Change Your Image
robert-temple
Reviews
The Blue Dahlia (1946)
Original screenplay by Raymond Chandler
Those of us who are passionate admirers of Raymond Chandler's novels and stories naturally have an interest in this film for which he wrote an original screenplay. However, the film does not measure up to one's hopes. The leading man, Alan Ladd, is wooden and unresponsive, as if he were half dead. George Marshall did not direct the film in a manner which was lively or inspiring. As for Alan Ladd, in other films he did have an infectious grin. But in this film he only briefly grins three times. (I counted them.) Marshall should have realised that Ladd needed to be given some medication to wake him up. He was cast opposite Veronica Lake because they were both almost the same size. She at least made considerable efforts to show that she was living and breathing, though she got no feedback from Ladd. One curious result of the Ladd and Lake casting is that Howard da Silva (the lover of Ladd's wife) comes across as a tall person. Da Silva was not particularly tall, as I know because I met him long ago. He only appears tall in the film because Ladd and Lake were tiny people. (Many will know that Ladd sometimes had to stand on a box or platform in his scenes with other leading ladies.) The performances in this film which stand out are from the supporting rather than from the leading cast. The outstanding performance comes from William Bendix. He is utterly and terrifyingly convincing as someone suffering not just from wartime shell shock but, as a result of the brain operation which he has had and the metal plate in his skull, from actual brain damage. Despite the intensity of his performance, he manages never to go over the top, and always remains all too believable. Another excellent performance comes from Doris Dowling, as Ladd's unfaithful and frankly horrible and vicious wife. She is so good at making us hate her that it is a wonder she was not attacked after each scene by the crew. Will Wright, as "Dad" Newell, a corrupt "peeper", is his marvellously droll and laid back self. Actors like that make a film believable. There are many instances of terrific dialogue and good lines in Chandler's script. The plot is good but it is not brought out satisfactorily by the direction or camera work or by the uninspired leads. Those of us who so admire Raymond Chandler should not delude ourselves that this is a marvellous film. It just isn't. The fact is that it was ruined by mediocrity of production. But it is not terrible, it is watchable by those who have patience, and it is in the film noir canon. This was the only original screenplay by Chandler which was actually produced, though he contributed to others. Chandler was far too subtle and profound for Hollywood, and all the best things about his work tended to evanesce and float skywards under the heat of the arc lights. Chandler was a real talent, whereas so many of his interpreters were not.
The Return of the Whistler (1948)
A mysterious disapppearance
This is the eighth and final Whistler film. It was made without Richard Dix in the lead, as he was too ill and died the following year. This time the lead is Michael Duane. D. Ross Lederman directed this one. The leading lady who plays a young French woman is Lenore Aubert, a stage name for Eleonore Leisner, who was Slovenian. She is very effective. Possibly in order to try to make up for the absence of the usual leading man, the producers chose a superior mystery writer, Cornell Woolrich. The story really is very good indeed. The film begins with a night of a torrential downpour. A young couple are driving through the rain, Duane and Aubert. They pull up in front of one of those private homes of a Justice of the Peace which has a neon sign saying "Marriages Performed". They have made an appointment to be married. But the Justice has been kept away by the storm and will not return until morning. So the couple drive into a nearby town and manage with difficulty to find a room for the night in a small hotel, but because they admit they are not yet married, Duane is told he cannot stay overnight with the lady, so he leaves her there and goes to get their car fixed and stay overnight in it. He returns the next morning, the sun shining brightly, and with an expectant smile on his face goes to the room where his bride to be will be waiting. But she has disappeared and the room is being decorated by a grumpy workman. Duane is told that Aubert left half an hour after he did the night before. He knows that is impossible, but can prove nothing. The police do not believe him and refuse to help. How is he going to find her? What can he do? The situation is desperate in the extreme. And that is merely the beginning of the mystery. This is a really, really good one. A magnificent way to close the series.
The Thirteenth Hour (1947)
Intrigue and complications, the last film of Richard Dix
This is the seventh Whistler film and the last one to star Richard Dix. (There would be one more Whistler film the next year with another lead actor: THE RETURN OF THE WHISTLER, see my review). This film as directed by William Clemens, who had directed several of the Falcon films, a Philo Vance film, and several of the original Nancy Drew films with Bonita Granville. This time Dix plays a trucker who has worked hard to start up his own trucking business but made enemies amongst the established truckers, some of whom are dangerous. Dix is involved with a woman named Eileen who owns a truck stop café, played by Karen Morley. She has an engaging teenage son played by Mark Dennis who has a considerable role in the film. (He was 14 at this time and had appeared in one film the year before; he is very good.) A lot of this film was shot at night on dark roads and it thus has considerable atmosphere. The story is not particularly odd or unusual, and it does not take place in a city like most Whistler films. Basically, this is a drama about setups, murders, betrayals, greed, and innocent victims. Dix is an innocent victim. There is no explanation within the film of the title, as there is no "thirteenth hour" in the story. So someone just thought up a catchy title. The story gets very tense and involved, as Dix is accused of murder after murder, none of which he has committed. And there is an interesting twist of a clue which seems to indicate that the murderer was missing a finger on his left hand. But to say more would be to say too much. This is a good noir. And it is sad to take one's leave of the amazing Richard Dix, who in seven Whistler films played characters so far apart it is astonishing that he could so easily do so. He was a most engaging and fascinating actor. He suffered a heart attack during the filming and died in 1949 of his heart condition. This was his last film appearance. He was only 56 years old, and his early death was a great loss to the screen.
The Secret of the Whistler (1946)
He married money
This is the sixth of the Whistler films. Once again Richard Dix stars, this time as an impecunious artist who has married a very rich woman. The versatility of Dix really is astonishing. He changes like a chameleon from picture to picture. This film is not directed by William Castle like the others, but by George Sherman. It has a completely different feel about it. It is not so quirky and mysterious, but is more of a glamorous melodrama. The budget seems to have been a bit higher, and the film is more of an ordinary murder mystery. The film opens well with a woman going to a monument maker and commissioning a very expensive gravestone for herself. ($5000, a lot of money then.) She is Dix's wife. She has a severe heart condition and believes she has only months to live. Dix is a dutiful husband towards his wife, seriously concerned for her health, until he falls into the clutches of a scheming young femme fatale played by Leslie Brooks. This curvaceous blonde artist's model sees dollar signs and goes for Dix bigtime. He naturally becomes infatuated and says when he is free (i.e., when his wife has died) he wants to marry her. But then along comes a clever doctor with a new treatment which restores the wife to health very suddenly. She overhears Dix and the blonde talking and realizes the situation, so phones her lawyer to arrange to change her will so that he inherits nothing whenever she does die, and to commence divorce proceedings immediately. However, this is a film noir, so she dies during the night. So what has happened? "The Whistler knows."
