eschetic-1 Reviews

Maytime (1937)

A great, nearly uncredited MGM debut

[7/10 · 16 March 2009]

It's fascinating to read in all the well justified praise (and occasional cavil) lavished on the glorious hodge-podge that is MAYTIME, not one word of the great feature film debut at MGM which the film also represented.

Since MAYTIME - first filmed in 1923 in a version more faithful to the original but as a "silent" film, lacking ALL of the original music - was contractually obligated to ONLY credit music to the great Sigmund Romberg (whose original show it had been when it opened on Broadway on August 16, 1917, to play for a then astounding 492 performances with songs the studio did not want to use like "Jump, Jim Crow"), the studio called in their youngest contracted composer/lyricists (then only 21 and earning a mere - but lordly during the Depression - $200 a week), Bob Wright and George (Chet) Forrest, who would be willing to do virtually the entire score (not allowed to actually compose, but adapting public domain material under chief studio composer - and early Oscar Hammerstein collaborator - Herbert Stothart's supervision). Wright and Forrest were relegated to billing only for "Special Lyrics by..." (and not even acknowledged for THAT by the IMDb, although the credits are there on the screen!). The film's "Best Score" Oscar nomination didn't even go to Romberg or supervising composer Stothart, but to Nat W. Finston, the head of the studio's Music Division!

It was years before "The Boys" would break into the public consciousness with stage adaptations of their own like SONG OF NORWAY and KISMET, and their own (always their first choice) original music for shows like KEAN and GRAND HOTEL, but the result on MAYTIME (including their faux Russian opera for the film, drawn from Tschaikowsky's 5th Symphony, translated from their original English into French by another poet not credited by IBDB - in a talk at the New York Sheet Music Society in 1989, Bob Wright said it was U.S. Sigey, but the screen credits say Gilles Guilbert) was a triumph of craft and carefully catering to the strengths of the stars who they were writing for. Witness in particular a couple numbers ("Song of The Carriage" and a number where Eddy proposes to prepare a ham and egg breakfast for MacDonald) crafted for the limited acting range of Nelson Eddy, giving him something to DO while he sang!

LOTS of great Broadway names worked under almost forgotten under-billed capacities (Larry Hart of Rodgers & Hart fame did lyrics for the Maurice Chevalier MERRY WIDOW!), but Wright & Forrest were among the most prolific and best, and MAYTIME was their first major film "credit." It's only a pity (given the high quality of their few surviving original scores) that in the ways of Hollywood, MAYTIME also "typecast" them into adapting other composers' works for the bulk of their careers.

Charlie Jade (2005)

Fascinating/frustrating: imagine Blade Runner by Charles Dickens

[6/10 · 10 March 2009]

More solid S.F. (as Asimov defined it) than pop Sci-Fi, this series which has scrambled to find audiences on three continents will probably always frustrate fans while it fascinates them until there can be a DVD release to appreciate its many stately paced virtues without the incessant, mood destroying commercial breaks.

Imagine the dark, fascist ruled world like that of Blade Runner (like Blade Runner, built around a hot but well roughed up film-noir detective - Colorado native Jeffrey Pierce - later seen or heard Stateside in quality work from NCIS to Eli Stone and The Bourne Conspiracy); toss in parallel universes of lighter but similar complexity (the lightest could have been borrowed from the lush but potentially threatening island of Lost) and a classic "Mars Needs Women/Water" umbrella plot. Now draw it out like a 21st Charles Dickens spreading his intricate plot and character descriptions over as many YEARS as possible of serial publication (pausing every hour or so to blow something up in as scenic and non-sensational way as possible), and you have the look, feel and details of CHARLIE JADE.

It's heady stuff for discerning ADULT viewers, and not remotely for the short attention-span set (which may be why it has failed to take off in television which this style of story telling is not ideal for), but the quality of the work is first rate in almost every aspect from acting to cinematography to scoring - even if all are almost too self consciously trying to recapture the aura of Blade Runner. On DVD or DVR, this is close to addictive caviar which any self respecting S.F. or film noir fan owes it to themselves to try for a couple hours - but *live* on commercial television, it will probably always remain difficult to get into.

