ScenicRoute Reviews

Five Graves to Cairo (1943)

Your enjoyment will likely hinge on how you like your Tone

[6/10 · 25 January 2016]

I just read all 45 reviews to see if I was along in not liking - never liking - Tone. When I watch a Cary Grant movie, I know he most likely was gay (the most sexual electricity I ever saw with him is between him and Randolph Scott in their "run-in" over a woman in 1932's "Hot Saturday" - that movie is worth it for that moment alone), but I always believe him as a man in whatever role he plays. No so with Tone - unlike Grant, whose ambiguous sexuality never gets in the way of his gorgeous body and face, Tone just annoys me. And I am not alone, but clearly in a minority. So if you like Tone, you will probably like this movie. In fact, Tone reminds me of Randolph Scott - to me, he is always too clearly playing a part - he never embodies the role, as I demand of all great actors/actresses. Get naked, Franchot, and kiss a guy! Instead, what I get is line-reading by a spoiled kid from Buffalo who never figured out who he was and died relatively young after awful experiences with women (read his bio - one horror after another). But back to the movie: I found him laughably unbelievable as a British soldier become a "Euro-spy" - just as he is laughably unbelievable in his "playboy roles" - such as against Jean Harlowe in "Platinum Blonde." But This movie is worth seeing as a "mash-up" - is it a comedy? is it a suspense? Is it a war movie? Regardless, as many note, any Billy Wilder movie is worth seeing, and I will agree with that as the primary recommendation.

But the reason I am bothering to write this review is I found Anne Baxter's performance fine and moving. Okay, maybe she doesn't have the best French accent, but I found it real enough for her to become French to me. And her passion! I was genuinely moved by the denouement, which I can't say for my lack of fear over the fate of Franchot, who plods his way through his role with no visible anxiety anywhere at anytime. I really couldn't believe this was the same actress as Eve in All About Eve, but it is, and I fell for her, fell for her plight, fell for her courage, and loved how the movie ended.

I know many don't like how the movie ended, but I did.

As a self-identifying Latino, the portrayal of the Italian and the Italians is of course offensive, but this is a hopeless issue, with Italians still painted as thugs or buffoons by contemporary cinema (one the few races politically correct Hollywood can still abuse). So I found that a minor irritant and couldn't help enjoying the beautiful Italian songs. I am not bitter and have no chip herein, because I know the world is fully of thousands upon thousands of Italian movies, where Italians are portrayed accurately, good and bad. Onward to my retirement! So I can't give this a higher rating despite it being a Wilder, and despite Baxter's convincing portrayal (I remain agnostic re Von Stroheim), because I just don't like Tone - a bad combination of a moneyed upbringing, repressed homosexuality (to me), a "beta male" body and look, and line-reading - and that's when he's not pretending to be English, which he fails utterly at here. Olivier or Howard would be convincing, but I am not sure even they could push this movie up the pantheon - just too much of a mash-up - a case of Wilder learning the Hollywood ropes, and soon ready to dazzle us with one of the all-time greats, "Double Indemnity." So see this for Wilder, for Baxter, and for why our side won.

The Member of the Wedding (1952)

Proto-LGBT militancy

[10/10 · 3 November 2015]

How the world hasn't changed! Julie Harris is superb as a girl who knows she's different, knows she's unhappy, but nothing stops her from seizing life and living it. Brandon de Wilde is great as "gay boy" - watch him sashay. And Ethel Waters - wow - she is the center of her universe, and watch out.

A hymn to the Protestant acceptance of individual belief, this movie sings the "body electric," while ostensibly staying within 1950s conventional morality. Dad, brother, sister-in-law - everyone is accepting, and ain't it cool? A must-see for those who insist on identity politics. Sometimes they get in the way of love, which this movie has in abundance.

This would make a great opera. Harris as the soprano; Watters as the contralto, the sister-in-law as the mezzo (the opera would need to flesh her out more). John Henry as the tenor (make him a little older and flesh him out more); Dad as the baritone; and Honey as the bass.

Sometimes the slightest story can capture all of human existence. This is one of them.

Loving (1970)

All that matters is my pleasure of the moment

[10/10 · 22 September 2015]

Who needs blood and guts when you can watch more interesting destructive behavior? George Segal embodies studied amorality perfectly. There is no God, no religion, no moral sensibility, only what I do and what I can get away with. But it's not just George. All the men in the film are just in it for themselves, down to the kvetching neighbor complaining about George's crab-grass. We are a long way from Puritan New England in this cold portrayal of suburban hustle set in Westport, CT. Some of the women, especially Eve Marie-Saint, still think the old rules - middle-class conventions - still have meaning, value, and valor, but not the men and certainly not two of the women (Mistress and Fling for discussion purposes herein). We get no inner life of George, he just communicates his superiority as an artist, his ability to hustle accounts (in a bizarre cameo by Sterling Hayden, who plays an embodiment of Lincoln), and his ability to have a wife, a mistress, and whatever Fling stirs him at the moment, which becomes the essential plot device of this otherwise aimless movie, aimless if you don't see the trainwreck coming at breakneck speed, despite the movie's studied languor. We would have no movie, however, if only George was amoral - and you know George is amoral, that the part was a cakewalk for him, because that is who he is. Yuk! I will certainly research any movie that stars George Segal before deciding how much degradation and loss of tradition I want to experience.