Mysterious Intruder (1946)
Elora Lund, where are you?
This is the fifth of the Whistler films, and the first one not to have "whistler" in the title. As usual, it stars Richard Dix. In this film he plays a private detective. The similarity to Raymond Chandler's Marlowe stories is enhanced by the appearance in this film of Mike Mazurki (1907-1990), who became famous two years previously for playing Moose Malloy in MURDER, MY SWEET (1944, a film adaptation of Chandler's novel FAREWELL, MY LOVELY), where he hires Philip Marlowe to find his girlfriend Velma. Anyone who has seen that film can never forget Mike Mazurki. Here he plays a similar character named Harry Pontos, also a tall and ominous criminal. But in this film, Mazurki does not last long, so we might almost call his appearance a cameo, although he in fact is the "mysterious intruder" in the story. This film starts out with an old man named Edward Stillwell walking along the city street at night on his way to see Don Gale, a detective (Dix). Stillwell wants Dix to find a 21 year old girl named Elora Lund whom he has not seen since she was 14. He won't say why. The girl had been orphaned at 14 and fled to avoid being seized by social workers and confined to an orphanage. Stillwell has no idea where she is and only has a hundred dollars to pay Dix because he is a very poor pawn broker and music store owner living in a poor neighbourhood. Dix is exasperated at this, but takes on the case anyway since Stillwell assures him that if he can only find the girl, she will pay him a substantial fee herself. Stillwell had known the girl and her parents well because they "lived in the neighbourhood". The mother before her death had left numerous belongings with him in pawn, and this appears to have some connection with why he is desperate to find the girl. The story is very mysterious and ingenious in its plot twists. Numerous unexpected surprises lie in store, and several people will get killed in the search for the missing girl.
Voice of the Whistler (1945)
A lonely lighthouse by the sea
This is the fourth Whistler film. Once again Richard Dix is the star and he plays a completely different character from the three preceding ones. His versatility is simply amazing. This time he is a very wealthy industrialist named John Sinclair who has no family, has never married, and also has no friends. He has been ruthless in the pursuit of financial success but as a result suffers from burnout. His doctor tells him he must take a long break, as his exhaustion attacks could become fatal. And that is where the story really begins. He meets a smiling and friendly nurse played by Lynn Merrick, who undergoes an extreme personality change when she realizes that Dix, going under a pseudonym as John Carter, is really the rich and famous John Sinclair. She becomes consumed by uncontrollable greed. Dix asks her to marry him and she unceremoniously dumps her fiancée, a handsome young doctor plated by James Cardwell. Then events very rapidly become noirish. The couple are living in a converted lighthouse on a desolate bit of coast and have no visitors. Merrick is going to pieces but Dix is falling in love with her. Then Cardwell suddenly turns up and the three of them spend days or weeks together, especially in the 'solarium' at the top of the lighthouse gazing out at the sea. There are lots of shots of them climbing up and down the spiral stairway inside the structure, of which Merrick cheerfully says 'It's good exercise.' Things get so tense one expects Barbara Stanwyck to turn up with Fred MacMurray. Well, at this point one draws a discreet veil over where this is all going, leaving the pleasure of discovery of the subsequent events to the viewers. One remark about Merrick. She was born in Texas as Marilyn Llewelling. That is an unusual American distortion of the well known Welsh surname of Llewellyn. And a real Welshman, Rhys Williams, appears in the supporting cast. I wonder what he thought of Llewellyn becoming Llewelling.
The Power of the Whistler (1945)
She meets a polite stranger with no memory
This is the third Whistler film. The fascinating actress Janis Carter has a lead role in this one. She had a small role as a girl reporter in THE MARK OF THE WHISTLER, but this time she has equal importance to the main star, Richard Dix. The film starts with Richard Dix stepping off a pavement onto a street and getting knocked over by an oncoming car. Although he is not physically injured, he has hit his head and lost his memory. He does not even know who he is or where he was going. He goes into a restaurant and bar to have a drink and try and collect himself. Janis is meanwhile with her sister and her sister's boyfriend at a table playing with cards. Just for fun she decides to tell someone's fortune from the cards and looks around for someone appropriate. She sees Dix sitting at the bar and decides to tell his fortune, though he is unaware of it. She pulls out an ace of spades and a two of clubs, which together she says mean 'death within 24 hours'. She is horrified, shuffles the cards carefully, and tries again. This time the same two cards appear. She is so worried that she goes over to Dix, whom she does not know, and asks if she can help him somehow. He admits that he cannot remember his name or what he was supposed to be doing. She says let's go through what's in your pockets and see if there is anything to identify you. And the story goes on. She accompanies him to some addresses and no one can identify him. She begins a bit of detective work on her own, and so does he. As they continue this investigation over many hours they begin to fall for each other. He has such a kind and thoughtful manner and she says he is so handsome. This all becomes a Big Adventure, with all kinds of surprises. I cannot reveal much more without giving away some of the secrets of the plot. But will Dix really die within 24 hours? Will he ever remember who he is? And is he really the big softie that Janis thinks he is? Only The Whistler knows.
The Mark of the Whistler (1944)
An ingeniously plotted and very tense tale
This is the second of the Whistler films, having two titles: THE MARK OF THE WHISTLER and THE MARKED MAN. It has a superb plot written by the famous mystery writer Cornell Woolrich. And Richard Dix, who plays the lead, intensifies the suspense by his brilliant portrayal of a man who impersonates another man of the same name in order to access a dormant account at a bank. He only discovers that the dormant account exists by randomly picking up a newspaper in which an ad has been placed for claimants to dormant accounts to come forward. His name is Lee Nugent, and so is the man whose money was left to him in trust by his mother many years ago and never claimed. Dix does research and, reassured that laying claim is probably safe, approaches the bank with a loan from a pawn broker to pay for a new suit (as Dix is penniless). But nothing in a film noir is ever simple, which is, one might say, the same as with Life. There are unknown factors in the background, and some begin to stir. Will the bank hand over the money? Will Dix get away with it? How much money is there, anyway, since the bank won't say. Events get more and more tense. This is a really excellent suspense film.