The Dangerous Christmas of Red Riding Hood (1965 TV Movie)

Odd little snapshot of a by-gone era

[4/10 · 15 January 2009]

What do you get when you throw a ton of money at top Broadway talents for a "sure fire" holiday special and toss in a popular rock group for demographic appeal? Well, historically and forever anything that people assume will be "sure fire" isn't - and THE DANGEROUS Christmas OF RED RIDING HOOD (or OH WOLF, POOR WOLF! as the sub title ran - a spoof on the relatively recent Arthur Kopit stage farce "Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mother's Hung You In The Closet and I'm Feeling So Sad" and typical of the "wit" of the script) is a perfect example.

Top billed Cyril Ritchard was (and remains) beloved of American audiences for his Captain Hook in Mary Martin's PETER PAN (with part of its score by Jule Styne); Liza Minnelli had already made the beginning of a major mark on stage Off-Broadway in a revival of BEST FOOT FORWARD and had won a Tony for her Broadway debut in the marginally successful Kander and Ebb musical FLORA THE RED MENACE (her incongruous first costume here looks like something from that show); Styne and Merrill's FUNNY GIRL was in its second year on Broadway, and they were both working on shows for the following season (Styne would win a Tony for HALLELUJAH, BABY - Merrill would come acropper with his BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S closing in previews). How could they go wrong with a little hour long holiday special?

Quite easily it turned out - although nothing much was lost at the time. No one had a lot to lose, and with Styne and Merrill as Executive Producers, there was no one to push for better. The work was tossed off without the care and craft that would go into something which had to sustain a run on stage. It filled a time slot and was decent fun even if it was no one's best work ("Ding-A-Ling" is fairly definitive proof that pop/rock music was not Styne or Merrill's métier).

Not one particularly distinguished tune or lyric emerged (the "Red Riding Hood" number sets the tone of sustained silliness with its anachronistic rhymes and jokes), and the wit in the book credited to Robert Emmett never went much beyond the only partially fulfilled concept of telling the story of "Red Riding Hood" from the Wolf's point of view. Despite the presence - mainly for the joke of the group's name - of the pop group "Eric Burdon and The Animals" in the supporting cast (they do awfully well in the Lee Theodore's sprightly 60's choreography), the show essentially disappeared after the initial November 28, 1965 Thanksgiving broadcast over the ABC Network (one supposes the link was EVERYONE going to Grandmother's house for Thanksgiving Dinner) until a cheap black and white holiday VHS video (a kinescope?) appeared in discount Christmas bins a decade or so ago.

With a slightly better print now available on DVD, the show is an interesting view for what is there. Ritchard is, as always, a delight in the lead role of the Big not-so-Bad Wolf narrating the piece in flash-back from his "cell" in the zoo, even when allowed to raise his perpetually arched eyebrows a trifle too high. The very young Liza Minnelli (Red Riding Hood - "her real name was Lillian") is just approaching her full powers and the potential is obvious. The talent is still very raw, but it is undeniably impressive ('though it would take a far stronger director than Sid Smith to reign her in and get a polished performance). It is clear why, the following fall, she would be rejected in her audition for Sally Bowles in the original CABARET - Sally was supposed to be worldly but *not* supposed to be a first class performer, and No one would believe a Minnelli Sally producing the required character shadings or that she could do no better than performing in a basement in Berlin at this point in her career.

Fanciers of early 60's pop music get a glance of both Vic Damone as Minnelli's Woodsman/love interest and The Animals as the "Wolf Pack. Both were popular at the time, and while nothing in the Styne/Merrill score is as good as anything in Merrill's score for BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S (which finally got recorded more than 25 years after it closed on Broadway!), nothing in it is painful either and all is musically very well performed by all concerned.

Pleasant little artifact and a diverting holiday trifle. Nothing more, nothing less . . . but it might have been much, much more.

Midnight (1934)

A find for connoisseurs; the unsophisticated may well pass

[6/10 · 13 January 2009]

MIDNIGHT (reissued by "Guaranteed Pictures" in 1947 as CALL IT MURDER with eighth billed Humphrey Bogart - now famous - elevated to top billing for his supporting role) was originally filmed at the Biograph Studios in Queens, New York, for Universal Pictures, based on a Theatre Guild production of the same name (but called IN THE MEANTIME during its tryout tour).

