tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43078730758231255332024-03-24T19:33:56.969-04:00PRE-CODE POLYAMORY 1929-1934Alex DeLargehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17050773136046485614noreply@blogger.comBlogger151125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307873075823125533.post-4554226980302376912024-03-16T19:02:00.001-04:002024-03-16T19:02:13.357-04:00CRIME WITHOUT PASSION (Ben Hecht, Charles Mac Arthur, Lee Garmes [uncredited], 1934)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7Gsg7XmzzznHfch02I072M-TewwtlHSrAAvOahG56S98zYBKd5qwTq7yN7LO_zVKb2zVglG35CP-Hdj4M1evZICZ_vjuHa51IJWWIc5y2rSUYfxJSuO1uVpqWjv8yehHD80Xi6BJq1QPxYUrNPQLuHKAZIrgIEDpLmjxVMTnUO1pEY6iZlLARo1Dm-LsF/s1114/crime%20without%20passion.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1114" data-original-width="736" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7Gsg7XmzzznHfch02I072M-TewwtlHSrAAvOahG56S98zYBKd5qwTq7yN7LO_zVKb2zVglG35CP-Hdj4M1evZICZ_vjuHa51IJWWIc5y2rSUYfxJSuO1uVpqWjv8yehHD80Xi6BJq1QPxYUrNPQLuHKAZIrgIEDpLmjxVMTnUO1pEY6iZlLARo1Dm-LsF/w264-h400/crime%20without%20passion.jpg" width="264" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The Three Furies rise from the blood of the innocent to mercilessly torment wicked men. And criminal defense attorney Lee Gentry (Claude Rains) is one wicked fucker. The film is directed by its own terrific triptych with legendary DP Lee Garmes doing much of the work, handling Director’s duties and photographing this strange and beautiful film. The look of this film precedes the film Noir genre and may have birthed it like the Furies themselves from the violent urban blood of modernity. The opening sequence is fantastic in both editing and composition: we stare down the barrel of a handgun and see a montage of murders in extreme close-up and shadows, with blood dripping upon the floor. From each blood spatter rises an avenging Fury, their naked fitness wrapped in silken shrouds, demons descending upon the Earth to punish dark desires. Their beautiful feminine bodies (barely concealed by the see-through shrouds) belie their intentions, soon revealed in close-ups of their ghostly faces shrieking with anger and accusation while men commit adultery and murder upon their virgin prey. The three sisters hunt through the NYC skyline, shattering the skyscraper horizon as shards of broken glass rain down upon the streets to form the film’s title. Holy shit is this the greatest opening sequence I’ve ever seen! Though this was released in August of 1934, shortly after the enactment of stricter censorship, it seems this one slipped through the cracks. Since this was filmed on Long Island and not Hollywood, I suspect it may have done just that! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Though the acting is superb, it’s the lighting and compositions that make this film stand out. Lee Garmes often films Gentry from low angle with key lighting to create a looming darkness upon Gentry’s handsome demeanor. His close-ups also develop an internal complicity between physical action and the intellect: the Actus Reus and Mens Rea, so to speak. It’s no surprise that Garmes would eventually photograph some of the great Noir films such as <b>NIGHTMARE ALLEY</b> (1947).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The story itself is a love triangle of the obtuse kind, as one point believes itself to be the sharpest but is actually quite dull in its passionless intellectualism. That point is our protagonist Lee Gentry, a criminal defense attorney who only saves accused murderers from the chair to bolster his own ego. This is a man who isn’t above creating his own evidence to ensure acquittal, which is suggested by the threat of Grand Jury indictment from the DA. Gentry considers himself the Übermensch, morally and ethically superior to the insect-like masses teaming below him on the streets. This speech foreshadows Harry Lime’s Ferris Wheel confessional 15 years later! Soon, Gentry wishes to end a sultry relationship with cabaret singer Carmen Brown (Margo) while proposing to the more upscale Katy Costello (Whitney Bourne). But he can’t just end it and lose face, so he engineers a plot that will catch Carmen in a seemingly deceitful web with her ex, so he can play the righteous role. Of course, this ends up with her shot and Gentry literally holding the smoking gun! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">As his intellect walks him through every nuance of evidence to conceal the crime (shown as a ghostly double exposure) he fails to account for the human element. As his anxiety spirals out of control towards self-imposed madness, he commits another crime that won’t be so easily defended in court! I suppose one man’s evil is another man’s poetic justice. </span></p><p><b><span style="color: red; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Final Grade: (B+)</span></b></p>Alex DeLargehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17050773136046485614noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307873075823125533.post-4103071025734455752024-03-10T09:17:00.000-04:002024-03-10T09:17:02.072-04:00FAST WORKERS (Tod Browning [uncredited], 1933)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnmcA0MHng5yLMFNkjY2_bX3kbOf-OUJR3Idx1gvahYbRP_4I31IcvBQKaCGvfx5Bx7c8n8G8K3MYXtOaH7EuKV0o5SLmpZMYXOhY8UGAE5MZUbyk5jT1kRn0Q-C8kQPtriXSXUVaXbHat_1Y5ycRebYPzfeIDofRGI0XRuvtr1HyU2HKqGhTETQ8pEQwu/s750/fast%20workers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="575" data-original-width="750" height="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnmcA0MHng5yLMFNkjY2_bX3kbOf-OUJR3Idx1gvahYbRP_4I31IcvBQKaCGvfx5Bx7c8n8G8K3MYXtOaH7EuKV0o5SLmpZMYXOhY8UGAE5MZUbyk5jT1kRn0Q-C8kQPtriXSXUVaXbHat_1Y5ycRebYPzfeIDofRGI0XRuvtr1HyU2HKqGhTETQ8pEQwu/w400-h306/fast%20workers.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">When your best pal fucks your girlfriend in order to “test’ her fidelity, maybe you should make new friends. Tod Browning is not credited with directing, as the title card says a Tod Browning Production, then lists the other creative constituents of this misogynistic melodrama. Was this the result of his previous disaster <b>FREAKS</b> which, in my opinion, is one of the great Pre-Code films and whose reputation has been deservedly resurrected? In 1933, his name may have been anathema, so here we get a dynamic duo of John Gilbert (Gunner) and Robert Armstrong (Bucker) in a dour and pessimistic relationship with Mae Clarke (Mary), all fast workers of a sort: Gunner with amoral women, Bucker with rivets, and Mary digging gold. We get a nice supporting role from Sterling Holloway (Pinky), who at least gives the story a modicum of compassion and humor. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">When Gunner does a stretch in county jail for being $29 short of his fine for assault, Bucker meets Mary at a local speakeasy and is hooked. Unknown to both of them, they share a bond with Gunner: he’s Mary’s boy-toy and Bucker’s confidant! Once Bucker’s two cohorts discover the truth, Bucker is the one kept in the dark even after he and Mary tie the knot (more like a noose). Soon hearts and bones are broken. The acting is generally decent but it’s the characterizations that vex, as Armstrong plays his role “full-idiot” and Gilbert is an asshole, while Mary fails to reveal any redeeming quality and becomes the punchline to their malicious masculinity. Unlike Browning’s film <b>IRON MAN</b>, where the homosexual relationship is buried in the subtext of two men who share friendship, hardship and compassion for one another, here one wonders why the two guys are even friends! It seems more like Gunner is the one taking advantage of Bucker and his kindhearted naivete, using the excuse of “looking after him” to get laid. The film also makes a point that every woman is after a man’s cash and should be treated accordingly. Gunner’s casual misogyny unfortunately isn’t just typical of the era, it transcends it. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">DP Peveral Marley does a wonderful job of utilizing back projection and high/low angle shots as the men work on the narrow beams while building a skyscraper, forty stories above the rush hour traffic but just the right height to peek into adjoining buildings to ogle women through binoculars. A nice interlude occurs when Bucker and Mary go to the movies, watching Harry Beaumont’s <b>LAUGHING SINNERS</b> (untitled in the film): Mary sees romance and Bucker sees “corn”. It’s a neat “meta” resolution because it exposes Mary’s moral fault, her narcissism obscured by fantasy. Browning’s macabre touch is exposed in the final act as he films Armstrong in sweaty, murdery close-ups as Mary discloses her unholy betrayal. He stalks off to work and causes Gunner to fall nearly to his death, but Gunner catches the sleeve of Bucker’s sweater and dangle precariously while the fabric tears, bit by bit. Gunner falls onto a landing many floors below thanks to his cohort swinging him toward relative safety. Mary knows this truth too and vows to tell Gunner and the cops about the attempted murder. But when they visit him in the hospital, Gunner forgives his pal and they both drop Mary! Yet there is time for one last patriarchal and puerile gesture towards the adorable nurse. Bones may be shattered, hearts may be torn asunder, but dirty minds remain fully intact. </span></p><p><b><span style="color: red; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Final Grade: (C) </span></b></p>Alex DeLargehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17050773136046485614noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307873075823125533.post-57215383574183312024-03-02T09:28:00.001-05:002024-03-02T09:30:33.873-05:00PAID (Sam Wood, 1930)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHQ_SKvOWjqhmG8vxviXOrU7BedR11qeip1P8D1fcCo2W8kK3n7lpEzrdo68MUxCk2O0ON1tAgnSeY7Ny-Q1849yBuqkzv9sLNYcDOq9X4F8KbbNYx3yHM0EqJHSGjLEaoG6gQne2kM-Cu1_81RTMgEgoSkhAZOUfzytSzoiv_SxlMJSc03bZ0I1HcEh5_/s364/paid02.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="364" data-original-width="256" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHQ_SKvOWjqhmG8vxviXOrU7BedR11qeip1P8D1fcCo2W8kK3n7lpEzrdo68MUxCk2O0ON1tAgnSeY7Ny-Q1849yBuqkzv9sLNYcDOq9X4F8KbbNYx3yHM0EqJHSGjLEaoG6gQne2kM-Cu1_81RTMgEgoSkhAZOUfzytSzoiv_SxlMJSc03bZ0I1HcEh5_/w281-h400/paid02.jpg" width="281" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Who are the bad guys in the story? The crooks or the constables? What is Fruit of the Poisonous Tree? Mary Turner vows to pay back her three years of incarceration to her corrupt boss and the District Attorney with interest, discovering that revenge is a balm best served cold(blooded). Whip-smart and devious, Mary studies the Crimes Code while in stir and learns to twist the statutes into supporting her Breach-of-Promise scam, all perfectly legal and binding, upon release. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The film begins with Mary (Joan Crawford) being sentenced for a crime she swears she didn’t commit, shoplifting. She’s mocked by her boss and the DA as she continues to stridently pleads her innocence, condemning both. The Court sentences her to 3-5 years (holy fuck!) for the crime of theft, not embezzlement of thousands of dollars, mind you, but items from the department store where she clerked (for $16 a week) that were found in her locker. Though I’m unfamiliar with the contemporary era crimes code, I find it difficult to believe that it’s anywhere near the Felony threshold. The battle lines drawn, it becomes obvious that her wealthy boss, living off the hard work of his poorly paid employees, and the police that support him, are the bad guys of this tempestuous tale. Once paroled, Mary’s cohorts soon include the vibrant and sexually charged Agnes (Marie Prevost) and the loyal Joe Garson (Robert Armstrong), who wears his own heart on his sleeve for Mary, but she has eyes for another. Not only does her scam net her gang some healthy profit from rich old men who can’t keep their hands (or other appendages) off the vivacious Agnes, but Mary has her own profitable racket on the side: she seduces the naive son of her former boss! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">With over 20 years' experience in a District Attorney’s Office, let me say a few words about the police in this film: their authoritarian entitlement is disgusting. They enter without warrants, ignore a Common Pleas Judge’s restraining order, continue to berate, belittle and intimidate our protagonists after they ask for an attorney, threaten the electric chair to elicit a response, and even point a fucking gun at Garson while demanding he confess! I know this was decades before Miranda and Hamilton v Alabama, but it’s discouraging to see how our Constitution courted Fascist ideals, framed (or hidden) within the illusion of a Democracy. But the worst act is the final one, as an undercover cop (or informant, it was unclear) entraps our gang by implanting the idea of a crime that is an elaborate ambush by the police to capture and punish Mary and her partners, for no other reason than to ensure she doesn’t corrupt her ex-boss’s son! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">So, Garson and his crew are told that the Mona Lisa is hanging in the boss’s house and a local museum curator will pay $200,00 cash upon receipt. Obviously, they’re not very sophisticated (who would believe this?) but Garson gives way to the temptation of one last score (sans Mary). When Mary and her boyish husband intervene and the informer revealed, this nark pulls a gun and is shot dead by Garson. Chaos ensues. Garson escapes over the rooftops and one of the crew falls to his death (which we get to see from a high angle shot, plummet and impact!) but Mary and her husband are discovered at the scene. Bullying and emotional torture (without charge, BTW) become police procedure upon the two, as they try every trick to get them to give up Garson. But here’s the catch: there is some damn poisonous fruit being eaten here! Since the police entrapped Garson by creating the very idea of the crime itself, everything that happens during the burglary (including the murder) should be suppressed! If the police discovered a plan and laid in wait, or even infiltrated the group with an informant, then this isn’t a legal issue. However, this is textbook entrapment and Garson should be freed upon a suppression hearing. Instead, the police lead Garson to certain death, while Mary cries for her friend. It’s only a happy ending for the Fascists. </span></p><p><b><span style="color: red; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Final Grade: (B+)</span></b></p>Alex DeLargehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17050773136046485614noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307873075823125533.post-66914374751714568712024-02-24T13:03:00.000-05:002024-02-24T13:03:31.880-05:00DOUBLE DOOR (Charles Vidor, 1934)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwFPqXBzij-KAwoFZdT8gspTVz0hucttGfcEw95f33oWHRfmzUWhSG0rVlHSGHkLB6dLZKx-pnZ2M1io3OXSNvPhUILISZr3qDbaOVH8e39KdtgBiMI5OLZHvLv6faNT2HWI39MvS6SQOsWx9RJ7mgc0i5CJjW2pCZf1ntgGJMdou7NdTbsLiLkjtRkOQS/s1498/double%20door.