Mean Girls (2024)
A feral subculture
MEAN GIRLS exists and has existed in so many forms. It is onstage in London at the moment. It was a novel, then on the stage, then filmed twenty years ago, then a series. Those girls just never get tired of being mean. Americans since the sixties have always been obsessed about high school films, and this is one. But it is not the high school that is so interesting, it is the feral subculture of the girls as they fight and claw their way up and down the social hierarchy of who is Queen Bee, who are the 'ins' and who are the 'outs'. In this version, Angourie Rice is an excellent choice as Cady Heron the innocent normal girl who enters the tiger's lair at a New Jersey high school. Queen Bee at that point is the snooty Regina George, played by Renée Rapp. Both of them are brilliant in their roles. And the supporting cast is also superb. Tina Fey who wrote this was schooled in that centre of all humour, the Second City group in Chicago. Second City are fabulous. You can't do better than that for comedy. My favourite film about girls is CLUELESS (1995), a classic for all time (see my review). But MEAN GIRLS is good, very good.
And Now Tomorrow (1944)
Magnificent performance by Loretta Young, script by Raymond Chandler
This powerful romantic drama, wonderfully directed by Irving Pichel, pulls at many heartstrings. The film could have failed and been considered too saccharine and melodramatic if not for the authenticity and conviction of Loretta Young, in an Oscar-worthy performance. And having Raymond Chandler and Fred Partos as the scriptwriters helped a great deal. At many points Chandler toughened up the dialogue to avoid its being too melodramatic. One typical Chandler moment near the beginning of the film is when Alan Ladd sits at a counter and orders: 'Coffee, hot and strong and made this year.' The film is based upon a novel by Rachel Field. Four years earlier another of her novels had been filmed as ALL THIS AND HEAVEN TOO (1940), and became a huge hit for Bette Davis. The story here is about a rich and spoiled young woman who develops a serious case of meningitis which leaves her completely deaf. She is in love with Barry Sullivan and they were just about to be married. The wedding is postponed indefinitely and when she recovers enough to speak she tells Sullivan that she does not want him to marry a deaf woman 'and have me reading your lips for the rest of your life'. So he reluctantly agrees to wait in the hope that she can be cured. Meanwhile the family doctor, admirably played by Cecil Kellaway, summons to the Pennsylvania town where this all take place a young doctor who had grown up in the shanty town of that same town but is now a brilliant success in medicine at Pittsburgh. He is played by Alan Ladd. It so happens that Ladd has been working for a long time on a serum treatment for deafness. So Kellaway persuades Ladd to try to help Loretta. They do not get on well at first but the treatment lasts five months, and they get to know each other better as a result. Many Raymond Chandler fans do not like this film because they think it is the wrong genre for their hero, and no matter how intently they watch, there is not a crime or a detective to be seen anywhere. I admire Chandler immensely and I am glad to see him being versatile and operating in a crime-free zone. In my opinion, his wonderful novels are full of profound and moving pathos and are highly emotional if you look beneath the wisecracks. Chandler was a sad and melancholy man, and this romantic film full of tragedy suited him very well. He was a real 'softie' and his hard-boiled detective fiction does not always conceal that. For instance, the terribly sad ending of THE LONG GOODBYE (the novel) is enough to make a strong man cry. There is much drama in this film which I shall leave unreported because it is best not to know too much before watching it. But Loretta Young is so touching and so genuine that we cannot but feel her every little emotion, and admire her bravery and strength of character.
The Whistler (1944)
Atmospheric and effective
This is the first of the 'Whistler series'. And it is moody and powerful, with excellent acting from Richard Dix and J. Carrol Naish. Naish is one of the best murderers I have seen in ages. Not that I hang out with them, of course, but there are plenty on screen and in various governments around the world, so that one is familiar with the type. Naish perfected the art of understated creepiness. And when he gets all excited because he thinks he has discovered 'a new technique in the art of murder', we believe him. The story is one of a man (Dix) who pays to have himself bumped off (by Naish) but then changes his mind. The budget for this film must have been very near zero, as the sets are so scanty as to constitute classic minimalism. But strangely, that just makes the film more effective. The lighting, the non-sets, the direction, all contribute to our accepting the down-and-out scenes, such as the flop house full of snoring drunks, and the docks. This makes good watching, 60 minutes of suspense. An excellent start. As for the Whistler himself, who roams the night seeing secret things that are going on, well, this is just an appetiser, as there are plenty more whistling sessions to come.