Of course, to him and his ilk, there is no other reality. Life is to be lived through their gimlet eyes, and my job is to identify these types early, and thence to avoid them. I am not even going to look up the name of the "party-host husband" who casually schtupes a drunken guest (that would be Fling #2 for George, but he doesn't get to her) while his wife vainly tries to keep the party upscale, only to have her husband tee up live-pornography for his guests. As my secretary says, you can't make this stuff up, and this movie perfectly illustrates what happens when you believe in nothing other than the primacy of your own sexual prowess.

Thoroughly distasteful but an essential watch for those who need to understand why we have a new religion in this land, one whose commandments consist of micro-aggression "Shalt-nots," identity politics, and a belief that government must make laws enforcing all this BS, and must take care of us from cradle-to-grave. For those rejecting the traditions of our ancestors, it is George jungle out there unless we abide by our new religion. It's an easy choice for me (the ol' time religion), but not for most, with their obsession with "truth," and hence our new religion. In this religion, all that matters is your posturing, and your obeisances to the identity politic gods (and police), even if the world is falling down around you. I'll take the old-time religion always.

Performances are excellent throughout. The children - the poor children: their suffering isn't shown, but it is forboded - are superb. The hard-bitten Mistress, angling for George to divorce, is perfect in her callous disregard for other's feelings. And the two Flings are the cynical embodiment of George - they are also just in it for the momentary pleasure George is living for. In fact, the only moral judgment ever passed in this movie is when Fling #1 (Fling #2 having passed out upstairs where the host gets her) accuses George of being middle-class for wanting his pants back before going back into the house to get food and drink for their outside tryst. Double yuk.

But powerful. After traditional religion but before our new Neo-Victorian secular religion enforced by the state (and its high priests), this movie is a must-see for American cultural history.

Search for Beauty (1934)

Hollywood Democratic elite falls in line with the party enforcing American Fascism

[10/10 · 8 July 2015]

A 10 for the politics and the for sex the politics disproves of. A key aspect of the movie that most reviewers miss is the essential plot turn requiring the appearance of a federal "morals agent." If that isn't fascism, ca 1934, then I don't know what is. Once he's there, everyone falls in line with the new order.

And a new order it was. 1934 was the year the Democratic Party, in a pay-off to its key Roman-Catholic voting bloc (always and still a party of factions), finally enforced the Hayes Code. What makes this movie fascinating is that the movie itself self-consciously enforces the Hayes Code by showing what the Hayes Code prohibits - lots of bouncing breasts, including visible nipples, as other reviewers note - but those are really cover for lots of gorgeous young men, either naked (in an early scene) or (in a later scene) in tank tops and really tight (and of course bulging) short shorts marching militantly, enough to give the Hitler in all fascists a good hard-on.

Most reviewers say the movie is worth watching as a swan-song to the pre-code era. I disagree. This movie is a must-see to understand the scandal that was and remains the Democratic Party. Sure, the Republicans have their scandals, but isn't every high school student of American History taught all of them? The American cultural elite presents the Democratic Party, the party of slavery, then Jim Crow, then American Fascism (via FDR), then corrupt hypocrisy,(via JFK), then bureaucratic incompetence (via Carter and Obama) as the saintly party? The party that will solve all our problems if only given complete control of all levers of power? This was the message in 1934, and it remains the message in 2015. We ignore it at our peril, as members of this year's crop of Democratic presidential candidates (Sanders and Clinton) include as part of their platform the evisceration of the first amendment? So watch this movie, one of the first that presents Democrats as the party of moral superiority, an attitude that the current White House trumpets almost every day.

But if this movie was just crude 1930s Democratic Party American Fascism propaganda, whose primary focus was the suppression of the liberation of the female libido so evident in pre-code movies, it still would not be worth watching. As noted above, however, this movie is both that and a wonderful celebration of pre-code liberation, as somewhat sadly captured by the wonderful Gertrude Michael. She knows the times are changing, and while her performance has real vigor at the beginning of the movie, by the end of the movie she is weary with defeat. Regardless, Michaels is superb throughout, and at only 23, hard to believe that she is already over-the-hill, but she is, and at the finale it is clear she has been supplanted by the dyed-blonde Ida Lupino, who is excellent as well, but also scary as she embraces the American version of Hitler-youth, by welcoming the vice squad capitan.

And what cojones Robert Armstrong has. A full 21 years older than Michaels, he plays her for the true-blue girl-friend he knows he can keep. However, he also knows, as an ex-con, that he's holding a pretty lousy hand in the movie's plot, but he plays it for all its worth. How subtle his performance is compared to the crude Anglo-machismo of Buster Crabbe (What a physique! What a bad actor!). I wish his team, celebrating the Republican virtues of liberty, and its necessary corollary of libertarianism when it comes to matters of sex, could have won the conflict, but that was not to be in 1934, not in Germany or Italy, and certainly not in the US.

And no review of the movie can be complete without lauding James Gleason, who of course does a fine comic turn as the shady money-guy. The movie ends with Gleason mooning us, and it is a fitting good-bye to the sexual liberation that did not die, but would be suppressed for another 30 years. For who wants to look at Gleason's butt for long? The American Fascists deliberately end the movie this way, to remind the viewer that they will be better off now that the feds are actively policing morals....