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1498" data-original-width="1000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwFPqXBzij-KAwoFZdT8gspTVz0hucttGfcEw95f33oWHRfmzUWhSG0rVlHSGHkLB6dLZKx-pnZ2M1io3OXSNvPhUILISZr3qDbaOVH8e39KdtgBiMI5OLZHvLv6faNT2HWI39MvS6SQOsWx9RJ7mgc0i5CJjW2pCZf1ntgGJMdou7NdTbsLiLkjtRkOQS/w268-h400/double%20door.jpg" width="268" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Rip Van Brett must wake from his moral slumber, a man whose family jewels are locked away in a vault, which is analogous to his own “family jewels” being sadistically kept by his evil stepsister Victoria. Rip must make a choice between the family (mis)fortune and his lovely new bride Anne. Wonderfully directed by Charles Vidor and photographed by Harry Fishbeck (who shot one of the best Pre-Code films The Eagle and the Hawk), this stagey melodrama opens with Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor as an elderly woman, her expression one of hatred and contempt, stares in extreme close-up directly at the audience and shatters the fourth wall that separates us! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The plot involves the matriarch of a wealthy 5th Avenue family Victoria Van Brett (Marry Morris) and her machinations to control her stepbrother Rip (Kent Taylor) and younger sister Caroline (Anne Revere) by dismissing blue-collar bride Anne Darrow (Evelyn Venable) using any means necessary. This would enable the jewels, a pearl necklace worth $500,000 (in 1934 dollars!) to stay in her possession instead of being gifted to the adorable new bride. But the necklace is really the MacGuffin, as the story is really about the clash of Victorian Age principles versus Jazz Age morality: Hell, the despicable woman’s name is even Victoria, so it’s not really subtext. After the terrifying opening credits, Vidor shows us a close-up of a car’s license plate as the camera pulls back focus and tracks right, as the car pulls away from the curb to be replaced by a horse-and-carriage. Commoners (as Victoria no doubt would refer to them) crowd the street to see who’s attending the famous Van Brett wedding which is being held right here in their 5th Avenue home. In the first few scenes Vidor subtly reveals the conflict without yet taking sides, but as the story progresses our sympathies fall squarely upon one couple. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I’ve advocated for many years that the most evil and amoral woman in a fiction film was Mrs. Eleanor Shaw Iselin (from the original The Manchurian Candidate) played wonderfully (and despicably) by Angela Lansbury, who sacrifices her own son upon the alter of Authoritarian power, but now I’m not so sure. Victoria Van Brett is the Wicked Witch of the West-side, an aging widow whose black heart seeks complete domination over her staff and family, and any others she can manipulate for her own purposes. There is not one fucking redeeming quality to this wretch, and as she destroys Anne Darrow bit-by-bit and subjugates Rip, we cheer for the thought of her violent demise. Rip is portrayed as a good man who dearly loves his new wife but he’s sleepwalking through the tempest, impotent to roust himself to action. The story takes pains to portray Anne as genuine and affectionate, a loving soul and not a gold-digger. As Victoria punishes her own sister Caroline, a meek spinsterish woman whose willpower has been whittled away until she’s barely an individual anymore, Victoria grows in power but diminishes in humanity. But she grasps too tightly and it’s not just her moral code that is her undoing, it’s a “combination” of factors, if you get my drift! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Vidor and his cinematographer light the set and characters like a Gothic horror film. Though it’s a stagey housebound film, the low angles of our domineering matriarch as she towers above her victims and the low-key lighting are visually exciting. One shot in particular that foreshadows the vault’s revelation is a high angle shot from behind the wall, with a funeral urn in the center of the composition: on one side is the maid and the other Victoria, warning her that the ashes of the family scions haunt this shelf! Mary Morris in her only film, reprises her stage role as Victoria and plays it to excess, which allows us to commiserate appropriately with the newlyweds and cheer at her self-owned demise. How many times have you cheered a young man twisting and old lady’s arm until he nearly rips it from her shoulder? You will here. Sometimes poetic justice is a dish best served cold. </span></p><p><b><span style="color: red; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Final Grade: (B)</span></b></p>Alex DeLargehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17050773136046485614noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307873075823125533.post-41093085750875514852024-02-12T20:16:00.003-05:002024-02-12T20:18:20.679-05:00IRON MAN (Tod Browning, 1931)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs0Q1DyW0pA8-EAQk0yTzTCqo7dNFu5_QM0Xi1VV3LvH2nOhqf7vEgrnhyphenhyphenryRDwmKjIeqKn80psCHVQ6oNDrfnq4x_C95c2bFN_u-HC29eNcqH5YgyRlCjzwgfA9jzdrrT-Qm7V0NV0kR-prNRsP340ig2IpRqvslq5Mnn012YnTrmpGydxomm-e_48pll/s900/iron%20man01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="645" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs0Q1DyW0pA8-EAQk0yTzTCqo7dNFu5_QM0Xi1VV3LvH2nOhqf7vEgrnhyphenhyphenryRDwmKjIeqKn80psCHVQ6oNDrfnq4x_C95c2bFN_u-HC29eNcqH5YgyRlCjzwgfA9jzdrrT-Qm7V0NV0kR-prNRsP340ig2IpRqvslq5Mnn012YnTrmpGydxomm-e_48pll/w286-h400/iron%20man01.jpg" width="286" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Kid Mason has to lose it all to find his true companion, the one who will make sure he doesn’t catch pneumonia, the one who has always had his best interests in mind...his manager George Regan. Tod Browning’s entire filmography depicts outsiders, strange and curious people at first blush but who, sometimes, prove to be more human than expected, embodying compassion and a strong moral willpower and rise above their banishment to the fringes of contemporary society. Here, Browning subverts his own trope and finds pugilist Kid Mason (Lew Ayres), an effeminate young man (hence his sobriquet) who looks nothing like a boxer, a naive boy who looks perfectly “normal” on the outside but hides something within, a dark secret of confused sexuality. Browning gives us hints throughout the film and elides any romantic interludes to focus upon two men and the love they feel for one another. Is it mere friendship or is it a deep physical affection? To Jazz Age audiences, if they looked hard enough, Kid Mason is a Freak who hides behind the mask of heterosexuality. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The plot seems to be fairly straightforward. Kid Mason is subjugated to his gold-digging wife Rose (Jean Harlow) and she’s the beauty that kills the beast, so to speak. When he’s winning, she’s head-over-heels for him but once he loses the title, she finds another man that can afford the new fur coat! Rose remains superficially defined throughout the film because the story is really about Kid Mason and his manager George Regan (Robert Armstrong). Browning has no “love interest” for either man, no compassionate woman to mend our titular hero when he is matrimonially knocked out. There is only one other woman briefly depicted but she threatens to sue Kid for breach of promise, hardly a romantic interlude. But George deftly deflects her advances, and she disappears from the narrative quickly. Even the scenes between Rose and Kid are shallow and devoid of eroticism, like a motherly kiss and embrace. Once cuckolded, Browning makes sure to frame Rose in a sexually charged dance with her partner Paul (John Miljan) and even gives us a bedroom scene between the two, when George finally has enough of her scheming. The other bedroom scenes in the film are between George and Kid! Browning also takes pains to show us George lives the life of a bachelor, gambling with his cohorts and living alone. He never makes a pass or talks about dames once in this seemingly macho film. He and Kid both look uncomfortable around the few women who haunt the story like ghosts, who are one dimensional extortionists. Also, Browning makes sure to often frame Kid sans shirt, showing off his somewhat muscular physique. Like his nickname, this is a young man not yet fully defined which includes his sexual identity. When he and George reminisce about the time George gave him his first beer while fishing, and they laugh kindly about the lie they told to cover up this tale, maybe it wasn’t a beer after all. I suggest this story is told purposely in the film to forge the bond between the two, so the final betrayal is all the more tragic, yet upon reflection it becomes even more important in their relationship. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">One key scene seems to be missing from extant prints, though it’s mentioned in contemporary reviews. In the final fight, after Kid reads the divorce decree from Paul’s wife (thus cementing his suspicion of her infidelity), as he gets knocked out in the ring, Browning crosscuts with Rose getting cold-cocked by Paul and also knocked out! Kid loses his facade as both husband and Champion, and the final tender scene is between him and George! As Kid sits in a chair and holds his head in despair, George hovers over him in a dominant composition but speaks softly, like a lover, admonishing him to put on his robe lest he catch pneumonia. Kid doesn’t stand to meet him, only looks upward in a striking composition that ends the film. So, Kid grows up, he loses his Title and his wife, but not himself. It’s truly beautiful. </span></p><p><b><span style="color: red; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Final Grade: (B)</span></b></p>Alex DeLargehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17050773136046485614noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307873075823125533.post-36158705561640081962024-02-03T12:42:00.000-05:002024-02-03T12:42:02.059-05:00PAYMENT DEFERRED (Lothar Mendes, 1932)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEise8oiwYHOiJf6HDMeo-8EiFx9PbQQ2LgwYS-7zq9HtZ2tnOtGU2p1ok_VZPSG7Nze3dbb4QsWYVQXUd6mx-XF69dlBOSXK-y6CwsmUjUUmr3TG7K0R9-brG2wKRPPJS_q4PGwbljS_QFSvv_SSMaxTFxfubJZTlN2UtlRHop0RBzudhvaqmlrjOjN6FIy/s944/payment%20deferred.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="617" data-original-width="944" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEise8oiwYHOiJf6HDMeo-8EiFx9PbQQ2LgwYS-7zq9HtZ2tnOtGU2p1ok_VZPSG7Nze3dbb4QsWYVQXUd6mx-XF69dlBOSXK-y6CwsmUjUUmr3TG7K0R9-brG2wKRPPJS_q4PGwbljS_QFSvv_SSMaxTFxfubJZTlN2UtlRHop0RBzudhvaqmlrjOjN6FIy/w400-h261/payment%20deferred.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">It’s funny, how one thing leads to another. Excellent film with solid directing from Lothar Mendes and photography from Merritt Gerstad, relegated mostly to one room but with the fluid camera movements, low key lighting and compositions, combined with a great cast which reminds one of later Hitchcock films. I would go as far to aver that this film surpasses Hitchcock’s British films of this period!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Charles Laughton is William Marble who loses his marbles when the opportunity to get out of debt presents itself in the guise of a forgotten nephew with a billfold full of cash. Laughton is a force of nature, a big man playing a small role, a meager bank teller whose debt isn’t incurred by extravagance or luxury overspending, but by Depression. Laughton possesses this character like a tormented spirit, retaining the humanity while committing an inhumane act. The suffering and guilt are not only etched into his face but in every bodily mannerism. Mendes allows Laughton to act in medium shot with long takes, so we see the shadows pass over his face like storm clouds slowly building towards tempest. This is one of the best performances I’ve seen in the Pre-Code era. Dorothy Peterson as his loyal wife Annie and a waifish Maureen O’Sullivan as his daughter Winnie are also excellent, though their parts are often eclipsed by Laughton. I love the Barrymores, but Laughton would be the one actor I’d fear to share a scene with: you better be on your game! Fortunately, both actresses are up to the task.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I’ll note some highlights. When Laughton poisons his nephew, the camera moves to close-up on him. But instead of focusing only upon the shocked expression on Laughton’s face, the camera pans down and keeps his shaking hands in frame, as the whiskey spills onto his sleeve and his hands shake uncontrollably. And he doesn’t even drop the glass! That Mendes allows Laughton to act with his hands and body makes the scene even more dreadful. And the death itself is elided and out of frame; Mendes doesn’t even include the sound of the body dropping to the floor. Another nice visual happens when Annie suspects her husband has gained the funds (which he invested to create his immediate wealth) through subterfuge, the camera does a quick zoom close-up of the bottle of cyanide in the cabinet. This reflects her husband’s immediate fear, not hers: she thinks he embezzled the money! Since lenses didn’t exist yet for rack-zoom, this sped-up shot must have been dramatic and unsettling to contemporary audiences. Also, watching Laughton be consumed and seduced by a local French woman is splendid, as he reveals both suffering and lust at the same time. And the way that Mends edits and focuses upon the mound in the garden like an infected tooth, a constant sore that won’t heal for William is excellent. We even get to see Laughton body slam a kid who plays too near the secret grave. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Finally, the end of the third act depicts Laughton’s maniacal laughter, from dark humor to dread, as he is accused of his wife’s death (for which he is innocent) yet accepts his fate, his deferred payment now due. The scene lasts for a minute, as the camera pulls back and the lights are slowly dimmed until we only see his face highlighted, until it all fades to black. That would have been the best ending, but we get a momentary tearful coda as Winnie visits her father in prison just before his execution, and she believes his innocence in her mother’s death. But she never learns that Justice is sometimes poetic.</span></p><p><b><span style="color: red; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Final Grade: (A)</span></b></p>Alex DeLargehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17050773136046485614noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307873075823125533.post-1440350469676925842024-01-26T17:34:00.001-05:002024-01-26T17:42:27.517-05:00THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY (William Beaudine, 1933)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrGJ5v2bgRIU0lp9DMjRyXxs7tZJWe99UNZkPeOSVFkRwXdEPA8rmguEz8l1QOVKMugZS6NOAsLzuxE-MYqHVaxUnJxmPx68KSdvRB3-hw6MIG4fh3v9wWe118u6fYgPlsCfxZpXcn3LPoHHkn0OHRuWXNS93O7glgwTlCLN4b2lFbXH6gtcrvO3tYjisa/s1280/crime%20of%20the%20century.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="969" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrGJ5v2bgRIU0lp9DMjRyXxs7tZJWe99UNZkPeOSVFkRwXdEPA8rmguEz8l1QOVKMugZS6NOAsLzuxE-MYqHVaxUnJxmPx68KSdvRB3-hw6MIG4fh3v9wWe118u6fYgPlsCfxZpXcn3LPoHHkn0OHRuWXNS93O7glgwTlCLN4b2lFbXH6gtcrvO3tYjisa/w303-h400/crime%20of%20the%20century.jpg" width="303" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Crime Reporter Dan McKee’s good luck may only last a day, but fortunately he only needs it to last through an evening of murders and mayhem where he successfully “pins” the blame on the guilty party! William Beaudine’s direction is mostly relegated to a few interior set pieces revealing the stage-bound origin of the narrative, heavy with dialogue and multiple characters (suspects) speaking their turn. Unlike a Howard Hawks’ film, there is no overlapping dialogue delivered at a machine-gun pace: every character gets their moment to speak and defend themselves from blame or offer clues to the identity of the true killer. This closed-door murder mystery may not be wholly satisfying by the end but it’s rather surprising and brutal in a Pre-Code way!</span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">NOTE: I GIVE AWAY THE ENTIRE MYSTERY IN THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPHS</span></b></p><p><u><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">OPENING STATEMENT</span></u></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">A mysterious man wanders into the local police precinct and confesses to a murder…he hasn’t committed yet! So, the setup concerns Dr. Emil Brandt (of distinctly German ancestry, reflective of Teutophobia in the decades after The Great War!) who treats criminals by hypnosis and mental suggestion in order to cure them of their Mens Rea. However, he is currently treating a shell-shocked bank teller (a Great War veteran!) and has gone all Svengali by convincing him to steal $100,000 from the bank and bring it to him, then the “good” Doctor will stab him through the heart with a medical instrument! He confesses this plan to Capt. Riley before it is completed, hence his appearance at the precinct. Racked with guilt, he agrees to allow the police to accompany him home to await this hypnotized patient with the cache (and cash!).</span></p><p><u><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">CASE IN CHIEF</span></u></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Phillip Ames, the previously mentioned shell-shocked somnambulist, does indeed return to the Dr.’s house with an envelope full of cash. Now, it’s a mighty skinny envelope and we’re expected to believe there is $100,00 in cash contained therein, but I recall from my coin collecting days that there were $1,000 and $10,000 bank notes in the 30s! However, it is later stated that these were old bills and well circulated so the serial numbers couldn’t be traced. It would be rather difficult in 1930 to get untraceable bank notes of that denomination, I suppose. Now plot gets rather complicated.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Eventually Cpt. Riley (Robert Elliot) arrives as expected and sees both Mr. Ames and the cash. The Sgt. threatens to arrest Ames because now the crime isn’t inchoate, the theft has been completed! Dr. Brandt begs that he’s going to mesmerize Ames into returning the cash so the bank will never know it was stolen. The Sgt. reluctantly agrees. This seems strange because the crime was committed by Dr. Brandt, not the patient! Statute concerning Involuntary Intoxication (intoxicant being mesmerism) should apply. But this seemingly skewed perspective makes more sense in the final minutes of the story! We also learn that Dr. Brandt’s gold-digging wife Freda (Wynne Gibson) has pressured him into financial fecundity, and she and her lover plan to steal the money after the Dr. murders Ames! We also have ace crime reporter Dan McKee (Stuart Erwin) who is tailing the Cpt., looking for a lead on his next story. Also introduced is Dr. Brandt’s daughter Doris (Frances Dee) and a mysterious skulking stranger. Dr. Brandt’s Butler and Maid are thrown in for good measure (even though Bodil Rosing as the Maid overacts her small part). With all these ingredients at roughly the same place and time, out go the lights and Ames is stabbed through the heart just like Dr. Brandt planned, and Brandt is chloroformed and unconscious on the floor next to the body. Freda is assaulted and her face bruised, and hand scratched, and the money is gone! So, whodunit?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Now we get a minute respite as an objective narrator allows the audience to briefly consider each suspect and come up with their conclusion. However, this is a false premise because we haven’t been given all the information yet. Sgt. Riley gathers all of the unusual suspects (excepting one, as he’s not formally introduced yet) and they re-enact the crime. But if one of them murdered Ames and stole the envelope, then where is the money? Deduction: it must still be in the room! In the course of this strangeness Freda is stabbed in the chest with scissors when the lights go out (again) as she was about to remember some implicating fact. So, we have another body, the same suspects, missing money, and a strong motive for Dr. Brandt’s conviction. He’s arrested and taken to the station. Our scrupulous (and “scoop”-ulous) protagonist Dan McKee has other ideas and evidence, such as a lost unmatched button, an Ace of Spades from an unknown deck, a lipstick smeared glove, and a gut feeling that the incarcerated Dr. is quite moral; after all, Dan’s crushing on his daughter!</span></p><p><u><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">VERDICT</span></u></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">McKee sneaks back to the house with Doris to search for the money. But so does Freda’s beau and the unnamed stranger. When they discover the cash hidden in the liquor cabinet, it is purloined by the stranger who kisses Doris gently before absconding. Turns out this is her brother, barely mentioned in the first act! When the police arrive, the truth is shockingly revealed: Sgt. Riley committed both murders and hid the money in order to return and retrieve it secretly. Holy shit, what a Pre-Code denouement! When McKee confronts him with the Ace (from a different deck, shown in the very first Act when they’re playing cribbage in the precinct, and which cards they (McKee, Lt. Martin and Sgt. Riley) have been carrying around throughout the film, he knows he’s pinned. Gun drawn, Sgt. Riley chooses the wrong door and backs into a closet where the Lt. locks him in. With five gunshots he tries desperately to escape; the sixth ends his life. Fuck, police suicide too!</span></p><p><u><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">SENTENCING</span></u></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Sgt. Riley gives up his long career quite suddenly, and murders for a chance at $100,000? Really? I suppose Depression Era audiences would have understood that desperate times calls for desperate measures, but there is never any motivation revealed, like he has gambling debts, medical problems or some other need for more money. It just seems like a good idea. We also need to believe that Cpt. Riley knew exactly where the chloroform was kept, having never visited the residence before. And, when all goes dark, knocks out the Dr., stabs Ames, assaults Freda and hides the money in the span of 30 seconds (at most). An analysis of darkened rooms, according to this film, reveals that when the lights are off, not only is it completely, absolutely dark with no ambient photons intruding, but all other senses cease to function! Sound is muted, sensations of fluctuating air movement upon the skin are repressed. At least McKee finally matches the button…to his own suit! Ha! Nothing like a little humor spiced with a pronouncement of procreation after a double murder and suicide, to get a girl to like you. </span></p><p><b><span style="color: red; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Final Grade: (B-)</span></b></p>Alex DeLargehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17050773136046485614noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307873075823125533.post-38490577707987746962024-01-20T09:33:00.003-05:002024-01-20T22:53:35.932-05:00WAR NURSE (Edgar Selwyn, 1930)<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7puUWKQPp_j8pjmbadHVMHlYymfrIxahoA5KOaco_au4jXvLH4-2WZ3bIi3ucyIUCA00_KnxAQHscnC9SQlgt22oG5aAZSRvrIL9uGtkmiEUUpzkwbUhECEjsBHDe_dIYwyAkczyrINgQo_DndT7ctg08S7Z8TXTYqXRBXUGYzDgGRyfdkUIJEj3kuFtZ/s636/war%20nurse.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="636" data-original-width="461" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7puUWKQPp_j8pjmbadHVMHlYymfrIxahoA5KOaco_au4jXvLH4-2WZ3bIi3ucyIUCA00_KnxAQHscnC9SQlgt22oG5aAZSRvrIL9uGtkmiEUUpzkwbUhECEjsBHDe_dIYwyAkczyrINgQo_DndT7ctg08S7Z8TXTYqXRBXUGYzDgGRyfdkUIJEj3kuFtZ/w290-h400/war%20nurse.jpg" width="290" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">A fellowship of Flappers decide that Paris is the happening place to meet their sweethearts, then suffer a fiery baptism of blood, death and blinding shrapnel. Edgar Selwyn directs the first act like a sexy lightweight comedy of well-groomed ingenues seeking romance, then transitions the story into a propaganda film concerning the need and sacrifice of wartime nurses, before then descending into the Hell of war with crushed hopes (and skulls), the death-rattle of dying men and the brutal mental breakdown of one of our titular heroines. This structure must have caught contemporary audiences off-guard like a sucker punch!</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The plot is straightforward concerning the young women and their violent awakening towards adulthood in wartime: imagine Robert Altman’s <b>M.A.S.H</b> set during the Great War but from a feminine perspective. We even get a “Hawkeye” Pierce character in Robert Montgomery’s smooth talking, conniving yet sympathetic Lt. O’Brien. Though the film is an ensemble piece with multiple characters and interactions, it soon focuses almost exclusively upon two young nurses, Babs (June Walker) and Joy (Anita Page). Both actresses are excellent, but the entire cast is solid, especially the droll mockery of the always adorable ZaSu Pitts and the voluptuous bawdy humor of my favorite, Marie Prevost. The men are but supporting characters to the women and it’s refreshing to see a war film from an entirely different perspective.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Some highlights: the casually flirtatious interaction between Lt. O’Brien and Babs is totally believable, as he looks for a one-night stand and she hopes for a lifetime commitment! Joy falls for Robbie (Robert Ames) a wounded American soldier who recovers and is sent back to the front (so to speak), as they share each other’s company while on leave. Unfortunately, Joy becomes calamity when she learns that he's married which begins her desperate descent into a mental breakdown. When he dies at her feet in the final act, stuttering his last breath in her ear, she calmly has an orderly remove him from the cot so another wounded soldier can take his place. Her smock is slashed with blood. When a bombardment begins, she screams like Munch’s existential masterpiece, like her very soul ruptures from anguish. It’s quite chilling. Another brutal scene involves the nurses being evacuated towards the front and artillery shells pound the road. We see a motorcycle and sidecar get disintegrated and as the nurses try to assist one of the soldiers, Kansas (Helen Jerome Eddy) runs to his aid. She is fucking blown to pieces by another artillery round! In a later bombardment scene when Joy freaks the fuck out, the hospital collapses around her. Watch closely, this isn’t some in-camera trick. It looks like some of the actors are crushed by the heavy debris and one has a close call, all probably shot in one take! It most definitely adds brutal verisimilitude but damn, way too dangerous for the actors and technicians!! The film is quite frank about sex, depicting pre-marital and extra-marital sex as mundane while simultaneously eliding soldiers with shrapnel in their eyes, or limbs and faces obliterated, or dying of sepsis.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The story arc gives Babs a somewhat happy ending, though it kills Joy in childbirth. Lt. O’Brien survives in a German POW Camp and eventually finds Babs stateside, reuniting with Babs and his buddies’ orphaned child. What’s interesting about this reunion is its uncomfortableness and awkwardness, not a traditional jump-in-your-arms copulation. This makes it both more believable…and hopeful.</span></p><p><b><span style="color: red; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Final Grade: (B)</span></b></p>Alex DeLargehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17050773136046485614noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307873075823125533.post-27101512706301188282024-01-12T21:06:00.003-05:002024-01-12T21:14:17.628-05:00MORNING GLORY (Lowell Sherman, 1933)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM7i0IxMN3k_ewsDbuGBPZMlXd3Y28GNPCLXoW_2fbu_zeLuJZj081o2n6_0pFYUoFHxOYRT1k3mmLC2dyv6BVcUgxvO1cws5yF6vtwRx3zqdYQi9TV0FYstqAygNMweRHczaQ-XM9fsgFWCbQ7_ZapDekpro9kZ2yA2re_AVt5FwKLMPps77lMinydOgF/s791/morning%20glory.