarly, though Cukor had original cinematographer James Wong Howe replaced with Charles Lang, the latter’s contribution is not acknowledged! Incidentally, there is a very similar scene here to the one which I forgot to mention in my write-up on A SONG TO REMEMBER in which Chopin walked out of a private performance, while various upper-crust figures are dining, when a hated General (in charge of quashing the revolt which the composer fervently, but clandestinely, supports) enters the hall, after which he is forced to flee his native country – in this case, Liszt is playing before the Czar who, not only turns up late but he keeps discussing matters of state during the performance, by which behavior the pianist feels insulted and quits in disgust, causing the oblivious yet baffled ruler to query, “What ails the man?”

Anyway, with respect to the narrative, the film can be divided into three parts: Liszt’s revitalized touring career, his domestic/romantic life, and the rather short period (at least, as depicted here!) as a composer. The first 2 angles, in fact, are covered in great detail (resulting in innumerable, virtually interchangeable, musical performances and reel upon reel of tenderness alternating with histrionics!) – when, really, a biopic about one of the great composers should be mainly concerned with demonstrating us just how talented he was at creating music! Having just watched Ken Russell’s vulgarization of Liszt’s life and works in LISZTOMANIA (1975), where he is seen being adulated by the crowds as if he was a modern pop star (that said, the character was being played by one there!), it is interesting that Russell had stated during the accompanying Audio Commentary that Liszt was perhaps the very first to connect in this way with audiences – and, to be sure, here we get Liszt not only repeatedly cheering the people who gathered outside his window but being literally mobbed by fans, with even one teenage girl giddily swiping the traditional white gloves which he has left behind lying on the floor!

Incidentally, I had intended checking this out the day before as a companion piece to both LISZTOMANIA and A SONG TO REMEMBER, but I had to forego that decision until I acquired this gorgeous-looking print since the one I originally had was extremely hazy and it was displayed in the wrong Aspect Ratio to boot! By the way, while I was also disappointed that it ran for a mere 125 minutes (when the complete version lasts as long as 142!), the one I did get to watch was still just 130 minutes in duration (so I have to assume that the discrepancy between this and the previous copy was the different frame-rate between PAL and NTSC, and that the “uncut” print was a “Roadshow Version” that featured “Overture”, “Intermission”, “Entr’ Acte” and “Exit” music!). By the way, about 14 years ago, this was a staple on local Cable TV but I somehow never got around to watching it, or even taping the film for future viewing, but my twin brother had in fact starting watching it at one time when he was on ‘sick leave’ from work…but the doctor came around to visit him half-way through the broadcast and, consequently, he had to abort the viewing!

At this point, I guess, I should mention that Liszt here is played by Dirk Bogarde, then on the verge of his major career phase: though he looks nothing like the renowned composer, the actor brings a lot of emotions to the role and he was rewarded with a Golden Globe nomination (albeit in the Comedy/Musical category, which is subsequently often overlooked at the Oscars – though the picture did win the award for Best Scoring Of A Musical!). His leading ladies are Capucine (her English-speaking debut was also honored at the Golden Globes – as was, for that matter, the film itself) as the Princess who gives up her position and properties to be with the man she loves (not that she gets her way in the long run!), and Genevieve Page (who actually gives the better performance and, coincidentally, today marks her 84th birthday!) as another woman of title, a Countess, whose behavior was deemed less than noble and whom Liszt himself eventually turns his back on. Supporting them are: Martita Hunt (another terrific performance as the Czar’s spirited Grand Duchess sister), Ivan Desny (as Capucine’s husband), Lou Jacobi (as Liszt’s “eternally devoted” manager), Alexander Davion (as Chopin), Patricia Morison (as his scandalous partner George Sand – dubbed by Anna Lee because her voice was deemed too feminine!), Lyndon Brook (as another famed composer, Richard Wagner, whom Liszt championed and whose own Hollywood biopic – MAGIC FIRE {1955} – is to follow), Marcel Dalio (in a blink-and-you-will-miss-him part as the Head Of Culture at the Russian court!), Walter Rilla (as the Archbishop who declines to condone Capucine’s divorce proceedings) and Abraham Sofaer (as the Papal Emissary who brings the central couple disheartening news regarding the hoped-for annulment – though, in all fairness, it appears that the Princess brought it upon herself because she had lied about her consort in an attempt to elicit sympathy to her cause!).

In the end, I admit to not being much of a connoisseur of classical music. However, I instantly recognized a couple of pieces from their inspired use in other films: the “2nd Hungarian Rhapsody” in both the classic “Looney Tunes/Bugs Bunny” cartoon RHAPSODY RABBIT (1946) and the Oscar-winning “Tom & Jerry” one THE CAT CONCERTO (1947), and “Un Sospiro” in Max Ophuls’ masterpiece LETTER FROM AN UKNOWN WOMAN (1948)!

"Nightmare" (aka "Nightmare in a Damaged Brain") - .5

Full review/stills - http://www.beardyfreak.com/rvnightmarebrain.php


When released onto VHS in the UK this movie quickly became caught up in the infamous Video Nasties scare that hit Britain in the early 80’s.
It was the only film on the Nasties list that actually got a distributor sent to prison!

The unfortunate who got sent down was Exploitation entrepreneur David Hamilton Grant, who ran the ‘World of Video 2000’ label.
Found guilty of releasing ‘Obscene’ material he served 12 months in prison and his company was liquidated.

Grant would later end up in Cyprus where he was deported for assaulted a man with a spade and was also accused (never proven) of drug running and ‘corrupting children’.
He was found dead under mysterious circumstances in 1991, perhaps the victim of a contract killing!


Why all that background dear reader?
Well, because quite frankly that story is sadly more interesting than the film itself.
No that there aren’t interesting nuggets of gore, sleaze and general weirdness to be found in the movie’s main chunk of tedium.

From the start we are certainly offered up something not quite the norm.
An amazingly disjointed opening shows us that "Nightmare" owes more to 70’s Grindhouse Exploitation Psycho flicks than any typical 80’s Slasher fare.

Trash hounds will welcome the few shots of 80’s New York at this early point, as marquee cinemas hawk their filthy wares and sex joints beckon punters in with twinkling, dirt caked, light bulbs, and hopes are high for some prime grime to come.

Hopes are raised even higher during a great peep show sequence where our sweaty, bug-eyed, psycho George pants away at a stripper before being given a private vibrator show where he literally convulses on the floor in an orgasmic, mouth frothing, fit.
This is what we want! Insanity, sleaze, grime and a cloying atmosphere of social and mental decay.

The first 20 minutes features very little dialogue and it's 30 minutes in until we get a grasp on any other main characters.
This almost surrealist approach to plot structure and progression adds a very strange feel to the movie.

Thankfully George carries out his first kill about now and it’s a solid, old school, FX joy.
The kill is a pretty effective throat slitting that is then coated with nasty sexual layers as the killer rams his knife into the woman’s belly with obvious sexual satisfaction. This owes much to “Maniac”.

So far so damn good. But then it all goes horribly wrong.
After this first half hour of brain abusing madness and sleazy nastiness “Nightmare” starts to seriously tread water a shrieking dysfunctional family for what seems like forever and watch George randomly stand around in random places doing very little indeed.
After that first kill we have to wait till over an hour into the film for the next one and then it happens off-screen!

It's genuinely bizarre though how much the film slows down after the mad first third. The plot simply stops dead.
Even the gory flashbacks/visions vanish and we are left with people walking around aimlessly with nothing exciting (let alone gory or violent) happening for a good 40 minutes!

Thankfully...Praise the Gods thankfully…at the 80 (yes, 80) minute mark the film remembers it's about a psycho killer and we actually have some killing.
It remembers it once had gore in it too and the finale sure doesn’t let us down in this respect.
It's blood drenched, FX heavy, nasty wound glorifying, grimy greatness!
Again those classic 80’s practical FX deliver much spraying, pouring blood, gaping holes in flesh and flying heads.
Its exactly what you expect from a film dubbed ‘Nasty’.

So overall then when “Nightmare” is being a weird, sleazy, nasty, Slasher/Psycho flick and delivering solid grime and horror set-pieces it’s genuinely excellent.
Sadly it only spends about 45 minutes, out of its 98, actually being those things.
For the rest of the time it simply follows around characters that end up having little or nothing to do with how the film eventually plays out, has its killer literally stand around doing absolutely nothing.

A shame really. As with a leaner more eventful screenplay this could easily be one of the true, last hoorah, Grindhouse flicks (like “Maniac” it apes so much) as it has all the essential ingredients.
Sadly though such marvelous moments are lost in a tedious swampy, stodgy, disappointment of a movie overall.
Still worth a look for the gore/sleaze, as well as for its ‘Video Nasty’ history.

12/13/11: MAGIC FIRE {General Release Version} (William Dieterle, 1955) **1/2

As an off-shoot of the Ken Russell tribute I just concluded, I have decided to watch a handful of films inspired by the lives of the great classical composers (about which Russell himself had made his fair share for both the small and big screen). This one, in fact, deals with Richard Wagner (who was actually featured in Russell’s LISZTOMANIA {1975}, as well as SONG WITHOUT END – THE STORY OF FRANZ LISZT {1960}, which had followed it): indeed, Liszt has a major part here himself (played, rather dully, by Carlos Thompson). As Wagner, then, Alan Badel is excellent – persuasively conveying his passion for music (which broke most of the established rules and evoked a power seldom felt before): this is described as “magic fire”, into which a variety of women get caught along the way. These are Yvonne De Carlo (as his first spouse and, despite receiving top billing, emerging as the least effective!), Valentina Cortese (as the wife of a man, Peter Cushing{!}, to whom he went seeking shelter from a failed coup d’etat against the monarchy: she inspires him to write “Tristan And Isolde” but their relationship secures both the end of Wagner’s marriage and his sanctuary!) and Rita Gam (as Liszt’s daughter, Cosima, who takes up with – and eventually marries – Wagner against her father’s wishes…especially since the latter has forsaken his career, and the celebrity that goes with it, for a monk’s habit!). Trivia note: here we have the momentous meeting of Hammer’s Baron Frankenstein (Cushing) and Lily Munster (De Carlo) from TV’s modernized Frankenstein spoof “The Munsters” – of course, before they would become known for those roles!

Typically, we first see Wagner as a struggling composer, ending up behind bars for failing to reimburse his creditors; this is, however, later supplanted by a life of luxury – which the now-pious Liszt takes him to task for (especially the dandy-ish look); the two eventually make up when Liszt is so moved upon hearing Wagner’s new work that he joins him at the piano! Even so, Wagner’s humanity is still evidenced by his love of dogs – berating De Carlo for having abandoned one and a maidservant for feeding another leftovers! Though early on, a performance of one of his Operas is disrupted by some rather over-age upper-crust revelers and he is constantly undermined in his work by the royal cultural advisor Frederick Valk – especially over money spent on building a modern Opera house in a time of war (as it happens, locally we have a similar debate over the erection of a new Parliament in view of the precarious state of the economy all across Europe!), Wagner enjoys the patronage of Ludwig II – the famous German King who subsequently went mad: for the record, I own as many as 3 films about him, 2 made in Germany (the first in 1930 by and with Dieterle himself{!}, and the second in 1955 by Helmut Kautner) and the last in Italy (in 1972 by Luchino Visconti, this one running a daunting 4 hours!).

Incidentally, at just 94 minutes, the film cannot hope to encompass the complexities of Wagner’s works, life and times; that said, the original running-time of this one was reportedly 2½ hours (including some 50 straight minutes of Opera!), then it was trimmed to 125 minutes (which was the version utilized for the accompanying soundtrack LP – yes, that practice dates at least this far back!), before being whittled down further to the current length! As it stands, the narrative – particularly in its second half – comes across as quite muddled if one is not familiar with the composer’s back-story: as for myself, having watched the afore-mentioned biopics, I was able to join the dots, as it were! With respect to the music itself, a number of Wagner’s more famous pieces are cited here though, not being a fan of Opera, I was disappointed that many of them are presented solely in this form (when, for instance, “Ride Of The Valkyrie” – perhaps his most recognizable opus, totaling some 15 hours, of which we only hear a 4-minute montage! – has often turned up in movies as underscoring to exciting action sequences!). However, “Tristan And Isolde” is heard literally as it was being conceived, with the composer seemingly overcome by his own genius via gestures which – oddly enough – mimic exactly those of a character in Luis Bunuel’s L’AGE D’OR (1930), who breaks down while conducting this very piece at a private upper-class concert!

By the way, though obviously made on a low-budget (produced by the “Poverty Row” company Republic Pictures and shot in the second-rate process Trucolor, albeit on actual locations – which proves a definite asset), MAGIC FIRE was evidently a labor of love for a number of its principal contributors (being co-nationals of Wagner), even if all of them were way past their prime by this stage i.e. producer/director Dieterle (who, in the late 1930s/early 1940s, had been Hollywood’s pre-eminent ‘biographer’), co-writer E.A. Dupont and composer/music arranger Erich Wolfgang Korngold Korngold (who, in his last film, also managed to appear in his element on the screen i.e. as an orchestra conductor, though only when the actor scheduled for the part failed to turn up and at Dieterle’s insistence!). While undeniably interesting, much like SONG WITHOUT END (incidentally, in both we find the meaningful gesturing of closing the piano – here, signifying Wagner’s death, and Liszt’s decision to abandon his concert-giving career in the later film), a lot of the running-time is devoted to Wagner’s romantic vicissitudes (with Cortese good but not really believable as the woman for whom the composer loses his head, though Gam is impressive) and, as I said, operatic performances (whose lyrics I can never make out through the high-pitched singing!). With this in mind, I guess that, in order to get the bigger picture, one needs to get hold of one the longer versions or, better still, go through the 5-hour TV mini-series WAGNER (1983) – boasting an all-star cast headed by Richard Burton – which I also own but cannot possibly squeeze in the generally lightweight schedule I usually prepare for this time of year…


12/16/11: PAGANINI (Klaus Kinski, 1989) *1/2

Having appeared briefly in A SONG TO REMEMBER (1945), the Hollywood film about Frederic Chopin, I thought of watching this radical take on the life of Niccolo` Paganini (his own mainstream biopic came courtesy of the British THE MAGIC BOW {1946}, starring Stewart Granger). Anyway, this notorious film proved not only Kinski’s sole directorial effort but his swan-song. By this time, he had proven so difficult that nobody wanted to employ him – the film’s producer, Augusto Caminito, was apparently one of the few who could reason with him and, in fact, apart from helming the little-seen GRANDI CACCIATORI (1988; co-starring Harvey Keitel), he would replace Mario Caiano after the latter threw in the towel and abandoned VAMPIRE IN VENICE (1988)! Those two films were nothing to write home about, but they feel like real cinema, whereas this is an incoherent mess of a softcore home movie! Apparently, Kinski identified with violinist Paganini (who here is repeatedly described as a crippled monster yet women shamelessly lust for him!) because of their parallel lives – both being misunderstood geniuses with a voracious sexual appetite (of course, the fact that Kinski saw himself like that speaks volumes about the size of his ego)...to the point that the film is generally referred to as KINSKI PAGANINI!

