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Friends and Strangers (2021)
One performance short
There's a lot to like in this offbeat, deadpan comedy that's part Rohmer and part Wes Anderson. Beautifully shot, and wonderful, notable performances by many of the actors, especially Emma Diaz. The character of Ray is at the center of the film, though, and the portrayal is too thin to carry it along. Clearly he's meant to be something of a cypher. But there's too little going on with the portrayal to merit the attention.
Der Boden unter den Füßen (2019)
Brilliant Psychological Study
This is a gripping, tough movie about the bond between two sisters, focused on the the younger of the two, a hard working business consultant, and how the reality around her erodes as her older sister is treated for mental illness. Valerie Pachner's performance is restrained and subtle. The cinematography is superb, bringing your the cold surfaces of chrome-blue hallways and white institutional walls that contrast with the turmoil that grows within the main character's increasingly tortured psyche. A beautiful, rich film.
An Act of Murder (1948)
Remarkable Little Film
There's something quite remarkable at the heart of this honest and direct portrayal of a very human crisis. The leads here - Frederic March and Florence Eldridge, real-life husband and wife - are completely and thoroughly a middle-aged couple and depicted as such, in all their wrinkles and folds and reflections on lives that have been lived. It's a reminder that the two kinds of people we see in movies are the very young and beautiful and the very old. The Cookes here are seemingly fully filled in, a husband and wife with grown children, in the midst of real lives, inhabiting their marriage with the deep love that is far beyond the romantic love that's the staple of motion pictures. This isn't the dashing Frederic March of the 1930s but a mature, restrained father and husband. It's a bit melodramatic at times - director Michael Gordon is a journeyman professional and not William Wyler, director of the great film of that era starring March, The Best Years of Our LIves. But watch for the details, such as the sharp, discordant strings stabbing along as windshield wipers swipe across the screen. I think I saw that in another movie made a few years later.
Dangerous Corner (1934)
A historical artifact, but little more
Largely of interest only as a historical piece, a document of movies made from the factory mill of drawing room stage plays of the period. It's part domestic drama, part detective movie, with supposedly sophisticated repartee with drinks, mild references to sex, affairs, marriage and relationships, with some high-minded talk about truth and - perhaps self-referentially - plot devices holding it all together. Except for a few slight flourishes, it's little more than a filmed play, with full shots interspersed with a few two- and three-shots. That said, the performances are expertly delivered, with Melvyn Douglas particularly good and charismatic as the single-man charmer who is after the leading lady, well played by Virginia Bruce. It goes down fairly easily, and the 'smart' lines, many expertly delivered as slight aphorisms by Doris Lloyd - playing a writer and so a kind of bemused commentator and proxy for the author on the unfolding drama. It was clearly meant as not much more than a diversion at the time, with production and performances a pale echo of better pictures or the era.
3 Men in White (1944)
Gardner shines through in this journeyman work.
An interesting curiosity for a number of things, including references to the war. The Barrymore character Dr. Gillespie, with his over-the-top snarling, snapping at people, rooting out mysterious cases and mocking of young doctors and their ill-informed diagnoses is a precursor of the Hugh Laurie character in the House television series. Most significantly, Ava Gardner's performance in her first significant role, where she is fifth-billed, is arresting. Her acting at 22 was still a work in progress, but her charisma and star quality is clear and shines through the journeyman quality of the filmmaking. The cast is an unusual mix of A- level players - Van Johnson, Keye Luke, Gardner and Barrymore - and barely adequate bit players, making for some unusual scenes.
Party Girl (1930)
Acting Lessons
If you want to study good acting, this film is essential for, well, the flip side of the acting craft. The most basic line readings are spectacularly awful. My personal favorite: a woman, facing two policemen with overbearing warnings, saying, "so - long pause - what?" To be fair, though, the script, just the basic dialogue, is horrible and the plot is just the bare bones material for an audience to get a peek at a lurid world of 'party girls' and Prohibition-era 'gin parties.' The double-meanings are just a step more lurid than the thinly-veiled plots of other "A" pictures. While prostitution is the main theme, the look into how the rich flaunt the alcohol ban is sure to have titillated an audience of the era. The 'perfume' bath given to one of the girls is strongly suggested to be gin. And one cop notes before questioning a girl that the guilty go for a bottle before being interrogated. The class depictions in a film shot at the onset of the Depression also are stark. The rich drink and carouse with poor girls on the margins of society who, as the opening title says, want only to earn a living in a "decent" way. The message to women is clear enough: the workplace is no place for decent gals.
Princess O'Rourke (1943)
Things change
Looked at with 70 years distance, the 'charming romantic comedy' involves a princess being drugged, stripped and dumped at a safe house in New York. One can imagine the developments being portrayed in a somewhat different way. And it's not to be hard on the movie - Olivia De Havilland is absolutely superb in a light comic turn - but it is interesting to see how society has changed and the little things taken for granted in the movie, such as a flight crew handing out sleeping pills to a passenger, are thoroughly anathema today. That said, it's De Havilland's performance that carries it. You can see Robert Cummings forming the light character that he would perfect to an annoying degree in the coming years.