tjonasgreen Reviews

The End of the Affair (1955)

Something Surprising From 1955.

[8 January 2007]

This is an astonishing artifact from 1955 -- astonishing because it is so grownup and sophisticated in its outlook, and because it grapples with moral complexities and ambiguities that English language films of this period never went near. An adulterous affair begun with a certain amount of cynicism on both sides grows into a true and passionate love affair, which in turn raises issues of guilt, trust, duty, self-denial and religious belief. As a story, it holds our interest and causes us to wonder where it will end. As a parable and philosophical meditation on belief and its role in love and contemporary life, it is both stimulating and unexpectedly moving.

That a novel as layered and difficult was attempted with major stars at this time is surprising enough. That THE END OF THE AFFAIR succeeds on so many levels seems miraculous, especially in the context of most mainstream film product of the mid-'50s.

Van Johnson is not as expressive or deep an actor as the excellent Deborah Kerr and Peter Cushing (and John Mills, Michael Goodliffe and Nora Swinburne) yet his character's relaxed masculinity, reluctant anguish and saturnine, rather malicious jealousy are well-conveyed, and he manages to be a presence you remain interested in. As Greene's Mary Magdalene character, the woman in whom the sacred and profane are mingled, Kerr is terrific in a complex role that is an interesting inversion of her promiscuous, childless woman in the far more famous and popular FROM HERE TO ETERNITY of just two years before. ETERNITY, done for Columbia, the same studio that released this, was far more shallow and conventional in the way it dealt with Kerr's Karen Holmes and her redemption. Just as shallow (and evasive) was TEA AND SYMPATHY, which Kerr did after this, and which received far more fame and attention than was merited.

This 1955 version of THE END OF THE AFFAIR deserves to be much better known and remembered, and all concerned deserve belated kudos for attempting such a provocative film in the midst of Hollywood's synthetic movies of the period. I saw this after recording it on TCM, and would like to see it scheduled in prime time, to perhaps begin to get the wider audience it deserves and to hear commentary from moderator Robert Osborn (for that matter, he ought to do one hour interviews with both Kerr and Johnson while they are still around).

Let the rediscovery and rehabilitation of this good film begin . . .

The Hairy Ape (1944)

Inspiration For Tennessee Williams?

[9 August 2006]

I never saw or read the Eugene O'Neill play of this title, but the movie is little seen so I jumped at the chance to view it. Despite many drawbacks, it is a curiosity and definitely worth a look. And it does contain an extraordinary scene, a moment that I feel must have inspired a greater and more famous play.

Among the more serious flaws are a too schematic, over-determined plot, sluggish pacing and murky photography. Obviously shot on a low budget by an 'independent' (or as close to it as one came during the studio days) none of this is a surprise. If the picture was good or had been more popular at the time, it would be better known today. The information provided by commentators here is interesting in the way it fills in the lefty backgrounds of many of the talents behind and in front of the camera, though all inexplicably fail to mention Dorothy Comingore. Famous for CITIZEN KANE, most of us have never seen her in any other picture and it has often been reported that her career suffered from the blacklist. This would make her, not director Santell or Bohnen perhaps this pictures' greatest victim of that injustice.

The liberties taken with O'Neill's play are pointedly sexual, and they make commercial sense, though they render the plot both melodramatic (in a different way than in the play) and ludicrous. Here, both Hank and Mildred are deeply affected by their first long look at each other, and the iconography of KING KONG and decades of melodramas have led us to expect Hank to menace and possibly rape and murder Mildred, the beautiful, disdainful rich bitch he cannot forget. Instead, there is wisdom, humor and a happy ending for all. But that isn't what the viewer is left with.

William Bendix makes a very strong impression as a bully with a frightening, unstoppable power and potential for violence. But his performance isn't quite as nuanced as his fan club here suggests. At the time, Susan Hayward made a bigger splash, garnering some good notices from critics and the film industry after languishing for years at Paramount as house ingénue and support to bigger stars. It was as a strong-willed, sometimes shrewish woman that she began to make her name, and here she is fresh, insolent and lovely, without the calculating hardness that had set in by the '50s. And Santell gives her (not Bendix) the single greatest and most haunting moment in the film and the best acting opportunity. It happens as Mildred enters the infernal engine room in her white dress and first spies Hank in all his grotesque power and virility. As she enters the closeup frame and the camera tracks in on her face, Hayward must suggest all that the script could not because of censorship restrictions. For that suspended few seconds we see she is transfixed, fascinated, aroused, repulsed -- disgusted as much by her own attraction to Hank as by his ugliness and brutishness. It is a revelation that seems to shatter both of them. The next scenes suggest they have had a kind of breakdown, that they are linked by destiny, are under a sort of sexual spell of what each represented to the other. This and not what follows provides the real emotional climax of the film.

It's an indelible movie moment, and the match-up of sheltered girl and animalistic male suggests the Blanche-Stanley relationship at the heart of the great A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE. There too, the working class slob goads the archly feminine upper class lady. Except in STREETCAR it is the woman who is insecure and fragile and the man who is beautiful and arrogant. In THE HAIRY APE, rape seems a likely outcome because Santell daringly implies it is what both characters fear and long for. In STREETCAR it actually does come to pass and forms the climax of the play. It is as if Williams had seen HAIRY APE, was provoked, inspired and aroused by its one sexually galvanizing moment, but rethought the form and implications of the plot to serve his own art and suit his own demons

The Hurricane (1937)

On An Island With You

[8 May 2006]

Directed by John Ford with an extraordinary eye for detail and with tremendous sympathy and sensuality, this picture will be a surprise for those who only know the later Ford films that explore the male worlds of military life on the frontier. In those, Ford seems to take the side of authoritarian severity, as if he had come to agree with the Raymond Massey character of THE HURRICANE, for whom human nature can and should be broken on the wheel of law. But in this earlier film you can feel Ford's deep yearning for the freedom and eroticism of a natural life of the body and the senses.

I grew up with THE HURRICANE, which was a staple of TV viewing throughout the '60s and '70s. But seeing it now for the first time in years I am struck by how subversive of convention it must have seemed in the '30s, and how much it was in sync with the cultural and political wars of the late '60s. Terangi, the kind, capable natural man wants merely to live freely and happily, but he is imprisoned and tortured and unwittingly finds himself in opposition to a rule of law that is anti-love, anti-life, anti-human. Every frame of this film sides with Dorothy Lamour and Jon Hall, the gorgeous young lovers, against the hard fanaticism of Massey's governor. Meanwhile the priest, the doctor, the sea captain and the governor's own wife are sensible, kind-hearted (if condescending) humanists who are on the correct side of the debate, but who are helpless in the face of insane obedience to authority.