Incidentally, the version I watched (where Kinski delivers his own lines in soft-spoken but heavily-accented Italian, despite being ostensibly a local!) ran just 81 minutes, which is how it was released theatrically (edited from a reportedly 12-hour TV mini-series!). Why the film was given a manic, haphazard pace (there is no plot to speak of here, as if we were only intended to catch a cursory glimpse of Paganini’s backstory, which basically resolves itself in a succession of carriage-rides anyway!) when it could have been extended to, say, 2 hours with a proper beginning, middle and end, is beyond me – but, then, it would probably not have been worthy of attention, except that, as it stands now and the way I see it, it only elicits contempt! I know of Kinski’s reputation (the Italian “Stracult” TV program even showed scenes of him going apeshit during the shooting of this very film, its subsequent press conference and other Italian movies he worked on) but this had never interfered with my appreciation of his undeniable acting talent. Here, however, by assuming complete control (after his frequent director Werner Herzog turned him down flat, which soured their relationship even more than it already was!), one can only place the film’s shortcomings at his door. For the record, a recent German DVD edition unearthed a “Director’s Cut” of PAGANINI running 95 minutes, which suggests that Kinski always knew he would end up with merely the skeleton of the original version – indeed, on the afore-mentioned program, Kinski is seen wildly operating the camera himself, and no amount of post-production tweaking can adjust a shot that is badly-framed, out-of-focus or underexposed…but, as I said, more judicious editing – rather than relying solely on instinct – could have improved the overall quality or, at least, allowed the viewer to care about what he was being asked to watch!

Needless to say, the film ends up giving Arthouse cinema a bad name, not just because of its ungainly approach but mainly because it cannibalizes other film-makers without ever hoping to match their dexterity: apart from the fragmented structure a` la Nicolas Roeg (down to Paganini’s son rushing to and aching over him in slow-motion at the moment of the violinist’s death, in a reverse situation to the one at the start of DON’T LOOK NOW {1973}) and its being shot by utilizing only natural light (in clear imitation of Stanley Kubrick’s BARRY LYNDON {1975}), we also get an irrelevant horse-mating scene (to go along with shots of Dalila Di Lazzaro pleasuring herself whilst thinking of Maestro Paganini!) lifted outright from Walerian Borowczyk’s similarly smutty but far more considerable – and rewarding – THE BEAST (1975)! Incidentally, the film co-stars two of Kinski’s family members: his last wife, Debora Caprioglio (billed Kinski), and his son Nikolai Kinski. While the former is not given much to do (especially since she has to share Paganini with so many other adulating women, including Italian starlet Eva Grimaldi as Napoleon Bonaparte’ sister, who carries on with Paganini in full military regalia!), the boy is quite good – indeed, the film only connects on an emotional level during his scenes with Daddy (and it was undeniably poignant to watch the older Kinski dote so unreservedly over his offspring, keeping in mind also that he would die within 2 years!). Also turning up briefly in the film are Feodor Chaliapin as an elderly authority figure hellbent on expelling Paganini from the country for his licentiousness, and celebrated mime Marcel Marceau incarnating the musician in a staged parody of his exploits.

However, the star/writer/director’s egomania, high opinion of himself (at one point, Paganini – and, by extension, Kinski – is literally described as being able to give himself a hard-on through the playing of his musical instrument!) and his lack of experience behind the camera sabotages at every turn the film’s aspirations as an objective look at the mind-set of a creative but evidently troubled personality. The fact that Paganini’s predilection for underage girls, which obviously landed him in trouble with the Law, elicits the ire of the people can only be shared by the audience, who are thus forced to participate in the masturbatory fantasies of an ageing and deranged narcissist who has pretty much hit rock-bottom on all conceivable levels! In the end, I should mention that Paganini’s music is heard practically incessantly throughout but, rather than evoking the accomplishment of the work itself, one is left with ears reeling squeamishly from the strident notes!


12/17/11: SONG OF LOVE (Clarence Brown, 1947) **1/2

With the word “song” appearing in the title, this must be another Hollywood biopic about a famous composer: in fact, we get no fewer than 3 here (Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms and, once again, Franz Liszt), as well as an accomplished female pianist (Clara Wieck, later Schumann)! Being an MGM production and starring Katharine Hepburn to boot, I was prepared for the worst – but I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised by the result; mind you, I love Hepburn’s classic comedies with Cary Grant and Spencer Tracy – yet, given her predilection for theatricality, I tend to approach her dramatic work with less enthusiasm!

The acting is fine all around, but I feel that the honors in this case should go to the consistently underrated Paul Henreid: he tackles the most difficult role as Schumann – whose lack of personal success, and being essentially forced to live in the shadow of his wife and depending financially on her own career, gives him severe bouts of melancholia (brought about by the persistent hearing of one particular dissonant note) which even lead to an attempted suicide and ultimately land the composer in a mental institution (though history tells us this isolation was self-imposed)! At this time, Hollywood was not yet rooted in the concept of rewarding actors playing these type of challenging parts (especially when they are based on real figures), so Henreid’s performance – indeed, the whole film – was ignored by Academy voters: another category where it ought to have been a sure-fire consideration was the black-and-white cinematography (back then, color films were separately judged) in view of the exquisite lighting, courtesy of Harry Stradling, throughout.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand: the picture opens on a concert given by Clara where she is constantly being corrected by her stern father (Leo G. Carroll) sitting right behind her! She rebels, however, when – instead of the usual encore – she opts to play a piece by a new composer, Schumann, with Caroll forced to swallow his pride since it particularly pleases the royalty in attendance! After the performance, though, he and Henreid (whom the older man had taken in as a student) exchange harsh words (since the latter apparently intends marrying his mentor’s daughter) and, when Schumann leaves, Clara goes with him! Cut to 10 years and 7(!) children later, Brahms (Robert Walker) arrives on the scene – pretty much a younger version of Schumann himself, and who is platonically doted on by both husband and wife. That said, it turns out that he harbors feelings for Clara, and which emerge the more Schumann retreats into himself on account of his condition (reaching its zenith during his conducting of the self-penned opera “Faust” in concert form). For the record, Liszt (Henry Daniell) had been instrumental in securing its production, in an effort to help the Schumanns’ impecunious situation (the husband had already been humiliated by seeing Hepburn forced to resume performing after several years but, while the result proves a resounding success so that her agent hopes for a run of such concerts, she is adamant that it be for a one-time engagement only, just so the family can rise above water financially!).

Still, unable to hold himself back any longer, Brahms decides to leave the Schumanns’ residence. Following Robert’s death, his own career flourishes but, learning of Clara’s secluded life, he visits her and, naturally, hopes to fill in the blank of both husband and father (he had been especially close with one of their girls, which the young man had even seen through a case of measles), yet the now-ageing lady tells him that she is still Mrs. Schumann, at which he gracefully retreats…but not before telling her that, if her love for her husband is still so passionate, she should do her utmost to bring his music to the world! The film, then, ends with Clara (towards the end of her own life) sitting down at the piano before vast audiences once again and opting to play the very composition that had received the approval of the present King (who was no more than a boy back when we first heard it!) against her father’s better judgment.

SONG OF LOVE has all the ingredients for a sophisticated entertainment – comedy (especially involving the antics of the Schumanns’ cantankerous old nanny), drama, romance, child interest and, of course, classical music (that said, even if this is copious throughout and involves all four musically-inclined protagonists, it is hardly memorable in comparison to the recently-viewed A SONG TO REMEMBER {1945}, about Frederic Chopin, and SONG WITHOUT END: THE STORY OF FRANZ LIST {1960}) – and it is all tastefully handled by veteran Brown, enough to make it palatable for most of its somewhat overgenerous 118 minutes. Although the movie has now been officially released on DVD-R via the "Warner Archives" collection, the copy I acquired is plagued by intermittent wobbliness in the picture (despite being sourced from a TCM transmission).
Edited by Mario Gauci - 12/19/11 at 11:03am

VERY interesting look at "Paganini" Mario!

A film I know of, and have seen posters for, but have not actually watched. I knew it was another swim in the ocean of Kinski craziness though.
God bless the mad fucker. He should still be here, livening up cinema...even if it's only with car crash movies.

"Santa's Slay" - .5

A great idea, with a great start at least.
Evil Devil spawn Santa lost a curling contest with an Angel and was forced to be good for a 1000 years. Time's up.

Getting off to a stonking start with a dysfunctional/celeb cameo family massacre and with a great Pantomime turn by Bill Goldberg as evil Santa (with a great sleigh set-up) all is looking good for "Santa's Slay".

Sadly things dip when the other characters are on screen and despite some first half goodness (like a strip joint massacre) the whole thing falls apart at the end and gets bogged down with utterly pointless sequences throughout.

No point sequences like the lead buying chewing gum from a gas station and (what looked like a big showdown) the wasted curling re-match with Angel Robert Culp just bog the film down.
The curling is an especially big sequence that in the end has no effect on the film at all. If it never existed, you'd never know!

Add to this some pointless weirdness too.
Like a bunch of hunters with an old Indian who speaks with a voice synthesiser for no other reason than to make all his dialogue hard to hear.

This all adds up to a confused, anti-climactic, finale that fails to satisfy.
Shame.
Because other aspects of the film (the look of Santa, Goldberg's turn, the creative seasonal/decoration deaths, some good initial gore/violence, and nice black humour) show that there is a great movie hiding in a messy, unfocused, rather dull overall average movie.

Once again, thanks for reading and the compliments, Dave!

Always a pleasure Mario!


"Blood Runs Cold" -

Low budget SOV Slasher flick from Norway, surprisingly filmed in English.
And although it is the actors actually speaking English they're very awkward and say "Man" an hysterical amount of times!
Why not shot in Norwegian with subs?

It has logic problems up its snowy arse too.
Guy sees strange man at window when he goes outside yet he knows that the only ones in the house are him and his three friends.
But he says/does nothing!?
At least we are offered two pairs of fine Norwegian boobs to take our minds off the script at this point.

Sadly the lead actress is mostly appalling though (if cute) as she's screaming one moment and acting like nothing much is going on the next. It's a strange performance in a strange film.

Thankfully it has some very groovy gore.
Highlights are a torn in half body, entrails being slopped and slurped and a truly great beheading.

And it features (in a film filled with random plotting and events) the most random handy weapon ever!
The final girl just happens to find a fully working, randomly discarded...wait for it...machine gun on the cellar floor!

So it has some good FX and violence worth checking out, but the wooden/awkward acting and script, wacky logic, annoyingly rubbish lead actress and the sheer randomness of it all (random mad guy who bleeds snowflakes(!) randomly pops up to randomly axe 'n' eat folks) damage the film a great deal.

I mean I don't need full motivation or back-story for any general Slasher villain (like "Hellbent" for example where it works fine), but when you have a set-up that involves a small village that has an almost indestructible cannibal/psycho killer who is filled with powdery snow and who slaughters people on the village outskirts with no one noticing...and you offer absolutely nothing in the way of an explanation ...it's just annoying.

Average fare. Could have been so much better.

12/18/11: PUBLIC AFFAIRS (Robert Bresson, 1934) **1/2

This film is pretty unique in the annals of cinema history, in that the efforts by the same director that came afterwards were such polar opposites that one can barely believe his eyes when watching it: the thing is that this 23-minute short was believed lost and only retrieved in 1987, when Bresson had effectively retired (being then 86 years old)…so that, to most movie buffs and admirers of the director, his debut proved to be the one they got to see last (in my case, it was the penultimate one, since I chose to watch this, A GENTLE WOMAN {1969}, and the documentary THE ROAD TO BRESSON {1984} on the 12th anniversary of his passing, just two weeks shy of the new millennium!).

Anyway, this is a satirical farce with political overtones, very much in the style of The Marx Bros. masterpiece DUCK SOUP (1933) – since it involves two neighboring fictionalized countries – and the ending, with two newscasters disapproving of an elderly high-society dame’s singing by flinging objects at her, is a literal borrowing/tribute. The runaway princess subplot, then, may well have been inspired by the W.C. Fields vehicle YOU’RE TELLING ME! (1934), albeit emerging as its weakest link. Another obvious influence here is Charlie Chaplin – especially in the set-piece of the unveiling of a statue (which, depicting a yawning man, unleashes a veritable flood of boredom/exhaustion grimaces among the spectators of the ceremony and even the heroine, whose airplane summarily crashes!), but also the fact that a squad of firemen here behave as if they were The Keystone Kops.