While the stage production disappointed the critics and was not extended beyond its initial subscription run (48 perf., December 29, 1930 - Feb. 1931 at the Guild Theatre), Claire and Paul Sifton's examination of the flaws in the idea that "the law is the law" regardless of justice or tempering with mercy was interesting enough to justify Universal's committing a cast from the top of their second tier to turning out a decent "programmer" to fill the demand for films to keep the screens they controlled occupied between their major releases and training stars in the making (like Bogart and Sidney Fox).

The original play concerned the foreman of a jury, a man named Edward Weldon (O.P. Heggie on screen), which had condemned a woman for the murder of a man who was leaving her - only to find, two acts later, his daughter (Fox) in a similar situation.

Director Chester Erskine (at the start of a career which would see well remembered work on such "A" releases as THE EGG AND I, ALL MY SONS and ANDROCLES AND THE LION, working as director, writer and producer for another 40 years), while unable to produce the figurative "silk purse" out of a possible "sow's ear" of a melodrama, opened up the play, originally set only in the Weldon living room, with excellent - and given the period, surprisingly sophisticated - crosscutting between the condemned woman, the daughter's developing affair and the moral quandary around the Weldon himself.

If the 30's structure of the argument may strike many as dated today, and the "deus ex machina" solution to one of Weldon's problems too pat to be genuinely satisfying, they probably are - but the elder Weldon's overly strict, unbending interpretation of his moral and civic obligations is hardly unknown today as an excuse for lack of thought or bigotry. A remake with more "modern" technique might indeed be well received, but the implicit melodrama would be just as blatant.

While Humphrey Bogart's role is a relatively small one (although it is woven through most of the film), it makes for legitimately fascinating viewing as a transitional role for the handsome actor who had been playing stage juveniles. He had had 15 Broadway roles in the 12 years - and 9 films in the three years - before making this film, but would only have two more Broadway credits afterward (but 66 films). His Gar Boni in MIDNIGHT is very well done in a more modern style than many around him (see the similar effect the young Helen Hayes achieved with the same then "fresh" realistic style in 1932's FAREWELL TO ARMS) before finding the "world weary" persona that won career-making acclaim for his "Duke Mantee" opposite Leslie Howard on Broadway and screen just two years later.

It may be of some interest that on stage, the supporting role of Arthur Weldon (played in the film by future director Richard Whorf) was created by actor/playwright Clifford Odets.

Finding a good print of MIDNIGHT or even CALL IT MURDER may not be easy, but the search may be worth it. Don't expect a polished "modern" film, and shallow film buffs who don't appreciate history or context will probably hate it, but true film connoisseurs shouldn't miss this one for what IS there.

The Tale of Despereaux (2008)

Much as I hesitate to admit it, the best animated feature I've EVER seen

[10/10 · 28 December 2008]

I'm highly reluctant to give unmitigated praise to any film - there's almost always *something* which could be improved upon even in the best films, but on exiting THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX today I found myself for the first time in 30 years longing to go back for an immediate second viewing. It was, simply, the best animated feature I've seen...ever. Even in this relatively strong year for animation, if ...DESPEREAUX doesn't wind up with an Oscar for its creators for Best Animated Feature, there's something very wrong with the world.

Part of the wonder is that the story telling, like the best story telling, borrows from and builds on the works of all the masters who went before. Just as J.K Rowlings borrows from almost every fairy tale, legend and religious allegory we've read to build Harry Potter's world, so ...Despereaux recalls great story tellers from Charles Dickens to Hans Christian Anderson and in other ways from Isaac Asimov to Clive Cussler. There are necessary dark passages (just like classics from SNOW WHITE to ENCHANTED), but nothing any more "scary" than the first STAR WARS film) and even more moments of joyous enlightenment. The political allegory which relates the best stories to the real world for the adults and precocious in the audience is both richly present (the "Mouse World" where children are taught to be perpetually frightened - "no-one is *born* that way" - is a perfect simulacrum for the world our soon-to-be-EX-President and Vice president tried to create) and sufficiently subtle to allow inveterate "Red-Staters" to enjoy the story and perhaps even get the message (I'm a life-long, if liberal, Republican myself).