Yes, the hurricane is marvelously done, impressive and absorbing, and it acts as a very necessary catharsis after the anxiety aroused by the many injustices Terangi must endure. But what seems to matter most to Ford is the idyll of sexy young love, not seen in films since the first two pre-code TARZAN pictures from MGM. Once married, the couple are stripped of their western clothes by their friends and returned to their near-naked state wearing sarongs and flower leis. It is Lamour's character who signals to her husband that she is ready for the honeymoon to begin, and the camera follows the happy couple to their private island where they lay in the sand to make love under palm trees. Just as sensual is the morning after, where Lamour raises the shades of their hut, letting the sun fall on her husband's naked back, and her hair falls around him as she leans down to kiss him tenderly on the neck. This must have been a powerful vision of romance and eroticism to workaday, Depression-weary audiences. The island scenes cast a naive spell, like something from Melville's early books of south sea island life. Ford films these like silent screen montages, with dissolving images of swaying palms, bare, tanned legs, the look of young, tawny bodies and shining hair. Rather than just a professional job for him, his work on THE HURRICANE seems deeply felt.

Lamour was just right here: Though not yet the wry comic actress she would become, she was rather gravely beautiful in a way unusual for an American star then and now, full of languor and sometimes a startling natural grace. The way Marama suddenly pulls her hair back from her face when first seeing Terangi after eight years is an expressive gesture, full of emotion. Hall was very appealing, with the grace of an athlete and for all his muscularity there is something feline about him. And for those aware of rumors that director Ford may have nursed closeted yearnings all his life (as revealed by Maureen O'Hara in her autobiography of 2005) the fevered way that Hall's body and face are photographed in the midst of his torments will have an added charge and interest.

Bye Bye Birdie (1963)

A Boomer Touchstone.

[18 January 2006]

When 'Bye Bye Birdie' was the hit of the '59-'60 season on Broadway, it was as much for its satirical edge as for the talent on stage or the innovative direction by Gower Champion. By that time it was only too clear to savvy adults that Elvis Presley and rock'n'roll had been thoroughly co-opted and mainstreamed by Hollywood and Madison Avenue. For all its supposed danger and subversiveness in 1956, Rock was a pop culture commodity like any other by the end of the decade.

And by the time BYE BYE BIRDIE hit the screen in 1963, that point was too obvious to have any edge. Presley had long since become a bland and unfashionable movie personality, and rock itself had devolved into the kind of inconsequential June/Moon tunes that in a slightly different form had been hit parade staples for decades.

So the point is, the teen world BYE BYE BIRDIE was parodying was largely gone by that time already. Just a year later, when the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan (ironically he was still a King Maker but not for much longer) that world began to dissolve and reform unforgettably. So BIRDIE is the swan song for an era and an expression of Baby Boom nostalgia for kids who were too young to have enjoyed the '50s in quite the same way their older brothers and sisters had. How many children in '63 thrilled to the vigorous twitching of Ann-Margret and Bobby Rydell, hoping that was the teen world that awaited them in the future, only to discover by '68 that alienation and anger were the currency of the day? Not that those emotions were misplaced -- the times themselves demanded them. But there was a sense of loss too, a sense that we had been cheated out of fun: silly, twitchy dances and full skirts and snug pastel pullovers. There's a reason this film made an indelible impression on children then, and perhaps most on girls and gay boys.

It was an old-fashioned musical in a movie era that was confused but evolving rapidly, and Ann-Margret was a transitional star of that moment. A throwback to another Hollywood, she gets the traditional star buildup here, and it works spectacularly. Like Rita Hayworth in GILDA, A-M was the good/bad girl -- fresh and sweet and direct enough to please any elder, but with a smoldering animal eroticism so potent the screen seemed barely able to contain it. She is hot in the runway opening and delicious thereafter but she doesn't really become a star until a pivotal moment in the 'Got A Lot Of Livin' To Do' number when her eyes narrow, she smiles and grits her teeth and her hands envelope the head of a chorus boy while she parses out the lyrics of female sexual emancipation -- Daddy won't know his daughter indeed.

It was a sexual call to action that kids understood and responded to. So THIS was what being a teenager would be like! In that moment and the few minutes that followed, even gay boys felt the tops of their heads come off. It's an excitement that doesn't return until the coda: once again A-M is on the runway, but this time any pretense that she is sweet, innocent Kim McAfee has gone -- this is Ann-Margret, and the sexual light and heat of a new star is palpable. Unfortunately, she was almost immediately to become outdated. Within a few years she was a joke in pictures, and had to wait until 1971 and CARNAL KNOWLEDGE to make a 'comeback' -- at the age of 30, no less. She had made the mistake of starting too late, and being too traditional a Hollywood star just when Hollywood decided to do away with stars, at least those that were provokingly lovely.

So BIRDIE trembled on the edge of a new, harsher era, and those of us who were caught on the cusp of that upheaval feel great affection for the fantasy of rock stars like Birdie, for Sweet Apple High, and for the bouncy, shiny, crisp teenagers we never were.

The Great Waltz (1938)

The Best MacDonald-Eddy Musical That Jeanette And Nelson Never Made.

[16 January 2006]

If there is a genre in which even die-hard contemporary fans of old movies seldom care to delve, it is the once-popular musical operetta. I have steeled myself to watch several Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy movies, and have occasionally been pleasantly surprised, as in my first viewing of ROSE MARIE. I recently caught THE GREAT WALTZ on TCM as part of a festival of Luise Rainer movies, and despite myself I was won over by the skill of the director as well as the opulence of the production.

Miss Rainer's charms elude me. She was pretty and not a bad actress by any means and yet the clammy, self-congratulatory air of masochism and eye-brimming sadness of each of her performances is hard to take. Even when you have to admit that she isn't bad in a given scene, she is insufferable, sometimes almost unwatchable. And she had her most cringing, masochistic and melodramatic role in this picture as the long-suffering wife of a faithless Strauss as played by a puffy Fernand Gravey.

It is Gravey and Miliza Korjus that are the real stars of the film, and this is curious to a modern viewer since neither had the classic good looks of movie stars of the period. What they did have was a stars' confidence and because of the considerable imagination of Julien Duvivier, you believe them as a romantic couple and as stars intoxicated with their own love and talent.

But what is impressive about THE GREAT WALTZ is the way Duvivier transforms potentially dull and static numbers into surreal flights of fantasy. He isn't afraid to be delirious or silly so a few set-pieces unexpectedly catch your attention, make you laugh and then impress you with their theatricality and verve. Such is the orgasmic waltz sequence that takes place in and around a bandstand in the Vienna Woods in which Korjus decisively seduces Gravey. It is Duvivier's attention to detail that makes it: the way Korjus jackknifes to the ground in Gravey's arms and removes her organdy picture hat, the gorgeous line of trees hung with Japanese lanterns on a moonlit set, the way she staggers and tumbles onto the grass after her trilling climax, inviting greater liberties (despite the all-girl orchestra looking on), all of these images make the scene breathless, ludicrous, memorable.

And just because we have blessedly forgotten Strauss's dreary wife, Duvivier concocts a spectacular scene for Rainer too: publicly confronted by her husband's faithlessness, she hurriedly dresses in silks and crinolines determined to kill herself or someone else on the night of his opera debut. Sweeping out of their huge house and down their long staircase to the strains of a waltz, sweeping into a baroque opera house and up an even longer set of steps, she stops, awestruck while several jump cuts reveal the enormity and grandeur of the theatre, the rapt audience and the triumph of her rival, who defiantly swirls into a lavish stage waltz. In contrast, Rainer's smiling-through-tears routine afterward seems an anti-climax, though it is an admirable piece of showmanship and hugely entertaining despite a shrill note of barely controlled hysteria she has cultivated throughout the sequence. Or maybe because of it. Rainer's few strengths as an actress are utterly linked to her considerable weaknesses.