In the end, the film is more a curio (if anything, it owes at least as much to Rene` Clair as it does the afore-mentioned Hollywood star comedians) than a success, but it undeniably boasts a handful of innovations and side-splitting moments: the sound of a tuba causes a house to move off its hinges, which is then brought back into place by a Pied Piper-ish flute player!; one of the firemen is a professional fire-eater, so that every time a spark is lit (as part of the town festivities), he rushes to extinguish the flame by gobbling it up!; finally, the climactic christening of a ship by the traditional breaking of a champagne bottle against its side proves problematic because of the incredible resilience of the glassware – someone has the bright idea of using a cannon to destroy the bottle but, first, the heaving of the evidently cumbersome weapon onto the platform almost brings the whole crashing down but, then, the blast naturally produces a hole in the vessel which, upon being slid into the sea, it promptly sinks!

For the record, the unearthed print of this one (which had actually been stored under a different title!) is in a rather precarious state, with the image so fuzzy that one can hardly make out the actors’ facial features!; incidentally, future Jean Renoir regular and reliable Hollywood character actor Marcel Dalio appears in four separate roles here (including a Military General who, in order to have a medal pinned on his chest, it is required to shear off his lengthy beard!). So, while France may have lost a comic genius when Bresson returned to film-making 9 years later, World Cinema certainly gained one of its most rigorous analysts into the human condition (and the quest for spiritual grace).


12/18/11: A GENTLE WOMAN (Robert Bresson, 1969) ***

As mentioned in my review of Bresson’s rare and most atypical PUBLIC AFFAIRS (1934), this is the last of his pictures to be watched. The film is notable for being his very first in color (which he seems to have mastered with no problem whatsoever), but also for having introduced to the screen Dominique Sanda (in this regard, David Thomson opines, “arguably the first real performance in a Bresson film”): the latter is the only one among his untrained protagonists to achieve international stardom – among her more notable subsequent work is Vittorio De Sica’s Oscar-winning THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINI (1971), Bernardo Bertolucci’s THE CONFORMIST (1971) and 1900 (1976), John Huston’s THE MACKINTOSH MAN (1973; partly filmed in Malta!) and Mauro Bolognini’s THE INHERITANCE (1976; which landed her the Best Actress prize at Cannes) – though Anne Wiazemsky, leading lady of AU HASARD, BALTHAZAR (1966) did get to marry “Nouvelle Vague” exponent Jean-Luc Godard and was in demand for a while in highbrow fare. Anyway, Bresson only made 13 features in 40 years – 2 in the 1940s, 3 in the 1950s, 4 in the 1960s, 3 in the 1970s, and just 1 in the 1980s (after which he retired, remarkably, at the age of 82). Still, his lean output meant that every new film would be hailed as an event (by critics and cineastes, if not the general public – given its admittedly demanding nature) and, besides, the quality of the finished product remained pretty much consistent over all those years.

It is worth noting, though, that, while his first 3 efforts (that includes PUBLIC AFFAIRS itself) featured performers, he would subsequently rely on non-actors for the remainder of his oeuvre, since he had radically rethought his approach to film-making in the interim (Thomson again: “no other great director seems less intrigued by cinema itself”!). This basically involved a rigorously austere style in which characters are made to behave like automata (even delivering their lines in an unnatural monotone!) but, by keeping emotion under wraps for the most part, as Bresson himself explained in the documentary THE ROAD TO BRESSON (1984) – included on Artificial Eye’s R2 DVD of the director’s masterpiece A MAN ESCAPED (1956), but which actually followed this viewing – one is able to see the ‘truth inside’ (that is, to say, not predisposed to either plot contrivance or acting technique). The style of the cinematography, too, is placid (concentrating only on the essential of any given moment, so that we get many close-ups of hands, feet, faces and objects in Bresson movies) and the choice of locales mundane (even when set in the Middle Ages, as was the case with both THE TRIAL OF JOAN OF ARC {1962} and LANCELOT DU LAC {1974}).

With respect to the film under review, it is not considered a major work, but that is because the standard of accomplishment was so high: though based on a Fyodor Dostoyevsky short story, we find ourselves in modern-day Paris, coming in at one of the bleakest openings in movie history – an elderly maid enters one of the rooms in an apartment, only to hear a commotion on the terrace followed by a cluster of horns sounding from the street below; next we see a billowing scarf and, finally, the body, face down, of a young girl, as curious passers-by gather round to get a better view of the tragic scene! The rest involves the girl’s husband recounting, to the old woman herself (and, by extension, the audience), their life together – via intermittent flashbacks – in an effort to determine the cause of what he can only take for a momentary lapse of reason, a desperate act: we see how they meet (she being a customer at his pawnshop), their brief courtship, and the initial happiness of the subsequent marriage. However, the cracks eventually start to show – yet Bresson never pinpoints any particular fault or lays the blame squarely at the feet of either partner: the husband just says that the two seldom communicated or would have a difference of opinion regarding the value of a pawned article – even when he accuses her of playing up to a client, at which she leaves and, seeking her out, finds them together in his car, the director does not place undue emphasis on the incident i.e. Bresson merely reports it, leaving us to make up our own minds about what bearing this might have had on the girl’s sudden decision to kill herself.

Throughout, we are shown the sterility of married life – the couple sitting at the dinner table, watching TV, in the bathroom, in bed, occasionally going out (to a film, Michel Deville’s all-star period romp BENJAMIN {1968; which I also own but have yet to watch}, or a play, Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”) – by which Bresson seems to be indicting the fast pace of life nowadays, which has severely limited communication and rendered young people particularly susceptible to its perils (thus being insufficiently prepared to fend for themselves and, more critically, articulate their anxieties). The fragmented structure does not allow for much character development (Bresson takes an almost perverse glee in subverting the established narrative procedure i.e. omitting the routine details and zooming in on the nitty-gritty of a story/theme!), so that we strive to learn about the protagonists from their gestures and words: even so, these are not always intended to be taken at face value – not only does the maid remain speechless during the first hour, but the wife’s assurance to her husband that she will thereafter be faithful actually denotes her resolve to commit suicide! In any case, the hero’s probing into the girl’s death fails to reap any definite results: despite his reprimands, he had always known her for a gentle creature (actually, the title by which this is better-known!) – even commending Sanda for ultimately resisting the other man’s advances and doting on her when she falls ill…all of which leads to his despairingly picking up the body, already laid in its coffin, and wishing she could open her eyes for one last time, if only to help him understand.

In the end, the fact that the film tends to be overlooked within Bresson’s canon has more to do with its lack of exposure: indeed, of his entire directorial output, only the afore-mentioned PUBLIC AFFAIRS, this one and FOUR NIGHTS OF A DREAMER (1971; as it happens, another Dostoyevsky adaptation) have yet to be issued on DVD anywhere. Consequently, though I have contrived to acquire all 3, they are only available in substandard prints…


12/18/11: THE ROAD TO BRESSON (Jurrien Rood and Leo De Boer, 1984) ***

Though he is one of my favorite film-makers, this is actually the first documentary I have watched about Bresson. Even if I was aware beforehand of his repudiation of ‘constructed’ cinema (which he tried in his first 3 efforts then abandoned for the remaining 11!), I was still taken aback by his evident lack of appreciation for the work of directors at least as revered as himself (as a side-note, having just acquired his undeniably interesting if underwhelming THE TRIAL OF JOAN OF ARC {1962}, I read that he was severely critical of the stylization within Carl Theodor Dreyer’s otherwise no less austere rendition of the same events, THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC {1928}, generally acknowledged as one of the pinnacle achievements of Silent cinema!) and also analysts of his work (writer/director Paul Schrader: more on this later). Apart from which, he acts rather condescendingly towards the 2 directors of the documentary, who are repeatedly shown throughout trying to contact him for a brief interview (presented at the very end).

I cannot say how the participants in the documentary were chosen (that is, if others were approached but declined to contribute) but the 3 directors who do appear all had some connection to the subject of the documentary. Though Andrei Tarkovsky admits to being influenced by Bresson, there was a whiff of topicality to his presence, since both film-makers had just shared the Best Direction prize at the latest Cannes Film Festival, the award being presented by none other than Orson Welles (unfortunately, though both much younger than him, Welles and Tarkovsky would die within 2 years of the documentary’s release, whereas Bresson passed away, a venerable 98-year old, on 18 December 1999 i.e. 12 years to the day of this viewing!). At the Press Conference for his latest and, as it turned out, last work (i.e. L’ARGENT {1983}), Bresson displays typical evasiveness – even joking about his old age by feigning to be hard of hearing! As for Louis Malle, he states that Bresson (whose rigorous working method the “Nouvelle Vague” exponent witnessed first-hand) has left an indelible mark on French cinema, but his own style in particular. Writer/director Paul Schrader (author of “Transcendental Style In Cinema”, a book comparing the spare modus operandi of Bresson, the afore-mentioned Dreyer and Yasujiro Ozu) recounts how, during an interview for which he had prepared a specific (and, to him, vital) set of questions, Bresson only contrived to give vague answers (reiterating the point I made about the auteur’s indifference to anybody else’s opinion)! Also on hand is Dominique Sanda (unsurprisingly the only one of his actors to turn up, since she had the most fortuitous career after debuting – in A GENTLE WOMAN {1969}, watched just prior to this – under his guidance) who says that, working for Bresson, invariably renders one prone to underplay any given role!

The documentary, then, is quite insightful – even providing quotes from Bresson’s slender book “Notes On Cinematography”, collecting a series of casual observations he made over the years and which would inform his distinct cinematic style – culminating in the afore-mentioned interview with the documentarians (who he almost walks out on because they exceed the number of questions that was stipulated beforehand!), where he rejects their idea of his work being intrinsically pessimistic in nature (becoming increasingly so as it went along), arguing that, whatever his characters’ ultimate actions, they were arrived at after having attained a complete state of lucidity! One disappointment here, though, is the fact that only 3 pictures are discussed in any detail and represented by clips – namely 1956’s A MAN ESCAPED, 1974’s LANCELOT DU LAC and 1977’s THE DEVIL, PROBABLY – with the film-makers going so far as to visit their respective locations! While discussing LANCELOT, it is remarked how little we see of the ‘medieval’ scenery throughout – a jousting tournament is exclusively shot from mounting level – however, by doing this, rather than alienating potential viewers, Bresson forces them to be active participants in the narrative as each will be trying to imagine what they are missing. Interestingly, this very same method of audience identification had been adopted much earlier by none other than Dreyer – ironically, for JOAN OF ARC itself! – but, in his case, he ended up exasperating the producer instead, by ordering expensive sets to be erected (so as to supply the proper atmosphere) and then proceed to shoot virtually the entire film in close-up!

In conclusion, there is another well-regarded feature-length documentary on Bresson, called UN METTEUR EN ORDRE (1966): this is included on the Criterion DVD edition of his AU HASARD, BALTHAZAR (1966), which I own but have yet to go through…

12/19/11: MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (Woody Allen, 2011) ***

This easily constitutes Allen’s best work since MATCH POINT (2005), also signaling a welcome return to the historical/time-travel themes of ZELIG (1983) and THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO (1985) respectively. Though it appears that Allen is meeting an increasing dearth of actors to work with (his films are usually peppered with top talent), it is admirable how this essentially modest company still manages to sink its teeth into his typically verbose, neurotic and amazingly informed script! By the way, I was surprised to see a plethora of Spanish companies behind this film – could it be that Allen is no longer a desirable commodity in his own country?!

Anyway, here we get Hollywood hack screenwriter Owen Wilson setting his mind on penning The Great American Novel, with Paris (the mecca of the art world in an earlier age) supplying the ideal background to fire up his imagination. However, since he is accompanied by his predictably condescending fiancee’ (a rather wasted Rachel McAdams) and her obviously conservative parents, he finds his creativity stifled – especially after she runs into an old friend (Michael Sheen), whose know-it-all attitude irks Wilson no end. So, he goes away by himself on a midnight stroll, wishing he were back in the 1920s (mind you, I harbored a particular kinship with his predicament – since I also believe that I was born too late and, consequently, feel out-of-touch with the current times!)…and, lo and behold, an old-fashioned car comes along and whisks him away to rub shoulders with the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, Cole Porter (whose songs are a constant on the soundtrack), Josephine Baker, Gertrude Stein (played by Kathy Bates), Alice B. Toklas, etc.! Here, he also meets and falls for a woman (Marion Cotillard, who typically walks off with the film) that is actually contended by both Picasso and Hemingway. Since he tries to fit in by presenting himself as an author, Hemingway tells him he will refer a draft of his novel to the matriarchal Stein but, as soon as he exits the bohemian establishment, the premises revert to their current state i.e. a laundry!

Of course, McAdams does not believe a word he tells her, so she reluctantly agrees to accompany him the next night – but she quits in contempt before the proverbial ‘taxi’ arrives, precisely at the stroke of midnight. This time around, Wilson is introduced to Salvador Dali (an impressive and hilarious Adrien Brody, forever re-routing a conversation towards a discussion of rhinoceroses!) and Luis Bunuel: his initial contribution is very understated, as if Allen did not quite know how to use him – however, in a subsequent scene, we get an inspired moment in which Wilson sneakily suggests to the Surrealist master the germ of an idea that the latter would eventually develop into one of his greatest films, THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL (1962)…but, naturally, he cannot quite grasp the absurd beauty of the situation presented to him so early into the game! While, at first, I was disappointed that Wilson does not walk in and out of the past at random (Allen opting for a Cinderella-type device), Cotillard herself pines for the so-called “Belle Epoque” i.e. the 1890s (even if her own era is known as “L’Age D’Or” – as it happens, the ironic title of one of Bunuel’s most scathing efforts!) and, magically, we go back to the dives haunted by such world-renowned painters as Toulouse-Lautrec, Gaugin and Degas!