La passion de Dodin Bouffant (2023)
A work of art, both cinematically and gastronomically
It is rare that one sees a film with the same sense of awe and pleasure as one experiences looking at a great painting in a museum where one can linger and examine the brush-strokes without people in the way. This film by the French/Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung is such a film. It is a 'must' for anyone of gastronomical inclinations, anyone training to be a chef, any true 'foodies', and experts on traditional French cooking. But it is also a film with stories, with happiness and with sadness. The film is set in the 1890s or first years of the 20th century, in provincial France. It seems to have been filmed entirely on location and the interiors take place in a traditional manor house. There is no electricity, and light is all from sunlight, candles, and oil lamps. There are no phones or other interruptions to the tranquillity of the setting. The cinematography is exceptional, with rich natural colour and ingenious camerawork (congratulations to the camera operator!) There is no sense of the existence of the outside world, and no one travels outside the bubble of their existence. The house is that of a famous gourmet, Monsieur Dodin, played quietly and magnetically by Benoît Magimel. For twenty years his cook Eugénie has lived with him and together they have created some of the greatest dishes of France on a daily basis, and invented several classic dishes as well. She is played by Juliette Binoche as a quiet, understated, and proud woman. Magimel has been in love with her and asking her to marry him for all that time, but she refuses to marry, even though they are lovers, because she prefers things the way they are. She does not really want to become a wife. She and Magimel have in a sense grown together into one person, and can communicate perfectly well in silence with an occasional glance or remark, or even a sound of approval or disapproval over a dish. Sometimes 'Mmmmm' is enough to convey paragraphs' worth of meaning. They discover a very young girl named Pauline who is a born gastronomic genius, and she enters their circle. She is played to perfection by Bonnie Chagneau-Ravoire, who is also naturally able to communicate by silence and with her eyes. Everything about this slow and dreamy film is magical. But best of all is the endless demonstrations of preparations of complex dishes. And when making a pot au feu, for instance, Magimel does not extract separate garlic cloves, but cuts the garlic boldly in half and places those carefully with cut-side up down into the pot. Magimel has a circle of five friends who are also gastronomes, and they frequently come for special dinners. They exchange stories about food. One refers to an incident which took place in 1364 with Pope Urban V at Avignon. To the group, this might as well have been yesterday, because as gastronomy is eternal, food and wine tales are also ageless. At one point Magimel and Binoche drink a bottle of 1839 champagne; it had been shipwrecked and lay at the bottom of the sea for 50 years, but when recovered in 1887, Magimel had bought three bottles of it at auction. They drink the most splendid wines every day, and at one point Magimel is drinking Chambolle-Musigny and says it is his favourite burgundy. As for whites, there is for instance the best of the Puligny-Montrachets. (A bottle of the 2021 is for sale on the internet at the moment for £747.60 in case you are interested.) There is an amazing scene where the men are together and eating ortolans, with napkins entirely covering their heads. Ortolans are small rare birds, said to be the finest of all game birds. When President Pompidou lay dying he had his last meal, at his special request, of ortolans. I have never eaten one and don't feel comfortable about eating rare creatures. Ormeaux yes, ortolans no, because they now farm ormeaux on the coast of Britanny, so that is OK then. In Magimel's kitchen all the pans are copper, and there is even a special copper 'turbot pan' shaped like a turbot, and large enough to hold one. We see the turbot dish being prepared. The stove is a large black aga. The kitchen is large and there are plenty of surfaces. The garden supplies endless vegetables. The film is amongst other things a continuous stream of demonstrated recipes, showing every aspect of the chopping and preparation of every ingredient. We see it all so clearly that if we had the ingredients and time and patience we could recreate some of them just from what we have seen and heard in the film. At one point we see every stage of the preparation of a Baked Alaska; the subtitles say 'Baked Alaska' but in the French dialogue they do not say Alaska, they say 'Norwegian'. (Alaska means nothing to the French even now.) The home made ice cream is made in a sunken area full of chopped ice. We are treated to the information that the vol-au-vent was discovered by accident. The group then decides that the story may be apocryphal, but that they don't care because they love any story about food whether it is true or false. All of these people are able to concentrate so profoundly upon food and cooking because there are no distractions, life is quiet, and nothing need interrupt the preparation of even the most complicated dish. It does not matter if a dish takes hours to prepare, as the dish is more important than time. This film is a food-lover's dream. I have not discussed the personal dramas that take place because it is difficult to do so without spoilers. What a triumph and work of art this film is! It can teach you to savour food, love cooking, and above all, eating.
Le caporal épinglé (1962)
Jean Renoir's last film
This was a very fine swan song for Jean Renoir's directorial career. It is both serious and humorous at the same time. The film contains a great deal of original news footage relating to the Second World War and the Occupation of Paris, much or all of which seems not to have been made public elsewhere. In order to blend in seamlessly with the news footage, Renoir chose to make the film itself in black and white. The original title of the film is LE CAPORAL ÉPINGLÉ, and the English title is a translation of that. Young and little known at the time, Jean-Pierre Cassel was cast as the corporal, and that worked perfectly. The story starts with the surrender of the French to the Nazis, and we see the surrender documents being signed in the very same railway carriage which was used for the Germans to sign their surrender at the end of World War I. Then we see the Nazis marching into Paris and from an oncoming sea of German soldiers Renoir cuts to an oncoming sea of bedraggled French soldiers. Despite the fact that France has surrendered, the French soldiers are being imprisoned in camps and treated as prisoners of war. The story starts there. Cassell becomes a serial escaper, escaping over and over again in ingenious ways, but is always recaptured. It is funny but also tragic, because all the imprisoned French are wasting away with insufficient food and brutal punishments. The film is historically informative and has particular value for that. But the human relationships and interactions are fascinating and the film is absorbing and enjoyable. The daring and imagination shown in the escape attempts is often astonishing. The story is based upon a novel by Jacques Perret, and that in turn was based upon real people and events. Certainly this film fills in a gap in our knowledge of the French experience of defeat. And Renoir has made a testament to human resilience and ingenuity.
Poor Things (2023)
A terrible film, perverted, dismal, and wicked as well
This is an example of exactly the sort of film which should never be made. To start with the most obvious, the film is so over-saturated with weird obsessive sexuality that I would classify it as pornography. Little if any of the countless sexual episodes can be justified as "necessary to the story". But they do seem to be necessary to the twisted psyches of the people who made the film. Who is the pervert? The director? The writers? The producers? Somebody certainly is. Or all of the above? But there are other serious things which are objectionable about this film, which go far beyond the subject of sexuality. One could consider the film as a kind of transhumanist fantasy, thrilling to those people who think having people made of pieces of flesh sewn together in the manner of the Frankenstein Monster is perfectly acceptable. And as we know, it is the dream of transhumanists that we will all one day be combinations of human and machine, with the emphasis on the machine aspect. In other words, the offensive "humanity" of humans must be eradicated at all costs, and people reduced to the level of robots. The Frankenstein Monster-style character played by William Dafoe is put forward as a perfectly normal fabricant. As for the main character Bella Baxter, played with such brilliance by Emma Stone, we are meant to accept her too as "normal'. She was "made" by the mad scientist Dafoe from the body of a woman who drowned herself while pregnant, with the brain of the foetus implanted in her instead of the adult woman's destroyed brain. So she is a child-woman. But "that's OK, nothing to be seen here, move on. Everything is perfectly normal and under control." Yes, control is the key. Whoever wants the public to swallow and respect such garbage would like to see a public consisting also of fabricants. And as for the brilliant art direction and special effects, which are gaspable, they purvey a nightmare world of semi-darkness, of lurid colours and fantasies: in other words, a purely A. I. world. Everything about and in this horrible film is entirely fabricated, and one wonders about the people who made it. From which sinister lab did they emerge?