So I'm now not surprised to learn of this film's great success at the time, though I do wonder why the Mac-Eddy productions never got as creative a craftsman as Duvivier to plan and film their pictures. If he had they might be more widely admired today beyond the group of fast-ageing fans who first loved them in the '30s. But maybe nothing can revive interest in this most unfashionable of movie genres.

The Thin Man (1957–1959)

Would Like To See This Again Now . . .

[16 March 2005]

In the early '60s before TV ad rates became astronomical and before small local stations joined large syndicated networks, the airwaves were full of old movies and TV series reruns because no one much cared about the ratings during off hours. Among the antique TV shows from the early and mid '50s that were endlessly repeated were (probably terrible) chestnuts like MY LITTLE MARGIE, OH, SUSANNAH!, PRIVATE SECRETARY, THE PEOPLE'S CHOICE, AMOS 'N' ANDY, THE LIFE OF RILEY, December BRIDE, TOPPER, I MARRIED JOAN, OUR MISS BROOKS, LOVE THAT BOB, and one that I remember especially fondly, THE THIN MAN starring Peter Lawford and Phyllis Kirk and with the sexy and incomparable Nita Talbot in a recurring role.

I remember virtually nothing about it except the impressions it left me with: Peter Lawford and Phyllis Kirk seemed dry, pleasant and sophisticated and had a nice chemistry together. I knew nothing of Powell and Loy and the original series of films at the time, so Lawford and Kirk seemed delightful. And even in childhood, I LOVED Nita Talbot, who guested on lots of other series of the period. Tall, with a model's figure and bearing, she usually wore a Veronica Lake pageboy and had a wry, slinky beauty which suggested a cross between Lauren Bacall and Anne Francis. But her voice was honking and grating and she had a N.Y. accent as thick as a slice of corned beef. The incongruity was delicious and she was wonderful.

The only plot I remember in the series was one in which it was implied that a murdered woman (I seem to remember her as a waitress) had been hacked to pieces and hidden in a trunk -- precisely the kind of grisly detail a child would remember.

While I'm willing to believe this series was awful (certainly most or all of the others I listed must have been) I'd love to see several episodes again, and I'd love to know whatever happened to Nita Talbot.

Trader Horn (1931)

Resonant 19th Century Boys' Adventure.

[5/10 · 24 February 2005]

The comments of Ron Oliver and marcslope are interesting and informative and yet what occurs to me is that this antique with all its racist assumptions about the violence and mystery of 'the dark continent' is a relic of late 19th-century Boys' Adventure fiction. These stories by H. Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs (as well as dozens of others now forgotten) seem to have had a surprising and lasting life in early talking pictures: TARZAN, THE GREEN GODDESS, SHE and countless serials all featured these mythic adventurers, forgotten white gods and goddesses and black 'savages,' both noble and blood-thirsty. Seeing TRADER HORN reveals that it was among the first and most influential of these movies, so it's unfortunate that it is so little known today.

That's no doubt due to its casual racism as well as the pre-code nudity on the part of the African women filmed on location. But TRADER HORN's naiveté and breath-taking political incorrectness make it a rather fascinating primitive. There are other marks against it: an overlong running time, too-leisurely pacing, wild-life photography that is often dull or (in the case of the slaughter of a rhino and a lion) sickening.

But on the plus side: Harry Carey's direct, natural and gruff performance has been noted by others. I was far more interested in Duncan Renaldo and Edwina Booth. Renaldo was so personable and extraordinarily handsome -- he looked like a prettier Don Ameche and from certain angles seems a dead ringer for a black-haired Brad Pitt -- that I was astonished to have never heard of him. He was certainly no great actor, and yet he had a definite physical presence and was highly photogenic. His Hispanic accent must have been the primary impediment to a career in 'A' pictures. The (in some ways) legendary Edwina Booth turns out to have had a strong facial resemblance to Marlene Dietrich, and like Dietrich she's not a very expressive actress. And yet she throws herself wholeheartedly into her portrait of a wild, willful and childish White Goddess, spitting out all of her dialog in unintelligible movie African. It's camp for sure, but also a gutsy performance.

And the scene in which Carey and Renaldo first meet Booth is memorable: after appearing in their hut wearing only a monkey fur bikini (and showing the kind of long, lean, cut body that contemporary taste demands) she proceeds to have a shrieking tantrum while flogging every African in sight. When confronted by the gorgeous Renaldo, she proceeds to whip him as well (in a scene that obviously inspired a similar one in Clara Bow's CALL HER SAVAGE a year later) while he simply smolders and hardens and she becomes aroused. It is a provocative scene of real sexual tension and something of a revelation.

A bigger one is the fact that in plot and iconography TRADER HORN was an obvious influence on the far more famous and evocative KING KONG. Having grown up with Kong and Fay Wray I was shocked to be watching TRADER HORN for the first time only to note that Carey begot Robert Armstrong as Booth begot Fay Wray and Renaldo begot Bruce Cabot. Such are the random ways that imitation can sometimes unintentionally inspire great folk art.

The Ice Follies of 1939 (1939)

Joan Crawford, in Technicolor yet . . .

[8 December 2004]

Widely considered the worst film Joan Crawford made at MGM (it must have been a low point for James Stewart too, yet it forms no part of the lore about his long career) this is a real curiosity. It has the sort of B-movie plot Sonja Henie was getting in her hugely successful skating pictures at Fox, but this one is done with an A-budget. And because the stars can't skate, it is essentially two pictures in one -- a skating 'spectacular' featuring anonymous athletes which prefigures the ice-skating arena shows we know so well, and a soap opera about a two career couple who can't make their marriage work.

Forget trying to figure out how a major film from the most meticulous of studios could be such a hodgepodge. Simply go with it and happily register its many lapses in taste and logic. In the early scenes Crawford is actually more relaxed and likable than in other pictures from this period, though this changes once her character signs a movie contract. The idea of Crawford playing a star makes perfect sense and one wonders why no one thought of it before. At last her artificiality and posturing has a logical explanation. (But can someone explain why some of Max Steiner's score from GONE WITH THE WIND is played during Joan's drunk scene?) And in gorgeous three-strip Technicolor she looks at once terrifically glamorous and hard as nails. This hardness and the fact that it exposed her age is surely the reason she never gets a color closeup. And though she is a small part of the color portion of the film, she manages to wear no less than three Adrian outfits, the most striking being a brilliant green ensemble with gold and silver embroidery (the 18th Century court outfits the extras wear must have been recycled from MARIE ANTOINETTE).

Assuming Crawford had a choice, why did she do this film? To branch out to a broader family audience than she had before? To cash in on a popular box office fad? Or, at a time when Jeanette Macdonald was still considered Louis B. Mayer's favorite, did Crawford relish getting the Technicolor operetta treatment? Joan took singing lessons for years (her thin, unpleasant voice is briefly heard) and Macdonald had already been in one color film and was about to do another at a time when Technicolor carried the prestige of novelty and expense. Whatever the reason, it must have caused general hilarity in Hollywood -- one can imagine Billy Haines calling up George Cukor to chuckle over the latest bomb Joan had been saddled with. Only Sonja Henie can have been jealous over this turkey.