In the end, even if this is more of a nostalgia trip than a dense time/space meditation a` la the films of Alain Resnais (incidentally, Allen had once decried never having made a truly great film!), we are nevertheless treated to a few choice nuggets of pure mystery: Carla Bruni – yes, Mrs. Sarkozy herself! – translating Cotillard’s memoirs to Wilson, clearly published long before but where he unaccountably gets mentioned!; and a private detective, appointed by McAdams’ father to follow Wilson on his after-hours ‘trysts’, falling foul of the time-warp himself and turning up – understandably befuddled – in the Middle Ages! Even so, the elaborate structure still allows for character growth, since Wilson ultimately attains serenity within his own epoch and, having broken up with McAdams (who admits to an affair with the insufferable Sheen), hooks up romantically with a new partner (a girl he had, time and again, conversed with at a flea-market and with whom he shares a fondness for Cole Porter) in a downpour – to him, Paris at its most expressive – at the conclusion.


12/20/11: WEEPING FOR A BANDIT (Carlos Saura, 1964) ***

This one makes for a belated addition to my extensive Luis Bunuel retrospective, which had started late last year and kept on going till February 2011. I opted to check it out now in order to complement both the Josef von Sternberg marathon that came to an end fairly recently, and also the tribute I just gave Robert Bresson this week-end, on the occasion of the 12th anniversary of his passing. Bunuel merely appears in the film – and only in a couple of shots at the very start at that! – as an executioner and, since this is a Western, its viewing will be followed by Arturo Ripstein’s TIME TO DIE (1966) – which the Surrealist master is said to have appreciated a good deal. Incidentally, I had intended going through a series of films my all-time favorite auteur is reported as having been fond of but, given that the Ripstein movie was the only unwatched title among them, I thought I might as well catch two birds with one stone. By the way, it is ironic that the only 2 Saura efforts I have gotten under my belt thus far both involved Bunuel – the other being the former’s engaging valediction to the latter’s work BUNUEL AND KING SOLOMON’S TABLE (2001)…and, to keep the Bunuel celebrations going, I also contrived to squeeze in Woody Allen’s latest offering i.e. MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (2011; actually sparked by its being nominated for a host of Golden Globes only last week), in which Don Luis also enters the proceedings at a couple of crucial points, into my current schedule (which is shaping up to be a pretty eclectic one)!

Anyway, back to the matter at hand: this was a visually-striking film (especially on my 40” monitor) – with any number of breath-taking wide shots, and camera movement so smooth that the change of perspective is almost imperceptible – telling a pretty classical outlaw tale i.e. the type whose exploits, taking up the cause of the oppressed, are celebrated in ballads (and there are quite a few in this regard). In fact, bandits here are better-known by their nick-names – El Lero, El Lutos, El Tempranillo, etc. – yet they live by a code of ethics which often requires them to be as ruthless with their closest associates as with the enemy, so that, however chummy they may get, the ring-leaders are always expecting to be betrayed to the proper authorities or else have their own command challenged…when it is not themselves who turn collaborationists and even agree to hunt down their former gang! By the way, apart from Bunuel himself (whose function here is to bring to an end the ‘reign’ of the current bandit chief, only to have his legend overshadowed by his successor’s by the end of the picture!), the impressive cast list of this one includes two actors from that director’s controversial return to his homeland, VIRIDIANA (1961), namely leading man Francisco Rabal and Jose` Manuel Martin (he had been the beggar who raped ex-novice heroine Silvia Pinal) as a half-blind cohort, thus referred to as “El Tuerto” aka “One-Eye”. The international production (Spanish-French-Italian) featured top performers from each country: in the case of the latter, female protagonist Lea Massari and, representing the Gallic interest, both Philippe Leroy and Lino Ventura.

So, as soon as the bandit falls to the garotte (though it is stated that he is to be dismembered as well, ostensibly to make an example of his death!), his place is taken by Ventura’s “El Lutos”. Soon after, a drifter (Rabal) arrives in the mountain regions where the gang hides out, seeking yet another pre-eminent outlaw i.e. the ageing (read: old-school) “El Lero”. Joining Ventura’s outfit till he reaches his destination, he is witness to the volatile new leader’s brutal ways – killing (while the lot are sleeping out in the open) a member who had threatened to quit and, upon raiding a cantina where various authority figures are dining (and passing judgment on the still-fresh execution), he picks up a young aristocratic woman from her cozy bed on the first floor and nonchalantly throws her from the balcony, visibly shaking the hostages down below being ‘cleaned’ of their valuables! Rabal eventually stands up to Ventura and the two are made to fight for supremacy: half-buried in the earth, they duke it out with a bough placed at arm’s length of either combatant. The former emerges victorious, having beaten his opponent to death! Of course, this gives him free rein to order everybody else around and lay down the law for all of them – even when finally meeting up with “El Lero”, the two leaders fail to reach an agreement and opt to go their separate ways! It also means that he has no qualms about endangering the lives of his men by seeking out his former girlfriend (Massari) and marry her, under the noses of the authorities, in grand style!

When a political revolutionary (Leroy) flees from a chain gang, he runs into Rabal going into town incognito (donning a priest’s garb): the former thinks he can throw him off his horse and make away with it himself, but the bandit promptly turns the tables on him by producing a pistol from under his cloth! He uses the disguise to play a prank on his wife as well (her mother is subsequently shocked to see Massari passionately embracing a man of the church!). Leroy naturally joins Rabal’s ranks, while the latter is told by his spouse that he is to be a father (eventually proving a still-born). When the bandit’s activities become too embarrassing for the militia, they plan to root him out by imprisoning Massari – whom he regains shortly after by kidnapping an aristocratic lady and have the prisoners exchanged in open country a` la Howard Hawks’ RIO BRAVO (1959)! However, Rabal himself barely escapes with his life during a ride into town to pick up Massari – incidentally, his wife’s disappearance from here on in suggests that she did not.

Interestingly, this seems to have presaged both the Spaghetti Western boom (it was released just 12 days before Sergio Leone’s groundbreaking A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS) and even the revolutionary route it would eventually take! By the way, while at first I was disappointed that Ventura’s presence was limited, his character actually resonates all through the picture – since, as I said, “El Tempranillo” ultimately proves unreasonable as well…and we find history repeating itself, with Leroy questioning his orders and taking charge of the outfit when Rabal ‘sells out’. Still, when faced with the prospect of mowing down his former comrades in cold blood, he retracts and, hollering, prepares to rejoin their cause – but his pang of conscience is brusquely brought to a halt with a bullet, leaving the bandit half-hanging from his mount (itself followed immediately with the tell-tale word “Fin”, one last ballad hailing the protagonist’s virtues, and a handful of credits…though these were incomplete on the print I acquired – marked by English subtitles which unfortunately flash on and off a bit too quickly for my taste! – given that Saura’s own name is nowhere to be seen!).


12/22/11: TIME TO DIE (Arturo Ripstein, 1966) ***

This was included in my belated continuation of the extensive tribute paid to my favorite film-maker Luis Bunuel because of his personal recommendation (he particularly admired its tempo and the way characterization is handled); in hindsight, given the participation of various alumni of his (actor Tito Junco, cinematographer Alex Phillips, editor Carlos Savage, soundman James Fields), this comes as no surprise at all! Incidentally, even if the Western genre (into which category this falls) could hardly be said to offer much interest to the Surrealist master, he did dabble in it once – in THE RIVER AND DEATH (1955), which Bunuel would subsequently cite as his second worst film, but a view I vehemently disagree with! Actually, TIME TO DIE tackles the very same theme of that film i.e. the oft-told one (and which I most recently encountered in VENDETTA {1950}) of a long-running feud between two families!

That said, by recruiting two distinguished writers in Carlos Fuentes (Damiano Damiani’s THE WITCH, from the same year) and Gabriel Garcia Marquez (his novel CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD was turned into a film by Francesco Rosi in 1987), ensures that the film under review prove an enriching experience despite the familiar premise. For the record, Fuentes would appear in a number of documentaries I had watched on Bunuel himself, and I have also just acquired a movie adaptation of his OLD GRINGO (1989; with Gregory Peck as British ‘Gothic Western’ writer Ambrose Bierce!); he had also been married to another Bunuel regular, Rita Macedo, and was a member of the Jury at the 1967 Venice Film Festival where Bunuel’s own BELLE DE JOUR emerged triumphant! As for Marquez, he wrote the original story on which THERE ARE NO THIEVES IN THIS VILLAGE (1965) was based, the Alberto Isaac picture in which Bunuel perversely takes the acting role of a priest – alas, no English-friendly version of this one seems to be currently available; another connection to the latter film is the presence in TIME TO DIE of Claudio Isaac, Alberto’s 9-year old son! With respect to Ripstein himself, he actually debuted with this film: it is only the second I have watched after the documentary short (about Bunuel!) THE CASTAWAY ON THE STREET OF PROVIDENCE (1971); still, I have these 5 in my collection as well: THE CASTLE OF PURITY (1973; starring Bunuel regular Claudio Brook), FOXTROT (1976; with Peter O’Toole, Max von Sydow, Charlotte Rampling and Brook again), PLACE WITHOUT LIMITS (1978; with yet another Bunuel actor, Roberto Cobo), NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL (1999; as it happens, another Marquez adaptation) and THE VIRGIN OF LUST (2002).

Following this lengthy introduction, I ought to point out that, watching TIME TO DIE, I was reminded of a number of other films (that is, apart from Bunuel’s) which may or may not have inspired it: we not only have the minor character (a trigger-happy reprobate!) of the hero’s crippled ex-sidekick, a` la the role played by Lon Chaney Jr. in Fred Zinnemann’s HIGH NOON (1952), but also something of a reversal of its central situation i.e. instead of a man freshly emerged from prison arriving into town seeking revenge, it is a local who wants the blood of the returning ex-convict (here, too, a couple of long-suffering women meet in an attempt to talk some sense into the various men involved in the quarrel)!; the hero’s slow-motion fall to the ground upon being mortally wounded recalls a similarly memorable moment from Akira Kurosawa’s SEVEN SAMURAI (1954); the climactic shoot-out-against-a-cavernous-setting seems to have been derived from Budd Boetticher’s SEVEN MEN FROM NOW (1956); the protagonist is held in the town jail for security reasons, an incident which also occurs in Howard Hawks’ RIO BRAVO (1959; curiously enough, this had been made as a reaction to HIGH NOON itself!); the last title in this impressive batch has a purely coincidental tie to Ripstein’s movie, since it was released just the day before! – this is Lucio Fulci’s MASSACRE TIME (even the title is almost identical!), where we also get a savage whipping sequence.

The protagonist is a chubby Charles Bronson type who has spent 18 years in jail for shooting his tormentor (the notable opening shot of him staggering out a door mirrors the closing one in John Ford’s masterpiece THE SEARCHERS {1956} and anticipates a similar moment in Enzo G. Castellari’s extensively-referential Spaghetti Western KEOMA {1976}!); he now makes use of glasses and, upon reaching his home-town, is forever being asked to leave (for his own sake) – from his previous rancher employer’s son to the sheriff to his former sweetheart (who has since mothered a son and become a widow)! Though his name did not ring any bells, the actor’s face was a familiar one and, taking a look at his filmography, I realized he had appeared (albeit always in minor parts) in Bunuel’s DEATH IN THE GARDEN (1956), THE PROFESSIONALS (1966), and even 2 co-starring Bronson himself, namely THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960) and GUNS FOR SAN SEBASTIAN (1968)! His nemesis, then, is the eldest son of the man he had killed, who taunts him anew all through the picture by, among other things, bursting on horseback into the saloon where the hero is quietly drinking, shooting the mirror when he is at the barbershop, throwing a dead dog at his ex-flame’s doorstep (which he promptly kicks upon emerging to confront him!), drenching him in pigs’ blood and, worst of all, literally tearing down his dilapidated home (which he had been diligently renovating) by tying it to the same steed and riding away! On the other hand, the villain’s younger brother befriends the older man at first and takes his sibling to task for his persecution but, eventually, he is the one to kill the hero by shooting him repeatedly in the back (he was said to have a mythical resistance to bullets!) – after the long-delayed showdown leaves his brother dead, bringing to mind the old adage “blood is thicker than water” – with the older man symbolically expiring in the shadow of a cross.

If there is something TIME TO DIE misses out on is the inclusion of local color (which Bunuel had given its due, to the movie’s ultimate benefit, in THE RIVER AND DEATH) as both a respite from and a contrast to the intense central confrontation; as it stands, the film under review tends to drag its feet somewhat in repeated situations whilst working its way to the inevitable face-off! Nevertheless, strikingly desolate black-and-white images are notably accompanied here by a brooding acoustic-guitar score. Interestingly, this would be remade (in Cuba!) in 1986 and, for what it is worth, there are various other pictures by this same title – one of which, Matt Cimber’s 1982 WWII flick (incidentally, also a revenge tale) with Rex Harrison and Rod Taylor, I also own but have yet to watch!
Edited by Mario Gauci - 12/26/11 at 5:26am

12/12/11: THE CRAB WITH THE GOLDEN CLAWS (Claude Misonne, 1947) **1/2

While I had been vaguely aware of the cultish figure – introduced in comic-strip form – of Tintin, I never got around to sampling any of his ‘work’ or, for that matter, had much opportunity to do so. Of course, I have now, in the wake of Steven Spielberg’s big-screen rendition…even if I did not precipitate into following this up with its own viewing! A local friend of mine, then, had also bought a DVD set of cartoons from the early 1990s (which are perhaps the character’s most renowned incarnation, even if there had already been a handful of other animated features and even some live-action ones during the 1960s and 1970s) – but I actually went for the very first movie (using stop-motion animation and involving puppets) to be based on the exploits of Tintin.