Thunder on the Hill (1951)
Released as THUNDER ON THE HILL, superb early Douglas Sirk
This film is based on a play, entitled BONAVENTURE, the title of which refers to the lead character, the nun named Sister Mary Bonaventure. But the film was released in 1951 as THUNDER ON THE HILL and has been released on DVD and Blu-Ray recently under that title as well. The story is highly dramatic, indeed can properly be described as a melodrama, and is powerfully directed by Douglas Sirk. It is set in the county of Norfolk, 8 miles from the city Norwich. Enormous floods have made the land impassable, so that some travellers cannot reach Norwich and they take refuge in a large convent, where they are welcomed by the sisters, who feed and shelter them. Amongst those taking refuge there are a policeman and a woman prisoner, as well as her female guard. We learn that she is on her way to Norwich to be executed for murder, and is due to be hung by the neck on a gallows the very next morning. But she will be late for her own execution, because there is no way to get to Norwich, and the phone lines are down so that a police boat cannot be summoned either. This sets the scene for a high intensity situation. A very saintly young nun feels instinctively when she meet the supposed murderess that she is really innocent. The nun is played by Claudette Colbert, and the condemned girl by Ann Blyth. The cinematography is terrific, evoking moods and atmospheres with every shot, and is by William H. Daniels. The combination of his camera work, Sirk's direction, and standout performances by the actors (Gladys Cooper play the Mother superior) make the drama immensely powerful. This is a major early work by Douglas Sirk. And it focuses intently on questions of guilt and innocence, and highly emotional scenes with a great deal of tension, as the confrontations play out one after the other, things are revealed, and there are surprises in store.
Outside the Law (1956)
Entertaining fifties B thriller
The noirish theme of the returning G. I. is perpetuated in this film made as late as 1956, more than a decade after most had returned from the War. In this case, Ray Danton plays an Army Staff Sergeant who has been called back from Europe to help the U. S. Treasury crack a counterfeiting case which has been plaguing them for 15 years. Danton had been permitted to join the Army as a condition of his parole, having been imprisoned for a minor offence when younger. He has done well in the army, been promoted, won a medal, was wounded, the whole lot. He is now offered the chance to have his "slate wiped clean" for his earlier crime by cooperating in solving the case. The head of the enquiry team in Washington is his own father! They are severely estranged and tensions run high between them. The reason why Danton is considered important is that he knew a member of the counterfeiting gang who was recently murdered. He is asked to call on that man's widow (played by Leigh Snowden) and see if he can glean any information on the gang. It turns out that Snowden had only known her husband for three months before he left for Europe and is ignorant of his criminal activities. But she is jealously watched by another member of the gang. Things get violent very fast. Will our hero survive? Will he fall in love with the pretty widow? Can the villains be traced? And can the case be solved? The film is competently done and all is eventually revealed.
The Bridge (1991)
A masterpiece of cinematic art
This film disappeared soon after its release and I can hardly believe that it is only now, 33 years later, that I have been able to see it again on a private DVD. It is a genuine masterpiece of British cinema. It has atmosphere reminiscent of PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK and the emotional intensity of BRIEF ENCOUNTER, with which it shares the theme of an overwhelming love which is suppressed and rendered impossible by circumstances. The film is set on the Suffolk coast in the 19th century and concerns the Victorian painter Phillip Wilson Steer, who spends the summer there. Steer is perfectly cast and played by David O'Hara, who beautifully underplays every scene, thus contributing to the film's amazing subtlety. But the outstanding performance is by the female lead, Saskia Reeves. It may well be the best thing she has ever done. She displayed at this early stage in her career that she knows how to act and convey overwhelming emotion without saying a word, one of the most difficult tasks in the acting profession. She was at this age hauntingly beautiful. As someone who is only five foot four inches tall, one never knows this from the way the film is shot, though I believe it was a handicap in her career. Some of Britain's best supporting actors appear in the film as well: Joss Ackland, Rosemary Harris, Anthony Higgins, and Geraldine James. As the desolate Mrs. Todd, whose husband and son are drowned at sea in a storm, Geraldine James is magnificent in her grief and her poverty, upheld by a pride of the sort one finds in Greek tragedy. This incredible film was directed by Syd Macartney, whom I knew fairly well in the early 1990s. He is from Northern Ireland and immensely talented and so effortlessly amiable. The failure of anyone to take any notice of this film upon its release was a terrible disappointment to him. There is no question that he was and is one of the most talented directors England has seen in decades. The artistry and genius he shows in every scene of this film has, in effect, been lost to creative cinema. He was one of the most noted directors of television commercials, for which he had his own company. And he has directed countless television dramas over the years. But he should have been the next David Lean. He was catastrophically under-appreciated and should have won many Oscars and gone on to make so many inspiring famous films. Syd has more talent and inspiration than any ten other directors put together. But we live in a world where the best are often not seen for what they really are, and where mediocrity is prized above all else. This film is so powerful and tragic. If only everyone could see it. Apparently it has never been available on DVD commercially. What a terrible loss to British culture and to British cinema!
Unearthly Stranger (1963)
A truly superb science fiction film
This film is a forgotten classic. It was a low budget independent film released by Independent Artists, and the interiors were shot at the Independent Artists Studio at Beaconsfield. The direction by John Krish is excellent. I knew John Krish in the mid to late 1960s, and was invited to the premiere of his wonderful film DECLINE AND FALL OF A BIRDWARCHER (1968), which was based on a novel by Evelyn Waugh. The premiere was held at the Paramount Cinema (then a single screen) on Lower Regent Street. The film starred the fascinating Geneviève Page and had a supporting role for Patience Collier, who lived in Holland Park and whom I knew slightly through her daughter. Krish himself lived in Hampstead. I never saw him after 1972, and had no idea he had lived to be 92, or I would have looked him up. He was a very fine fellow. This film is extremely exciting and imaginative. The lead role is played by John Neville, who does a brilliant job. The ideas in the film are decades ahead of their time, as some of the concepts discussed are only coming to be understood now, such as awareness of plasma. (I shall not here enter a long discourse about the scientific ideas.) The script was by Rex Carlton and Jeffrey Stone, and I wish they were still alive so I could ask them the sources of some of their inspiration. The film takes place mainly within the Institute of Space Studies in London. (There is no such institute in the UK, alas. If only!) The Institute has a department which is studying a highly advanced way of travel in space and other worlds by means of disembodied transport of the mind and subsequent manifestation in bodies which alternate between visible and invisible. The head of the department is mysteriously murdered, and scientists working on the same type of project have been murdered in Russia and the United States. John Neville takes over as the new head of the department. A short while before in Switzerland he had met an irresistible young woman named Julie and hastily married her. I had not seen this film, which was made before I knew Krish, and as there were in those days no video cassettes or DVDs, there was no way to do so as it had last been in the cinema a few years earlier. So it is only now that I have seen the film and been shocked to see the actress Gabriella Licudi (aged 21 at the time of shooting) who plays Julie. She is so like my old intimate friend Caroline Glyn (who died young so long ago) that I "nearly fell off my chair", and it was like going back in time, truly a sci fi experience in itself. Great praise must be lavished on the entire cast of this film, Neville, Gabriella, Patrick Newell, and Philip Stone. They make a lot of scenes entirely believable which were otherwise frankly on the edge of believability. The characters come to realize they are up against something far beyond their comprehension, that their work is being thwarted, sometimes by murder, and that there are "powers" at work of a mysterious nature. There are a lot of dark and atmospheric shots, especially in the beginning, of portions of London which no longer exist, such as the old Clink Street, the wharves, the warehouses, the lack of proper lighting, the emptiness, the lack of cars, and the paucity of people. Younger people alive today in London cannot conceivably imagine what London was really like in 1963: it was another universe. So these glimpses which those few of us who are still left so dramatically remember are a welcome reminder of the true "traditional London" of those days; it was before "swinging London" came into existence, which only commenced in August of 1963. It was so much easier to make a suspense film in those days, as the exterior locations naturally existed. This film is a perfect example of how important it is to keep menace invisible, and to avoid unnecessary special effects. At one point I was afraid we might have some horror intrude into the picture, when John Neville opens the coffin of his predecessor to try to find out how he really died. But never fear, there was no horror. We are shown the inside of the coffin and it is merely full of bricks; the real body was being kept secret by the intelligence services. Now, that is how you build suspense.