Night and Day (1946)

The cold, dark, beautiful prince.

[8 July 2004]

I haven't seen DE LOVELY, the new musical biopic about Cole Porter's life -- the movie trailer convinced me it would be as terrible as the reviews say it is. But Stephen Holden's pan in the N.Y. Times caused me to want to see NIGHT AND DAY again since he thought that for all its fraudulence, it caught something right about Porter's life and times. Having seen it recently for the first time since childhood, I can see what he meant. Evidently everything in it is a lie. Okay. Standard for Hollywood biopics.

The more important thing it gets wrong is the music, which for the most part is not handled well. In this period, Warner Bros. did not have talented singer/dancers under contract and it shows here. Ginny Simms is an accomplished if mechanical singer, Jane Wyman a passable one, but neither dances and neither dazzles. Mary Martin had talent and charm but not the looks nor the sparkle to come across well on film. When dancing is called for we get dull, pretentious ballroom/acrobatic routines from anonymous performers. This film needed the kind of musical talent MGM had under contract, and that lack of talent and zip makes for a musically mediocre film despite the fantastic Porter song catalog.

What the film got weirdly right was the casting of Cary Grant because either by his choice or director Michael Curtiz's design, Grant's withholding, enigmatic performance is intriguing, and does most of the work of spelling out 'the gay thing' for audiences in the know then and now. DE LOVELY may well be frank about the fact that Porter was gay, but gay audiences would have gotten the point in NIGHT AND DAY anyway. Lovely, elegant, chilly Alexis Smith does all the pursuing in the film, as do the other women, and yet Cole is charmingly evasive with all of them. They want him -- who wouldn't want to sleep with Cary Grant at the peak of his beauty? -- but he doesn't seem to care about anything but his music. Hmmmm. Where have we heard that before? Even when Linda/Alexis lands him, he's never really hers, he always seems to have his mind and heart elsewhere. There is absolutely no suggestion anywhere in this film that there was intense passion, emotion or love on his side of this relationship, which is unusual in this period. Rather their marriage seems to be a companionable one of mutual respect, which was apparently the case in real life. When Linda/Alexis gets fed up with being neglected in favor of Cole's work, we can also imagine that an endless supply of bellmen, sailors and chorus boys may have had something to do with it as well. The movie can't say this, but it leaves enough space and question marks for the audience to fill in the blanks. And we do.

Even at the end, with Porter being honored back at Yale with the (all male) glee club singing the glorious "Night and Day" and Linda walks in and she and Cole meet again on the brick patio in the moonlight, Grant doesn't kiss her except for a chaste peck on the cheek. Once again, as throughout the film, he is the passive object of her desire and he hardly seems to care. This performance as much as his work in the excellent NOTORIOUS suggests the coldness and misogyny that sometimes lurk in his screen persona. It's explicit in SUSPICION and NOTORIOUS, Hitchcock was exploring it there, but it's actually implicit in NIGHT AND DAY in every closeup where Grant looks simultaneously gorgeous and conflicted. How hard it must have been to be this beautiful and this uneasy about it.

I concur with those here who find the print currently on view on TCM as sub-par. A new DVD is out on NIGHT AND DAY and TCM would do well to show this in future. Meanwhile, feel free to check this picture out to see an example of screenwriters, a director and a star who work hard to suggest what they cannot actually say.

Adventure (1945)

Pretentious misfire.

[28 June 2004]

Maybe because STRANGE CARGO, THE HUMAN COMEDY and A GUY NAMED JOE dealt with whimsy and religious fantasy successfully, MGM kept trying with this kind of picture. But HIGH BARBAREE and ADVENTURE (both based on what must have been gassy novels) are dull failures.

I must dissent with the majority view here that ADVENTURE is good and that Clark Gable and Greer Garson are good in it. They are a dismal mismatch as a romantic team and neither is suited to this kind of heavy, 'meaningful' material. In their very different ways, both stars were grounded, practical, sensible, which is not what was needed to bring off this type of romantic fantasy. When they meet and for a long time after, Gable and Garson give too successful an impression of mutual loathing for us to believe later that they have suddenly discovered their great love for each other. Victor Fleming does a very glossy professional job directing this film and both stars get dazzling, dynamically framed closeups and two-shots, but they never seem right for each other. By contrast, in a supporting role, Joan Blondell seems exactly right for Gable, being his female equivalent, having humor and a juicy kind of sensuality.

ADVENTURE is anything but, and the mystical themes never make any sense and are never convincingly connected to the romance. It was a big hit, presumably because people were curious to see these stars together, and to catch Gable's first picture after the war. But this could only have diminished the luster of both of them. And pictures like this must be why Dore Schary was brought into the studio to supplant Louis B. Mayer, who had become lazy and complacent, squandering his two biggest stars on pretentious garbage.

Athena (1954)

Loony, enjoyable and underrated musical.

[10 June 2004]

ATHENA is a strange movie in many ways, some of which still resonate today. As a satire of a certain kind of Southern California lifestyle it was ahead of its time. Astrology, numerology, exercise, body-building, vegetarianism, non-smoking, environmental allergies, animal rights, contemporary art and architecture are all parodied or touched on here, and all became joke punchlines in the '50s and '60s -- until these 'isms' became part of mainstream culture. Here for the first time in movies we see familiar aspects of American life as we take it for granted in 2004.

On a completely different front, it was the lack of tuneful, memorable original scores that began to kill the movie musical in the 1950s and the exceptions were few: ROYAL WEDDING, CALAMITY JANE, GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES, SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS, GIGI, then much later, THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE. Can you think of others? Those that were as good or better were either revues of old song catalogs (SINGING IN THE RAIN, THE BAND WAGON) or else were filmed versions of hit Broadway shows. On the other hand I LOVE MELVIN, HIT THE DECK, LUCKY ME, TWO TICKETS TO Broadway, Texas CARNIVAL, GIVE A GIRL A BREAK, SMALL TOWN GIRL, THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, THE GIRL MOST LIKELY, THE GIRL RUSH and others like them presided over the slow death of a great film genre. Blane and Martin's score for ATHENA isn't top notch, but it's good and it deserves to be better known than it is.

Then we have the coded gay sensibility that slumbers in every film musical but occasionally awakens in '50s Hollywood in the 'Is There Anyone Here For Love?' number in GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES, in the 'Put 'Em Back' number from L'IL ABNER and throughout ATHENA, which even has an appearance by physique god and gay icon Steve Reeves, along with a gaggle of other adorable, glossy-haired muscle studs who were almost certainly gay to a man (for the right price, anyway). Somehow, ATHENA weaves these various skeins in a way that is simultaneously entertaining and mind-blowing, awful yet kinda terrific. All this and Jane Powell and Debbie Reynolds in the same picture.