Running a little under an hour, I guess, this brings out the essence of the character and his closest associates – the cute mutt Snowy (I once had a lovely dog by that name, a former stray which was later cruelly poisoned) and the drunkard Captain Haddock. However, while we are shown how Tintin meets the latter (being unwittingly at the helm of a freighter smuggling opium out of the country, a case being investigated by the hero), no mention is made of the protagonist’s own background: if Tintin is supposed to be no more than a boy, how come he is into espionage – by which I mean that he is specifically appointed to intercept this illicit operation!? Incidentally, there are a couple of other sleuths on the track of the powder – though they are called “Dupont & Dupont”, the English subtitles insist on changing their surname to the American Thompson! The film follows a pretty standard pattern of detection and action (which sees the hero starting off with the cryptic titular clue, the proverbial “McGuffin” ultimately proving the true contents of a harmless-looking can of seafood, followed by his falling foul of, fleeing from and eventually defeating the villains), interspersed with comedy (especially Haddock’s constant yearning for booze) and set in an exotic locale (Morocco).

By the way, the character of Tintin originates from Belgium, a country that would also spawn the even more popular The Smurfs (now receiving their own, albeit modest, cinematic overhaul) – which, on the other hand, I used to watch on Italian TV and whose sole feature-film I did catch back in the day and also own (albeit dubbed in English).


12/22/11: DON’T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS {Re-Edited Version} (Edmund Purdom and, uncredited, Derek Ford, Ray Selfe and Alan Birkinshaw, 1984) *1/2

Following on from the previous decade’s BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974; easily the best of the bunch), SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT (1973) and CHRISTMAS EVIL (1980), the Eighties also saw a proliferation of Yuletide horrors like GREMLINS (1984; a Yuletide perennial during my childhood days) and the SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT franchise; this troubled production was the British contribution to that cycle. The three uncredited directors, collectively dubbed “Al McGoohan”, included screenwriter Derek Ford (whose most notable work was done in the 1960s for director Robert Hartford-Davis), editor Ray Selfe and director Alan Birkinshaw (of the reportedly just-as-abysmal KILLER’S MOON {1978} fame)!

Rather than the expected ‘murderer dressed in a Santa costume’, here we have the annihilation of the persons dressing up as Father Christmas – a modus operandi that is, needless to say, triggered by a childhood trauma (involving a man in a Santa outfit who is obviously not his father shagging Mommy). Given the dearth of admirable qualities on display here (it is considered the cinematic equivalent of a Christmas turkey dinner!), there remains little for me but to describe the copious murders: from the very first sequence, we have a Santa done in through the window of his car where he is smooching his girlfriend: she, too, foolishly but predictably rushes out of the car to her death; a reluctant Santa Claus is impaled through the mouth with a spear during a Christmas party by the murderer wearing a gruesome mask...but, apart from a weak scream, none of the witnesses make any kind of reaction – not even his daughter nearby!; a street-side Santa is strangled, has his face pushed against a stove and subsequently set alight!; in the re-edited version I watched, the fifth murder – where a Santa has his brains blown away with a gun, has been removed and replaced by the later tenth(!) one of a Santa castrated with a razor in a urinal!; another Saint Nick (a lonely, middle-aged soul) unwisely takes a break from his Christmas duties to go check out a peep-show and gets his in the neck to the horror of the teasing tit-flasher in the booth (when the murderer returns to kill her, she subsequently runs out into an incongruously deserted London street!); another is stabbed in the gut via a knife-wielding shoe!; a Santa – who has taken shelter in the London Dungeon (which I visited on my first trip to the British capital in 1999) – gets it in the neck too; another receives a machete to the face and turns up on-stage during a musical performance; the heroine is strangled but subsequently found all bloodied(!?); an investigating police officer is electrocuted; the killer’s mother dies in a fall in a flashback sequence; the villain himself is thrown off the stairs at the top floor of the stripper’s flat…who predictably comes back to life when she goes to check up on him!; finally, the Police Inspector on the case (though his lack of productivity eventually gets him taken off it) dies in a slow-motion bomb blast, which effectively concludes the film, when committing the titular act (why he never doubted the contents of the package is anybody’s guess)!

While the killer is seen having no qualms about stabbing a couple of females, he is clearly taken aback when a would-be Santa victim turns out to be a nude model to whom the hero had taken his bereaved girlfriend to uplift her spirits by taking part in a saucy shoot (WTF?!). The daughter of the second murdered Santa and her callous boyfriend subsequently become the relative protagonists of the piece; however, during the latter stages, it is the stripper who takes centre stage (especially since the nominal heroine is herself bumped off) – she is eventually kidnapped by the killer who intends offing her on Christmas Day (earlier, she had told the cops she might be able to recognize the murderer if he smiled at her!?). It is idiotic to have people keep turning up everywhere in Santa outfits when they are likely to be targeted by the murderer for it – neither do the local authorities issue any order to refrain from doing so for safety’s sake; in any case, the Police put Santa decoys in an effort to apprehend the killer but they only end up among his death-list, one of them messily losing an eye to him!

For no very good reason (except that her husband was behind this production), Caroline Munro appears as herself to warble a tacky song. Persistent journalist Alan Lake turns out to be the killer and Purdom’s insane brother (the heroine comes to know of his monthly visits to the ostensibly committed sibling but she is not given the opportunity to do anything about it), taking care to implant the seeds of suspicion into the mind of the latter’s direct subordinate (though he misconstrues the situation by thinking Purdom himself is the guilty party); tragically, the actor committed suicide before the film’s release as a result of the death of his wife, iconic British star Diana Dors earlier in the year!

The film (which, apparently, was not even officially released, going straight-to-video instead!) has been recently released as a SE to little fanfare on R1 DVD by esteemed cult label Mondo Macabro. For the record, it shares its producer with that of the equally execrable PIECES (1982), also featuring Purdom; the latter, then, appeared in the following horror-related films throughout his European wanderings: THE NIGHT THEY KILLED RASPUTIN (1961), Sergio Corbucci’s THE MAN WHO LAUGHS (1966), Pupi Avati’s THOMAS AND THE BEWITCHED (1970), THE FIFTH CORD (1971), LUCIFERA: DEMONLOVER (1972), Riccardo Freda’s TRAGIC CEREMONY (1972), FRANKENSTEIN’S CASTLE OF FREAKS (1974), THE NIGHT CHILD (1975), Joe D’Amato’s ABSURD (1981), the aforementioned PIECES and FRACCHIA CONTRO DRACULA (1985; as the Count!).


12/23/11: SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT III: BETTER WATCH OUT! (V) (Monte Hellman, 1989) **

A belated addition to my earlier tribute to the cult American director for his 79th birthday; back then, I did not manage to acquire this but, now that Christmas-time is here, I have so as to augment a series of Yuletide thrillers. This is the third entry in a horror franchise (started in 1984) I was not familiar with; given the similar title, I often got it confused with the earlier 1973 film SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT with Patrick O’Neal, John Carradine and Mary Woronov; as if that was not enough, this film’s subtitle equates it with the much superior CHRISTMAS EVIL (1980) whose original title was YOU BETTER WATCH OUT!

I believe Hellman only became involved in this as a personal favor to the producer who was just starting out; though he ditched the original script and had it rewritten, this was still a straight-to-video blot on his filmography and which stopped his already plodding career for 21 straight years! – luckily, he finally bounced back with one of his best films i.e. ROAD TO NOWHERE (2010; though, typically, it only received a limited exposure). Given the latter’s Lynchian echoes, it is interesting that Laura Harring (who became a relative star with the latter’s MULHOLLAND DR. {2001} – incidentally, just this week, her GHOST SON {2005} i.e. Lamberto Bava’s remake of his father Mario’s SHOCK{1977}, was on Italian TV!) has a major supporting role in this one; the film also features another future notable character actor – Bill Moseley (of THE DEVIL’S REJECTS {2005}) – and two Hollywood veterans in Richard Beymer (who also received a brief lease of life around this time thanks to Lynch’s TWIN PEAKS TV-series) and Robert Culp (who, by now, had apparently let his hair go white).

The film initially riffs on a theme from John Boorman’s EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC (1977) with psychiatrist Beymer making blind psychic Samantha Scully connect to comatose murderer Moseley (from the second entry in the series – ironically, the manifestations she has of Moseley’s visions were lifted from the first film, in which the murderer was a totally different character!); needless to say, this works only too well and Moseley is soon off his bed and up to his old tricks at the hospital itself (his first victim being a visiting drunken Santa who sarcastically asks him if Perry Coma{!} was his favorite singer), a gas station and at a cottage in the country (it is amusing to see him hitching a ride in his hospital clothes, with his exposed brain inside a steam oven-type device, resulting in a driver who jokily queries about whether he has had his head transplanted being dumped on the side of the road soon after)! Scully and her incredibly hirsute (sporting not just long hair but a plentiful chest as well!) brother Eric Da Re, accompanied by his girlfriend Harring, are on their way to their granny’s country house for a Christmas reunion and, given that the girl is telepathically connected to the killer, he follows them there (doing off with the old woman after she unwisely tries some BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN {1935}-like hospitality!); in the meantime, Beymer and Culp – on their way there themselves in the latter’s car – indulge in pseudo-intellectual conversation that leads nowhere!

Predictably, Moseley literally slits Beymer’s guts open when the doc attempts to approach him (having deserted Culp when the latter has gone out to take a leak!) and the policeman only arrives on the scene after Moseley had been at long last dispatched by Scully (he unaccountably survives a shotgun blast to the chest) – the former having already done away with both Da Re and Harring; the unbelievably corny ending (with Moseley’s ghost wishing us a “Happy New Year” in reply to Scully’s “Merry Christmas”!) was apparently merely devised as a means of paving the way for a potential sequel (there were, in fact, 2 more of these in quick succession)! I had watched a “You Tube” clip of Hellman attending a screening of the film in which he jokingly names it his best work (while also taking care to badmouth THE EXORCIST {1973}!); it is a long way from being the best Christmas slasher, much less Hellman’s zenith; even so, he does imprint it with his persona by quoting the famous “Even the phone is dead” line from Edgar G. Ulmer’s classic THE BLACK CAT (1934) – apart from having various clips turn up on TV from THE TERROR (1963), the infamous Roger Corman quickie on which Hellman did uncredited doctoring work!
Edited by Mario Gauci - 12/26/11 at 11:49am

12/24/11: CHRISTMAS EVE (Edwin L. Marin, 1947) **1/2

The perennial title in itself but especially the splendid cast rounded up for this Christmas movie should have earned it durability but, instead, its genuine oddity has ensured its obscurity; in fact, it was later retitled as SINNERS’ HOLIDAY for theatrical reissue purposes (despite there having already been a non-festive 1930 film featuring James Cagney and Joan Blondell by that name!) and, much later, another unrelated (and made-for-TV) one called CHRISTMAS EVE in 1986 that was Loretta Young’s much-heralded return in front of the cameras!!

There are three male leads in the film – George Brent, George Raft and Randolph Scott – playing the three adopted sons of eccentric millionairess Ann Harding (a weird casting choice if ever there was one, seeing how she is younger in real life than her onscreen off-springs and, consequently, sports heavy make-up to appear older!) who is on the point of being declared insane by duplicitous relative/guardian Reginald Denny (who while outwardly concerned about Harding’s reckless philanthropic spending is actually interested in appeasing his own creditors). Harding (dutifully waited upon by an unrecognizable Dennis Hoey as her butler!) assures visiting Judge Clarence Kolb that this Christmas Eve at least one of her wayward sons will come to her rescue and the film then episodically trails the path (via Harding’s investigating detective Joe Sawyer) taken in life by each individual before reaching the inevitable all-inclusive happy ending.

And so it is that we meet up with playboy Brent, who is on the point of hooking up with an heiress – an attachment he badly needs in order to cover up a run of $75,000 in fraudulent cheques that are currently doing the rounds about town – but true love intervenes in the shape of his ditzy friend Joan Blondell!; although this was a plotline worthy of Preston Sturges in his prime, the heavy-handed treatment it receives here renders it the least effective segment of the lot. Next up is George Raft’s lording it over in South America and stepping on the toes of fugitive Nazi Konstantin Shayne in the process – not least because of his attachment to the latter’s feminine associate, Virginia Field!; the violence and downbeat nature (the latter is felled by a bullet and Raft is eventually apprehended by FBI agent John Litel) of this episode jars considerably with the Capra-esque sentimentality of the main narrative strain but is nonetheless interesting for that. It is worth noting here that director Marin had just directed Raft in the noir NOCTURNE (1946; which I also own but have yet to watch) and that he had also helmed the 1938 MGM version of A CHRISTMAS CAROL! The third and last part is the corniest but also the most enjoyable as we watch second-rate rodeo rider Randolph Scott getting mixed up in Douglas Dumbrille’s adoption racket as he is convinced by attractive undercover agent Dolores Moran (in her first film for future husband, producer Benedict Bogeaus) to pose as a married couple looking to acquire some kids! The eventual confrontation between the two parties earns the film its biggest laugh when Scott, gun firmly in hand, invites Dumbrille to “Raise (his) arms to the perpendicular”!


12/25/11: REMEMBER THE NIGHT (Mitchell Leisen, 1940) **1/2

Like CHRISTMAS EVE (1947) that I watched the day before, this is a vintage Yuletide Hollywood film that should be better known in view of the talents involved; however, unlike the later film – which, given its undeserving *½ rating on Leonard Maltin’s Film Guide, I was not expecting much from and was somewhat pleasantly surprised by the outcome – this turned out to be something of a disappointment. Not that it is in any way bad but, having a stylish director like Leisen, a peerless screenwriter like Preston Sturges and the sure-fire teaming of Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray, it should have been a comedy classic. Rather tellingly, it seems to me, the film proved Sturges’ last screenplay assignment before embarking on his meteoric directorial career that redefined the screwball genre; needless to say, the two leads would subsequently be iconically reteamed in Billy Wilder’s seminal noir, DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944) and twice more thereafter in the following decade which I am not familiar with.