Ung frue forsvunnet (1953)
A tragic tale from Norway
This is a sad and tragic tale. It was released with English subtitles as A YOUNG WOMAN IS MISSING. The film is interesting in several ways. For one thing, it shows what life was like in Oslo a few years after the Nazis left. Everyone wears their overcoats indoors most of the time because there is not enough heat for the houses. The streets and many homes are extremely grim and desolate. The story concerns a young married woman named Eva who suddenly vanishes. But we do not then have a police investigation film, instead we have a series of flashbacks which explain everything step by step. Eva is a very naïve country girl with little education. She has a sweet nature. She is married to an archaeologist. In fact, there is one exterior scene where we see them both coming out of the new Kon Tiki Huset, an archaeological museum created by Thor Heyerdahl. Eva's husband Dr. Berger is heavily intellectual, and his social friends are also. Eva feels crushed by their supercilious put-downs, due to their being intellectual snobs without even realizing it. She feels inadequate and worthless. But she has worse problems than that, of which her husband has been blissfully unaware. And through the flashbacks of her history told by her previous lover, a drug addict, we learn the full horror of what Eva has gone through and continues to go through. We are therefore the horrified viewers of what morphine addiction was like. The film then turns into a tale of addiction, and what it does to people's lives. Can Eva be found? Can she be saved? The performance of Astri Jacobsen as Eva is very touching. The film was directed by a woman, Edith Carlmar (1911-2003), who was also an actress, and she appears uncredited in the scenes in the pharmacy. It is doubtful whether a man could have directed this film with the same amount of empathy. Carlmar later appeared as an actress in a feature film and also subsequently a mini-series about the author Knut Hamsun, one of Norway's Nobel Prize Winners for Literature.
21 Days (1940)
When they were young for three weeks
This is a superb British proto-noir thriller starring the young Laurence Olivier and the young Vivien Leigh before they were married in real life. What charmers they were then. Later they both became so mannered, but here they are fresh young things, and they are hopelessly in love, and Fate is against them in a big way. The film contains some fascinating location scenes of the Thames in 1937, and a daily cruise boat sailing from there to Southend-on-Sea and back, as well as a London devoid of traffic. The film is based on a story and play by John Galsworthy, 'The First and the Last', and the script was jointly written by the director Basil Dean and Graham Greene. It must have been Greene who added all the angst of sin and redemption and Catholicism. The film is powerfully performed and directed. Vivien Leigh convincingly portrays a Russian waif émigré with big innocent eyes, a girlish voice, and a 'lost' look. Olivier successfully portrays an impetuous, reckless, and innocent young man. He does not look at all like Laurence Olivier, instead he looks like the character. The fresh young Olivier, wholly spontaneous, is something of a revelation. Leigh was 24 but seems 20 and Olivier was 30 but seems 25. William Dewhurst plays the Lord Chief Justice of England and died shortly after shooting was completed. For reasons no one knows, this film was not released until January 7, 1940, after Leigh had made her big hit in GONE WITH THE WIND. So it sat around in a can for nearly two and a half years. That is a puzzlement for such an excellent film as this. Olivier accidentally kills a man who had attacked him with a knife. A defrocked priest robs the dead man of his ring. Another man steals a wallet and picks up some dropped gloves which are a clue to the murder. What will happen? Who will pay? Will Justice catch up with anyone? Do the lovers only have three weeks of happiness? Watch and see.
Bat Out of Hell (1966)
An ingenious vintage mini-series from Francis Durbridge
This 1966 mini-series for the BBC has been restored and its five episodes last two hours. Francis Durbridge (1912-1998) was one of the cleverest thriller writers. He is most famous for his character Paul Temple, Detective. Durbridge always comes up with more twists and turns and surprises than other writers. Here he does not disappoint. Dudley Foster brilliantly plays the dour police inspector who is trying to solve an impossible crime. The two plotters are Sylvia Sims and John Thaw, both very good. It is strange to see Thaw as a young man, so utterly different from the famous Inspector Morse which he later became. In this series, we have a dead man who comes to life, a dead man who then becomes dead, a schemer behind a schemer behind a schemer. And there is the mystery of what does 'Bat out of Hell' mean? It is inscribed on a woman's bracelet. Hard to figure. And then a woman who owns a sweet shop is murdered. Now why was that? Were her wine gums too strong? Or was her fudge not sweet enough? I doubt that anyone will figure this one out in advance, it is worse than a Rubik Cube.