Which turns out to be revealing. Jane Powell was always pretty, peppy and efficient, and I've always preferred her operetta-style singing voice to those of Jeanette MacDonald, Deanna Durbin or Kathryn Grayson. And yet more than some others, this role reveals a certain detachment, a lack of affect. Having now watched six or eight Powell films over a short period (via the Universite de TCM), it gradually dawned on me that for all her niceness and professionalism she never really seems to connect to her material, her surroundings or her co-stars. Did she ever make you believe she was Walter Pigeon's daughter? George Brent's? Fred Astaire's sister? Or that she was in love with Peter Lawford, Cliff Robertson or (in this picture) Edmund Purdom? It's as if she's starring in a film in her own head where the other actors are her creations. Compare her to Debbie Reynolds here, whose talent and personality seem so much more engaged and energetic -- this may be a construction (Debbie was an ambitious and hard-working gal) but she is more immediate, more alive than Powell, and she effortlessly steals the 'I Never Felt Better' number out from under Janie, making it the best in the film.

Need more reasons to check out this curious and curiously enjoyable musical? Well, there is the very handsome Edmund Purdom, whose stiffness is for once used well in a film, and who manages, in his sly, quiet way to be very sexy and charming. Then there is dishy, bitchy Linda Christian, who loses Edmund to Jane, but who is so much more believable as his consort. As she must have seemed in real life: after husband Tyrone Power died, she briefly married Purdom. And then there's the fact reported by Esther Williams in her memoir "Million Dollar Mermaid" that she and Charles Walters originally dreamed up ATHENA as a swimming musical for her. Do seek it out. It's not entirely successful, even on its own terms, but it's worth a look.

Easy to Wed (1946)

Stolen By Lucy . . .

[10 June 2004]

As the other comments here indicate, it's highly instructive to compare LIBELED LADY to this remake, EASY TO WED. A decade brought a huge difference in style between the Thalberg-approved slangy courtship of slapstick repartee and the plush, earnest romance of Louis B. Mayer's MGM of the '40s.

Lucille Ball steals this picture with a very well-judged comic performance, aided by director Edward Buzzell, who clearly throws many scenes her way. What will surprise those who know her primarily from "I Love Lucy" is to see how much of her comic shtick is already on view here, completely developed and intact. The drunk scene, the little voices, the 'takes,' stares, reactions and expressions are familiar in every way as Lucy Ricardo. Ball also never looked more beautiful than in this film, with her hair as metallic and bright as a new penny, and in a series of witty and gorgeous costumes by Irene, who does just as well by Esther Williams.

But those who are critical of Ball's performance, particularly in contrast to Jean Harlow's in LIBELED LADY, are right. Harlow was a natural, a wonderful, winning and unique personality, whose blustering scenes of anger were always justified, always expressing her common sense and dignity. The dirty little secret about why Lucille Ball never made it as a movie star was that despite her professionalism and beauty, she was essentially a strident and cold personality. What Harlow did naturally, Ball works very hard to achieve so that we admire her pyrotechnics without ever warming up to her. By the time of "I Love Lucy" she had begun to disguise her intensity with clutziness and feigned vulnerability and stupidity. And like Katharine Hepburn, she learned that if Lucy was reined-in by a man once in a while, audiences could forgive her for her aggressiveness.

There is relatively little of Esther Williams' swimming in this picture. At this mid-'40s point, MGM was pushing her versatility to see just how much she could do, how far she could go. I happen to think that her screen presence (even when out of the water) is underrated. She had a refreshing, no-nonsense self confidence that is very American, and she was sexy in a way that is never blatant. The fact that this statuesque beauty with her strong physical presence and perfect carriage never acts seductively or coyly creates an unexpected sexual tension, especially in her early films (she lost a bit of it later as her body became thicker and more athletic). You can see how some would feel moved to ruffle her composure, warm her up, 'get' to her in some way, because she seems oblivious to her femininity while brimming over with it. Which is what makes her seem an emblematic American movie star. In the first half of this picture she gives a good account of the kind of frigid glamor girl that Alexis Smith often played at Warners.' When she finally melts, it's lovely, though she is better photographed in both THRILL OF A ROMANCE and THIS TIME FOR KEEPS (where she rates closeups by Karl Freund that make her look almost impossibly, lustrously beautiful).

A word about MGM's '40s Technicolor -- I love it. Many films from this period as screened on TCM seem to have been saved, restored, remastered for video tapes and DVDs. All of Esther Williams' color films from the mid-'40s are a visual treat with bright, deeply saturated color and sharp images, though a few scenes in EASY TO WED seem unaccountably muddy and soft, with desaturated color. And in one scene Ball wears a frosty blue costume that we have been told is green. Maybe they should take a look at this print before they put this film out on DVD.

I Live My Life (1935)

Adrian Is Destiny . . .

[7 June 2004]

Talented writer (and later director) Joe Mankiewicz wrote a decent early screwball comedy script with I LIVE MY LIFE, one that in some ways anticipated the much better MY MAN GODFREY of a year later. It meanders a bit, is repetitious and ultimately tedious, but with Clark Gable and Myrna Loy it might have worked.

Joan Crawford didn't have the light touch or resourcefulness needed to make the contrived comedy reversals of this story come to life. The result is that a movie whose script suggests a frothy romp becomes a very strained love story with failed comic overtones. Brian Aherne is tall, handsome, gallant and completely believable as an academic trying to learn how to unwind, rather like Cary Grant in BRINGING UP BABY three years later. Unlike Grant, he hadn't the gifts of comic timing or of charm -- there is something cranky and grudging about him, and maybe this kept him from becoming a star despite his good looks.

But this was a Joan Crawford vehicle, it was tailored for her, and it was she who was expected to carry it. As usual, the broad, strong face is as striking as a Modigliani sculpture but less expressive. Adrian, the great MGM designer so closely associated with her, is largely responsible for providing the illusion of presence and magnetism which Crawford didn't actually have. In this picture he gives her one of her most extreme and frankly ludicrous costumes, and in upstaging her, it exposes the essential flaw in their professional relationship.

Adrian had wit as a designer and his costumes here are all amusing comments on Crawford's character, but they expose rather than enhance her. The worst example seems meant to be a literal suit of armor since Crawford wears it in a scene in which her defensive, self-conscious character realizes she loves Aherne but must give him up in order to save her father from financial reversals. It's rendered in what looks like silver lame, with gigantic panels that fit over each shoulder, open on the sides but completely obscuring her arms from the front -- an armless Athena ready for battle. Less awful but still attention-getting are a series of black suits and dresses which are cluttered with enormous starched white collars and bibs or exploding swags of stiff material suggesting stylized nun's habits.

In contrast, two simple costumes are far less theatrical but more effective in letting us examine Crawford: A backless, halter neck sailor suit is playful and sexy when she wears it without a bra in her first scene. And much later a starkly elegant white satin dressing gown proves to be more beautiful and glamorous than the two wedding gowns she also wears, the second of which uses tiers of orange blossoms to cover up damage her spoiled heiress has done to it. The two pared-down costumes at least allow us to observe the actress and woman for ourselves to decide what we think of her. Little was required of Crawford in this period and she gave very little in return. And we have to wonder if Adrian tried to hide this or was in fact the cause of it: Why should Crawford have learned to feel and act when her collars and sleeves upstaged her in every scene anyway?