Anyway, the narrative revolves around an attractive chronic shoplifter (Stanwyck) who gets away with an expensive bracelet from one shop but is apprehended when trying to pawn it in another; MacMurray is the prosecuting D.A. who, after suffering through the would-be heart-rending histrionics of her has-been thespian attorney, secures a recess until after the festive season but gets a change of heart upon watching Stanwyck make her way to spending Christmas in police custody. Therefore he arranges to pay her $5,000 bail but the bondsman misconstrues his interest and dumps her on his doorstep – to the bemusement of MacMurray’s “dumb” colored butler! Given the situation and the time of year, he takes her out to a dinner dance (where he embarrassingly comes face-to-face with the presiding judge) but, upon discovering that they both hail from Indiana and that she had not been home for the holidays in years, they are soon en route together to their old hometown. Unfortunately, since MacMurray only makes this trek once a year, they get lost and spend the night in a farm and wake up surrounded by a herd of cows and their irate owner who, once again misinterpreting the situation, rides them off to the Justice of the Peace at gunpoint. Thankfully, Stanwyck’s quick wits – that had seen her slid out of many a jam with the law in the past – come to their rescue as she almost sets the latter’s office on fire.

So far, so humorous…even if it never quite reaches the zany heights of Leisen’s earlier classics EASY LIVING (1937; from another Sturges script) and MIDNIGHT (1939; from a Billy Wilder-Charles Brackett screenplay). However, when the couple hit Indiana, the laughs mostly subside and are unfortunately supplanted by grim domestic melodrama (Stanwyck’s confrontation with her unforgiving mother who has since remarried) and corny sentimentality (MacMurray’s family includes concerned mother Beulah Bondi and future Sturges stalwart Sterling Holloway as an annoying simpleton of a farmhand). The expected local color (for those who like this sort of thing) comes courtesy of home-made sweet cooking, a philanthropic bazaar, a barnyard New Year’s Eve dance and a series of individual piano renditions/sing-a-longs by the two stars and Holloway. The return trip to New York takes them to a romantic stroll along Niagara Falls (to avoid meeting up again with the proprietor of the arsoned “Justice of the Peace” office) but, as they reach the Court in the same taxicab, each decides to “throw” the case in favor of the other party…but since Stanwyck admits her guilt (following MacMurray’s overzealous grilling intended to win the defendant the jury’s sympathy), there is little else for them to do except for a concluding teary-eyed reconciliation in the court’s elevator in which they swear each other eternal love. For the record, this was MacMurray’s fourth of 9 films he made with director Leisen and he was also the nominal star of one of the most notorious of all Christmas movies, THE MIRACLE OF THE BELLS (1948; co-starring Frank Sinatra as a priest)!


12/25/11: CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT (Peter Godfrey, 1945) ***

This is among the more popular “Christmas” films, enough to be remade as a 1992 TV-movie directed, of all people, by Arnold Schwarzenegger!). Barbara Stanwyck is also in this one and the difference in studio style (this was made for Warners) and approach from Paramount’s REMEMBER THE NIGHT (1940) is immediately apparent: coincidentally, the two have a lot in common, which I was not conscious of before deciding to watch them back-to-back!

Both films involve deception: here, Stanwyck is ostensibly a famous cook contributing to a top monthly magazine, married with children and living on a Connecticut farm; however, she is none of these things, depending for her recipes on Hungarian chef and restauranteur S.Z. Sakall. So, when the boss decides to pay her a visit, she has to fake her entire lifestyle!. The majority of the proceedings, of course, take place in the country-side – where the protagonists are involved both with a cow and an involuntary brush with the Law! Incidentally, the male lead (convalescing sailor Dennis Morgan – in fact, it was jarring to have the film begin inside a German submarine!) was brought to Stanwyck’s house over Christmas as a display of solidarity. This was done in order to boost the circulation of the magazine run by “fat man” mogul Sydney Greenstreet, here having the time of his life – so much so that the film ends on him rather than the expected romantic clinch! – in a role which anticipated his turn in the MGM Clark Gable vehicle THE HUCKSTERS (1947).

Typically, an older man sacrifices himself for love of Stanwyck – in this case, Reginald Gardiner – who not only can do nothing to prevent his supposed bride from falling for the dashing young sailor, but he is thrown a bone by the script by making him an innovative architect whose work interests the mogul enough to employ him! In fact, the would-be couple spends a good deal of time trying to organize a hasty wedding ceremony, with the presiding Justice Of The Peace forever being hidden in the back-room or else coming and going for another stab at the nuptials, naturally all of this taking place behind Greenstreet’s back…but, conveniently, they never actually manage it! Other complications see a couple of different babies involved (local kids being babysit by Irish maid Una O’Connor, and whose obvious difference in age and sex leaves Greenstreet befuddled: when he spies one of the mothers coming to pick her toddler up, he creates a panic by calling cops and reporters in the mistaken belief that a kidnapping had occurred!) and the arrival upon the scene of the sailor’s nurse, whom he has had to bribe with a promise to wed her in order to get some decent food at the hospital. Incidentally, Stanwyck has to constantly improvise so as to ditch her boss’ wish to see her cook or feed the child (relegating the former chore to either Sakall or O’Connor and the latter to Morgan himself, who is all-too-happy to be of help).

As I said, the two leads soon realize they harbor affections for one another but cannot bring themselves to admit it, both believing the other is already spoken for! Even if there is little chemistry between Stanwyck and Morgan (unlike Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray in the afore-mentioned REMEMBER THE NIGHT) and the nominal star’s career had just peaked with DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944; with MacMurray again!), the film is a very pleasant diversion which, as already intimated, results in being more palatable than the somewhat similar Preston Sturges/Mitchell Leisen confection simply because the two films seem to have swapped styles: while I expected the 1940 effort to be sophisticated and breezy while this ought to have been bland and syrupy, it proved agreeably zany whereas REMEMBER THE NIGHT emerged to be incongruously serious and downright sentimental!

12/24/11: A CHRISTMAS CAROL (TV) (Moira Armstrong, 1977) **1/2

This was at least the 14th screen adaptation of the classic Charles Dickens tale that I have watched (the others being those made in 1935, 1938, 1951, 1962, 1964, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1983, 1984, 1988, 1992 and 2006) with another (dating from 2009) following only 2 days later! While the 1951 version is universally acknowledged as the finest rendition (though one cannot really put a finger on why it works so well, given its modest credentials!), a few of the rest (including the 1983 animated Disney short!) are well enough regarded as well. Incidentally, while several actors have attempted to give life to the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge, Alastair Sim’s portrayal was so vivid and perfectly-realized (he would also voice the character in the 1971 animated version by Richard Williams) that all later remakes would have to be judged against it, and this is were the film under review decidedly comes up lacking!

Ironically, the otherwise reliable character actor involved – Michael Hordern – had played Scrooge’s partner Jacob Marley in both adaptations involving Sim (Marley, then, is here incarnated by John LeMesurier, another welcome presence), but his contribution in this case comes across as no more than workmanlike. The main reason for this, I guess, also has to do with the script’s scrupulous adhering to the letter of the original source which, again, was superbly-delivered – in his inimitable fashion – by Sim! I am sure it is not necessary for me to relate the plotline: with this in mind, the many familiar characters are adequately-filled (most impressively perhaps by Patricia Quinn – fresh from THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW {1975}! – as the Ghost Of Christmas Past, with Bernard Lee – ‘M’ in the first 11 instalments of the James Bond franchise – also on hand as the Ghost Of Christmas Present). Besides, the eerie elements of the narrative (which, admittedly, is what really draws me to this piece, as opposed to the sentimental subplot involving the fate of Tiny Tim!) are given their due…but, all in all, the film merely sticks to the standard of British TV productions of the era i.e. generally tasteful in approach and undeniably practised in execution, it is also inherently dull!


12/26/11: THE CHRISTMAS THAT ALMOST WASN’T (Rossano Brazzi, 1966) **1/2

This obscure Italian musical fantasy was actually made in the then-prevalent style: elaborately-mounted, garishly-colored and broadly comic in tone (bringing to mind both THE GREAT RACE {1965}, with Rossano Brazzi's Phineas T. Prune looking quite a bit like Jack Lemmon's Professor Fate from that film and CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG {1968}, which also involved a child-hating villain) – in fact, it comes complete with an animated title sequence! Incidentally, the anti-Christmas feeling inherent within the film would turn up again the same year in Chuck Jones' animated rendition of Dr. Seuss' HOW THE GRINCH STOLE Christmas (by the way, I will be checking out the 2000 live-action version as part of my ongoing Christmas binge)! Writer/director/star Brazzi – who, curiously enough, died on Christmas Eve 1994 – had already proved his vocal mettle (in heavily-accented English) with the popular musical SOUTH PACIFIC (1958). For the record, this was his first of only 3 directorial efforts – the others being no less intriguing, and admirably versatile, namely the caper CRIMINAL AFFAIR (1968) and the giallo PSYCHOUT FOR MURDER (1969; which I have opted to acquire in its original cut, since a 'harder' version was commissioned for the overseas market that reportedly saw the involvement of cult figure Renato Polselli!).

Anyway, while the film under review emerges as no unsung gem, it was a harmless and surprisingly engaging addition to the Yuletide movie lore, its plot also recalling the seasonal perennials MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET (1947; in view of the fact that the real Santa Claus seeks employment in a department store to fill just that role!) and the much-filmed "A Christmas Carol" (given Prune's eventual softening). The songs (music by future Jess Franco{!} regular Bruno Nicolai and lyrics by one Paul Tripp, who also co-stars as the lawyer – Brazzi's own neighbor! – helping Santa thwart the villain's plans to disrupt the eagerly-awaited festivities) are hardly classics, but the title tune in particular is quite pleasant. Being an international production (here presented dubbed in English albeit still sporting the original Italian credits), Father Christmas is played by an unknown Italian actor (Alberto Rabagliati) – who, amusingly, gets the shivers in having to deal with children, since he usually encounters them while they are asleep (similarly, he and Tripp get carried away trying out the toys in the store, which merely elicits a head-shaking reaction from prospective customers)! His spouse, then, is played by Brazzi's own second wife (Lydia) and the wiry elderly clerk at Santa's workshop is the ever-reliable character actor Mischa Auer in one of his last films. Typically, a number of midgets are behind the bearded fat man in the red suit or, more precisely, the toys he distributes door-to-door all around the world every Christmas Eve.

With respect to Prune's beef with the Christmas period, it transpires that he has purchased the entire North Pole so that, knowing Santa will not be able to pay the lease, he can evict the latter (which Brazzi takes great pleasure in, turning up every day like clockwork expressly to upset the old man's meal!) and, therefore, no toys will be manufactured and delivered from then on! In fact, Santa takes up the extra employment in order to meet his new landlord's demands (which the latter nips in the bud by purchasing the establishment too and firing St. Nick and his attorney on the spot!). Incidentally, one quibble I have with films purporting to present the Real McCoy: if Santa is supposed to be the be-all-and-end-all of Christmas gifts (in that he has to bring them personally to kids, with his herd of reindeer and all), where do the plentiful toys in sundry department stores across the globe come from?! As expected, Brazzi's scheme (aided in his nefarious exploits by cadaverous butler John Karlsen) is ultimately foiled, with children everywhere willingly giving their pocket money to save Santa from his predicament. Prune, on the other hand, is revealed to have believed in Father Christmas himself once upon a time…but his letter asking for a sail-boat had gotten misplaced, and this was the reason he grew up detesting all things connected to the proverbial 'jolly' season!


12/26/11: A CHRISTMAS CAROL (Robert Zemeckis, 2009) **1/2

I came across this one by accident, since it was broadcast on local Cable TV instead of the scheduled 1984 TV version with George C. Scott! Not being a fan of Jim Carrey or the modern ‘motion-capture’ style of animation, I was not exactly enthused by the prospect of catching the nth rendition of the Dickens Yuletide classic featuring both these resistible commodities! The end result could hardly be expected to be anything less than the standard level already accomplished by the myriad previous adaptations of the tale for both the big and small screen. However, it is certainly not any better than most of these and a far lesser achievement than the definitive one i.e. 1951’s SCROOGE. With this in mind, it is a pity that young moviegoers with little to no interest in so-called ‘old’ films will be deluded into believing this is the “Christmas Carol” to see!

Anyway, I was surprised by Carrey’s understated central ‘performance’ (which, rather lazily, resorts too readily to a mere mimicry of Alastair Sim’s iconic interpretation in the afore-mentioned British version!): for the record, he takes on several roles here – as do Gary Oldman (most recognizable as Bob Cratchit) and, though hardly a thespian, Cary Elwes (as, among others, the Ghost Of Christmas Present). Colin Firth, then, is Scrooge’s apparently clueless nephew (I was always bugged by the fact that this character seems surprised by his uncle’s intense dislike of Christmas!), Robin Wright Penn Scrooge’s old flame and Bob Hoskins ‘appears’ as Scrooge’s ebullient and big-hearted first employer Mr. Fezziwig. Incidentally, director Zemeckis had been behind the first film to be made entirely via the ‘motion-capture’ technique, namely the similarly Christmas-related – but unwatched from my end – THE POLAR EXPRESS (2004). In this case, he chose to adapt the novella himself and, if anything, he started it off in a novel and interesting fashion, by showing Scrooge haggling with funeral directors over his partner Jacob Marley’s burial preparations (even paying an attendant with the coins superstitiously covering the deceased’s eyes!).

At first, I have to admit to being impressed with the whole approach, especially the way the Steadicam is made to hover over the bustling street activity. However, once the plot gets going, the style becomes inconsistent and generally leans too much towards appeasing the kids in its prospective audience (this is actually ironic, since the inherent phantasmagorical elements are tackled with all the stops out!) – such as Bob Cratchit giddily sliding on the ice, Scrooge himself being made to hitch a ride at the back of a carriage (not to mention fly on a number of occasions), and even having the Ghost Of Christmas Past in the shape of an anthropomorphic flickering light. The latter, then, is the most obvious tell-tale sign of its being a Walt Disney production, and it is odd the studio turned to Scrooge for one of their animated features only now (though, in all fairness, they had already made the half-hour short MICKEY’S CHRISTMAS CAROL {1983}, which is actually one of the most enjoyable reworkings of the source material!).