And for those cultural liberals, as I am certainly one, who always vote the Democratic ticket for moral reasons, don't think the 1930s vice-squad enforcement of behavior and speech codes had no tragic or devastating consequences in the US, just as the same enforcement today will do the same, then think again. Think of Billy Haines being driven from Hollywood, and all the great actresses, most notably Ruth Chatterton and Helen Twelvetrees, who could no longer find parts suitable for their femme libre personalities. And if this happened in the fake world of cinema, you can imagine what was going on in real life. It couldn't have been pretty, and there had to be a lot of suffering. Perhaps if the American people had risen up and fought for its cinematic and personal freedoms in 1934, then it would have more readily resisted the rise of Nazi Germany. But the course of American cinema shows the exact opposite happening, with 1937's "Love, Honor, and Behave" an outright celebration of National Socialism, right down to Priscilla Lane practicing her German as she belts out "Bei Mir Bist Du (sic) Schane (Schon)." Yuk, and in 2015 we are paying the price for not understanding this shameful history of ours, and the key role the Democratic Party plays in it. So watch this movie so that we don't once again have to repeat history.

I Found Stella Parish (1935)

The Wavishing Kay Fwancis is at her best - I cwied like a baby

[10/10 · 3 December 2014]

First: Let's begin with a quote from "Midnight Mass," an unpublished poem of mine (all rights reserved): (sorrry for the /s - there is a space limit here, and I have still more to say) - "What would the ancients have thought,/seeing the porcine wavering supports/of Saint Peter's canopy?//The seduction of Babylonia?/The wail of the Pharoahs?/The shimmy-shimmy of the two-buck dancer/caught on celluloid in '33, before the Code?//Sex and idolatry,/purple protuberances massing to the sky/are not what TV sees,/whether panning to the flowers in English,/or in Spanish mooning the faithful.//Both handed the lie by those serpentine columns, who say not truth not science,/but Hollywood excess begins here—/name dropping,/and the eternal celebrity of sainthood.//Though stars and saints come and go:/dropping from the firmament/like Kay Francis or St. Christopher."

Now isn't that a fine way to capture how Bette and Joan live and Kay doesn't? Life is inherently unfair and Kay knew it, always knew it, and in every performance knew that she was only as good as her last sale, and that there would be a last sale. No NE flinty will-to-survive like Bette, or pure white-trash-cum-French-(don't forget LeSueur) glamour like Joan: no Kay was always pure "noble glamour," and always with the understanding that while nobility is eternal, glamour almost always passes with youth (that's why Joan is so pathetic, she willed her glamour to survive, and paid a ghastly price for it), especially for a woman, as her hips widen no matter what she does, and she slowly pirouettes into middle age and and the inevitable desuetude of barrenness. (Oh and Ruth Chatterton needs a place, too, but not here.)

I like to think of Kay in the 1960s, her 60s too, as she faced her imminent young death (63 is young to me) from too many cigarettes and neglect. Was she able to rewatch her glamour-turns from the pre-code era, especially, "Trouble in Paradise," with her perfect American foil of Marian Hopkins? So that Americans could compare and contrast nobility with commercial will-to-live (yes Marian does the NE better than Bette, but that's another review)?

In the end, nobility must reconcile with commercial survival, as the Italians learned so difficultly (but they have learned it, yea!). And Kay always knew that, was always commercial in her nobility, but she couldn't stop her own aging, nor could she stop the changing mores of that "low dishonest decade," where the Democrats, with their new power, enforced their own version of 1930s fascism on American popular culture.

So if the other critics are right, and this is the first (and last?) Kay Francis hit "post-code," then the plot makes perfect sense, but I am not going to give any spoilers.

I never watch Robert Osborne's intros until after the movie is over, where he sometimes gives a coda as well. He does both with this movie, and he makes fun of it in both the intro and coda as only "rich liberals" can do, which you know Osborne is(though not so rich I would guess, but in his 80s, he has enough to keep him going, so who cares?).

So diss him here. And while I agree that Kay could have had a more butch male interest, Ian Hunter has enough "male beauty" to make her attraction believable, especially in the one scene where he briefly shows up in two-toned (with one tone white) shoes - I am sure there is a name for these 30s-specials (are they still called spectators when men wear them?), but anyway, he functions as a classy Brit silly enough to fall in love with an aging star.

For Kay is aging - now 30, which for a woman in the aptly named decade, meant she was approaching the third movement of the "Mary Astor dance" ("Who is Mary Astory? Get me Mary Astor. Get me a Mary Astor type. Who was Mary Astor?"). She knows 1937 is coming, and she knows she won't get to say, in 1950, "I am big. It's the pictures that got small," because her story is more complicated than Gloria Swanson's - that quintessential Protestant girl gone big time, where she could always argue she hadn't gone bad (in the best Protestant female-empowering dialectic).