The CGI animation is by far the best and most layered we've been given to date, blending styles from absolute believability for the furry creatures to beautiful stylization for the humans and brilliant "flat work" for the dreams and fantasies of both, while incorporating references to classical masters from Titian to Vermeer for the general "look". That "look" also recalls in exciting ways the best of the best comic book memories for those of us old enough to remember the glorious Scrooge McDuck adventures when the detailed *locales* on quests (remember the search for lost Inca treasure in the Andes?) was half the fun.

In an odd but satisfying way, the film makers also harken back to the glory days of the old Hollywood studio system when wonderful character actors would appear in different roles adding depth to their characterizations. Watch the "food critic" in RATATOUILLE and the "head rat" in ...DESPEREAUX side by side. Their fates are different, but there's a great double feature there waiting to happen.

Despite the somewhat obvious ultimate "messages" of the damage snap judgments can cause and the healing power of apology, this film seems to have proved too sophisticated for some critics, perhaps in part because of one "politically incorrect" - or at least unfortunate - sidetracking moment when a little serving girl who almost brings about tragedy and a seemingly unfeeling prison guard are both drawn as overweight. At the same time however, the characterizations allow the audience to recognize an important plot point between the two before the film shows them - and making the audience feel smarter is never a bad idea.

"Bottom line": no-one who loves good animated film or just plain wonderful movies in general should think about missing this enchanting layered fantasy. You - and any technical children lucky enough to go with you - will not have a more satisfying 100 minutes in the movies this year. The audience of all ages I saw it with was moved to applause at the end - and how often does that happen?

Pushing Daisies (2007–2009)

One of the two best shows on television at the moment

[9/10 · 20 September 2008]

The mind boggles at the nitpicking of previous reviewers (but, thank God, not the actual professional critics) over this amazingly fresh, witty romantic mystery/comedy with its large, perfectly cast ensemble.

Yes, many of the elements had been suggested by earlier, less successful programs. Shakespeare recycled uncounted plot and style elements from earlier plays through his own remarkable sensibility (the use here of a recycled scene from Hitchcock's THE BIRDS late in the first season was simultaneously dazzling and hilarious). Like the more conventional but equally satisfying CBS serial mystery MURDER SHE WROTE, ABC's PUSHING DAISIES starts with a solidly likable cast and concept (Lee Pace reanimates corpses for a minute - including his dog and the girl he loves - to get clues to their deaths. A second touch returns them forever to a post-living status. Exceed the minute, as he obviously must with his love and his dog, and there are dire consequences) and brings on a parade of solid theatre and film pros as corpses and suspects and puts them through ever more inventive hoops to keep the wonderfully off-kilter concept ever fresh.

The gorgeous cinematography gives the show a bright yet amusingly arch look unlike anything else on television and perfectly supports the high fantasy tone of the stories. The writing is fresher than anything else currently on the broadcast schedule with the possible exception of the best science fiction show since Star Trek's NEXT GENERATION, EUREKA over on the Sci-Fi Network.

How well the talented rotating staff of writers and directors will be able to sustain the level of creativity of the all too brief (9 episodes) first season is anyone's guess, but while it's here, this confection is the champagne, caviar and marzipan treats on a weekly schedule overloaded with flat ginger ale, bare toast points and carob.

Indiscreet (1958)

Charm for miles & terrific cast, but all have done better

[7/10 · 14 May 2008]

Well, let's face it. It's hard to go wrong with any film which stars two quintessential MOVIE stars like Cary (PHILADELPHIA STORY) Grant and Ingrid (CASABLANCA) Bergman, and INDISCREET is famous because of them.

If you love old fashioned (and INDISCREET is very old fashioned) boulevard comedy as I do, you'll have a lovely afternoon with this screen version of Norman Krasna's successful Broadway play, KIND SIR, where a glamorous stage star has a charming, bantering "thing" with a successful (almost TOO rich for credibility), glamorous and *apparently* unattached businessman/diplomat. (To quote the film: "there must be a catch in it somewhere.")

The problem isn't the catch (you've already guessed by now what it may be, and there's nothing wrong with that - this sort of thing is all about execution - and don't be so sure it's the *obvious* catch), but that the chemistry is just slightly off this time. It worked better a couple years earlier on Broadway with Charles Boyer and Mary Martin for a season's run, but chemistry is a tricky thing.