The protagonist’s maudlin back-story (sacrificing love for the unmitigated pursuit of wealth) and the whole syrupy subplot revolving around the crippled but altruistic Tiny Tim (for those not in the know, the youngest son of the miserly Scrooge’s meek clerk Bob Cratchit) is clearly in line with the essentially lowbrow sensibility that lied at the heart of Zemeckis’ Oscar-winning FORREST GUMP (1994)! Thankfully, as I said, the supernaturally-infused moments deliver the goods and make the film worth watching at least once: the visitation by Marley’s shackled contrite spirit, the two symbolic children (quite creepily rendered) concealed under the robe of the Ghost Of Christmas Present (who himself eventually turns skeletal), and the typically grim wraith-like depiction of the Ghost Of Christmas Yet-To-Come.


12/27/11: HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS (Ron Howard, 2000) **1/2

This is a live-action adaptation of the Dr. Seuss novella, following the classic 1966 animated short by Chuck Jones (narrated by horror icon Boris Karloff); for the record, I own a copy of both the latter and the earlier Stanley Kramer production of THE 5,000 FINGERS OF DR. T (1953) in my collection. This remake, on the other hand, features the voice of a bored-sounding Anthony Hopkins. The Grinch (actually the title of the copy I watched, shown on local TV) is an ideal role for the facial contortions and over-the-top antics of Jim Carrey. He is a hairy creature in the fictional town of Whoville (whose ‘normal’ inhabitants are elfish in appearance).

They love Christmas and celebrate it in grand fashion, but The Grinch does not since he had always been given the cold shoulder at this time of year in view of his unusual appearance. Consequently, he has gone to live by himself in the mountains (attacking occasional trespassers from town) but a little girl feels pity on The Grinch and determines to help him (even carrying out a survey around town to learn what the townsfolk really think of him!). When a prize for the most prominent personality is to be handed out, she nominates The Grinch, even if the Mayor (the latter’s arch-enemy and contender for the hand of the town belle) expects it to be given to himself. The girl convinces The Grinch to accept but, when the ceremony turns unpleasant – with the people of Whoville making fun of him a` la The Hunchback Of Notre Dame – he decides to take revenge by disrupting their Christmas festivities (the premise, then, is very similar to the recently-viewed THE CHRISTMAS THAT ALMOST WASN’T {1966})!

What he does is wear the traditional Santa Claus clothing and, rather than delivering presents as he is supposed to, The Grinch goes round the Whoville houses on Christmas Eve to steal the gifts ready to be opened the next day! However, his triumph is short-lived as the townsfolk realize – once again, thanks to the girl – that Christmas is essentially a time of solidarity but, of course, this being at heart a morality play, The Grinch is himself reformed and finally accepted into the town’s fold. Though reasonably engaging (the little girl’s sincere portrayal helps a lot in this regard), occasionally funny (for instance, The Grinch dresses his dog like a reindeer on his nefarious expedition!) and undeniably good to look at (highlighted by the imaginative production design of the Whoville locale), this still makes for little more than a kiddie movie. Incidentally, Carrey would later ‘star’ in that other Yuletide favorite A CHRISTMAS CAROL (2009), which I also included in my schedule for this season.
Edited by Mario Gauci - 12/29/11 at 10:58am

Will someone be opening "Track the Films You Watch" and "Film List" threads for 2012? :)  I usually just like to wait until someone else does it and then hitch a ride.

12/28/11: THE CHRISTMAS TREE (Terence Young, 1969) **1/2

This was shown at Christmastime on local TV in the late 1980s, back when Leslie Halliwell’s conservative Film Guide was the ‘Bible’ of movie-reviewing tomes – and, since he had disparagingly labelled this “the most lachrymose film of the sixties”, I missed out on it! Mind you, this does provide the double threat of being an all-stops-out ‘weepie’ with child interest – of which quite a few, oddly enough, were made in Europe around this time (including MISUNDERSTOOD {1966} and THE BALLOON VENDOR {1974}, which was a big hit when released in theaters locally)!

By the way, I now caught up with this on Italian TV and, incidentally, in spite of a British director and an American star (William Holden), this is a Franco-Italian co-production, with those countries represented in the principal cast by Bourvil and Virna Lisi respectively. Actually, only the last act deals with the titular decoration and the period itself and, given the subject matter, I am sure it was chosen with ironic intent: in fact, here we have a boy who is fatally stricken with leukemia when exposed to radiation – in a scene virtually replicating the one in the sci-fi classic THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (1957)! – on the coast of Corsica (where he had gone ostensibly to spend the summer holidays with the industrialist father he barely knew). The latter was nearby (albeit safely underwater) when a plane exploded on top of the child (sitting in a dinghy) and, while killing its occupants, managed to release a parachute containing an atomic bomb into the sea!

Upon learning of this condition (which he naturally keeps from his son at first, by pretending he is the sick one!), the star dedicates himself to the boy unconditionally by taking up residence at a French country-side chateau he owns (with widower Holden’s new girlfriend Lisi coming to visit from time to time). Looking after this property, then, is well-meaning but cantankerous handy-man Bourvil – in fact, it is during an argument with his boss (which is unwittingly overheard by the boy) that the latter gets wind of the true nature of their isolation! Anyway, at this point, Holden cannot refuse the kid anything – even when he requests a wolf for a pet. Since his father and Bourvil had served in WWII together, they were no strangers to dangerous missions – and so it is that they infiltrate a zoo and steal a male and female wolf (Bourvil having read in a book they would not survive apart!). The scene of their capture itself is pretty vivid, as the beasts do not take kindly to the intruders and fight back (injuring Holden) – later, there is a suspenseful moment while transporting the stolen ‘cargo’ at a gas-station as a couple of policemen want to inspect their vehicle and the men have to use their wits in order to get out of this scrape!

Speaking of animal violence, another strong scene involves the vicious attack by the wolves on a ‘mad’ steed (who has run away from under his own master, a Holden acquaintance, played by Friedrich Ledebur) – with the horse being eventually put down, actually an act of empathy, by the star! To be honest, though, it is this element above all else which renders the film palatable (though Henri Alekan’s cinematography and the score by Georges Auric also help in this regard). The anti-nuclear message, on the other hand, is laid on too thick – with recurring noises of jets flying overhead, at which Bourvil utters accusingly (but also rather desperately), “Assassins”! – ironically enough, the actor would himself die the very next year, at just 53, of a rare disease! As for the child’s inevitable death scene (surprisingly, he is not shown to be suffering all that much considering, but I should point out here that the copy I watched ran for just 97 minutes against the film’s official length of 110!), this thankfully occurs off-screen – with Holden alerted to the tragedy by the howling of his two loyal pets (for the record, the film was released on VHS in the U.S. under the title WHEN WOLVES CRY!).


12/29/11: IT HAPPENED ON FIFTH AVENUE (Roy Del Ruth, 1947) ***

This was released on DVD by Warners as part of a 4-movie collection of Christmas-related titles – consequently, I added it at the last minute to my current Yuletide schedule. In hindsight, it has only one short sequence set during this time of year and it is not exactly central to the plot! In any case, I was pleasantly surprised by the film (which, on the other hand, seems to have underwhelmed Leonard Maltin, since he awarded it a measly **!). As such, even if the narrative is stretched out to almost 2 hours, it was a fairly modest enterprise – made by a B-movie company (Allied Artists) with unassuming credentials and no stars to speak of!

The title implies a dual nature and so it is that we have here a morality play, albeit boasting a whimsical approach. The film’s attack on wealth (read: power) and the indomitable spirit of the common man has been labeled Capraesque and, reportedly, the script was originally optioned by just that director but, eventually, Del Ruth acquired the rights! Anyway, the plot is put in motion by a cheerful tramp (Victor Moore) who takes advantage of a mogul (Charles Ruggles)’s numerous addresses by taking up residence in the one currently not in use – to which he acquires access through the sewers! When Ruggles’ ruthless bid for progress turns to an apartment block inhabited by (among others) WWII veteran Don DeFore, the latter finds himself on the street – despite having made a lone stand and chained himself to the bed-post which, if anything, gets his name and photo in the newspapers! He meets up with Moore, who invites him to his ‘home’ (though, at first, he says he is a guest of Ruggles and not an interloper). Ingeniously, Moore had wired the electricity in a way that the lights go out in the house as soon as somebody comes through the front door (which happens quite often since two beat-cops have been charged with checking out on the place every now and then)!

The situation complicates itself with the arrival of Ruggles’ daughter Gale Storm (divorced from his wife Ann Harding, the girl had been living with her but she wants to make it independently and not have to depend on Mother’s alimony all the time!). Of course, the two men think she is just another “squatter” and initially plan on ‘evicting’ her – but the timely intrusion of the cops sees the trio taking shelter in the ice-box, with DeFore offering his coat to Storm and this, naturally, signals the beginning of their romance! The young couple go their separate ways next morning: she to a music shop, singing the latest hits and playing them on the piano to attract customers and sales (needless to say, this practice has long gone out-of-fashion!) while he meets up with a couple of buddies and their families, both of which are similarly having trouble finding accommodation (actually, a popular subject around this time – tackled most notably in George Stevens’ THE MORE THE MERRIER {1943}), so, he invites them up to Ruggles’ mansion too! The three ex-soldiers (one of whom is played by Alan Hale Jr.) then hit upon the idea of propositioning the Government to convert the now-vacant army barracks into lodging-houses, but Ruggles gets his mitts on them as well!

As it happens, the latter runs into his daughter one day and, when he learns of what is going on up at his 5th Ave. address, he decides to dress up as a bum in order to be taken in himself (Storm actually hopes he will come to like DeFore and, thus, give his consent to their marriage)! However, Ruggles is virtually treated as a slave by Moore (whom the former obviously resents for lording it up in his home) and, when caught phoning secretary Grant Mitchell to advise on the running of the business, he is thought as ‘barmy’! In true Hollywood style, things do not run smoothly between Ruggles, Storm and DeFore, and this necessitates the intervention of Harding (who is ostensibly assumed as a cook – which, unaware of her engagement, Ruggles immediately senses by merely smelling her delicious Irish stew)!

Things come to a head when Ruggles sides with the homeless against his own men (as I said, the two parties had been bidding against each other for possession of the barracks – though the tycoon did not know his rival was actually a co-operative headed by DeFore himself!), gleefully flinging a tomato at Mitchell who, having to speak in his boss’ ‘absence’, is thought to be the reclusive millionaire himself! Even on the domestic front, things offer surprises: having been forced to seek manual labor shoveling snow, Ruggles begins to suffer from backache, which is soothingly oil-rubbed by Harding. Their intimacy here is noted by Moore, who had set his eyes on the woman himself but he is wise enough to discern who Harding is really drawn to (the family reunion obviously pleases Storm, who has her own relationship to smooth out – this results in the film’s craziest sequence as the couple’s table at a restaurant keeps wobbling, which exasperates the waiter attending them no end, while a band of serenaders pick the wrong moment to chip in…even misconstruing DeFore’s suggestion to “Check Out” for his requesting a piece by Tchaikovsky!).

Realizing it is time to lay the cards on the table, Ruggles (in his true guise) asks to meet DeFore and his pals at his office: at first, they think he has gone delusional once again and, hearing Mitchell approach, the trio forcibly hide the millionaire in his own closet – but, once the situation is explained, it proves too much for DeFore who promptly faints! As for Moore (who, by the way, is forever accompanied by a cute white mutt), he is apologetic towards Ruggles but the latter tells him he is grateful to him for having opened his eyes to various facets of reality. Since it is time for the tycoon to resume residence at the 5th Ave. mansion, the latter asks Moore where he will go to and the tramp innocently replies that he usually installs himself in the house Ruggles would have just left!
Edited by Mario Gauci - 12/31/11 at 11:41pm

12/30/11: CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY (Robert Siodmak, 1944) ***

This is a strange noir, made even more so by the odd casting of the usually wholesome Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly as a barely-disguised ‘floozie’ and an inveterate gambler and murderer respectively! Besides, the title is most ironic since, while it does revolve around just that occasion, the main narrative (which unfolds in flashback, a typical genre device, I might add) hardly evokes a feeling of good cheer – incidentally, this is possibly the only film set around this time of year to depict the Midnight mass traditionally held on Christmas Eve! CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY, then, was only director Siodmak’s second noir: the result is somewhat pretentious for a movie from this vintage, yet this very quality has helped render it less dated than others of its ilk! I should point out that the late eminent British film critic Leslie Halliwell resented the script’s approach to the source material – but, while this is unusually billed in the opening credits as “W. Somerset Maugham’s CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY as written by Herman J. Mankieiwicz”, the author himself was reportedly enthusiastic about the screen rendition!

For the record, I own 10 vehicles by the female lead (who actually initiated the project in an effort to change her child-star image!) but, more by accident than design, this is the first I have watched – and it appears that, not only was the film her personal favorite but also, in her opinion, the only worthy one she ever did! Incidentally, she would again dabble in the thriller genre with the more modest but still interestingly-cast LADY ON A TRAIN (1945), which I do have a copy of. By the way, the actress (who retired from the screen way back in 1948!) has just turned a venerable 90 years old in December! With respect to Kelly, this was his seventh picture (having debuted just 2 years previously) and, in his case, too, he would appear in only one other title in this vein i.e. BLACK HAND (1950), which I have also acquired some time back but have yet to catch up with. As for how the two fare within this seedy/gloomy environment, Kelly is quite good as a ne’er-do-well but Durbin (even though the studio bosses forced her into a couple of numbers – Frank Loesser’s “Spring Will Be A Little Late This Year” and Irving Berlin’s “Always”, with the latter essentially turned into a motif throughout – to appease her established fan-base!) is surprisingly excellent.