Swanson had no time for nobility - there was too much life to be lived, and she knew that in la coda nobilitas (someone check my Latin here, I'm winging it), la dama always gets screwed in the end. And maybe la dama wants it - vagina dentata and all that for some more Latin. Who knows, who cares? maybe in another life I will be that sex, but now I just do it. So while Swanson deserves her immortality, with her apotheosis being Sunset Boulevard (every scene memorized, trust me, and I too, always wanted a swimming pool- still not there yet), Francis needs to break into 21st-century post-modern popular culture, because she taught Americans the lesson, now lost, about Roman Catholic nobility.

Another review will need to riff on that theme, for IMDb is shutting me down, but let's end where I began - I cried like a baby, the plot is believable, and while not as great as her pre-code movies, this is a great movie, better than anything Bette or Joan ever did, and another example of why Kay needs to get her long overdue place in the pantheon.

Should Ladies Behave (1933)

An affirmationof the importance of conventional morality

[10/10 · 12 August 2014]

I rewatched this after seeing it at least 10 years ago, when my great pre-code TCM love-affair began. As a student of European culture, I think this movie is important. As indicated in other reviews, the sexual revolution has already happened, yet because it is 1933 (rather than post-1950s), this Anglophonic elite is still trying to observe the pieties of conventional morality, all of which have since been self-consciously discarded except among the religious. Here you have affirmation of why these conventions are important and why we abandon them at our peril. Katherine Alexander has a more touching part that what was usually afforded Eve Arden in that she expresses wistful regret for what might have been (none of that in Arden) had she been a little less unconventional and is genuinely moving in her relatively small part. Conway Tearle is unconvincing as a Picasso-like mensch (perhaps if Leone had been a young man?), but he is but a foil, so his fey performance becomes irrelevant. What really matters is Alice Brady, who in the previous favorable reviews is still not getting the due I think she deserves. There is liberated (no better illustrated than in the braless Adrian gown noted in an earlier review) soul in Alice, and her character, while appearing to be two-dimensional, is truly rich, and Alice affirms, throughout and at the end, how happiness is achieved in this compromise we call life. And Lionel is three-dimensional from start-to-finish, fully engaged in his part as a man with clear interests for his own happiness and that of his loved ones. The lessons of this play (for it is a play) are timeless, but are given with that teaspoon of sugar (comedy) so necessary to really impart them, and Brady's, Barryomore's, and Alexander's performances make this great.

Expensive Women (1931)

Is there a pre-code with Warren Williams not worth watching?

[7/10 · 9 March 2012]

I don't need to repeat the other favorable reviews - I agree with most everything favorable, including the assertion that the movie is not a "hack job." I think the plot does make sense and it kept me relishing just how much "free love" was in the air among young people of the late 20s/early 30s. But old man Raymond is the voice of fascism and his success in the movie is a grim foreboding of the repression that would soon sweep northern European societies (of which I include the US) in the early 30s, where the Democrats ascent to power in the US was accompanied by the "sexual fascism" of the production code. So I think this movie holds up well and is loaded with both wistfulness and chills.

This is the first movie I have seen of Dolores Costello and her facial expressions are delicious even if her verbal delivery is a little wooden. I agree with the favorable assessments of Polly Walters (what a fabulous Betty Boop voice!) and Warren Williams, but disagree with the generally negative takes on Jack Donohue, playing Bobby Brandon, which I read as successfully and self-consciously "rich Irish," right down to the Brooklyn way Jack says "paehty." And yes Anthony Bushell is despicable as the young lover, but somehow I found his performance right, like the repressed bisexual son of a powerful father, doing everything Dad says as a result of his own confused sexuality. Of course, that read puts pressure on his love affair with Dolores, and that's not very convincing, though it won't be the first time I've seen a woman throw herself at a sexually confused young man, attracted to his vulnerability and refreshed by his lack of machismo, so ultimately I was convinced of their love, and the scene where he sleeps on her breast is truly touching, and a beautiful symbol of his weakness.

The Raymond father/son relationship is one of the best illustrations I have seen of how "conventional Protestant morality" was foundering among the Anglosphere "elite" of the late 20s/early 30s. Here's a fellow, ol' man Raymond, who insists he is the soul probity and yet finds himself committing ghastly deeds, and getting away with them. A fine portrait of the corruption of power and the impending death within a generation of conventional Anglosphere morality.

Maybe the Warner Brothers didn't know how radical they were being, but they knew what it took to tell a good story, and they succeeded here, even if you can feel the furies descending on this celebration of "pre-code mores," where murder goes unpunished, the clown gets to laugh at New Year's Eve debauchery (don't miss that image - truly powerful), and promiscuity is rewarded.

So it's a 7 because it is too short at 1 hour and too many characters are left hanging, especially the Raymond father/son/daughter-in-law triangle, which really needs a 5-minute wrap-up scene where their eternal misery is nailed. But watch it and see if you too don't find yourself satisfied with the meatiness of the story.

A Slight Case of Murder (1938)

A tour-de-farce

[10/10 · 9 February 2012]

Jolly from start to finish, this "gangster movie" is Damon Runyan perfection and if ever set to music, has the chance to take a front seat to "Guys and Dolls." The casting is superb, except for perhaps "Mary," but her role is but a foil, and I am not sure the lots could have produced someone who actually reflected genetically the comic genius of Ruth Donnelly and Edward G. Robinson.

A brief search appears to support that this is the only film paring Donnelly against Robinson, and what a shame, since they are a dynamite team.