Three Strangers (1946)

Interesting black comedy about greed in a movie rich with detail and atmosphere.

[8/10 · 4 April 2004]

A very literate script by John Huston and Howard Koch makes this one worth seeing. Only after the initial intriguing premise is set in motion do we discover to our amusement that all the characters we've become interested in are fairly despicable, particularly Geraldine Fitzgerald as a sociopath and nymphomaniac. With the unusually well observed character details provided by the script and the use of many supporting and bit actors one hasn't seen in lots of other pictures, THREE STRANGERS really has something of the atmosphere of London in 1938 rather than of London-via-Hollywood.

And make no mistake: Despite good direction by Jean Negulesco, John Huston's cynicism, pessimism and misogyny are evident everywhere, and that alone makes this unusual in a '40s picture. Like MALTESE FALCON it is a black comedy about greed, but it has no big stars, no glamor, and only the sliest, cruelest humor. Add the perfectly judged performances of everyone in this film, and it adds up to a neglected near-classic, one that seemed to predict the funnier and more elegant KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS.

As the real star of the film, Peter Lorre is wonderfully wry and quite lovable as one of life's eternal losers. Sydney Greenstreet often played nasty men deliciously but here he takes his character's weakness and pettiness much further than usual, and his scenes of escalating madness are very effective. Geraldine Fitzgerald's portrait of an amoral seductress is different than what she usually played at Warners, and should be considered some kind of '40s milestone in the depiction of depraved women alongside Gene Tierney in LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN and Agnes Moorehead in DARK PASSAGE. She's aided by some very form-fitting Milo Anderson gowns, one of which, a pleated satin negligee, was recycled in black for Patricia Neal in THE FOUNTAINHEAD a few years later. It looks great in both incarnations. In smaller parts Peter Whitney makes an impression as a soft-hearted (and homosexual?) crony of Lorre's, and Rosalind Ivan is memorable as a dotty widow who is much shrewder than she appears. Finally, the casting of Fitzgerald, Marjorie Riordan and Joan Lorring (who looks like a young Irene Selznick) is curious: all three young women have prominent noses, darkly painted lips and very dark, shoulder-length hair which is styled similarly. And as each character descends in economic scale, her looks are heavier and plainer. Another comment on how fickle fortune can be? Anne Sharp's comment below that the characters are meant to illustrate the dark forces that enabled WWII is interesting and valuable.

By the way, the print shown on TCM is rather dim, sketchy and full of harsh contrasts so it's hard to judge what the film was actually meant to look like. Whoever now owns the Warner Bros. library should strike a pristine version of this one.

Phantom Lady (1944)

The most suggestive 'sex scene' in '40s films.

[4 April 2004]

Film students and fans of film noir always hear about PHANTOM LADY and now that I've seen it I'm inclined to report that it's overrated. Though the premise is initially intriguing, it quickly accumulates so many plot holes that you instantly figure out who the murderer is. But this is an exercise in style, not content. Director Robert Siodmak saved the film by giving visual distinction to a poor script.

His training in the German Expressionist style makes for very striking images thoughout despite the low budget: dramatic contrasts between light and dark with simple, strong lighting effects never fail to provide interest and tension. And he goes a long way in suggesting the ethnic and racial mix of New York City in 1944 by his offbeat choice of extras and supporting players, most of whom are not the types you see in movies of the time. And the set of sculptor Franchot Tone's apartment complete with furniture and busts would be the envy of many a Soho or Tribeca resident in 2004.

In the lead, Ella Raines looks rather like a poor man's Gene Tierney. She is attractive and likable and you have no trouble maintaining interest in her, but she doesn't have much acting range, at least at this point in her career. Franchot Tone does a very professional job in an impossibly sketchy and ludicrous part, and Thomas Gomez is okay as the detective. As the wronged man, Alan Curtis provides his own visual interest via a strong jaw and broad shoulders, and an occasional hint of surliness makes his character more interesting.

But as others have indicated here, the single most surprising and effective scene is one where horny drummer Elisha Cook, Jr. takes Ella Raines to an after hours dive to show her what he's made of. Equating jazz and especially drumming with hot sex, Siodmak cross cuts between Cook's orgasmic frenzy at the drums (complete with a closeup insert of his crotch) with Ella seemingly transported as well, giving him the come-on, urging him to climax. It's the most overtly sexual scene I've ever seen in a '40s film and it's one you shouldn't miss.

Mildred Pierce (1945)

'Please Don't Tell What Mildred Pierce Did!'

[31 March 2004]

James M Cain's novel 'Mildred Pierce' was much tougher, dirtier, violent and cynical than the gorgeously mounted movie it became, but the film still manages to maintain enough of the flavor of the book to be interesting. The portrait of working class life in Southern California works well, as does the depiction of a marriage that breaks down because of disappointment and resentment rather than anything melodramatic. Within its first hour MILDRED PIERCE captures something anxious about American life and marriages and families that is more true than most of what movies had shown up to that time, and it would prove to be even more so in the postwar world to come. The movie actually becomes more false and synthetic as it moves into Mildred's rise in life, but by then the plot and characters have taken hold.

And so has the film's increasingly bleak look at what women can expect when they live and work alone in a man's world, beset by men who want to exploit them, sexually and otherwise. This too, though softened from the book, would have seemed refreshingly frank to many of viewers at that time.

What raises the film to the level of classic is the first class work from every professional in every department. Joan Crawford is not much more expressive here than she was in her later MGM pictures, but this character suits her limited talents so well that she seems better than in almost anything else she did. All her Warners pictures used her more effectively than MGM usually managed to do, perhaps because in them she is invariably exploited, abused, maligned, even tortured. The bad behavior her Warners characters inspire in others is so extreme that she doesn't need to be. These plots do what Adrian's sometimes garish clothes did for her at MGM: they give her a personality, make her seem more interesting than she really was, and they make her sympathetic despite her essential coldness. Crawford gets able support from Ann Blyth, Eve Arden (as comedy relief; she is almost appearing in another movie entirely), Zachary Scott and especially Jack Carson, dead-on as a sweaty hustler and low rent lothario, bringing nuance to what could have been a one-note portrayal. Bruce Bennett isn't really a good actor in the role of Mildred's first husband, but he's perfectly cast -- he looks like an Okie from one of Dorothea Lange's photographs who went west to 'make it' and never did.

And as has been frequently mentioned here, Ernest Haller's cinematography (especially in the brilliant prints now being shown on cable) is consistently evocative and beautiful. So many of his shots live in the memory: in the scene where a mink wearing, gun wielding Mildred comes upon Monte and Vida kissing, the image is an almost primal one of betrayal and glamor -- the way their profiles are in darkness, the way Ann Blyth arches back against the bar, the hard, dim glitter of lame and the billows of tulle from her gown. The way Vida tumbles forward into almost blinding lamplight while Monte's face hardens behind her -- these are the kinds of wonderful images the best old films regularly delivered. Also excellent is Anton Grot's art direction, opulent but still managing to help create the particular SoCal atmosphere of this picture. And as usual, Max Steiner's score is effective, but as an earlier poster noted, he recycled a couple of motifs from his Oscar-winning score to NOW, VOYAGER. And director Michael Curtiz must be praised for keeping everything in perfect balance. This is one of the most admired '40s pictures and well worth a look.