Anyway, the plot involves Durbin and Kelly meeting at a concert (the ‘Love/Death’ theme from Richard Wagner’s opera “Tristan And Isolde” – also effectively reprised here for the finale – which, for my money, has been immortalized in two Luis Bunuel films!) and immediately falling in love. When he takes her home to meet his mother (Gale Sondergaard in one of her best roles), the latter realizes the girl (who obviously is unaware of his character foibles) can help her make an honest man of her boy. However, events take a tragic turn as Kelly kills a man in a dispute over money, is caught, tried and condemned. Sondergaard, whose feelings for her son go far beyond motherly love(!), takes it out on Durbin for having failed her – which sends Durbin on her path to perdition (self-imposed, really, so as to be herself in a prison of her own making!)…which is how we first see her, offering solace at a New Orleans “joint” to a soldier who has his own beef against love (in fact, he was on his way home to take revenge upon the fiancée who had just jilted him!).

Other prominent characters are the proverbial madam-with-a-heart-of-gold played by Gladys George and Richard Whorf as the sleaziest figure of all, a muck-racking reporter who also operates as something of a pimp in the latter’s establishment! The climax, then, sees Kelly escape from prison and (understandably) misconstruing Durbin’s particular method of expiation: however, the Law is soon on his tracks, and he dies in a shoot-out with the Police – his dying words to his wife, finally appreciating the nature of her sacrifice, are “You can let go now, Abigail” (promptly reiterated by the young soldier, looking on).


12/31/11: CASH ON DEMAND (Quentin Lawrence, 1961) ***

Having been a bank employee for a number of years now, I guess I have a subversive fondness for caper thrillers, especially those dealing with robberies from vaults and which generally involve hostages being taken. Although they have been known to happen locally even during my tenure, luckily I have never been subjected to one…although last year’s mid-year attempt was quite a close call! Anyway, this renowned British example of this subgenre – atypically produced by Hammer Films for all of £37,000! – gives studio stalwarts Peter Cushing and Andre` Morell (formerly paired as adversaries in a famous 1953 TV adaptation of 1984 – that I have yet to watch! - and as celebrated duo of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in their atmospheric 1959 adaptation of THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES) arguably the best non-horror roles they ever had during their stay at Bray Studios.

Although the IMDb mistakenly gives the film as being a 1962 production and a mere 66 minutes in length, the truth of the matter is more complicated: its U.S. distributors Columbia released it over there as early as December 1961 but the movie would not be officially screened on its home-turf until October 1963; its running time, then, is actually 80 minutes! Based on an earlier TV episode of THEATRE 70 entitled GOLD INSIDE which also shared the same director and starred Morell but with one Richard Warner enacting the role later handled by Cushing. Indeed, the Christmas period during which the narrative is set and Cushing’s own fastidious and glum character make this seem like a smart revisit of Dickens’ Yuletide perennial about a certain cantankerous miser who goes by the name of Ebenezer Scrooge! Cushing, in fact, plays a strict and unloved manager of a small banking branch in the suburbs who is as distant and authoritarian with his staff as he seems to be with his wife and child. Morell is the at-once gentlemanly and ruthless thief who poses as an auditor from Head Office out to inspect this particular branch’s security standards.

The fact that a recent minor cash difference had just put a young teller (Barry Lowe) and the Chief Clerk (Richard Vernon) at loggerheads with their Manager only exacerbates the tension already present within the enclosed environment and ensures that a series of errors (i.e. security breaches) are committed that enable Morell’s ease of entry into Cushing’s office from which he will be conducting his cunning plan of filling up four suitcases (which he had Lowe bring back inside from his car parked outside!) with the bank’s entire cash holding of £93,000 since there is a direct passage to the vault downstairs from there! This being the early 1960s, it still presents the old-fashioned picture of a branch manager holding one of the keys to the keys to the bank’s strongroom with the other held by the Chief Clerk but that situation is all the more plausible for the film being set in a small branch. Morell tells Cushing that he had been planning the heist for a year and one is bound to believe him since he knows every little detail concerning not just the bank’s security procedures but also its individual employees! In fact, some accomplices are apparently holding Cushing’s family hostage and have orders to kill them if the appropriate signals are not given from Cushing’s window. The plan goes smoothly for Morell (despite the occasional slip-up from a broken-down Cushing) but he has not reckoned with Norman Bird (as an eager-to-please bank employee who belatedly checks up on Morell’s identity with Head Office) and Kevin Stoney (as an overzealous new Police Inspector in town)…

Apart from the aforementioned stars and a handful of behind-the-scenes mainstays, most of the people involved in the film were not Hammer regulars; even so, it still emerges as one of their worthier straight efforts and is miles removed from even their other thrillers: the telephone sequence with Cushing and his ‘family’ and the sudden realization of Morell’s true intent is more genuinely spine-tingling than anything out of the studio’s more renowned chillers! Still, the miniscule budget ensured that no attempt is made to open-up the story (which would have justified this big-screen transposition!) but, on the other hand, this enables it to retain the inherent claustrophobia elicited by its one-set plot; one other quibble involves the finale, which could have been rendered in a more exciting manner! While Cushing’s characterization is impressive (it was a pleasure to watch him crack under the strain and become recognizably humane – albeit still reservedly – towards his “subordinates”) as always but Morell is a particular standout here (since he was rarely given the opportunity to play lead roles, notable exceptions being the original TV serial QUATERMASS AND THE PIT {1958} – later condensed for a movie remake by Hammer themselves but starring Andrew Keir{!} – and the company’s sole foray into living-dead lore THE PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES {1966}) as the charming villain who can just as easily display his menace through the tone of his voice as the use of his hands. Interestingly, director Lawrence was the man behind the Hammer-esque sci-fi effort THE TROLLENBERG TERROR aka THE CRAWLING EYE (1958; which I just caught up with last year) and THE MAN WHO FINALLY DIED (1963; another thriller featuring Cushing that I have in my unwatched pile). For the record, having already acquired a mediocre-looking copy of the film some years back, I eventually upgraded to a vastly superior one sourced from Sony’s barebones disc as part of their “Hammer Films: The Icons Of Suspense” 6-film 3-disc set.


12/31/11: THE SILENT PARTNER (Daryl Duke, 1978) ***

Like Hammer Films’ CASH ON DEMAND (1961) which I watched earlier the same day, this is a bank heist thriller set during Christmastime but with the location transposed to Canada instead of Britain; the stars are New Yorker Elliott Gould, native Canadian Christopher Plummer and British Susannah York…although, truth be told, their limelight is somewhat stolen from right under their noses by sexy Canadian starlet Celine Lomez who is given ample opportunity to show off what Mother Nature provided her with! She would eventually be up for the role of TV’s CHARLIE’S ANGELS cult series but she was deemed too hot for the small screen!! Incidentally, THE SILENT PARTNER also provides an early role for future burly star comedian John Candy (as a philandering banker).

Despite the Yuletide festivities going on and the presence of Gould, the film is no light-hearted affair and, indeed, is a pretty unpleasant one at times: apart from the abject use of recreational drugs and illicit sexual encounters taking place during a supposedly wholesome Christmas party, Plummer is a psychotic robber who takes to dressing up as Santa Claus in the vicinity of a bank branch housed inside a shopping mall before he is nabbed by the police for rape, assault and battery charges (towards a singing waitress in an episode that occurs inside a gym’s sauna). Alerted to his criminal intentions by a note handed to him during an aborted robbery attempt, bank teller Gould outsmarts Plummer by handing him only a fraction of the loot on a subsequent retry while he does away with the lion’s share of the stolen money. This does not sit in well with the increasingly impatient and unhinged Plummer (especially after learning, through a TV interview that acquires Gould instant celebrity status among his clientele, that the missing cash holdings amounted to around $50,000) who starts to pursue Gould by contacting him from a phone booth underneath his apartment and even raiding his home in search of the hidden cash.

To complicate matters further, fellow worker York (who is their boss’ mistress) also starts getting interested in Gould but she cannot understand the way he brusquely cuts off an amorous dalliance (upon receiving yet another phone call from Plummer) or when he fails to identify him during a routine suspect identification parade down police headquarters. But, as already intimated above, Gould has his own scheme to ensure Plummer’s capture but the latter has another trick up his sleeve as he send another waitress/lover (Lomez) to seduce Gould into revealing the whereabouts of the money. What he had not counted on was that the two would eventually fall for each other (after laying all the cards on the table – she had posed as a carer for the senile father he had just buried and, eventually, dresses up as a luscious, curly-haired and bespectacled safety deposit locker owner!) but Plummer soon reveals his utter ruthlessness by beheading(!) Lomez on the broken glass of Gould’s beloved aquarium (having previously pinned his prized fish to the wall!) and presenting himself once again at the latter’s counter in drag! Actually, Plummer’s characterization had been rather flamboyant throughout – with prominent use of the eyeliner – so watching him dressed in women’s clothing is not that much of a stretch as it might initially appear)! By this time, Gould has had enough and he sets off the alarm system – an action that is repaid by a bullet wound from Plummer’s gun and the latter is in turn shot repeatedly by the bank’s security guard while making his escape in a crowded escalator. Written by future director Curtis Hanson (of 1997’s L.A. CONFIDENTIAL fame) and directed by Daryl Duke, the movie (which contrives a happy ending with an ambulance reunion between Gould and York with the money safely in tow!) emerged triumphant at the Canadian Film Awards…despite falling somewhat between the cracks in the interim until a barebones DVD release brought it back into public availability.
Edited by Mario Gauci - 1/1/12 at 11:16am

The only thing I can really remember about "The Silent Partner" is that head int he fishtank. I have a very old UK rental VHS with Gould in the Santa costume on the front.


December

Submerged - 2.5/5*
Deathsport - 1.5/5*
Westworld - 3/5
Firepower 3/5
Sweet Karma - 4/5*
American Grindhouse - 3.5/5*
Joshua - 2/5*
Captain America - 3/5*
Black Cobra - 2.5/5*
Quo Vadis - 3/5*
Nightmare - 2.5/5
Santa's Slay - 2.5/5
Blood Runs Cold - 2/5*
Black Narcissus - 3.5/5*
Die Hard - 4/5
Die Hard 2 - 3.5/5.
Alvin & Chipmunks (Chipwrecked) - 0.5/5*


TOTAL FOR YEAR - 264 - 160 first time viewings.

Here's my list for December:

 

DECEMBER
53 Total Movies, 50 First timers, 1 In The Theater
336 (12-01) Duel Personalities (1939) 3/5
337 (12-01) Clown Princes (1939) 4/5
338 (12-01) Cousin Wilbur (1939) 3/5
339 (12-01) Joy Scouts (1939) 3.5/5
340 (12-01) Dog Daze (1939) 3/5
341 (12-01) Auto Antics (1939) 3.5/5
342 (12-01) Captain Spanky’s Showboat (1939) 2.5/5
343 (12-02) City Girl (1930) 4/5
344 (12-02) Batfxxx (2010) 2/5
345 (12-04) Waiting For “Superman” (2010) 3/5
346 (12-05) Dad For A Day (1939) 2/5
347 (12-05) Time Out For Lessons (1939) 3.5/5
348 (12-05) Alfalfa’s Double (1940) 3/5
349 (12-07) Two Mules For Sister Sarah (1970) 3/5   
350 (12-08) The Big Premier (1940) 2/5
351 (12-08) All About Hash (1940) 2.5/5
352 (12-08) The New Pupil (1940) 3.5/5
353 (12-08) Bubbling Troubles (1940) 4/5
354 (12-09) 12 Angry Men (1957) 4/5
355 (12-10) Americas Dangerous Animals (2011) 4/5
356 (12-10) Apollo 18 (2011) 2/5
357 (12-11) Source Code (2011) 4/5
358 (12-11) Where Eagles Dare (1968) 3/5
359 (12-12) Jurassic Park (1993) 4/5
360 (12-14) The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) 3.5/5
361 (12-15) Coogin’s Bluff (1968) 2.5/5
362 (12-16) The Lady Vanishes (1938) 3.5/5
363 (12-16) Catalina Five-0 - Treasure Island (1990) 2/5
364 (12-17) Catalina Five-0 - Tiger Shark (1990) 2/5
365 (12-17) Stephen King’s Bag Of Bones (2011) 2/5
366 (12-17) Contagion (2011) 3.5/5
367 (12-19) Jurassic Park III (2001) 2.5/5
368 (12-19) Lazybones (1925) 2.5/5
369 (12-20) Any Old Port (1931) 3/5
370 (12-20) The Music Box (1931) 4/5
371 (12-22) Kelly’s Heroes (1970) 3/5
372 (12-23) Predators (2011) 2/5
373 (12-25) The Band That Wouldn’t Die (2009) 3.5/5
374 (12-25) Small Potatoes: Who Killed The USFL (2009) 3/5
375 (12-25) Kings Ransom (2009) 3/5
376 (12-25) Go Chase Yourself (1938) 2/5
377 (12-26) Muhammad And Larry (2009) 4/5
378 (12-26) Without Bias (2009) 3.5/5
379 (12-26) Three Colours: Blue (1993) 3.5/5
380 (12-27) Some Girls Live In Texas ‘78 (2011) 4/5
381 (12-27) The Legend Of Jimmy The Greek (2009) 3/5
382 (12-27) Three Colours: White (1994) 3.5/5
383 (12-28) The Chimp (1932) 2.5/5
384 (12-28) County Hospital (1932) 3.5/5
385 (12-28) Scram! (1932) 3.5/5
386 (12-29) Carlos (2010) 4/5
387 (12-30) The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011) 3.5/5
388 (12-31) Columbiana (2011) 2/5

 

Best of the month was probably Source Code. I was in no rush to watch this one since I'm not fond of the actor. It ended up being a dead solid Sci-fi and a lovely, humanist picture. Nice work.