L'espoir (1940)
An amazing portrayal of real events of the Spanish Civil War
This film is based on one chapter of André Malraux's novel L'ESPOIR (HOPE) published in 1937. The Spanish title was SIERRA DE TERUEL and the two English titles used from 1945 on were MAN'S HOPE and DAYS OF HOPE. But the French title is ESPOIR ('HOPE'). The film was directed by Malraux himself, aided by the Russian Boris Peskine. Malraux also co-wrote the screenplay. The film concerns real events which took place at Teruel in north-eastern Spain in 1937, and was shot on location in 1938, with a Spanish cast and more than one thousand local peasants. The film is so realistic it is practically a dramatized documentary. The film was financed by the Spanish Second Republic. Malraux himself joined the Republicans in 1936 to fight against Franco. He was a commandant of an air squadron, and hence the extremely dramatic shots of aerial combat and the story focusing on a brave bombing raid. A great deal of genuine 1938 war footage is used, which is well integrated into the drama, and some of which seems to have been of the actual bombing raid itself. The film was finished in 1939 and shown a few times in Paris. As a piece of history, the film is priceless, because it is entirely authentic and was made only months after the real events. The Vichy regime in France and the Franco regime in Spain seized and destroyed all copies of the film which could be found. But one print secretly survived, which surfaced in 1945, and was shown in Paris then. The film I have seen was of that one surviving print which was restored in 2003. The film was never entirely finished, and there are frequent bridging texts linking the filmed episodes in order to make the story continuous and complete. These texts are original, as it was clearly impossible to film everything called for in the script because of the Franco regime's control of Spain. Although the film certainly had propaganda value, I would not call it a propaganda film, because its integrity is too great for such a categorisation. The language of the film is Spanish, but I have seen it with English subtitles (from Movie Detective). This is as far from a Hollywood war film as anyone could get. Everything about the film's look and impact is real and authentic. Whether the story has been somewhat romanticised or not we may never know, but that hardly matters. One feels one is really there in those small Spanish towns with deserted streets and a few straggling Republicans sharing a single military rifle and otherwise only having their hunting rifles, and precious few of those. They search all over town to find a single car which they can 'borrow' for a daring raid. Brave men suddenly fall dead and others survive, showing the randomness of war. The aerial scenes are amazing. They need to blow up a crucial bridge and a new air field. At one point a plane is flown by a man who has not flown since 1918, 19 years earlier; he crash lands because he was not allowed his two hours of practice to get back in the swing of things. But he survives to continue to serve bravely. We see incomplete planes in an improvised hangar with their fronts off, waiting for the engines which never arrived. Everything about the war waged by the Republicans was improvised, for lack of funds and supplies, in their struggle against Franco's army which was so amply funded and supplied by the Hitler regime. Even the way to the enemy airfield is only made possible because a local peasant from the adjoining village leads the pilot of the bomber by means of spotting the lanes and fields from the air, interrupted by clouds. This film was influenced to a certain extent by Russian cinema, with some dramatic shots of the heroic 'people'. But mainly, action dominates. No one appears to be acting, and although most people in the film are amateurs, that only adds to the realism. What an amazing film this is!
Allied (2016)
Brad Pitt sleepwalks through an entire film
This film has a powerful story, many stunning scenes, and Marion Cotillard. But it also has Brad Pitt. Big mistake. Not only does Pitt seem to have had his face worked on, so that it can show little emotion anymore, but he is also apparently not Brad Pitt anymore. Is this a zombie who has taken his place? He plays opposite Marion Cotillard in countless intimate scenes, she tries every device she can think of to wake him up, but still he slumbers. A cardboard cutout of the Brad Pitt we used to know would have been more effective. Considering that this is a film wholly dependent upon the relationship between Pitt and Cotillard, the result is a disaster. The chemistry between them is so far below absolute zero that we are in a deeply frozen universe. Meanwhile, an enormous crew and the director Robert Zemeckis (famous for FORREST GUMP and BACK TO THE FUTURE) struggle to hold back the Red Sea so that the entire cast do not drown in a sea of indifference. We have the excellent Jared Harris, beloved of all MAD MEN fans, adding his resonant voice which is as soothing as hot chocolate, but lacking closeups, so that we can barely see him. We have Gary Sinese, an old chum of Zemeckis. We even have Simon McBurney. But still there is no thaw. We have great scenes. There is sex inside an old car in the middle of a sandstorm in the desert (lacking however any continuity link to the succeeding scenes, which is both an editing and a directing lapse). There is a birth of a baby in the open in the middle of an air raid. There is a man landing on a sand dune by parachute, seen from the air as he descends (astonishing camera work) which is ostensibly in Morocco but was really filmed in the Canary Islands, where all the North African locations were simulated. (There are in any case no such sand dunes near Casablanca, just for the record.) And there is a plane coming straight at a house but which misses its roof by a whisker and crashes across the street. That street is Willow Road in London's Hampstead, where so much action takes place. I could not make out whether the house was meant to be that of my friend Rupert Sheldrake, but I must go have a look at his roof to see whether it is damaged. Later when we see baby Anna taking her first steps, with the wrecked German plane in the background, it is on a hill far from Willow Road, but then this is only a movie. This is a film which should have been fantastic. But it has no pace, it is in fact languid and lingering. It is meant to be a powerful thriller and intense personal drama, but where is the editing to keep it going, where are the intense angles, and above all, where is the hero? Sound asleep, of course. Yes, there are plenty of spectacular setups. Many people worked their butts off giving us great sets, great props, great clothes, wonderful period cars. There are searchlights and anti-aircraft guns slaving away for our benefit, there are Sten guns, Nazis, stern 'V Section' spooks, uniforms, pistols, the whole shebang. But where are the pace, the intensity, and the excitement? All the elements are there, but we wait in vain for it all to move us. This is a passionless film. I also think Steven Knight's screenplay was greatly lacking in any true cinematic sense, and that he is just not a natural writer for the screen, despite having numerous credits. What a waste of a wonderful opportunity this is. And all that money spent on it! Zemeckis rolls scene after scene onstage as if he were producing a variety show in a theatre, or reading from Steven Knight's shopping list, and expects them all to adhere. But they are episodic rather than unified. We go from one outstanding setup to another. But we do not do so quickly enough, there is not enough glue, and above all, the nearest thing to a meaningful Pitt which we see in this film, vaguely and in the distance, are the ones on Jared Harris's face, remembered from MAD MEN, where we all learned to find them endearing marks of his individuality. Marion Cotillard deserves an Oscar for trying. But she might as well be kissing a film poster, and even a rag doll would be more responsive to her embraces. All of her plentiful allure is just so much water thrown at the desert sands, disappearing instantly and leaving no trace. If one pretends all the flaws are not there, one can still just about enjoy this film because of its dramatic and tragic story. But its lack of vigour just makes it look so contrived.