Somewhere I'll Find You (1942)

And somewhere you'll find a much better movie to watch . . .

[29 March 2004]

This is a 'you hadda be there' picture. In 1942 this would have been one to see: the re-teaming of Clark Gable and Lana Turner after their success in HONKY TONK and Gable's first picture to be released after the death of his wife Carole Lombard. It was also his last picture before enlisting, so all stateside moviegoers knew it would be their final Gable film for the duration of WWII. And since her elopement and subsequent divorce from Artie Shaw in 1940, Turner was an ongoing tabloid headline. I guess with so many surefire elements, MGM didn't think it had to make a good movie too.

This is a 'love' triangle between three journalists, unfolding just before and just after Pearl Harbor. But since Gable and Turner make up two of the three points, there's no doubt about who will wind up with the girl. Yet we must suffer many contrived scenes during which two parts of the triangle argue tediously about the absent third. Finally, war breaks out and all debts are paid during the Japanese invasion of the Philippines,

Beginning with an ill-judged opening comic scene, right through to the rousing, patriotic ending in the midst of the noise and muck of war, nothing in this picture makes sense, fits together or works satisfyingly. It lurches clumsily from comedy to romance to comedy to action picture, as if each sequence was meant for a separate film. SOMEWHERE I'LL FIND YOU gives lie to the idea that movies from the classic period always had coherent stories.

Gable is reassuringly gruff and virile but he does seem less energetic and committed to the part than usual, and a couple of his closeups suggest the studio was exploiting his grief over Lombard, assuming that's what audiences would see in his face. Turner is livelier and her scenes with Gable are beautifully shot but never erotic. As Gable's younger brother, Robert Sterling is good-looking and lends able support and it isn't his fault that he and Gable never seem related. That was more Gable's job and he botched it. As a fast-talking B-girl, Patricia Dane is self-conscious but she makes such an impression in her two scenes and is so well-dressed and photographed that you wonder why you haven't seen more of her. You also wonder who she may have been seeing in the Front Office to get such a break. Best buddies (and rumored lovers) Van Johnson and Keenan Wynn have small parts near the end, and a few Asian actors are given sympathetic bits in the last quarter. But this movie squanders nearly every opportunity it had.

The Bride Wore Red (1937)

A Dull Curiosity.

[26 March 2004]

Despite the provocative title and the first few scenes, which suggest this might be an interesting variation on Shaw's "Pygmalion," we're actually back in Joan Crawford's MGM universe, where one suitor isn't enough if you can have two, and where Adrian can be counted on to provide a drop dead gown at regular intervals.

This airless, relentlessly phony picture did Crawford no favors. For a major star she is remarkably inexpressive. Her face, so strong, angular and meticulously made up, is striking enough to get all our attention, but this curiosity is never repaid. We search Joan's face looking for fleeting expressions, varying moods, complex emotions but we get only a single mask of anxiety. Crawford in this period seems incapable of shaping a performance or giving a character flesh, blood and heart -- she just sleepwalks from scene to scene looking as perfect and lifeless as a mannequin (coincidentally the title of her next film).

If glamor without rhyme, reason or variation is your idea of entertainment, you are welcome to it, but I thought THE BRIDE WORE RED was both strange and boring. By the way, the eponymous dress is kind of tacky but undeniably spectacular, and it sure looks red, even in black and white.

San Francisco (1936)

One of the best pictures of the '30s.

[26 March 2004]

The contrasting images and acting styles of Clark Gable and Jeanette MacDonald are actually part of the story of SAN FRANCISCO and a major reason the picture works as well as it does. In no other universe but this one would you believe that Gable lusted for MacDonald, but here their relationship has a strange sort of aptness. Jeanette represents culture, respectability, Christianity. Gable is populism, hedonism, atheism, and until he did GONE WITH THE WIND, this was the film that seemed to capture his screen persona best. And this performance convinced everyone that only he could do justice to Rhett Butler. Forget his sappy conversion to Christianity at the end -- what you remember is how shrewd, sensible and full of heart his Blackie Norton is. Better to be his kind of man than to be like Spencer Tracy's Father Tim Mullin, who is alternately smug and smugly masochistic. When Gable describes his philosophy in a wonderful speech to MacDonald and speaks of his feelings "rushing up like a river," she and the viewer know who really wins this debate, despite the ending to come.

But the reason the earthquake sequences work so well is because the relationships have been so well defined by the time it hits. So in a way it seems like the emotional eruption of the two conflicted lovers, the opposites who attract, rather than a judgment from God (which is implied). When Jeanette gets up to sing "San Francisco" at the Chicken Ball talent contest, it's one of the rightest moments in any '30s film. Her performance of the song was ruthlessly parodied by Judy Garland later, and I always find MacDonald's voice to be both thin and shrill, yet the excitement of the audience and MacDonald's gameness at singing along (in a kind of scat opera riff) while the happy tension builds and builds is undeniably a joy, as is the eruption of cheers when she wins the contest. Gable's pride spoils the moment and just as we feel cheated and suspended . . . catastrophe! Throughout this picture but especially near the end, director Van Dyke has a clear eye for detail: the way the panicked man runs through the streets yelling "Irene! Irene!" is something I have remembered through the years.

This picture has real flavor and atmosphere, both shrewdness and heart (like Blackie) and it's obligatory viewing for any fan of movies from the classic period.

Sadie McKee (1934)

The Perfect Crawford Vehicle.

[26 March 2004]

Clarence Brown was an above average director and his pictures with Joan Crawford in the early and mid '30s are better than those she did with others. Brown had an eye and a sense of detail and he favors long takes with two or more performers interacting, which creates a certain tension where there might otherwise be none. Certainly this improbable script is not noticeably better than others Joan did around that time, but everything about this picture works perfectly.

Having finally found her best 'look,' Crawford is undeniably gorgeous, the ravishing epitome of glamor. And Adrian does some of his best work for her in this, putting her in one stunning and flattering gown after another. She is also given a talented and varied supporting cast and all of the big set pieces work, though Edward Arnold's drunk scenes go on for too long.

And there are a couple of fantastic sets, one of Arnold's mansion and the other of a glass sanitarium in the snow. Though the whole cast is more than adequate, a few players stand out: Jean Dixon is delightfully world weary in a leopard coat, Esther Ralston makes a perfect amoral siren, and it's a bit of a revelation to see how much Leo G. Carroll accomplishes by doing very little in his role as a nasty butler. There's also a fantastic jazz version of "After You've Gone" performed by Gene Austin, Candy Candido and Otto Heimel. As for the main players, Crawford, Franchot Tone and Gene Raymond don't dig very deep in their performances, but with a plucky, luscious Crawford at full tilt and with everything else about this movie clicking so well, it doesn't matter. It works.

Our Blushing Brides (1930)

What Shopgirls Saw In 1930.