So this is the first reason why the movie is a 10. From the moment husband and wife are together, the chemistry is magical. While Robinson is good as a serious gangster, he is better as a comic one. No one does panache better than ol' Eddie. And Ruthie, what a moll! For her last scene she is wearing an outfit that could be carried off in in 1975 or 2005, so timeless a "dame dress" it is.

A second reason the movies rates a 10 from "ScenicRoute" (always take the Scenic Route) are the gangsters. A virtuouso performance by all of the gang, but Allen Jenkins performance is particularly memorable, right down to his "seat-of-the-pants" transportings of "Douglas Fairbanks Rosenbloom" (a brilliant performance by Bobby Jordan, though a sad bio, dead at 42, alas).

A final reason for #10 is the spoof on the rich WASPs, played out by two of the same - Willard Parker (though apparently German, since ne Worster Von Eps) and Paul Harvey. Parker is so much taller than Robinson that it really is the clash of two separate races. Divine.

So let's get this show singin' and tappin'!

The Big Shot (1931)

Corn-ball delight but still doing pre-code stuff of interest

[24 October 2011]

Eddie Q never married, I am told, but this movie shows him as a reasonably convincing romantic lead against Maureen O'Sullivan. At one point the director has Mary Nolan ogling Eddie's tight rear-end as he bends over, a scene you won't see in a post-code movie. Eddie also gives Mary a shampoo, which is well done and realistic. This movie also has Maureen in an auto chase, where she out-guns her "bad suitor," and that too is refreshingly pre-code. And the corn-pone is delicious - everyone has a good heart - even the villain is three-dimensional, with his villainy clearly anchored to his keen desire for O'Sullivan. The movie is worth the price of admission just to hear Nolan yell "Yoo-hoo" when summoning boy Eddie (she never calls his character by name), which she does on more than one occasion.

A 75-minute marshmallow with a few pre-code gems inserted.

Just a Gigolo (1931)

Watch It for the sets, Irene Purcell and the old folks

[24 October 2011]

William Haines is not believable as a "straight man" in this movie, despite what others think, and so there is no sexual frisson between him and Irene Purcell. They are as brother and sister, but what a sister she is! Really quite contemporary in her deportment, she fascinated me with her performance. As others noted, she came and went - perhaps her interpretations were just too far advanced. But the movie was a hit, and I think she carries Haines through, with her "needy sister" act to his absolutely dispassionate comportment with her. Anyway, one reviewer says Haines had a hand in the set design, and if you love "geometric Deco" (as I do), they are to die for. I kept pausing and studying the sheer complexity of the opening set - way, way cool. And the old folks, C. Aubrey Smith, and Charlotte Granville, are great as Brits who know how to let their youth evolve. A quite amusing scene when the two react to the "sex book" that the young folk are reading. Some things never change. A refreshing move, even if Haines only really engages with the other men and is too much the buffoon with the women for my liking.

The History Boys (2006)

Tarted-up gay soft-porn

[24 October 2011]

If there's a gay theme and the New York Times/New Yorker love it, it is going to pure rich-liberal fantasy, and this movie lives up to that bill in spades. It is completely unbelievable from start to finish, with each character preposterous in a unique way. It is ginned up with references to American popular and literary culture to cement its appeal to our vast market, and I guess that worked, but to me was just further evidence of the outlandish nature of this exercise. The movie begins as a rah-rah there-is-nothing-greater-to-strive-for than English academia (sappy to me), and then degenerates into melodrama. I watched it stupefied with its sheer insistence that it is more than gay soft-porn. It ain't, right down to the two stick-figurish female figures, one the "ugly moll" (whose Delphic utterances are typical rich liberal platitudes); the other the "pretty moll" (who has few lines of no import). It never ceases to amaze me what the rich-liberal establishment passes of as art, such as The Book of Mormon, of which this is in the same breed.

Harper (1966)

Decent but vastly overrated

[22 September 2011]

Just another boy movie...

This movie is not the 3.5 to 4* that the mainstream reviewers give it. The characters are either two dimensional or not convincing. Laurein Bacall and Shelly Winters are cartoons, while Paul Newman is lazy and campy, perhaps effective to the hero-worshiping audience of the day, but not holding up well after almost 50 years. He doesn't work as the loser-detective in the Sam Spade mode - literally doesn't work - especially the scene where he calls his ex-wife from a pay-phone, where he plays for laughs, winking at the audience that we all know he is the megastar that he is. I think the mid-60s is when stars became celebrities - famous not for the talent but just for being famous. Don't get me wrong, Newman was talented, but he has the visible air of "slumming it" in this movie, and the movie became unconvincing to me as a result.

Julie Harris is effective as a junky musician, but her lover, who to me was functionally gay, also wasn't effective.

The movie ultimately is a boy-chase/buddy movie and doesn't capture anywhere near the sexual complexity that underlie the great noir detective movies of the 40s and 50s. It is camp, which is important to understand (pace Sontag) but otherwise not art.

I think if this had been a 2* movie I wouldn't have bothered to review it but because I had been hyped by the rich liberal critics (and I know what they think it is such a great movie - they are part of the same elite as Newman and therefore understand why he played the role the way he did) to thinking I was going to see a great work of art, not an exemplar of camp.