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="791" data-original-width="622" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM7i0IxMN3k_ewsDbuGBPZMlXd3Y28GNPCLXoW_2fbu_zeLuJZj081o2n6_0pFYUoFHxOYRT1k3mmLC2dyv6BVcUgxvO1cws5yF6vtwRx3zqdYQi9TV0FYstqAygNMweRHczaQ-XM9fsgFWCbQ7_ZapDekpro9kZ2yA2re_AVt5FwKLMPps77lMinydOgF/w315-h400/morning%20glory.jpg" width="315" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Eva Lovelace is an intelligent yet naive young woman who becomes the golden bough for a Broadway Producer and his Playwright, a new branch which immediately sprouts from the broken remains of the old one, an omen of success. Katharine Hepburn won her first Academy Award for her loquacious performance as Ms. Lovelace, her breathy and mannered speech dominating every scene and conversation. Adolphe Menjou (Producer Louis Easton) and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. (Playwright Joseph Sheridan) can do nothing but react to her strident orations, because even when she’s conversing it seems like a monologue! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Eva comes to the Big Apple to take a bite out of Broadway but instead, it takes a bite out of her. Her strident urgency lands her small parts on stage and Vaudeville until, as understudy to a pampered star, she gets her big break. No points here for originality, as the film is held together by Hepburn’s force of personality, a woman who doesn’t give up and relies on only one person: herself. When fate converges and she attends a party as a guest of her mentor, her plain and simple clothes are diametrically opposed by the absurd frills and gowns that adorn the other actresses. When she gets drunk on two glasses of champagne (on an empty stomach, starving actress and all), she gets the attention of all the guests (and host Louis Easton) and performs two short vignettes, one from Hamlet and another from Romeo and Juliet. For the first time, the Director Lowell Sherman cuts to close-up on Hepburn accentuating the performance, making a grand statement that would be lost to a Broadway audience who sees only from their limited perspective. However briefly, he transitions the Bard from stage to screen! This scene alone probably won her the Oscar. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Eva hangs on as understudy, orbiting a star whose ego has enough mass to finally go supernova, and on opening night of The Golden Bough she gets her own chance to shine. Of course, she’s a hit and proclaims she isn’t afraid to be a Morning Glory, her one night of flouresence potentially curling and dying as the sun wanes towards dusk, fading as the neon lights flicker to life on billboards and marquees. But the title of the film is a double entendre, as she awoke to her own morning glory in Louis Easton’s bedroom! Though she sleeps with Louis Easton after a drunken Shakespearean soliloquy, she neither regrets it nor uses it as a springboard for success. </span></p><p><b><span style="color: #ff390f; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Final Grade: (C)</span></b></p>Alex DeLargehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17050773136046485614noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307873075823125533.post-68992768405110651532024-01-03T22:53:00.001-05:002024-01-06T13:24:06.858-05:00WONDER BAR (Lloyd Bacon/Busby Berkeley, 1933)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFMg_rHbXjBuRdMr7VaLFtUXAwD6AdCd3-ZLzxyHO7limSWa8nBhq0i3qpH3bTzZD0V6jqJdgIP2-8n7P1-6KPzIls2_f_ve6wt16E-w_YK2JYpUmAv3SW6k9B9OD7oGKtS5UFa81VbI3_bLAlzw9vvMqfZ2CshavBmzwVTVYZYYvzlLkpOMWWXEmG8O5M/s570/wonder%20bar.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="570" data-original-width="420" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFMg_rHbXjBuRdMr7VaLFtUXAwD6AdCd3-ZLzxyHO7limSWa8nBhq0i3qpH3bTzZD0V6jqJdgIP2-8n7P1-6KPzIls2_f_ve6wt16E-w_YK2JYpUmAv3SW6k9B9OD7oGKtS5UFa81VbI3_bLAlzw9vvMqfZ2CshavBmzwVTVYZYYvzlLkpOMWWXEmG8O5M/w295-h400/wonder%20bar.jpg" width="295" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">A miscellany of melodrama that converges upon one long night of pathos and pleasure, hosted by the insufferable Al Wonder (Al Jolson) at his titular Parisian nightclub. Lloyd Bacon’s direction is workmanlike, and Busby Berkeley’s musical intervention fails to make the film transcend its modest intentions, especially the ten-minute Blackface sequence that represents every fucking racial stereotype of the time. But holy shit is this Pre-Code!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">So, we get some funny moments such as a hetero couple dancing when another man cuts in...and dances away with the other man! “Boys will be boys”! It’s unexpected and hilarious, and though Al Wonder says his line in the effeminate, no other couple seems bothered by it. We also get two old married men (Guy Kibee & Hugh Herbert) flirting with two buxom young ladies, while their wives (Ruth Donnelly & Louise Fazenda) are seduced by a debonair and seedy man (he has his own business cards!). They play musical tables while being played for laughs, while another absurd subplot involves a “stolen” necklace, the wife of a rich banker (Kay Francis), and the dancing duo of Ricardo Cortez and Dolores del Rio. This subplot literally crashes into another concerning a once wealthy businessman who spends his final $30,000 in a final night of swinging before committing suicide. And our fine host Al Wonder uses this act of self-destruction to cover up a murder...all with good intentions, of course. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The Busy Berkeley numbers don’t seem inspired and rather dull, unlike most of his work. The first major sequence involves many scantily clad women in silken gowns frolicking about, as the high angle and overhead shots depict this mass of moving mammaries coalescing into various designs. The use of mirrors to extend the illusion to excess seems a bit trite, and the entire sequence becomes “we’ve seen this before and done better” by Mr. Berkeley. The second ten-minute number is quite problematic, as it’s Al Jolson singing about “Going to Heaven on a Mule”...in blackface. But that’s not all folks, as every fucking character in the skit, including children, are slathered in blackface. It’s a checklist for every racial stereotype that still permeates our society today, whose details I don’t feel any need to identify. Jolson ends the skit reading a Yiddish newspaper, so I suppose that’s the punchline. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Musical numbers aside, the film ends by wrapping up its myriad interludes somewhat neatly yet fails to finish with the best punchline! As the married couples flirt with future engagements, Ruth Donnelly says to her cohort that she’ll “put a sleeping drought in her husband’s drink at bedtime” so they can have an evening affair with Mr. Business-card. But their husbands are planning on sneaking out after bedtime to meet their flings. Now, why not end on the joke of the men planning their own droughts for their wives? Then they both sleep through their ill-planned liaisons. Ha! However, the film fades out before a proper punchline. </span></p><p><span style="color: #ff390f; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>Final Grade: (C-)</b></span></p>Alex DeLargehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17050773136046485614noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307873075823125533.post-63392625487616345392023-12-28T21:38:00.001-05:002023-12-28T21:38:42.674-05:00THIS DAY AND AGE (Cecile B. DeMille, 1933)<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtFJ6MxsTg2nuwxoUJrjGdPjzCHB9ULcEuyrOoJqR147hM0S5WuCwpJ1ZKlja9zRTsahIt2Aa1REJArvQusKb-pZTqV1csW4Ua0EYZ0xZEi5l6w_XcXCeFrd7Fe0APOVJRKWPr4NPaHmFktY5ddyn2bu0FnZLl5WPygaOuH5_1bTob18ydA73FXi84xWLH/s1280/this%20day%20and%20age.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="832" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtFJ6MxsTg2nuwxoUJrjGdPjzCHB9ULcEuyrOoJqR147hM0S5WuCwpJ1ZKlja9zRTsahIt2Aa1REJArvQusKb-pZTqV1csW4Ua0EYZ0xZEi5l6w_XcXCeFrd7Fe0APOVJRKWPr4NPaHmFktY5ddyn2bu0FnZLl5WPygaOuH5_1bTob18ydA73FXi84xWLH/w260-h400/this%20day%20and%20age.jpg" width="260" /></a></div><br /> <span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">A High School Civics Lesson reveals the limits of the Rule of Law, so the students decide to suspend a gangster's habeas corpus...over a pit full of hungry rats! Holy shit, this isn’t the first Pre-Code film that suggests that the Criminal Justice System is impotent to protect citizens; after all, Criminal comes before Justice in this System. Ochlocracy, as long as it’s directed at the “bad guys” is upheld as the strident answer and cure-all. Here in DeMille’s film, the “bad guys” are obvious in both manner and actions, so we should embrace the politically surreal outcome because of a written confession by the murderer. It doesn’t matter if it was coerced by torture, he signed it! What is most disturbing of all is that the magisterial Judge allows these shenanigans as long as the mob doesn’t disrespect his courtroom. Here in this day and age of 1933, hindsight highlights the State sanctioned shades of Nazi Germany that would foretell a dire future. The jackboots on the steps may come for you next. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Three High School seniors are assigned the roles of District Attorney, Chief of Police, and Judge then must tag along with the real professionals, kinda like a “bring your kid to work” program. There is an inconsequential puppy-love triangle between faux DA Steve (Richard Cromwell), his nemesis and fellow senior Morry (Ben Alexander), and the adorable Gay (Judith Allen). When Steve witnesses a local businessman murdered by Garret (Charles Bickford), the seedy owner of a local speakeasy, Steve vows to bring him to Justice. But he learns a hard lesson that the Truth is difficult to sustain a prima facie burden, and after being humiliated at the preliminary hearing, watches Garret walk free. Three of his buddies break into the nightclub to get evidence (match a broken cuff link from the crime scene), and one is shot dead by Garret and the other framed for the murder! The boys vow revenge and Mob Rule becomes Law. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">DeMille’s grandiose third act of chanting, screaming teenagers is frantic, utilizing crane shots and extreme angles. Filmed in medium long shots, the compositions allow the action to become larger than life and fill up the screen with hundreds of extras. As he builds towards this climax, there are some nice match-cuts: one involves the three boys crawling through the bombed-out wreckage of the Tailor’s shop looking for clues that the police may have missed, and this dissolves to three pretty girls crawling on stage at Garret’s nightclub singing Three Blind Mice. The other is even more obvious as we see a rat in a cage dissolve into Garret himself! It’s both simile and foreshadow! Interesting that the High School seems integrated, as there are both black and white students marching towards the final act, as all of the local Districts come together for a singular purpose. A black student even plays an important role in the capture of Garret, though he’s relegated to polishing his shoes. The henchman Toledo likes his olives green, so Gay is the fruit that must fend off his sweaty impulses. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The students sing patriotic anthems while carrying their burden towards the courthouse, all witness to Garret’s confession to murder and mayhem. No million-dollar mouthpiece can save Garret now. Here, the ends justify the means and Garret, one mean sonofabitch, will get his ends. But it’s Justice that suffers.</span></p><p><b><span style="color: #ff390f; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Final Grade: (B-) </span></b></p>Alex DeLargehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17050773136046485614noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307873075823125533.post-63832416650519820422023-12-21T16:04:00.001-05:002023-12-21T16:04:11.771-05:00TURN BACK THE CLOCK (Edgar Selwyn, 1933)<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaizSiP6kjKsAPiVr9ILfpdM2dVviQL6s_qp8TEBIY3SThrslLva-LlYizJDt03L8XHQfwD33Jo_SAKuG-FxY__0D1oMV4qVicSn3_Vsc2-EXi_BA5f8aVnTltkkiTwh-NSqiuX_RiP8iqNaXLn2OiRh-SLeeiQn2eRvAUF5_fmghTCpbSD9G-H5EGpHpT/s1378/turn%20back%20the%20clock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1378" data-original-width="1000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaizSiP6kjKsAPiVr9ILfpdM2dVviQL6s_qp8TEBIY3SThrslLva-LlYizJDt03L8XHQfwD33Jo_SAKuG-FxY__0D1oMV4qVicSn3_Vsc2-EXi_BA5f8aVnTltkkiTwh-NSqiuX_RiP8iqNaXLn2OiRh-SLeeiQn2eRvAUF5_fmghTCpbSD9G-H5EGpHpT/w290-h400/turn%20back%20the%20clock.jpg" width="290" /></a></div><br />J<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">oe Gimlet wants to live a life of cocktails; instead, he’s stuck with a glut of cheap cigars. But he soon learns of the axiom: “be careful what you wish for”. Writer Ben Hecht’s Depression Era time travel fantasy is trite by contemporary definition but it’s marvelous in the way that it’s told, in the small details and character arc of its protagonist Joe Gimlet (Lee Tracey). Harold Rosson’s cinematography utilizes some rather distorted and surreal effects for the fantasy transition and allows long takes and a few tracking shots of Tracy moving and talking without need to cut. Lee Tracy is great in this role, imbuing his character with just the right amount vulnerability and compassion, so we slowly feel his emotional loss as he gains financial success. This is his film, and he owns it!</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">44-year-old Joe Gimlet owns a cigar store and by chance, his childhood friend Ted Wright (Otto Kruger) wanders in for a box of smokes. Ted is now very wealthy and married to Elvina (Peggy Shannon) who once offered Joe a chance to invest his life savings ($400) in her father’s swampland investment. But in 1913, Joe was in love with Mary (Mae Clarke) and he was saving the money to marry her. This is his current life-path, left on the outside of financial stability because of this single decision. That night after dinner, Ted offers Joe and Mary a chance to become rich if they invest their entire life savings of $4,000 but Mary is against it, looking out for their future stability while the country slowly heals from its nearly fatal collapse. They argue and Joe gets drunk and hit by a car, his traumatic brain injury propelling his perceptions backwards in time to 1913 with contemporary knowledge of future events! So, when the chance comes again, he invests the $400, marries Elvina, becomes rich and powerful, and lives a dreadful life of financial success amid emotional distress. Money can’t buy happiness indeed.