This typical Cold War spy thriller, full of impossible to understand plot turns, bad guys and bad girls who turn to be good, maybe, doesn't have much going for it except Max Greene's (Mutzy Greenbaum) dazzling B&W deep focus photography and one of John Williams' first atmospheric scores. Phil Karlson, the director, who occasionally made a decent film, was hired and then fired by star/producer Richard Widmark who mostly snarls. Karlson does an OK job with the confusing script, but this is no THIRD MAN. If you stop trying to figure out what the hell is going on, and just watch the imagery, worth your while. Added bonus: Lots of excellent European character actors looking sinister and the luscious Senta Berger looking delicious in one of her first English language roles.
Reviews
8 Reviews
My Son John
(1952)
Hollywood in the Dark Ages
6 December 2021
Much maligned in its day as one of Hollywood's much too fervent attempts at atonement to the HUAC and McCarthy for having once hired so many communists, this slick Paramount picture made in 1952 remains a social document that reveals the right-wing views some members of the film community held during those dark days. It glorifies an idealized small-town family. Dad (Dean Jagger) is a solid hard-working citizen, a Legioner who finds time to toss around a football with his two blonde athletic sons about to fight the good war in Korea; he's a man who goes to church every Sunday. The flaw in the perfect unit is mother--who else?-- and her curse of too much Mommy love; Helen Hayes, for some reason, too obviously dotes on the son (Robert Walker) who doesn't play football, doesn't go to church, and prefers the company of college professors, yes professors, to his own family. He is, horror of horrors, a practicing self-admitted intellectual.
Needless to say, we eventually learn that any spoiled child brought up this way cannot be up to good. Despite this silly propogandist view of the true values of decent American life, the film is very well directed by the great Leo McCarey, excellently acted by all the leading players. Robert Walker, in his last film, is particularly effective as the non-athletic son with heretic (read unAmerican) views. If the film had been made a decade or so later, his secret would have been that he was gay, but as this is 1952, the sin is political.
Needless to say, we eventually learn that any spoiled child brought up this way cannot be up to good. Despite this silly propogandist view of the true values of decent American life, the film is very well directed by the great Leo McCarey, excellently acted by all the leading players. Robert Walker, in his last film, is particularly effective as the non-athletic son with heretic (read unAmerican) views. If the film had been made a decade or so later, his secret would have been that he was gay, but as this is 1952, the sin is political.
Mr. District Attorney
(1941)
A lot for the money (1941)
6 December 2021
Mr. District Attorney (1941) is a particularly well-produced Republic Picture, coming as it does from a studio better known for its quickie Westerns and B-picture programmers. It is extremely well-staged and paced by British-born director William Morgan, who had begun his film career as a film editor. His previous experience shows. The script was co-written by Karl Brown, one of the few cinematographers ever to leave the camera behind to become a successful screenwriter; Karl had begun as a teen-age camera operator working for D. W. Griffith in the silent days. This film is a typical screwball comedy with an improbable crime plot, a genre popular back then, and features Dennis O'Keefe as the uptight Harvard lawyer, and Florence Rice as the wise-cracking girl reporter. They are not quite up to the dazzle of a Cary Grant and a Roz Russell, but they are both attractive and perfectly acceptable. Republic must have spent a good deal of money surrounding them with some of the ablest character actors in town, faces all of us recognize even if we can't name them-- among them, Minor Watson, Stanley Ridges, Charles Halton, Vince Barnett, and, for a flash, Dave Wilcox. Peter Lorre, who must have cost Republic a pretty penny to borrow from Warner Bros, is his usual evil self. Of all the fine cast, the ever-dependable Charles Arnt is the most memorable as the little sucker who falls for the no-good dame. As was so often the case, director Morgan went on from picture to picture, and as an editor, from TV series to series, rarely ever getting a chance to show his comic talents as a director again. Too bad.
Too Many Cooks
(1931)
A LITTLE GEM
5 December 2021
This sentimental but endearing 1931 Radio film was based on a successful 1914 Broadway play by the writer/actor Frank Craven, best remembered now as the Stage Manager in both the play and film of Thornton Wilder's OUR TOWN. Bert Wheeler, here for once without his long-time comic partner Robert Woolsey, is perfectly cast in the Harold Lloyd mode as an All-American nice guy. He is partnered with the ever-adorable Dorothy Lee, his co-star in many an RKO film to come. They are, as always, delightful and believable together; one is only disappointed that they do not break out into song and dance as they did in many a W&W RKO feature. They are surrounded here by a cast of small-town character actors, foremost of all, the excellent Robert McWade as Uncle George. Although McWade would go on working for another seven years, he was never given a part as good as this again. He would have made a superb Frank Capra bad guy, but others more famous got those parts instead.