Dangerous Corner (1934)

Conventional Morality again takes it on the chin

[13 September 2011]

Watch this movie from 1934 (from a 1932 English play by J.B. Priestley)to see how early the English-speaking elite began to smash up their values, with a direct path to the mayhem and anomie of the 1960s/70s, and now the politically correct straightjackets of the early 21st century. I don't give it a 10 because of the excisions made to satisfy the censors - too bad for that, as it would have made the movie even more delicious.

For delicious it is, watching people throw up on their values as they wear magnificent gowns, even if we are living with the consequences now. Watch it to see what we need to recover...

Priestley is of the GB Shaw school - tradition and the wisdom of our ancestors is out the window, with no one knowing at the time what great new world awaits us. Unfortunately, we know now, and owe it all to these misguided geniuses for dramatic dialogue.

Prestige (1931)

What a drag it is being imperialist

[12 September 2011]

Yes the movie is full of racists, has racist language but I wouldn't call the movie itself racist - the whites are shown no mercy. This movie is worth seeing for its realism, and the way it ends. No spoilers here, but I found the ending eminently satisfying, unlike other reviewers. And Ann Hardy is such a gem - so much better than the stars who held the screen for longer than she (Crawford, Davis etc). Adolph Menjou is a perfect snake. Melvin Douglas captures arrogance - and its consequences perfectly - and the "natives" are brilliant in their forceful presence.

Another pre-code movie that is startling contemporary (except for the "racist premise") in its depiction of how the relationship between a man and a woman can be impacted by events beyond their control, especially if they ignore their environment.

Gasbags (1941)

Would that the Nazis had been comical

[11 September 2011]

I am deleting after 49 minutes out of 77. You should stop earlier or not watch at all. The song, Yesterday's Dream is sweet, but everything else about this movie is preposterous and not funny. I guess it cheered up some kind of Brit, but it deserves the 1 star I saw it receive. Not a woman in sight, and these guys are all over each other in the broadest hammiest slapstick that doesn't work given the gravity of the subject matter. And it is really low budget, with the air scenes silly in an almost fascinating way. So if you have an interest in British low-comedy, this is the show for you. Otherwise, hit the delete button much sooner than 49 minutes - shame on me for thinking this movie could not be as bad as that 1-star indicated. Sometimes the mainstream critics are right.

The Locked Door (1929)

First 5 minutes are must see - then degenerates into a campy melodrama

[10/10 · 11 May 2011]

The first five minutes need to go viral on YouTube to prove to young people there is nothing new under the sun. It is a brilliant portrait of the bright young things getting s**t-faced on a boat, especially the women (all women the following: "I want a drink. I want a drink!! I want a drink!! I want a drink!!!"; and "I want a high ball. I want a high ball! I want two highballs!!"; and finally "I want two quarts of gin."). It is a priceless portrait of the emancipated flapper misbehaving! For old movie snobs, La Roque is an interesting villain - see why his career when nowhere with the talkies - he does villainous too believably for the audience of that era to ever let him have a mainstream role again. Stanwyck shows her chops, though she has yet to get her full form and is a little stagy.

And you might enjoy the lipstick on Willian 'Stage' Boyd, not well done, but Mr Boyd clearly enjoys wearing it - checking out his bio, I am wondering if he was a bad, bad bisexual - the orientation everyone loves to hate? A young death at 46, so it would make sense that he was abandoned by both men and women...

That Forsyte Woman (1949)

Icky people doing icky things

[7/10 · 21 January 2011]

Notable is the absence of children. If this were real life, the hot Errol Flynn and the still fecund (albiet long-in-the-tooth) Greer Garson would have generated children. Is Flynn supposed to be gay? Who knows - he does pick out his wife's outfits and directs her attire, so that's pretty flouncy, but he plays the role super straight, so it is all a bit nutty.

The movie's a 7 because of the costuming and the sheer lush absurdity of it all. Walter Pidgeon as an English artist? He's got this super-corporate mid-Atlantic American voice going - again, beyond lunacy.

And of course, Janet Leigh - that wild, untamed mid-century Californian, as a stuffy late Victorian Brit? This movie doesn't work on so many levels that it becomes an animal house of conflicting cultures, accents (Harry Davenport - the archetypal midwesterner, plays the patriarch), and appearances (Robert Taylor would make a good grinch who stole Christmas), that it remains irresistible.

I think every technicolor movie made in the 1940s is worth watching, so I have a natural bias here. Those of you with less liberal allowances may want to take a pass here, unless you have an insatiable appetite for watching Greer Garson (the reigning "Most Glorious Missus" (i.e, MGM)of the eponymous studio during this period) achieve the amazing combination of (1) suffering, while (2) being so above it all, which she again does very well here, and this time in technicolor.

And if you buy into the Ivy League world view, you'll like the movie too: creative artists are the higher order, and the mercenary middle class (i.e., those of who don't have tenure and have to hustle for a living) is scum.

Finally, don't come here for any insights into the human condition. Everyone is infantile here ~

The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961)

Pretend she's a man and it all makes sense

[6/10 · 18 January 2011]

Worth seeing as a gay lib film. It is "Tod in Venedig" updated to 1960 Rome, and so that the plagiarism is not so obvious, the old queen's sex is changed. Otherwise it is Mr Mann's storyline verbatim.