Arrival (2016)
A pseud's film
This film is a complete failure. It leaps from one ludicrous affectation to another, straining for 'meaning' but having none. The director Denis Villeneuve can deal with reality, as witness his film SICARIO (2015, see my review). But when it comes to spacemen, forget it. He has not got a sci fi bone in his body, or should I say his brain, as the film has been made by somebody who is clearly bone-headed. He thinks he can achieve profundity by having lots of loud music which drowns out the actors' voices, by having them mumble and whisper, by most of the scenes being so dark you have to peer through the gloom (all the better to see nothing, my dear), by having one of those identikit Hollywood children who lisps like an infant and cannot speak clearly, by not really showing his aliens except through a haze, by pretending to be something of a philosopher, with all the assiduity of a drunk ranting in the street. Amy Adams plays the female lead, and she at least articulates her speech, even though she has been encouraged to say everything in a near-whisper, so that we struggle to make out what she is saying, especially against the 'mood music'. As for Forrest Whittaker, who spoke perfectly clearly in THE BUTLER (2013), he has been reduced to an incomprehensibly mumbling hulk. I think I more or less understood about half of his lines, or am I just being kind? The idea that he should play a tough Army colonel was a serious instance of miscasting. He looks too nice to bark out orders such as 'move out!' But we can't understand his dialogue anyway, so in the end it does not matter. The stock scenes of tanks and soldiers with assault rifles attempting to deal with incomprehensible aliens from another world shows that Hollywood has not moved on since the 1950s. Everyone in the film seems to wear battle fatigues. But what about the fatigue of us, the viewers? There seems to be no end to this meaningless rambling film as it wanders around seeking for answers and finding none. The camera lingers so obsessively on the face of Amy Adams that the film is essentially an Ode to Amy. She seems to be the subject of about half of the shots in the whole film. Was the director in love with her? What is that all about anyway? Amy's leading man is played by Jeremy Renner, who get almost no close shots, much less closeups, and seems to have been cast in order to play the thankless role of a nonentity who would not steal too much attention from Amy. OK, OK, so the film was made in Canada, and Villeneuve is Canadian, and maybe it is not technically a Hollywood product. In which case, it is simply worse than Hollywood. All Canadian aliens should hang their tentacles in shame. A single scientific buzzword has been thrown into the dialogue, 'nonlinear'. That is all the science we get. (Nonlinear equations are increasingly important in modern physics. Don't even ask what they are, this is a film review.) There are mumbling remarks about the puzzling nature of time, but even on the rare occasions when we can hear them, they don't make any sense. Somehow Amy Adams is meant to know the future, or is it the past? It is not clear at all what she knows, although we are told she speaks Farsi, Mandarin, and many other languages. But no matter how many languages you can speak, if you have nothing to say, you might as well keep your mouth shut. Having the aliens look like octopuses is sensible, since serious writers on extraterrestrial life have been suggesting such creatures since the 1960s at least. Octopuses have big brains, and so hyper-intelligent super-octopoid aliens probably do exist on many worlds. That at least was not nonsense. But just about everything else was. And once again China is misconceived as being run by a general called 'Chairman of the People's Army'. Come on, folks, can't you get anything right? But the most ludicrous single thing in the entire film is the suggestion that a spaceship lands in the Sudan, of all places, and we are expected to imagine that the Sudan has a proper government. Hahahahaha.
Secrets (1924)
A partially preserved Norma Talmadge silent melodrama
This is an impressive melodrama which is now difficult to see, because the DVD is made from a very poor print, apparently the only one surviving, with about a third of its footage lost. The modern subtitles which have replaced the originals are also partially illiterate, which does not help. For instance, 'adversity' is spelled 'adversory'. Some idiots at work there! But the film is worth watching for those interested in cinema history and in Norma Talmadge as a sparkling star of the silent screen. She does very well in the lead role here, playing a character named Mary Carlton. The story begins with her as an old woman in the 1920s. Her husband is lying ill in bed, believed to be dying. As he sleeps, she goes to rest in her room and gets her diary out of a drawer, and reflects upon her dramatic and perilous life history. Suddenly we are back in 1865 in England, and she is a young girl from a wealthy family getting ready for a ball. There is an amazing scene, largely satirical, of her dressing for the ball. Anyone interested in costumes really must see this to believe it! Words fail me in attempting to describe it! Then she has a confrontation with her stern parents who have discovered that she has been writing love letters to John Carlton, an employee in her father's business, whom her father has consequently just fired. Her father says: 'No daughter of mine is going to marry such a nonentity!' So Talmadge elopes and does so, rather impractically, in her hoop skirt. She and John go off into the darkness. Then suddenly we are in the wild northwest of America in a log cabin, having lost a huge amount of footage. John has somehow antagonised some ruffians called 'Jack's gang' and they come riding through the snow to 'get' him. Talmadge's baby has been ill and the doctor has just left. A huge gunfight takes place, with John and one other man besieged in the cabin, and as Talmadge retreats to the back room to see how her baby is doing, she holds a small mirror to its mouth and sees that there is no breath, and that her baby has died. She sits there holding the dead baby in a state of shock while the gunfight is proceeding. Talmadge is very effective in her acting throughout the film, and in this scene she portrays the tragedy and pathos very well. Then a huge loss of footage occurs, but an inserted title informs us (from notes or perhaps the script) that John won the fight and defeated Jack's gang, despite being hugely outnumbered, and becomes a local hero. Then we are suddenly back in England again years later, where John's infidelity with another woman is exposed, and the woman comes to confront Talmadge and demand his freedom, saying that John and she love one another. However, Talmadge sees her off and reclaims the penitent John, who sheepishly admits that he has lost all his money 'again' (we missed the earlier occasion or occasions in the lost footage) and that they are penniless once more. Talmadge says they will fight together to survive, as they have always done. She has meanwhile met up with her parents again, and satire once again rears its head as the father says to his daughter that he had always wanted her to marry John Carlton. She looks at him with a mixture of amazement and contempt. Soon we are back with her as an old woman, as the doctor enters to speak of her husband's condition. As IMDb does not permit discussion of endings, I cannot say how it all turns out. Considering its poor state of preservation, this film now is very much a specialist's viewing experience and the general public would not wish to put up with the missing sections and the bad print. But for those of us who see beyond such things, it is worthwhile, and would have been a very impressive film at its time of release. It is also a particularly fine example of Norma Talmadge's talent as an actress.