[26 March 2004]

This movie starts with floods of women arriving to a department store to start work for the day. Chatter, griping, gossip and a moving camera all promise some fun. And Joan Crawford, whose appearance in this period was constantly evolving, looks lovely rather than merely striking. She also appears relaxed and self-possessed. But the picture slides downhill fast. Clearly, MGM considered Crawford the shop girl's delight, and they plotted her movies accordingly. This one dangles the wages of sin, with promises of new frocks among the art deco splendor of vast outdoor pavilions, fanciful tree house love nests and luxe illicit city apartments. But then we learn that girls who go bad end up badly. Determined Joan doesn't take that route and SHE winds up with the callow rich boy rather than dead or back on the farm with Mother. Oy.

Alternately static and melodramatic, only Anita Page gives a direct, natural performance here. Everyone else poses and strikes attitudes, spouting pretentious dialogue that makes no sense whatever. Two fashion shows (another sop to the Working Girl) feature some very unattractive and unflattering Adrian outfits. Supporting actor Raymond Hackett is pretty cute as a cad, and there is one amusing in-joke. At one point, Joan attends a movie to escape her troubles and it turns out to be LET US BE GAY, a real picture which featured co-star Raymond Hackett (whose character is also in the theatre watching the picture) but whose star was Norma Shearer, Crawford's arch rival at MGM. Just watch the first ten minutes then skip the rest of this turkey.

Our Modern Maidens (1929)

Rather Hard To See Why Crawford Became A Star.

[24 March 2004]

After four years of slogging, Joan Crawford had finally become a star, but this followup to her breakthrough role in OUR DANCING DAUGHTERS is a puzzlement. Her face, while strong, is not exactly beautiful and certainly not pretty. And F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous comments about her limitations as an actress have never been bettered: she is capable of showing only one emotion at a time, and those are telegraphed and italicized so that the dimmest audience member will know what her character is supposed to be feeling. Yes, the plot is nominally risque, but what did people see in Crawford at this period, since there is nothing extraordinary about her? Perhaps her aggressiveness, decisiveness and athleticism seemed modern. There is really nothing conventionally feminine about her, and maybe this was refreshing. Pretty Anita Page, playing the rather bovine 'nice' girl shows what Crawford might have seemed to be rebelling against.

Because the film was shot as a silent but had a music and sound-effects track added along with minimal titles, OUR MODERN MAIDENS moves quickly and is much less static than many early talkies. There are also some wonderful art deco sets here. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is good-looking but he gives as over-scaled a performance as Crawford does, Rod La Rocque seems epicene and old-fashioned, but there is bright support from blonde, slender Josephine Dunn as a droll bitch, and some camping from handsome Edward Nugent as her consort.

The Seventh Sin (1957)

Dull, literal-minded version of a good Maugham novel.

[23 March 2004]

I love Somerset Maugham's novels, but they tend to be full of internal monologues and emotional and spiritual struggles that can be difficult to dramatize (his short stories make much better material for movies). THE PAINTED VEIL is a terrific book and a good read, veering from sexual melodrama to spiritual regeneration, full of psychological insight, tension and vivid descriptions of life in China during a cholera epidemic.

But this movie is just dreadful. It's dull, literal-minded and a travesty of a great story and promising concept. The credibility problems start (but don't end) with the fact that handsome Bill Travers was miscast as the cuckold. Tall and masculine with sensual features, a brooding sexiness, and a resonant, beautiful voice, it's absurd that we are expected to believe he is unappealing to Eleanor Parker. How can she not want to grab him and ride him ten ways from Sunday? I have often liked beautiful Eleanor Parker, but her archness here is hard to take and not what the part needs. The only bright spot is George Sanders, cast against type as a warm, sympathetic guy.

One thing I'm curious about is why Vincente Minnelli abandoned the project (his name appears nowhere in the final credits). Had he directed it (preferably in Technicolor) it might at least have been more enjoyable. Skip this dreary soap opera. Or if you see it and actually like it, read Somerset Maugham's novel, which is far better and certainly more entertaining.

Marriage Is a Private Affair (1944)

What Soap Operas Reveal . . .

[22 March 2004]

The product of a broken home who has been raised by her cynical, much-married mother, Lana Turner enters into the kind of hasty wartime marriage everyone in 1944 was being warned against. And the man she chooses is stable, romantic and old-fashioned. Uh-oh. This picture shows how 'women's films' and 'soap operas' could sometimes tackle modern life's most important moral and ethical situations. Turner's character wants to commit herself to her marriage but realizes she hasn't the experience or the emotional tools to be a good wife, nor does she have the example of her parents' happy marriage to follow. MARRIAGE IS A PRIVATE AFFAIR explores that dilemma and does it very entertainingly. Too bad Lana didn't take the film's theme to heart!

As the newlyweds, Turner and John Hodiak have a wonderful sensuality and seeming spontaneity together during the scenes that take place on their honeymoon as they are first getting to know each other. And the movie presents a very interesting moral complication when it introduces the threesome that are Hodiak's closest friends from childhood. Consisting of a married couple and their male pal, Hodiak idealizes them but Turner recognizes the sexual tensions that will eventually threaten that marriage. For those who assume that '40s films never dealt with sexual issues, this picture might be a refreshing surprise, especially since it came from MGM, Hollywood's most conservative studio.

And for those who generally think of Lana Turner's late films when you think of her at all, her work in this and other early '40s pictures might surprise you too. Looking ravishingly pretty with a lush but trim body, in these years Turner actually seems to look at and listen to her fellow actors, and speaks her lines with expression and emotion, a real contrast to her sluggish, lazy late work.

Random Harvest (1942)

One Of The Three Most Emotionally Satisfying Movies Ever Made.

[8/10 · 22 March 2004]

Along with NOW, VOYAGER and CASABLANCA, RANDOM HARVEST is one of the three most emotionally satisfying movies to ever come out of Hollywood's classic period, and a great example of the best that MGM had to offer in the '40s. Beautifully accomplished in every department from writing to art direction to cinematography to scoring, you have only to watch the first scene (so like REBECCA's) to be drawn in by it and then consistently surprised and entertained. And reading the 28 other comments here, I am struck by the unanimity of opinion -- because what makes the contrived plot believable scene by scene, and what causes the picture as a whole to live so warmly in the memory, is the unbeatable work from Ronald Colman and Greer Garson.

More than MRS. MINIVER, this is the archetypal Garson performance: her tact, gentle humor and intelligent restraint are in perfect service to her character and the story. If she seems too starry and aristocratic to be a lowly music hall performer, she is right in every other respect, particularly as an efficient secretary, society hostess and perfect helpmate. And this is Ronald Colman's best work ever. He should have won his Oscar for this lovely, subtle performance rather than for the strained work he did in A DOUBLE LIFE. Full of wistfulness as the amnesiac early in the film, there is real heartbreak in the way he says the line "I would have liked to have belonged to them" about the couple he hopes will turn out to be his parents. But he is just as convincing later as the confident, energetic 'Industrial Prince of England.'

Colman and Garson are the perfect grownup romantic couple: they make intelligence and maturity seem impossibly glamorous, and they embody the idea that friendship, loyalty and mutual respect must be at the center of every enduring love.