Lush lush colors and a great window on the decadence of Rome ready to be renewed (albeit while damaging the Church) via Vatican II.

And Warren Beatty at 22? Like Splendor in the Grass, he is all dick, all the time. His acting is decent, but as an Italian, he is laughable. And I guess that is how he lived his life. Be careful what you wish for...

As for Leigh, clearly she was playing her mentally ill self, and she does a fine job.

Finally, the movie is worth seeing for Lenya brilliant performance as a procuress. As she sings in the 1950s version of The Three Penny Opera: "What keeps a man alive? He lives on others? As long as he can forget, they're his brothers..."

The Show-Off (1934)

Bringing the Irish boy home?

[8/10 · 15 November 2010]

I think if viewed as a culture clash - upper-middle-class Puritans who are slipping economically - and desperately need some new blood - having a head-on collision with Irish-Catholic culture - where forgiveness always waiting around the corner.

As someone who grew up with that clash - though it was Puritan vs. Italian-Catholic, with the Irish as referrees, I loved this movie. The Puritans were so perfectly portrayed, and WHO CAN CRITICIZE Clara Blandick? If she isn't waving the "white" flag better than anyone for our culture going down in all its glory - as the WASP business class did in the 1930s, then I don't know who..

Clara is superb and her character pegs Tracy for the blowhard that he is. But he is more than a blowhard - he is genuinely tender with Madge, and his love for her - albeit the puppy love of a couple in their 20s - is real and sincere.

Clara reminded me of a maternal grandmother - granted, grandma, born Charlotte Evelyn Hemmings, was on the serious narcotic known as Roman Catholicsm by the time I knew her (having converted 20 years before I was born), and to a lesser extent, my dear mother, gone these three years, who not only was on Roman Catholicism, but also on real narcotics after having Irish triplets, courtesy of the Latino known as Daddio.

Anyway, I love these portrayals of Yankee/Puritan/WASP womanhood (don't all happy people love their mothers?) - both Clara and Madge are honest to the core - and like Kay Johnson in Passion Flower - they are willing to accept the "other" - in this case the new blood that is Spencer Tracy - daughter lovingly, mother grudgingly.

No coincidence that Kay Francis is the femme fatale in Passion Flower - like Tracy she was culturally Irish, right down to the convent schools (when Ma could afford them).

So watch this movie as a culture class and enjoy it. The Irish had a few things to teach the white people...

Passion Flower (1930)

A decent portrait of culture clash

[8/10 · 15 November 2010]

I just reviewed "The Show-Off" which has a similar - Irish vs. WASP thing going. In Passion Flower it is a bit more subtle, but Kay Francis is still most definitely the other - liberal, louche, a free-thinker.

In reading the other reviews, I note the historical value mentioned about the depression. This movie scores an 8 for me because of the priceless line about the battle of the sexes.

And of course it is Zazu delivering it - I think someone should gather her speaking roles in all her bit parts and string 'em together, end-to-end.

As I recall (I saw the move several years ago, but believe I watched this scene several times, I was so wowed by it), Zazu is mopping the floor and chatting "men trouble" with Kay Johnson. "I don't know about men," says Zazu. "They can be handy during the day and entertaining at night, but that's about it. I don't know about men." HANDY DURING THE DAY and ENTERTAINTING AT NIGHT? Now don't that just sum up the plight of 21st century manhood? And Zazu figured it out in 1930! Evewryone should watch this movie for that one scene. It is one of the best.

The Other Side of Midnight (1977)

Opera or soap opera?

[10/10 · 3 November 2010]

The ending is almost operatic in its perfection, but not quite (I would prefer the last 3 minutes just excised. However, we can't expect either Sidney Sheldon (if the ending is true to the book - I have no idea) or Hollywood to "get" true "Italianate" endings.

Anyway, I found the story quite believable and the plot twists effective. And the acting is great. Marie-France Pisier is grandly, operatic - and entirely convincing - as the forgotten lover who will not let go. Susan Sarandon was also excellent as a creatively brilliant corporate-type who latches on to the wrong man. and Clu Gulager is perfect as a squeaky-clean corporate guy (why would one want to be any other way?) except for his way-too '70s hair-do (but then that problem pervades the movie, which is set from 1939-47). Now about John Beck: why don't I know more about him? He played the "dick" (not in the detective sense) superbly - letting his "little head" lead him about until the movie's end, while his "big head" is blithely amoral and absolutely oblivious to the emotional needs of women - something that Italian opera composers exploit so well, as does this movie. And the parade of cynically amoral, seedily corrupt Europeans gives the movie real authenticity as a portrait of the decadence that enveloped wartime Vichy France and its immediate aftermath, and, unfortunately, has gotten worse throughout all Europe (including the UK) since then.

So this movie is not the "BOMB" that Siskel & Ebert (or whoever wrote my 1998 movie guide) say it is - it is not dreck, but quite a fine, compelling drama, set in the sexual turmoil that was World War II.

The Crash (1932)

Who knew such decadence?