The Inspector General
(1949)
Kaye surrounded
22 November 2021
Excellently directed and paced by the underrated director, Berlin-born Henry Koster, this Danny Kaye vehicle, his first after leaving Goldwyn for Warner Bros., has enough comic highlights to make even non-Kaye fans admit that, at his best, he was a comic actor of considerable charm and talent, particularly likeable whenever he performs one of the many parody songs written for him by wife Sylvia Fine. Kaye is surrounded here by a superb cast of the very best character actors in Hollywood: among them, Walter Slezak, Gene Lockhart, Alan Hale, Elsa Lanchester, Bryan Foulger, Walter Catlett, and the adorable Hearn brothers, all hitting the exact right note of believability without resorting to the often annoying mugging of their star.
The Night of January 16th
(1941)
Neither here nor there/ 1941
22 November 2021
This Paramount B picture made in 1941, based on a successful Broadway courtroom drama written by Ayn Rand in her playwriting days, is --let's face it--a mess. The one-set play was obviously much rewritten by Hollywood hands who set out to make a movie ["open up'] the bought property. In the process, no one seems to have decided whether it should remain a courtoom drama or become a comedy or be a bit of both The confusing plot is predictably improbable, mixing comedy and suspense in a heavy-handed fashion, all directed clumsily by Wm. Clemens. Robert Preston is appealing and so is Ellen Drew. Cecil Kellaway somehow shows up along the way for no reason at all, but does a delightful turn as a drunk. Cliff Nazarro, also for no apparent story reason, appears briefly as a double-talking gas station owner. Leon Belasco is also seen as the Cuban airplane steward who ends the film. The silent movie star, Nils Asther, in one of his few sound film roles, is the the debonair continental villain. Incidentally, this film was made the same year Paramount agreed to let one of their contract writers, Preston Sturges, direct his first picture. Judging from this picture, they certainly needed all the help they could get.
Doll Face
(1945)
An Exercise in Mediocrity
22 November 2021
A group of talented performers show up in this silly backstage story that might have been passable Fox entertainment in glorious Technicolor, even with its ordinary screenplay, had Zanuck in 1945 not decided to reduce it all to a low-budget black and white programmer with lots of cheap sets that only emphasize the mediocrity of the very forgettable songs by Adamson and McHugh, the uninspired choreography by Kenny Williams, and the by-the-book direction by Lewis Seiler, who had done many a gritty gangster film at Warner Bros, but showed no feeling for musicals. Handsome Perry Como, who could sing but wasn't much of an actor, was given little to do other than to croon while Carmen Miranda, who could do it all-- act, sing, dance--and who had stolen every Fox movie she had been in up until then, has just one song. A few years later, Vivian Blaine who plays the lead stripper would be unforgettable as Adelaide in the Broadway production and film of "Guys and Dolls," but here she does what she can do with a nothing role that even Alice Faye could not make sparkle. Dennis O'Keefe, a decent comic actor, is also wasted. A sad reminder of how bad B&W film musicals made on the cheap could be once upon a time.
Waterfront
(1944)
Low-budget fog
9 November 2021
This typical low-budget PRC Poverty Row feature with it's cheap sets was directed on the quick by Hungarian refugee director Steve Sekeley, born Istvan Szekely. As this film shows, he was not without talent. It is so cheaply made that PRC even cut down on the amount of fog used on the waterfront set. Most of the production budget must have gone to pay the two leads: John Carradine is, as to be expected, very good as his usual snarling self, but the best performance comes from that excellent character actor and dialectician, Irish-American J. Carol Naish, who as the Nazi ring leader sounds at times like Peter Lorre. (During the years this film was made, he was also the voice of the Italian Luigi on the long-time radio show Life with Luigi.) The rest of the cast is not very good. The romantic lead, Terry Frost, is wooden, particularly in a car scene shot against a background projection. One wonders what this now unknown director, who once made some decent films in Europe, might have done if he had the budget fellow Hungarian, Michael Curtiz, was given over at Warner Bros.
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