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Some neat details. When he wakes up back in 1913, Joe approaches a mirror and sees a younger 24year old self. Rosson alters the lighting to reveal his much younger visage in reflection, and it’s a neat one-shot trick (no dissolves) like DP Karl Struss used on Frederic March in <b>DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE</b> two years earlier! When Joe sees his mother in the kitchen, obviously dead for many years to his 1933 self, his genuine affection is quite touching. He asks for orange juice for breakfast and his mother is confused. This is so ubiquitous to a 1933 audience (and us) that it’s strange to realize that in 1913 this beverage did not yet exist. It wasn’t until 1914 that Sunkist began offering it nationwide! Another interesting scene is the verge of America’s entrance into The Great War. Others give jingoistic speeches, but Joe is a veteran of the war yet to happen, and he knows what brutality these men will face. Many will not return. It’s a touching scene and one Tracy pulls off with his malleable facial expressions, portraying hidden angst and faux patriotism at the same time! We also get an unbilled low-key and uncredited cameo of the Three Stooges sans Ted Healy, with Curly making his debut! Joe tries to sing a jazz song not yet written (Hell, the genre didn’t even exist yet) and the confounded trio act confused.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Joe lives his fantasy life until March 6, 1933, which is the date the story began, and once he wakes from his coma, he realizes that he had it right the first time.</span></p><p><b><span style="color: #ff390f; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Final Grade: (B)</span></b></p>Alex DeLargehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17050773136046485614noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307873075823125533.post-58297710571486570092023-12-13T17:25:00.002-05:002023-12-13T17:25:35.504-05:00UPPERWORLD (Roy Del Ruth, 1934)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVvlBfYuM9rDGAZz9DUrb3c3wONXCmT896qtagwym131dEBaDBOLeo9Hv7FQFBnCgtq_jbkEaCwVXT2-ojmhO5VFY-koI4mE165wC_IYNhl9_tq31kBt8hUEr5yVo0ISpjMsZ3G7QzL0HCDmWGncngjeiv0W7wzTGBOStn_YAkO5OcNlODoHIN7uGWdPPk/s686/upperworld.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="686" data-original-width="468" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVvlBfYuM9rDGAZz9DUrb3c3wONXCmT896qtagwym131dEBaDBOLeo9Hv7FQFBnCgtq_jbkEaCwVXT2-ojmhO5VFY-koI4mE165wC_IYNhl9_tq31kBt8hUEr5yVo0ISpjMsZ3G7QzL0HCDmWGncngjeiv0W7wzTGBOStn_YAkO5OcNlODoHIN7uGWdPPk/w273-h400/upperworld.jpg" width="273" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">A married Railroad Magnate gets derailed while pursuing an affair with one of the Three Little Pigs (the one with the curly tail!) and his whole house of tracks comes crashing down! OK, I mix metaphors, but you get the idea. Roy Del Ruth’s competent direction stitches this straightforward narrative together until the violent denouement and head-scratching blunder by our wealthy protagonist Alex Stream (Warren William). Stream’s Upperworld could become his Underworld, of the six-foot down variety! After all, he’s on trial for First Degree Murder which in ’34 carried death by Electric Chair.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Alex Stream and his wife Hettie (Mary Astor) seem to exist in different time streams and social circles, their marriage more friendship than companionship. Lonely, Alex meets dancer Lilly Linda (Ginger Rogers), and they began an innocent affair, but before they can consummate their relationship she is gunned down by her slimy beau, and Alex kills him in self-defense. To keep the affair secret (since he’s on the verge of a multi-million-dollar merger) he hides one handgun and replaces the bullets in the other to make it look like the man committed suicide. WTF? We see the dude fire first and kill Lilly then Alex picks up a second discarded handgun and shoots him dead. In the chest. From about 15 feet away. And he stages this as a suicide? But a beat cop who was previously sanctioned by his superiors for giving the famous Mr. Stream a speeding ticket has figured out the case due to mismatching bullets. How about the wound, he shoots himself in the chest/shoulder and no blood on the gun? Or powder residue on the shirt? And finally, Stream doesn’t even wipe his own fingerprints from either firearm! Now, to be fair, he wouldn’t be in the police database since he has no prior convictions so if there were no witnesses at the crime scene then the fingerprints would remain a mystery. But that’s taking a huge chance. And of course, aforementioned Beat Cop witnesses Stream's chauffeurless car double-parked at the hotel before the murder. The Cop’s theorem is castrated by superiors once again and he fucking strangles the Police Commissioner in anger! Incarcerated, he convinces the crime journalists to pursue Alex Stream’s fingerprints for comparison.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The film ends with Lilly dead and Alex on trial for murder. He claims self-defense (which it was) and is acquitted of all charges, including Obstruction and Tampering too, I presume. So, for him on his European cruise and wife planning to spend more time together it’s a happy ending. But for the adorable and honest Lilly, she pays for her loyalty and love with her life.</span></p><p><b><span style="color: #ff390f; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Final Grade: (B-)</span></b></p>Alex DeLargehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17050773136046485614noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307873075823125533.post-1087077148425112422023-12-02T17:12:00.004-05:002023-12-02T17:12:35.659-05:00BLONDE VENUS (Josef von Sternberg, 1932)<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWXnh1cyEjKcT7Q4-k1aL2qj7JCbXgdUu3xSuwXTxmN8cTLcfM8RWTsLQGGicqOKbDBaCaohIq_yzQHpL-VQEAdJznM8JBENqHxJ48KpCZsML1Fms52dt55nY39Ezb15KKcMtHy3oR-_Xovf1lx5QRmE-Xr-DZVz6xUxX5oyU8wge709FKnYaBAn_jF6ff/s704/blonde%20venus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="704" data-original-width="495" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWXnh1cyEjKcT7Q4-k1aL2qj7JCbXgdUu3xSuwXTxmN8cTLcfM8RWTsLQGGicqOKbDBaCaohIq_yzQHpL-VQEAdJznM8JBENqHxJ48KpCZsML1Fms52dt55nY39Ezb15KKcMtHy3oR-_Xovf1lx5QRmE-Xr-DZVz6xUxX5oyU8wge709FKnYaBAn_jF6ff/w281-h400/blonde%20venus.jpg" width="281" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Ned Faraday needs to go faraway to cure his Radium poisoning, a separation from his wife Helen and child that contributes to her own travelogue. Josef von Sternberg and DP Bert Glennon shoot this film with beautiful shadows, slow-dissolving transitions, and well-paced tracking shots. They capture the opening sequence in candid Pre-Code glory, as six princesses cavort naked in a pond, glistening alabaster skin revealing pubic shadows or the sliver of a breast, until Marlene Dietrich swims towards the camera in medium close-up, berating the seven voyeuristic men, one of whom becomes her husband. The odd man out is Sterling Holloway in a brief and uncredited role! When Dietrich performs, they often frame her in medium long shot with flowers and plants foregrounding the action, so we see her interact with the crowd and environment. Many other Directors would frame the singing lead actress in medium close-up and pull focus on her, so she dominates the screen. Dietrich does dominate the screen, not by close-up but by her very personality! There is also a great match-cut/jump-cut as Dietrich swims away in the opening scene, legs kicking the water, and von Sternberg matches this with tiny legs kicking in a bathtub! A creative way to forward the plot in time and place and allow the audience to glean information without talky exposition. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The melodramatic plot seems an unlikely story for Marlene Dietrich who, like Garbo, seems more than merely human, an archetype of feminist womanhood: it’s strange to see her in an impoverished apartment and playing housewife to her husband’s career. It’s when the story projects her into the cabaret, whether it be in a gorilla suite or top hat and tails, this is when she finally comes alive, full of a fierce independence from patriarchal authority. This story seems better fit for Barbara Stanwyck and her blue-collar beauty and solid right hook! Helen (Marlene Dietrich) marries Ned after a one-night stand and pregnancy (hence little Johnny). This is implied in the bedtime story that has become Johnny’s favorite fairy-tale and which bookends the couples story arc. Ned is a poor chemist who needs $1,500 to travel to Europe as his life is soon going to be half-life, just as he’s on the verge of a discovery that will make them wealthy. Helen decides she must earn the money by taking to the stage once again, and while her husband is away, she hooks up with Carey Grant and becomes known as the Blonde Venus (gorilla suite and all). It all goes to Hell and when Ned, now cured, threatens to take full custody of the child, she absconds with Johnny. Though there is no doubt of Helen’s love for her child, there is little indication of her love for Ned. He’s presented as a decent enough guy with his major flaw being a voyeur (I suppose), but they seem cold together as if Helen loves the ideal of him rather than the man. Even her relationship with Carey Grant seems tepid, based more on financial deed than emotional need. But her love for her child and the way she interacts with him is priceless. I wonder if Johnny grew up with all sorts of oedipal issues? </span></p><p><b><span style="color: #ff390f; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Final Grade: (B+)</span></b></p>Alex DeLargehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17050773136046485614noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307873075823125533.post-70562755467032386482023-11-21T21:52:00.002-05:002023-11-21T21:52:35.579-05:00DISHONORED (Josef von Sternberg, 1931)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW7usfoEJga4QlV7ABY8stZLvyzbDc43ItATkVV-t6kVZ_zVksQaYCt79HQN_s1TpPuSixyugZxMCz6uWvPUWSqiUlm4nG5WhK_sKSPJIE_CxMWq1Ml3KsFjWWC2lFcKBZlL7eDZGrXOPHI54EOhzKrXTdzK2ix9nj-5A4ug3qMLVs9vxHz-9lxsQw25Ag/s565/dishonored.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="565" data-original-width="437" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW7usfoEJga4QlV7ABY8stZLvyzbDc43ItATkVV-t6kVZ_zVksQaYCt79HQN_s1TpPuSixyugZxMCz6uWvPUWSqiUlm4nG5WhK_sKSPJIE_CxMWq1Ml3KsFjWWC2lFcKBZlL7eDZGrXOPHI54EOhzKrXTdzK2ix9nj-5A4ug3qMLVs9vxHz-9lxsQw25Ag/w310-h400/dishonored.jpg" width="310" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Marie isn’t afraid of life or death, her adventures taking her from the red-light district to the graveyard, facing down her fate without shame dressed in her civilian uniform. Once again, Josef von Sternberg and his DP Lee Garmes capture the legendary beauty of Marlene Dietrich in wonderfully lighted black & white compositions. Her introduction is wonderful as Garmes focuses upon a streetwalker’s stockinged leg and casually pans up as she exposes her garter. We get a full body shot of this woman as she turns towards sirens, her face hidden in shadow but for a sliver of flesh: this revelation is both sexy and mysterious. The use of slow dissolve transitions adds an eerie and ominous tone to the story. And if you would like to see Marlene Dietrich caterwaul while hiding from a blindfolded Russian General, this film is for you! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">This is a strange film whose strident morality is left unexplained and cryptic. Marie is a War Widow who prostitutes herself to survive yet accepts the job as spy X-27 to serve her country. Yet she subverts this very notion when she encounters a Russian Colonel (Victor McLaglen) who does little but grin maniacally and show off his patriarchal entitlement. This strange affair which eventually leads to her dishonorable discharge (by firing squad) seems little based on love but instead respect and intellectual affection, as if they see their best qualities, of mercy, kindness, and ego, reflected in each other’s soul. Maybe that is love? It’s interesting because though they spend a night together after she’s captured by him in Russia, it’s not solely a physical infatuation. She then escapes and returns the favor many weeks later! Even the scene when she “allows” him to escape is ambiguous in intent: she holds him at gunpoint then fumbles the weapon. Was this an intentional faux pas, allowing him to “save face” and retain his male authority? Even facing death, she is unapologetic and avers that her service to her countrymen was more important than to her country. The execution scene is quite poignant, as a young officer breaks down and refuses a direct order. Marie refuses the blindfold and uses it to wipe the young soldier’s eyes. Wow.</span></p><p><b><span style="color: #ff390f; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Final Grade: (B+)</span></b></p>Alex DeLargehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17050773136046485614noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307873075823125533.post-59410631921621534562023-10-31T14:08:00.001-04:002023-11-21T21:52:49.265-05:00MURDERS IN THE ZOO (A. Edward Sutherland, 1933)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaf7AjjfZ__1qRj7JYlo_d-UAuw3tCrDnAf28uyjkjICldTIZqXThCHqWUmbUtfLSPpVLdUocp6KdkHnirOBR_FM1R7lyXV4YMnVxzxsSpHLyJMWm2CNxh_HSPAbmroTXsgAULeLOmLiaPEFAMG4TtHN6LLF1hd_Wm1RKdX28xE_K_moy5J1VSJ5FstHIK/s715/murders%20in%20the%20zoo03.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="715" data-original-width="520" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaf7AjjfZ__1qRj7JYlo_d-UAuw3tCrDnAf28uyjkjICldTIZqXThCHqWUmbUtfLSPpVLdUocp6KdkHnirOBR_FM1R7lyXV4YMnVxzxsSpHLyJMWm2CNxh_HSPAbmroTXsgAULeLOmLiaPEFAMG4TtHN6LLF1hd_Wm1RKdX28xE_K_moy5J1VSJ5FstHIK/w291-h400/murders%20in%20the%20zoo03.jpg" width="291" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Eric Gorman’s venomous jealousy of his wife’s main squeeze makes her cry crocodile tears (quite literally...and fatally), but in the end he’s the one who gets squeezed! This is one of the most brutal Pre-Code horror films in its utter nihilism and crude violence, yet balances chuckling goofy humor between these particularly gruesome scenes. It’s either the unfunniest horror film ever made or the grisliest comedy produced before the Hays Code enforcement! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Eric Gorman (Lionel Atwill) is a hunter who brings back majestic beasts for the Municipal Zoo, but he’s also a virulent narcissist, consumed with jealousy over any man who even looks askew at his beautiful wife Evelyn (Kathleen Burke). The film begins with Gorman and a few of his indigenous guides holding a man down and sewing his lips closed for trying to kiss his wife. Abandoned in the jungle, the man is eventually devoured by tigers. But not before he staggers to his feet and runs haphazard towards a close-up where we see in bloody detail Gorman’s stitch-work! Wow. The film then follows the arc of Mrs. Gorman hiding her extra-marital affair amid the antics at the Municipal Zoo, where a temporarily sober Peter Yates (Charles Ruggles) is hired as an Advertising Executive to bring media attention (and customers) to the failing business. Interestingly, Ruggles is top billed, so this makes me believe this was intended as more of a comedy, focusing more upon Ruggle’s “slacker” demeanor and his jumbled jargon than on Atwill’s toxic Actus Reus and Mens Rea. The opening credits depicts various animals dissolving into the actors: Ruggles is first, a clapping seal becomes our pipe-smoking laugh-track while Atwill is last, a cagey tiger fades into our inscrutable antagonist. The entire film plays off this dichotomy. The film is wonderfully photographed by future seven-time Academy Award Nominee DP Ernest Haller, who would win in 1939 for a little film titled <b>GONE WITH THE WIND</b>. His compositions and low-key lighting help create the dread but become rather mundane in the comedy bits. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Gorman murders his wife’s lover with Mamba poison, a deadly snake brought back from his recent expedition. Dr. Woodford (Randolph Scott) and his beau Jerry Evans (Gail Patrick) work to discover the antivenom. When Evelyn discovers the truth, her husband throws her into a pond full of hungry crocodiles and she’s ripped to shreds. Which leads one to question why a zoo has a pedestrian bridge over such a dangerous exhibit! But Gorman has a unique murder weapon: a fake snake head with needle-fangs filled with real Mamba juice. Dr. Woodford realizes the ruse by measuring puncture wounds in the victim so his time on Earth is limited. Then Jerry saves the day with one injection and Gorman has nowhere to run and becomes terminally constricted. As in Boa. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The film is rather a tough watch, not because of the violence inherent in the story, but in the actual treatment of the animals. Majestic Lions trapped in tiny cages, baby bears chained by the neck, and the finale of a huge fight between the animals that isn’t staged, where panthers and lions claw and rend one another for our entertainment. There was no certification in 1933 assuring the safety and protecting these animals from exploitation, and the cruelty is alarming especially in the final act.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b><span style="color: #ff390f;">Final Grade: (B-)</span></b> </span></p>Alex DeLargehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17050773136046485614noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307873075823125533.post-28843421412505275842023-10-14T17:58:00.000-04:002023-10-14T17:58:22.556-04:00BROKEN LULLABY (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPSpdb4AVBrt3mNp_sT5_3635TZv-Bxk4BwoqTsx_6g7Wv_xVy7aDC8CKbfF8TRJfzWz9T1MnysJ9ug8wKnxfbT-Q8cmy4TJsqF_aHljbn9FAwMbJtLNCLVH1gPPFObuJ6WEM9HPKfNx5mk4V5oYLLDsfAuVYwH81MvOPUQTfCmK-OvC2EIE2MziD1COkF/s1388/broken%20lullaby01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1388" data-original-width="896" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPSpdb4AVBrt3mNp_sT5_3635TZv-Bxk4BwoqTsx_6g7Wv_xVy7aDC8CKbfF8TRJfzWz9T1MnysJ9ug8wKnxfbT-Q8cmy4TJsqF_aHljbn9FAwMbJtLNCLVH1gPPFObuJ6WEM9HPKfNx5mk4V5oYLLDsfAuVYwH81MvOPUQTfCmK-OvC2EIE2MziD1COkF/w259-h400/broken%20lullaby01.jpg" width="259" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Paul still battles his own psychological Great War, burdened by the guilt of killing a young German soldier in the trenches of France, a man who scrawls his name upon a letter to a love he will never consummate. Ernst Lubitsch’s film is emotionally brutal and unflinching, exposing the morality of old men who send their sons off to war, fathers who sit around pub tables drinking beer (or wine) while justifying the cost of the enemy’s defeat…but not the price paid in blood. DP Victor Milner’s photography is outstanding with his mis-en-scene, deep focus, and low angles to depict anxiety and trauma. His work is bolstered by the taught editing that cuts and dissolves into powerful images that reveal the message without narration or dialogue. The weakest link of the film is actor Phillips Holmes as Paul Renard, the tormented French soldier. He’s very good at times but his body language tends towards histrionics and the over-exaggeration of silent films: he’s no Frederic March (but then again, who else is?)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">In the opening scenes, we see the one-year anniversary of the Armistice as canons blast and soldiers march, and cheering French people fill the streets of Paris. But Lubitsch and Milner show us a low angle shot of the parade through a soldier’s crutches with his left trouser rolled up to the knee, his leg obviously torn off in combat. He’s not cheering. Then high-angle shots of a church services as the priest mutters about peace while old, retired soldiers, dressed in military uniforms with clacking swords and holstered guns, look on with passive duty. Milner tracks along the pews as their sabers scrape the floor, and when they kneel for prayer, he shoots the camera down a long row of jackboots and spurs. The dichotomy between the spoken prayer and the visual reality couldn’t be any more opposed. As the church empties, Milner begins with an extreme high angle crane shot and gently lowers the camera to reveal a solitary figure, hands clenched in prayer. He looks upwards towards the camera, and we see a young handsome man in a suit. Obviously in distress, he approaches the Priest and vomits his guilt: “I murdered a man”. The Priest ushers him towards the confessional and we are told the truth: this man killed an enemy soldier in the trenches a year ago and cannot live with his grief. As he speaks, we witness the flashback to the death in combat, as Paul stares into the eyes of another handsome young man as this man’s life slips away into oblivion. The German soldier struggles with his final testament to sign a personal letter and Paul, who can read and speak German, finishes the final signature: Walter. Over 10 million young men were slaughtered in the Great Way but here, one death is the tragedy. Paul, a violinist drafted into the Army killed another young man Walter and now seeks repentance for a sin that the god of Catholic Church cannot give him.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">So, Paul seeks out Walter’s family to tell them that he killed their son in combat as a way to make amends, to possibly pay restitution with his own suicide. That’s the final destination his internal conflict is racing towards. But he fails to tell his family the truth as he, an outsider to this small German community (and a Frenchman!), sees how happy they are when they mistakenly believe he befriended Walter in Paris before his death. Soon, the father and mother adore him, and Walter’s fiancée Elsa (Nancy Carroll) begins fall in love as he becomes a doppelganger in the household. Even he and Walter share the skill of the violin, and when the father hands over his dead son’s instrument to Paul, the lie must become the truth, at least for them. He does admit the truth to Elsa in a harrowing melodramatic scene when she reads Walter’s last letter out loud…and Paul finishes it verbatim. Finally, Elsa realizes that the truth would kill her mother and father and agrees to conceal the secret, as she and Paul begin to make beautiful music together. </span></p><p><b><span style="color: #ff390f; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Final Grade: (B+)</span></b></p>Alex DeLargehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17050773136046485614noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307873075823125533.post-70675715092234281462023-10-07T12:35:00.001-04:002023-10-07T12:35:40.103-04:00DEVIL AND THE DEEP (Marion Gering, 1932)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI2Fs7bn2y6F_FLXrcU5k-ulyihi2VE0kukKtkEoHu0-7M5EWn_tLsE2JJoGpMvoM9A2VYsScP5Wjkmph4kPSmCGdv-0XqVNgIi2fpsNncsCDb3MOxqFi-LQy6_WMvsa63KjAHP2qXvbU7y13HhPgVOEugToY196GpfPJBoEmBTYwreV1LSiNT6agigofe/s712/the%20devil%20and%20the%20deep01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="712" data-original-width="500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI2Fs7bn2y6F_FLXrcU5k-ulyihi2VE0kukKtkEoHu0-7M5EWn_tLsE2JJoGpMvoM9A2VYsScP5Wjkmph4kPSmCGdv-0XqVNgIi2fpsNncsCDb3MOxqFi-LQy6_WMvsa63KjAHP2qXvbU7y13HhPgVOEugToY196GpfPJBoEmBTYwreV1LSiNT6agigofe/w281-h400/the%20devil%20and%20the%20deep01.jpg" width="281" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Commander Sturm is consumed by Sturm und Drang, a powerful man of impotent fidelity whose marriage vows aren’t a promise of partnership but primacy. Charles Laughton dominates the film with his ethereal madness, his soft glib words and manners belie his imperium, an excellent performance that evokes both contempt and compassion towards the physically and emotionally damaged Commander. Tallulah Bankhead as Diana, his aggrieved wife whose virtue is questioned by both her husband and his cohorts, imbues her with a fierce strength and loyalty even when pushed towards her brief affair. The third part of this illicit triptych is Lt. Sempter, played by a monotone Gary Cooper, whose mannequin-like expressiveness and dull performance is embarrassing, reciting his simple lines without inflection. It seems as if even the Director Marion Gering knew this was problematic and attempted to restrict his lines to small phrases and inane uttering. Carey Grant appears as Lt. Jaeckel in the First Act as Diana’s potential affair, but he is quickly subdued by his jealous Commander; they should have flipped Grant and Cooper’s roles because Grant is wonderful!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Interesting plot: Sturm commands a submarine which is docked in a North African coastal town, a man who is the life of the party and respected by all. He fosters rumors that his beautiful wife is unfaithful though in reality she is loyal and monogamous, until his abusiveness births this self-fulfilling prophecy. It should be understood that her infidelity is superficial and not actual: it is an element of his madness that keeps her close yet also pushes her away. Diana is even reluctant to dance with a young Lt. Jaeckel (an allusion to Jaeckel & Hyde, perhaps?) and is censured by her husband for failing to do so! In modern domestic violence terms, this is called gaslighting and makes her feel like her perceptions are skewed and immoral. She struggles not to become the very person that haunts her husband’s violent fantasy. Driven away by Sturm’s voyeuristic demands, in a psychological stupor she stumbles through a raging crowd of revelers until she is picked up by a handsome man and they share a moment of physical bliss together under the desert stars. This is her first and only act of adultery, yet the film takes pains to depict it as a final act of physiological survival not mere animal lust or revenge. Of course, this one-night stand is soon revealed to be Lt. Sempter, a replacement for the previous Lt. Jaeckel who was rumored to have easy access to her virtue. Diana keeps the new Lt. at arm’s length but they are both betrayed by the scent of cheap perfume. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The Final Act is thrilling as the now cuckolded commander sets sail with his wife, who came aboard the submarine to warn Sempter, and becomes trapped in his room. Sturm orders the boat to dive and facilitates a collision with a steamship to kill them all! Holy shit, suicide by submarine! Here is a damaged man so possessed by jealousy that he attempts to murder not only himself, his wife and her lover, but his entire crew and potentially that of a passenger ship! In a wonderful climax, Sempter proves his leadership under pressure (about 57.7 psia) as the frightened and mutinous men (and woman) follow his instructions and escape through torpedo tubes and the conning tower. We get to see a step-by-step orderliness to their actions that seems like a training film! It builds towards the watery climax where Sturm, laughing and screaming until his lungs fill with seawater, is silenced forever. The story ends with a coda as Diana and Sempter meet once again and, on cue (a pool cue, mind you), share a taxi ride towards a brighter future. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The acting (except Cooper) and the direction are first rate, but what truly elevates the film from the murky celluloid depths of Lethe is DP Charles Lang’s cinematography. Check him out, 18 Academy Award nomination in his career and a few wins for good measure! His use of low-angle and deep shadow is amazing and when the story shifts to the claustrophobic confines of the submarine, he gets his camera in places that seem impossible. In one scene, his extreme sweaty close-up of Laughton as he spouts condemnation towards his spouse is shocking in its abruptness and framing, key lighting making this seem more like a horror film than a melodrama. Bottom line, this film doesn’t deserve to remain at the bottom of the sea and should be reevaluated as one of the truly great Pre-code classics! </span></p><p><b><span style="color: #ff390f; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Final Grade: (B+)</span></b></p>Alex DeLargehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17050773136046485614noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307873075823125533.post-53852905294380963402023-09-24T13:22:00.006-04:002023-09-24T13:22:45.690-04:00STINGAREE (William Wellman, 1934)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9O6WKbSWULlYE3quORPsLFWRS1EZyQ0rlRm_LidhPI_8rMtpEs1wh40AlVQoP5gHuxVEBg6q6P6R302EgxKfx5JRadPg_1j99tt6X3qREOVJFGB1iAWPVmCqZuySkoRNJOheiOU1vHEYDjxm-Ea7k_QjxvBLcoex0oGQinHb2QUakS-5YXshO4-cialjS/s645/Stingaree01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="502" data-original-width="645" height="311" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9O6WKbSWULlYE3quORPsLFWRS1EZyQ0rlRm_LidhPI_8rMtpEs1wh40AlVQoP5gHuxVEBg6q6P6R302EgxKfx5JRadPg_1j99tt6X3qREOVJFGB1iAWPVmCqZuySkoRNJOheiOU1vHEYDjxm-Ea7k_QjxvBLcoex0oGQinHb2QUakS-5YXshO4-cialjS/w400-h311/Stingaree01.