odresel Reviews

The Doll (1919)

Delightful post WWI silent comedy fairy tale

[16 December 2021]

I caught this on TCM, it is a completely captivating and delightful experience for all ages, so many layers in this story. Cannot recommend it enough for its period charm and generally kookiness.

However, the cast list here on IMDB is a mess due to faulty translations. "Dessen Frau" means "His Wife", and refers to Baron Chanterelle (chanterelles are a group of mushrooms, much eaten in Germany in late summer/autumn.) Similarly, "His Daughter" (Ossi, or The Doll) again refers to the Baron as her father. "The Briar" (!) should, I think, be The Friar; only in the film he is in fact the Abbot of the monastery, not merely a Brother. Wikipedia gets it all correct on its page about this film.

The Corrupt Ones (1967)

Interesting relic of 60s Hong Kong, despite its obvious flaws

[7/10 · 5 July 2017]

Nothing to add, really, to the earlier reviews except to clarify some things about the film. The location is never really stated explicitly in the film, except that it is somewhere on the border of 'Red China' where foreigners are safe. In 1967 that is either Hong Kong or Macau. Since there is legal gambling shown going on, it has to be notionally Macau. Except that I cannot detect a single scene shot in Macau. Many of the interiors look like they were done on a European sound stage as well.

All the street signs, for example, have Chinese and English text (= Hong Kong; in Macau it is Chinese and Portuguese.) There are identifiable shooting locations in Hong Kong. The opening train sequence is shot on the Kowloon-Canton Railway tracks somewhere in the vicinity of Taipo. There is a back-projected car ride down Nathan Road, Kowloon, and one can see the wall and gate of St. Andrew's Church for a second or two. Earlier, there's a car ride shot in Wanchai. There are several scenes shots in Aberdeen, and a little booth selling tickets for the "Ap Lei Chau Ferry" (this was before there was a bridge there.) Some of the waterfront/speedboat shots appear to have been done in Clear Water Bay or Sai Kung, probably because of the proximity of the Shaw Brothers Studio which might have offered some advice. Perhaps most amusing is the 'Temple of the Bells' under which the treasure is buried, which is actually the exterior of the Roman Catholic Diocesan Seminary at Wong Chuk Hang! For me it's actually these shots of a run-down but livable Hong Kong in the Vietnam War era that are most interesting, a document that preserves a lot of footage of a place that has now completely disappeared under 20 years of 'Red Chinese' rule.

Bob the Gambler (1956)

Outstanding noir, but which version?

[9/10 · 11 November 2013]

This is one of my all-time favorite films. I saw it in Boston around 1982 when the film was released, it seems for the first time, in the US. The acting, the script, the astonishing performances from actors unknown to most US audiences, the modernity of it all...and Isabelle Corey. Well, the French have a word for it.

Paris, as always, steals the show to a certain extent, but that is one of the things (besides Isabelle Corey) that makes it worth viewing repeated times.

The one thing that I am perplexed by is this: when I saw it in 1982, I am quite sure it had a *completely different, and happier ending*. What I recall is: The gang gets into the casino and holds the staff hostage as planned. Bob is late, but gets there in the end to see them trying to open the safe...but there is some complication with the locks and they fail, and decide to run for it. They make it outside, where the Commissaire and his men catch them. Paulo didn't die in this cut. They are all arrested, and as they're being put in the police cars, out come the pageboys carrying all the banknotes Bob won at the Chemin de Fer tables...so Bob knows they'll be alright in the end.

In this case, I think the scene in the Criterion release where Melville comes on the voice-over and says "This is how the hold-up was supposed to take place" was actually seen at the end as the hold-up itself in the version I remember. As it is now, it's quite bizarre and something of a non-sequitur to see this scene placed, for no apparent reason, earlier in the film. This alternate ending also explains the odd situation several people have commented on, to the effect that Bob is seen after Paulo's death appearing not so concerned or saddened as we all think he should be.

So it seems to me that Melville made two versions, and that perhaps for some markets it was felt that Paulo had to die, since he'd gunned down Marc the Slimeball a few hours earlier.

They just do not make films like this anymore.

L'amico del giaguaro (1959)

50s flotsam with curiosity value

[7/10 · 9 July 2012]

Picked up the DVD of this in a street market in Rome last week. It's an odd bit of flotsam from a golden era of Italian film making. The story is absurd, but it has its moments, though they are brief. Breathtaking is the long rooftop scan of the sparkling new Stazione Termini in Rome, you can see they hadn't even finished the landscaping on the Via Marsala side yet. Another wonderful moment (or two) comes in the latter part of the film, in the bar/nightclub, with covers of two romantic 50s American pop songs, sung in Italian by Tony Dallara, a terrifically expressive tenor. Never liked this music, but boy, does he sell it! This films seems to have survived largely because it was the screen debut of Elke Sommer. But in my opinion she gives little or no indication or reason here for her future success. On the other hand, the late Isabelle Corey is radiant, at 20 she is oh-so much more grown up than in "Bob le Flambeur" from 4 years earlier. She is not on screen nearly enough, she disappears for the middle three acts of the film.(I admit, I am a Corey fan, and it was her name on the DVD jacket that caught my attention.) What a shame her career never took off. The tiny cameo roles are a lot fun, too, especially the deaf jukebox technician (Italian directors seem to have specialized in this little generic quirk.) And Walter Chiari was a name I had never heard before. He becomes more likable as the film progresses, perhaps because he gradually seems less and less insane compared to the misfits and losers surrounding him. Chiari was an ex-welterweight champ from Lombardy, and by the end of the film you're glad he and Corey can have each other over the objections of her pompous, philandering uncle. Worth a look.