[9/10 · 19 April 2010]

A very high rating from me because of the baldness with which husband pimps wife and wife accepts same. Nobody does FEMALE better than Ruth Chatterton (with that of course the name of probably her most famous flick, and a must-see), and here she does it as tour-de-force - even making me doublecheck her age - she is passed off as "young" in the movie while at least 39, but she does the femme so well, I did need to review. Anway, the amoral way in which Ruth and George attack the early scenes is truly delicious. Sure, the movie finally adheres to convention, but not until after 45 minutes of such elegant pouting and flirting. And Ruth is never an object, always the center of her universe, casually creating and destroying per the whim of the moment. She has never let me down - I wonder if her later alcoholism was a way for her to hold onto just how good and memorable she is? George Brent (blank slate Irish immigrant that he was)is a good foil to her in this tailor-made role.

Metropolitan (1989)

It follows the oldest plot line in the world

[5/10 · 19 April 2010]

The dialog is stilted and affected but who cannot like a movie full of good-looking young people? I saw it on the large screen just about 20 years ago and recall thinking it was important. Don't think that anymore, but it is engaging, and sometimes fun. It doesn't play as well on the small screen as the large - its low budget aspect becomes clear, but it remains endearing. It would probably work better as a stage piece - it is as old-fashioned as the Jane Austen books it features. And what happened to these actors/actresses - none appear to have advanced to greater lights, but maybe they truly were playing themselves? Anyway, the tenderness is enjoyable.

Diary of a Chambermaid (1964)

A waste of time

[1/10 · 19 April 2010]

This movie is presented as "pitiless, devastating" etc, but really it is just an exercise in artistic snobbery - the characters are either two-dimensional - the gentry, who are simply symbols of lust, jealousy, or avariciousness, or one-dimensional - the servants, who are either victims or heartless. This movie is like an Ivy Compton-Burnett novel: Everyone is a caricature, who gets what she/he deserves, but what's the point? If you like stick-figures who are arrogantly set up to be knocked down, then this is the movie for you. If you like to explore humanity in all its complexity, then skip this shoddy theater piece. The only good thing is the French is clear and easy to follow, so helpful to those studying the language.

Make Me a Star (1932)

One of the great expositions on the "Price of Fame"

[9/10 · 20 April 2007]

This is high modernism at its best - a powerful recognition of the enormous power of cinema to both elevate and crush talent, told through the means of a simple "boy wants to go to Hollywood" story. It is so affecting because though it can be viewed as a relatively straightforward tragicomedy, it ultimately becomes a light but heartfelt meditation on the constraints that art places on the artist and the artist on the art. But that's what they were doing in 1932 - a particularly great year for Cinema - when the technology had really come together (this movie has music overlays, and film within a film), but the industry had not yet begun to self-police itself in the context of its political role in society, and to abandon the unself-conscious exploration of the latest literary forms. These themes - self-consciousness, the artist as victim to his art - themes that Joyce and Woolf were exploring in literature, can be found right here in "Make me a Star." The Pre-Production Code Enforcement movies almost always contain these nuggets, and I watch them no matter how badly rated the contemporary critics assess them. For example, this movie garners but 2 starts, yet I would put it as solid 3.5 (out of 4).

Stuart Irwin's acting is a tour-de-force: absolutely astounding at every turn, and the final scene had me in tears: Laugh if you well, his statement "I'm a clown" reminded me of the great aria "Rire Pagliacco" from Il Pagliacci - it was that kind of moment - the self-conscious realization that the actor and the role were one, but in contrast to the opera, here the clown accepts his fate rather than fighting it.

Ruth Donnelly has a cameo role and is her usual work-horse self - always great to see the old girl, and let's all work to put her into the pantheon of great stars, for she certainly was. The brilliance of her acting is that she doesn't thumb her nose at conventional morality, she doesn't know it exists. She is too busy in the day-to-day to understand the oppression of woman, but if confronted, she will make it clear that others may be oppressed, but she ain't (and you'll learn the hard way soon if you don't agree with her).

I do not know if the 1924 play includes the homosexual innuendo found in this movie, when Joan Blondell says to Sam Hardy, "You're not going soft on him, are you?" Regardless, this moment is fine, and there is no shame or circumspection in either Hardy's or Blondell's interchange - but unlike today you don't know or care whether Hardy is gay or straight, just that he's a great director and yes, he has gone a bit soft on Erwin. I need to research Sam Hardy, but his cameo here is superb.

And what else can one say about Joan Blondell, other than to say that the 26-year old she is in this movie could step into 2007 and deal with it just fine? - truly, completely liberated, but still with a tenderness to the conventional morality that she bows to but knew was slipping away. I don't know who insisted on down-playing the romantic angle between the role of Menton Gill and 'Flips' Montague, but this also makes the movie startling. Menton Gill could be gay and Flips just a 'girl-friend' - they really are equals here, whose only real sexuality is the desire to perform.

I taped this movie onto a DVD and am sitting my 5 and 8 year-old daughters down to watch this as soon as I can budget 1.5 hours for the three of us (or four, if Mom wants to join) to enjoy this together and to understand its lessons. It is a perfect antidote to the silly point our culture has come to, where celebrity qua celebrity is all that matters, and at least in the ephemera, talent is irrelevant. This movie reminds us that talent is everything, and there is a great price to pay for it.