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">A fairy tale concerning a young woman who goes from an Australian sheep farm to the Paris Opera, and an outlaw who goes from the Australian outback to a Melbourne cage. William Wellman has directed some great films, but this ain't one of ‘em. The film plods along for its 77-minute runtime as even its opening scene is too talky, blandly introducing the main characters with some trite and unfunny conversations. Wellman’s films are often tough, gritty, and anchored in a violent realism, but this star-studded fantasy is as weightless as a photon...and just as electrifying. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Hilda (Irene Dunne) is a poor servant girl whose soprano transcends her mistress's chirping nonsense and is soon kidnapped by the swashbuckling Stingaree (Richard Dix), who sacrifices himself for her audition! Incarcerated, she travels the world becoming an Opera sensation yet her wounded heart still yearns for his captured corpus. But Wellman can’t decide if this film is a screwball comedy, melodrama, musical, or adventure so he tries to mash it all together into one big confection. The two stars share little chemistry onscreen, and their romance seems a bad fiction by bored writers, as Stingaree professes his love with patriarchal authority and hers with submissive compliance: it’s too convenient and forced. The bright spots to this tarnished affair are Andy Devine as the titular rogue’s sidekick Howie, who sputters in disbelief and anxiousness under pressure but is always loyal. Also, Una O’Connor as the housemaid Annie is a firecracker, muttering witticisms and criticism about her smarmy mistress under her breath, her expressions and body language often communicating more than a spoken word. The music by legendary Max Steiner is forgettable and repetitive, and what was hilarious once becomes rather annoying for the third and fourth time! Even the great DP James Van Trees seems to dial-it-in here, with bad back-projection and lazy camerawork that fails to add flavor to this vanilla narrative. <b>STINGAREE</b> is a stinkaroo. </span></p><p><b><span style="color: #ff390f; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Final Grade: (D) </span></b></p>Alex DeLargehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17050773136046485614noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307873075823125533.post-84730318400282100172023-09-14T16:56:00.009-04:002023-09-14T16:56:57.818-04:00BLESSED EVENT (Roy Del Ruth, 1932)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiQ6l-rE90Pfg9w_wdzRn7XokswBtOEHNvPHca8qGlUSAUs-gY0M8HrgHsrmAmXRosjZziaLtt9o8YuyXSR6K5NdPjjMS9NPtNb8viEnZy_SfQ89klk8x68Kz4e1j-_lbTide06i3dK7KeV3AOGwrSGtOQ7hNz0jdoEnM4fF6uTOwGDxOOwxXA8Hn9slds/s750/blessed%20event.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="586" data-original-width="750" height="313" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiQ6l-rE90Pfg9w_wdzRn7XokswBtOEHNvPHca8qGlUSAUs-gY0M8HrgHsrmAmXRosjZziaLtt9o8YuyXSR6K5NdPjjMS9NPtNb8viEnZy_SfQ89klk8x68Kz4e1j-_lbTide06i3dK7KeV3AOGwrSGtOQ7hNz0jdoEnM4fF6uTOwGDxOOwxXA8Hn9slds/w400-h313/blessed%20event.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Fast talking and quick-thinking gossip columnist Alvin Roberts rises to the nadir of The Daily Express, sacrificing his own conscience for comeuppance. Director Roy Del Ruth allows Lee Tracy’s prestissimo verbiage to dominate the film and veteran DP Sol Polito just needs to point the camera and shoot in order to capture the barrage of banter in medium shot: the workmanlike compositions focus the film squarely upon our main characters like a Broadway performance or, more aptly, vaudeville verbosity! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Alvin Roberts (Lee Tracy) begins at the bottom and sinks even lower as his gossip column airs dirty laundry and moral misconducts of the rich, famous, chorus girl and gangster all with equitable impunity. Of course, he gets promoted! But Alvin’s crush Gladys (Mary Brian) in the news department doesn’t like the sleazeball he’s become at the expense of other people’s grief, and demands he give up his job...or her. Alvin’s nemesis is teen idol Bunny Harmon (Dick Powell, cute as a button) who trades public barbs with the rambunctious reporter and vows to keep him out of the new Jazz Club on opening night. The battle lines are drawn, though rather vaguely. It’s never quite explained why they don’t like each other, and Bunny is never shown doing anything but crooning his numbers and smiling a lot. The conflict is just a MacGuffin to set up the third act. Meanwhile, Alvin publishes premarital consequences and naughty nuptials without regard to those hurt, rationalizing his Yellow Journalism as only taking advantage of what other newspapers would print anyway. His cohort George Moxley (Ned Sparks) loses his column to this muckraker and one of his four humors in this humorous affair. Ned Sparks enriches every scene with his stone-faced droll delivery, whether it be strident or subdued. Alvin’s secretary Miss Stevens (Ruth Donelly) holds her own against his pleonastic rhetoric and even incidentally steals a misplaced kiss from him between doors and doesn’t bat an eyelash.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">So, we get to see a policeman slap around a handcuffed suspect with nary a condemning word, Alvin’s mother says “Well I’ll be damned” just before a fade to black transition, multiple instances of cheating husbands and pregnant mistresses, a step-by-step description of Ruth Snyder’s death by Electric Chair in a nice piece of blackmail by our protagonist and the grand finale of a pregnant chorus girl getting away with murder, with a cop as eyewitness no less! The power of the Fourth Estate saving the intestate! Depression era shenanigans at their best! </span></p><p><b><span style="color: #ff390f; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Final Grade: (B)</span></b></p>Alex DeLargehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17050773136046485614noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307873075823125533.post-18265187459339411932023-09-10T17:23:00.000-04:002023-09-10T17:23:45.046-04:00MIDNIGHT (Chester Erskine, 1934)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJBxOQQQA1DXfJlQwn23g_1s18iMwwsLH5n7PToMETnvpN2P4J3RSu5astI47GZehoLUqWvCbDMyw-jjAjoCs6QO_dLHoYTDlsKdRmyVOWwPkEcTSOoUvGTxpxyb0yUbuuZo6mPLo_73KVLUMztaLbLUILZlvQHLgCL-fcH67LLi0AGjJc-oF7BDB8j7uY/s1061/Midnight01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1061" data-original-width="790" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJBxOQQQA1DXfJlQwn23g_1s18iMwwsLH5n7PToMETnvpN2P4J3RSu5astI47GZehoLUqWvCbDMyw-jjAjoCs6QO_dLHoYTDlsKdRmyVOWwPkEcTSOoUvGTxpxyb0yUbuuZo6mPLo_73KVLUMztaLbLUILZlvQHLgCL-fcH67LLi0AGjJc-oF7BDB8j7uY/w298-h400/Midnight01.jpg" width="298" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Jury Foreperson Edward Weldon’s sense of Justice is carved in immutable stone, much like Hammurabi’s Code, but whose own adherence to the Rule of Law is as passive as his entitlement. He’s willing to take another’s eye or tooth while his daughter's remains intact. Chester Erskine directs this “Poverty Row” morality tale with tight framing and stagey blocking which reveals its limited budget, eschewing transitions or establishing shots and relying on solid acting, wonderful match-cuts and interesting compositions to stage this talky affair. The story stretches credibility, and its contrived plot is engineered to exploit the underlying moral conundrum of the central character yet holds our attention as the suspense builds ampere by ampere to its shocking climax. This was re-titled <b>CALL IT MURDER</b> upon its re-release 1947 to promote star Humphrey Bogart, whose role is billed eighth in the original credits! However, Pre-Code sensibilities of premarital sex, murder, executions and the unprosecuted guilty haunt the stark narrative, as the very tale itself would need its ghosts exorcised to appease the Hays Code!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The plot is a reverse <b>12 ANGRY MEN</b>: Mr. Weldon’s role as head of a jury, who asks a pointed question of the accused murderer Ethel Saxon during her testimony: “Did she take the money?” She proclaims the murder as a crime of passion but her positive assertion of absconding with the money leads Weldon in convincing the rest of the jury of her guilt for First Degree Murder and, by obligation, her death by electric chair. Edward Weldon (O.P. Heggie) suffers little concern over her fate as he’s only applying the law as written by statute. As the story progresses, he becomes a recalcitrant celebrity whose jury question not only convicted the defendant but propelled the prosecuting District Attorney towards potential Governorhood. As the midnight hour of her execution ticks closer, his anxiousness and nervous behavior is contrasted with Ms. Saxon’s, whose dark-circled eyes already seem to stare into oblivion. A journalist slithers his way into the Weldon household for an inside scoop to witness his potential breakdown. Tangentially, Weldon’s adorable daughter Stella (Sidney Fox) is dating slimy dude by the unfortunate name of Gar Boni (I urge you to look this up in the Urban Dictionary) played by the now legendary Humphrey Bogart. The nexus of this night brings together Saxon’s execution at midnight and his own daughter’s crime of murdering her gangland lover. The moral dilemma becomes in Weldon’s acceptance of the Rule of Law’s equity: should his daughter be sent to the electric chair too? Can human behavior always be explained by mere Actus Reus? Isn’t Mens Rea an element too? The denouement involves the District Attorney devising his own narrative to save the waifish Stella even though Weldon wants the exact truth to be told, and Stella confesses to the murder. But law applied unfairly to those entitled to preferential treatment is Fascism, and the film seems to support this claim. Her preemptive Nolle Pros weighs heavily on the viewer’s mind after poor Ethel Saxon was murdered by the State for a similar passionate crime. The film smartly doesn’t include a coda and remains ambiguous in its judgment, ending with the bored looking journalist, who witnessed everything, leaning against the doorframe. Will he write about this miscarriage of Justice? Or will his headline underwrite the DA’s sordid story?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">O.P. Heggie is excellent as the rumpled patriarch filled with the nervous energy of the Righteous, angry at feeling shame for carrying out his civic duty. He comes across as a decent man, yet one confused by his own ethics, unable to accept that human behavior is sometimes unquantifiable. He may see the world as black and white, but his world is only white. Sidney Fox is cute as a button and portrays Stella with naïve charm, a good girl who falls for a bad guy. Bogart as Gar Boni actually smiles and laughs in the First Act but when he admits he has a few “birds” in his car while kissing Stella goodbye, the lump she feels is only his Smith and Wesson!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The film is beautifully photographed with claustrophobic framing and deep focus, and obviously Director Charles Erskine didn’t have extra film to waist for coverage: much of the dialogue is spoken in two-shot or close-up. He and DPs William O. Steiner and George Webber also use reflections to create interesting compositions that minimize editing and waste of film stock. Leo Zochling’s use of match-cuts creates tension and conjunction, such as a pacing Ethel Saxon behind bars cut/to Edward Weldon pacing behind a stair banister, or a dolly in for close-up on a policeman dissolves to the guard at her jail door. The best may be an over-the-shoulder shot of Weldon berating his daughter that cuts to the same shot of a Priest reading the last Rights to the convicted. Lithe camerawork that follows a slow head-turn or short nervous tracking shot of pacing feet imbue this film with a creative impulse often lacking in the most expensive feature films!</span></p><p><b><span style="color: #ff390f; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Final Grade: (B)</span></b></p>Alex DeLargehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17050773136046485614noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307873075823125533.post-88829477186484078552023-09-08T11:04:00.002-04:002023-09-10T17:36:24.192-04:00STATE’S ATTORNEY (George Archainbaud, 1932)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuaLAL1fhwDhgtD5Jtwiu30m1nLSA-f3FhTbJCavuy58HJ0Aw8ECdSvzXg5fjsdxsF29ouywGPl_nvKLfzgaqWGQHIpOsN63LIlkcI25BjLpoAiyZNpm03Ey0RzVpCIhfyVAEcepE_M-fZFE20K8NA9vTngaIHoaJ5r2WFHRyXbukvnMnC_4RsaM1-u_iU/s450/states_attorney.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="315" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuaLAL1fhwDhgtD5Jtwiu30m1nLSA-f3FhTbJCavuy58HJ0Aw8ECdSvzXg5fjsdxsF29ouywGPl_nvKLfzgaqWGQHIpOsN63LIlkcI25BjLpoAiyZNpm03Ey0RzVpCIhfyVAEcepE_M-fZFE20K8NA9vTngaIHoaJ5r2WFHRyXbukvnMnC_4RsaM1-u_iU/w280-h400/states_attorney.jpg" width="280" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Prosecutor and Prostituter shack up together until the Governorship is about to set sail; fearing a tempest, the elected DA marries for social standing and not the recumbent kind. Director George Archainbaud allows John to go full Barrymore as the alcoholic and womanizing attorney, yet his antics are to good effect. After all, what is a criminal attorney’s strength but courtroom theatrics! The beautiful Helen Twelvetrees portrays the streetwalking June Perry, knocked down (not up, fortunately) but not out for the count; she’s a strong and resilient woman who may feel shame yet considers herself a survivor and not a victim of circumstances.