The Montecarlo Story (1956)

Bizarre period piece

[5/10 · 8 April 2012]

Saw this last night on cable TV in a hotel in Zhuhai, China, of all places. This film was released 16 days before I was born, and not knowing the name of the picture or anything else, I pegged it exactly right (1957). There were many of these Americans-gaffing-their-way-through-Europe films at this time ("Royal Wedding" comes to mind...), I suppose sparked by the Fodor-induced rush to see Europe on $5 a Day. Since this seems to have been an Italian production, it's not quite so lame as many others. I actually found this one compelling in some ways for its weird melange of actors from completely different eras all thrown together like passengers on a doomed ship. Dietrich was much too old to play her role at this point (I kept asking myself in some disbelief, Is that really her?), and regrettably she looks it, jewels or no. The Americans are uniformly cringe-inducing, with the exception of the very winsome Natalie Trundy, who could have been another Patty Duke. Post-War Monte Carlo and Homer Hinkley's gargantuan yacht steal the show. It must have been magnificent in its original vista format on the big screen.

The Threepenny Opera (1931)

Rather a disappointment

[11 May 2009]

I've just seen the restored 2006 German print, and while I found it entertaining, it's almost as long as the stage musical. The film medium can't support this, and after about the first half hour, it becomes claustrophobic and momentum-less, and a great disappointment. I had to fight the urge to pick up the clicker and press fast-forward. Part of the problem seems to me that the screenplay adapter or adapters didn't trust Brecht and Weill's theatrical instincts sufficiently: they left out half the songs (though the sound is remarkably good for 1931) and reordered the ones that were left. Most problematically, they rewrote the ending, with this nonsense of Polly and the gang taking over a bank. No march to the scaffold, no "Ballad of Sexual Dependency", no last-minute pardon from the King...

Many reviewers here seem to take the London location too seriously. That's just a relic of the John Gay original (The Beggar's Opera): it is most clearly meant to be a satire on Weimar Republic Germany. That's why the Nazis banned it. The real corruption is in the official institutions of power, not in the relatively benign underworld (which reappears in very similar shape and form in Fritz Lange's "M".) Those who don't know Brecht's translations of Gay's original names and texts should learn that MacHeath becomes 'Mackie Messer' (messer mean 'knife' in German, thus 'Mack the Knife'.)

The best thing about the film, is probably the documentary record it contains of just how the original audiences would have seen the story, and how the original performers would have rendered the songs. I particularly liked the Moritaet-Saenger and his incredible trilled "Rs" in the opening scene.

Diary of a Lost Girl (1929)

clarifying the roles

[8/10 · 18 March 2009]

Saw this last night on a DVD I bought in Shenzhen, China. Enjoyed it thoroughly, though I don't know which 9 minutes of the film were cut at one point, and then restored in the print I watched.

Clarifying the relationships: Meinert works for Herr Henning. Henning owns the pharmacy, and later on we learn that he actually inherited it from his late wife (you have to be able to read the summons to the reading of the will to know that; and that's why Thymian gets a share of it when he dies.) Meinert is essentially an apprentice of some sort, who is hoping to usurp the whole business for himself when Henning dies. That's why he seduces Thymian (perhaps has some idea of marrying the boss' daughter at the start of the film, his French postcards aside...), and then sucks up to Meta when she marries Henning.

Space Coast (1979)

off-beat documentary in the steps of Harvest of Shame

[7/10 · 9 September 2006]

I saw this film shortly after its release, at a ramshackle cinema in Cambridgeport, MA, about 1980-81. I wish it would be released in some sort of retail form today. The thesis was, that in the doldrum days of NASA in the 1970s, a community of trailer-park trash which had provided services to the space program in the 60s had been 'abandoned' along the Florida coast in the vicinity of Cape Canaveral. The film was a hand-held camera "reality show" before there were reality shows, and provided some hair-raising glimpses into what happens when a community is abandoned and turns in on itself (and breeds in on itself, as I recall...) Now NASA is up and running again, and that part of Florida east of Orlando is retirement heaven...I wonder how this film is holding up?

The Magnificent Yankee (1950)

Surprising charm and maturity

[8/10 · 5 July 2005]

I caught this on Turner last night. I happen to be in the history business, in a way, and was surprised at how good this still was. Like most films-adapted-from-plays of the 30s and 40s, it never really transcends its stage origins, but I thought it dealt with the big issues of law, justice, morality, life and death in a way inconceivable in a politically correct age such as ours. We are much smaller people now. The conversation Holmes has with his wife while she lies dying in her bed is a masterpiece of really mature human communication, it's not sappy or sentimental, it's just heartbreaking in its honesty.

The Justice Holmes of this film was Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., the son of the famous poet-doctor of the same name who wrote "Old Ironsides" and "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table." The father and son are often confused. I was also delighted by Eduard Franz's underplayed portrayal of Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish justice on the US Supreme Court, after whom Brandeis University was named.

I didn't want this film to end, and will now look up the original stage play.