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Tom Cardigan is a boozing criminal defense attorney for mob boss Vanny Powers. Vanny offers him five grand to go to Night Court to get one of his girls “off the hook” for ‘tapping on the window”. Tom isn’t interested until circumstances find Vanny at the court’s mercy after a speakeasy raid (Tom purposely fails to get the case thrown out) but lingers until June’s case is called to the docket. He feels empathy for her predicament and with charm and devilish wit convinces the judge (a woman, mind you) to acquit the girl. June is thankful and comes home with him for a drink…and makes him breakfast in the morning! Their romance seems genuine and rather touching as they bond in everything but holy matrimony. Tom is offered the chance at District Attorney at Vanny’s suggestion who wants to control him as Chief Law Enforcement Officer of the city. Tom is elected and soon the Governorship calls, but he won’t prostitute himself to his one-time boss and decides to go the straight-and-narrow. Melodrama ensues.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">I’ve worked in a District Attorney’s Office for 22+ years and have been part of over 100 jury trials in my career (not counting other proceedings!) and have never seen court as exciting and theatrical as this! Barrymore does more speechifying than questioning and the exasperated Judge and Defense attorney (not to mention witnesses) struggle to hold their own against his somber (not sober) verbiage. The Rules of Evidence may have been different in 1932 but not that different! Yet it’s enjoyable enough and presents the moral dilemma beyond a reasonable doubt which Tom accepts with head held high yet professionally laid low. Over-dramatic? Hell yes! But perfectly in character and with a lovely and surprising denouement.</span></p><p><b><span style="color: #ff390f; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Final Grade: (B-)</span></b></p>Alex DeLargehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17050773136046485614noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307873075823125533.post-56996007057548449162023-09-01T17:37:00.001-04:002023-09-01T17:37:24.131-04:00THE LIFE OF VERGIE WINTERS (Alfred Santell, 1934)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVSZsuZO-Hzt9-YUcnZQ9E1sXtMYM1OkFVMSon1rdxBEG37j6pMq1heZuWAqY5r3lKoh8MbqG5QxpOWyLIen8hEbwQAUhrCcYSNfd6ehKZBW-KocDGCvI_ilJCVLw9DlOfBjKYb8GoQcWdKTjLpKbyQ9OR219BEQS3uXiBYLiNaWUh8it5RLcNBKMwrbn6/s761/the%20life%20of%20vergie%20winters01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="761" height="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVSZsuZO-Hzt9-YUcnZQ9E1sXtMYM1OkFVMSon1rdxBEG37j6pMq1heZuWAqY5r3lKoh8MbqG5QxpOWyLIen8hEbwQAUhrCcYSNfd6ehKZBW-KocDGCvI_ilJCVLw9DlOfBjKYb8GoQcWdKTjLpKbyQ9OR219BEQS3uXiBYLiNaWUh8it5RLcNBKMwrbn6/w400-h315/the%20life%20of%20vergie%20winters01.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Vergie suffers through her Winters of discontent, mistress to an ethereal love grasped temporarily, her life dedicated to another’s achievements. Director Alfred Santell tells another version of <b>BACK STREET</b> and <b>FORBIDDEN</b> but Ann Harding as the titular victim breathes fierce life into the often-trite melodrama while John Boles as John Shadwell, the married and upwardly mobile Politician (her One True Love!) imbues his character with the requisite good intentions and deprecating charm.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Plot: Vergie is an independent businesswoman whose father was paid-off to arrange the breakup between Vergie and Shadwell by insinuating she was pregnant to another man. Shadwell leaves her and marries into a wealthy family which is a stepping-stone for his own ambitious career. Small town gossip and rumors spread like Covid (to the same disastrous effects) and soon Shadwell and Vergie are having an affair when he learns the truth about the lie. But Vergie is supportive and sacrifices her happiness and their forbidden child upon the alter of John Shadwell. She also offers her own freedom to save his reputation (and her daughter’s!) after his tragic murder, committed by the jealous wife who stalks him to Vergie’s boudoir. Though the plot reads like a mundane psychodrama the film’s structure tries to frame the narrative in an interesting pattern: it begins with Shadwell’s funeral as we’re introduced to characters (without context, that’s revealed in the next two acts) who cackle and chatter about his life and death. Then we get a reverse shot of the procession from inside a second story jail cell with the beautiful Anne Harding slumped against the window. Reverse-shot to her framed in the window gripping the steel bars: it’s a nice composition that is reminiscent of Robert Bresson, decades later! Then the body of the film is told in flashback beginning 22 or so years prior to the present date of 1934. Strangely enough, decades pass, the child grows to womanhood, yet Anne Harding doesn’t age! It’s not until the denouement that we see her truly withered and unkempt, like an older woman whose hope has receded like a deluge.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Harding’s performance isn’t as breathy and over-dramatic as some of her other roles; she plays it more restrained which makes it more sympathetic. She’s a survivor more than a victim of circumstance, a business owner who relies on herself and not a man for her daily sustenance. There is no weekly allowance from her lover: she is financially independent which makes for a refreshing Pre-Code character! Thankfully for Vergie, she suffers unjust conviction and incarceration for only a year until the guilty wife makes a deathbed confession. She is reunited with her daughter who now knows the truth. It’s a real tearjerker.</span></p><p><b><span style="color: #ff390f; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Final Grade: (C+) </span></b></p>Alex DeLargehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17050773136046485614noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307873075823125533.post-52267800755348632732023-08-20T13:37:00.002-04:002023-08-20T13:37:26.382-04:00THE LITTLE GIANT (Roy Del Ruth, 1933)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ6bGQxY_EcQj11D9O2BvY5fcnG9gKg4cKytUE4Q1F5QQuyd4ad1XWFxS67h0WEIbG_ACCeNKVo3qHfThHUlVCNTyPd5i5mHZId4MebTKfcKiFkm_QiKUQ7wsN4WItbQArAH1vhraF7fMl38Q7QhJ7NSGiUm_lLI9DnJLVjROC_6YRB8cVoiRBzllFK2Nz/s1200/the%20little%20giant02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="978" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ6bGQxY_EcQj11D9O2BvY5fcnG9gKg4cKytUE4Q1F5QQuyd4ad1XWFxS67h0WEIbG_ACCeNKVo3qHfThHUlVCNTyPd5i5mHZId4MebTKfcKiFkm_QiKUQ7wsN4WItbQArAH1vhraF7fMl38Q7QhJ7NSGiUm_lLI9DnJLVjROC_6YRB8cVoiRBzllFK2Nz/w326-h400/the%20little%20giant02.jpg" width="326" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">You can take Bugs out of Chicago, but you can't’ take Chicago outta Bugs! Edward G. Robinson is Bugs Ahearn, recently unemployed bootlegger from the Windy City who decides to take his tax-free million dollars and move up in the world...or at least society. A street-smart tough guy whose language and mannerisms are as unrefined as the gutters he crawled out from, Bugs gives up his criminal ways (thanks to FDR) and attempts to go straight. See, he’s been reading Pluto’s books! Ha! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Director Roy Del Ruth propels the narrative with wisecracking rapid-fire dialogue as Bugs delivers his own verdict to peers and rivals alike. He’s sincere and not out for an angle but gets swindled by high society low-lifes in California (which is in Texas, according to his cronies!). Bugs even pays off his moll with both money and kindness and keeps his childhood sidekick around if he really tries to better himself. DP Sidney Hickox sets the right somber tone after the initial election montage with extreme close-ups of tough cigar chomping men, who listen to the disheartening news. The compositions visually balance what at first seems like another violent gangster flick which is soon upset by Bugs’ raucous and hilarious diatribes. It’s a neat trick for an audience expecting <b>LITTLE CAESAR</b>! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">We see Bugs struggle to choose the right clothes at the right time, uncomfortably mingle with the Santa Barbara aristocracy, attempt to learn and play polo and get blinded and swindled by love. The ultimate gangster becomes victim...but not for long. He’s even conned by his lovely benefactor but no worries, she’s been victimized by the same crass upper-class caste! So, Bugs gets his gang together for one last fling as they try to save his failing Savings & Loan that he was tricked into purchasing for six hundred thousand bucks. He sure gets more than his money’s worth! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Funny and cartoonishly violent, this film is both a parody of the genre and a solid entry. It can laugh at itself and not take itself very seriously and yet carve out interesting characters to tell a rather touching love story. The cast is excellent from Edward G. Robinson’s grimacing countenance and guttural mangling of the English language to the intelligent and beautiful Mary Astor as his “secretary” and Helen Vinson as the disingenuous femme fatale. Finally, his beer buddies finally enjoy a game of Polo, not with mallets but hot lead! </span></p><p><b><span style="color: #ff390f; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Final Grade: (B)</span></b></p>Alex DeLargehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17050773136046485614noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307873075823125533.post-32843422870181769262023-08-10T13:48:00.001-04:002023-08-10T13:53:47.938-04:00LADY FOR A DAY (Frank Capra, 1933)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyBNSVqmbxYW8c5sNgDvQ4vflxjHhTUi_J4TK91HZpSXwU9lQRLRTGKLYLrIQNoyVr0u5ol5xogxzOLexYmWDJRFY4qvvDZrJljxwnPzQsWdN330wTp-fxTQUNgjuuZiE4uU4ECDbPDv-wN8l45Urwx-krtZEZKKHkdiy0pdGhlwTAyMPLDdqDKJLGWw6E/s1500/lady%20for%20a%20day01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1178" data-original-width="1500" height="314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyBNSVqmbxYW8c5sNgDvQ4vflxjHhTUi_J4TK91HZpSXwU9lQRLRTGKLYLrIQNoyVr0u5ol5xogxzOLexYmWDJRFY4qvvDZrJljxwnPzQsWdN330wTp-fxTQUNgjuuZiE4uU4ECDbPDv-wN8l45Urwx-krtZEZKKHkdiy0pdGhlwTAyMPLDdqDKJLGWw6E/w400-h314/lady%20for%20a%20day01.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Annie is a small apple in the Big One, carrying good luck in a wicker basket for Dave the Dude but wearing her own misfortune like a funeral shroud. Frank Capra’s drama is “melo” in all the right places, a Depression-era fantasy that wears its heart on its tattered sleeve. Watching this, I was thinking of Steven Spielberg's often trite ho-hum fantasies that can be discarded without much effort and how Capra’s have always been superior. Specifically, in this film Capra creates a drab and realistic world for his characters to inhabit, suffering and bad luck are as ubiquitous as the crowds on the city streets. He doesn’t romanticize suffering, it fucking sucks for Annie and her street-smart cohorts yet he doesn’t condescend either. Capra only offers his character a temporary reprieve from torment, not a permanent “everything will be alright” fix. In fact, after the tearful denouement one wonders what the future has in store for Annie: it sure doesn’t seem pleasant. Capra gives us a hint visually: Annie, standing on the crowded dock holding onto a thin paper streamer thrown from her daughter, who holds the other end as she departs on the steamship. Annie’s connection to Louise is fragile and twisted about, a moment of celebration later becomes trash to be swept up from the dock. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The plot is rather simple: Annie is a poor street vendor who has been deceiving her daughter Louise, who lives in Europe and is about to be married to a Count’s son, by stealing stationary from an exclusive hotel and writing her about her high society lifestyle. Of course, her fiancée’s family wants to meet Annie and they set sail for NYC! But gangster Dave the Dude needs Annie’s apples for good luck so when she is down and out, his luck becomes rotten: and he needs good luck for an upcoming big business deal. So, he gets his gang and Annie’s downtrodden friends together to fake a cotillion while trying to keep reporters away (as in locked away!). Hilarity, suspense and good old-fashioned kindness ensue. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The cast is excellent! May Robson as Apple Annie wears the role like her drab and tattered clothing, and even when she’s haunting the role of a socialite one can just peer under the deception to see the scared and tender mother who so loves her daughter. It’s such a genuine performance and the film wouldn’t work without our sympathies squarely on her side. This is done by a solid script, but May Robson breathes life into inanimate typeface. Warren William is the classy Mob Boss Dave the Dude who imbues his character with the requisite amount of charm and dangerous sincerity. Guy Kibee plays penny-ante pool shark Judge Blake (called Judge because he’s erudite, not because he’s formally educated) who masquerades as Annie’s wealthy husband. It’s another funny and selfless performance from Guy Kibee whose character is a hustler with a heart of a golden apple. But it’s Ned Sparks as the incongruously named Happy McGuire that steals the film in a secondary role, his droll and often loud pronouncements hilariously monotone with a wide-eyed kind of disbelief at the circumstances. He’s the voice of reason, the boy who never believed in Santa Clause and doesn’t mind telling his Boss. We also get a solid performance from Halliwell Hobbes as the butler whose reactions are restrained yet always on the verge of hysteria. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Once again Director of Photography Joseph Walker elevates what could have been a humdrum story (even with great acting) to a cinematic classic. His camera movements and deep focal points especially in crowded scenes is exemplary, the blocking and choreography of movement must have influenced Akira Kurosawa in his formative years. Kurosawa watched every Hollywood film he could see in his youth and Walker’s camerawork must have been influential! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Though we get the essential happy ending it is still one of hard knocks, fleeting like the steamship that carries the daughter away. Thus, it weighs heavier on our heart. </span></p><p><span style="color: #ff390f; font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><b>Final Grade: (B)</b></span></p>Alex DeLargehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17050773136046485614noreply@blogger.com