In black & white for Hitchcock a few years earlier, in NOTORIOUS, Grant and Bergman had it in spades. In INDISCREET, they just miss, and I don't think it has anything to do with the intervening years and Rossellini. Grant would do this sort of thing to *perfection* a few years later in THE GRASS IS ALWAYS GREENER (Deborah Kerr and Noel Coward background music); Bergman would do it *close* to perfection a few years later ('though Bacall had done it better on stage) in A CACTUS FLOWER with Walter Matthau in the Barry Nelson role; and even Krasna would do it better a few years later in Sunday IN NEW YORK, but the chemistry and tone is just a bit off here (Krasna's dialogue which tries to sparkle lies there in the soap suds (too many tries for AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER tears where CACTUS FLOWER laughs are called for) despite everything director Stanley (CHARADE) Donen does to make it shine and, for me, the bubbles burst and soufflé is served flat.

As Bergman says of another early in the film, "I tried to love him, but I just don't." Good things keep cropping up in the film - when my attention wandered, we heard Bergman's hotel Front Desk man and my eyes would jerk back to the screen. He SOUNDS just like Walter Slezak (the back of his head even looks like him!), and you *have* to love anything with Walter Slezak in it (don't miss COME September if you love boulevard comedy!), but we never see his face and he isn't credited.

Ah well. A near miss. A clear miss, but a largely pleasant one.

M. Butterfly (1993)

Deeply disappointing if you know the play - intriguing if you don't

[4/10 · 30 April 2008]

There is a problem with adapting brilliantly "cinematic" stage work to the actual cinema - even if the adapter is the talented original playwright. Works conceived for highly stylized stage production where the viewer's imagination is an active participant lose much of their impact - and occasionally essential content when the literal settings are laid out for the viewer. This is partly because helpful subtext and motivation are frequently removed in the more "obvious" medium, and occasionally the writer actually even removes important subplots feeling them less essential with the viewer distracted by all the "real world" visuals on the big or small screen.

This was even more true in the superior film of Michael Frayne's COPENHAGEN where the original staging gave the viewer a second layer of meaning with the actors acting out the "chaos theories" which were the underpinnings of the play - giving the audience an essential understanding of the physics the movie's historically accurate sets couldn't - but in losing the vast sweep of the red ramp circling the stage in M. BUTTERFLY's story of espionage, illusion and self deception, we lost the ability to instantly segue from one location and time to another carrying the subtleties of each to the other and actually understand Mssr. Gallimard's obsession and frustration after it is exposed. Moving the final confrontation between the leads from Gallimard's acknowledged imagination to the literal back of a police wagon removes any believability, impact or magic.

Even worse, the casting of the two leads seriously undercuts the author's efforts by giving us *not* a plodding diplomat who might conceivably not consider himself a sexual catch (John Lithgow in the original) but a prissy Jeremy Irons as Gallimard (wonderful actor in other roles) more in BRIDESHEAD REVISITED mode from 12 years earlier, where we question his very heterosexuality from the beginning.

Whether it is John Lone's fault as "Song" or director David Cronenberg's in his filming of the character, but ALL surprise in the role is removed (tellingly, in every stage production the role is billed only using the first INITIAL of the actor playing it). Imagine THE CRYING GAME with the crucial "second" role played by Harvey Fierstein. As wonderful an actor as Fierstein is, NO surprise or even believable illusion in the context of that story. Hwang kept the structure of his story but eliminated the illusion which made it believable and the surprise which justified the structure.

All that said, if you DON'T know the story and the first telling, the elaborate settings and supporting cast (occasionally distorting in themselves with the casting of brilliant scene-stealers like Ian Richardson as the Ambassador) give an interesting visual picture of China just at the cusp of Mao's late-life destructive "Cultural Revolution" from a ground level perspective - the literal aspects of which were an essential plot point but more subtly finessed on stage.

Curiously, SHOWING the reality of the revolution and "re-education" camps makes the credibility of the "Paris" portion of the story almost non-existent, and the one area there the tools of FILM making could have improved the story, showing how Song and Gallimard were exposed, is ignored entirely.

M. BUTTERFLY isn't the first film which didn't understand or support the genre of its source (think Stephen King's THE DEAD ZONE which tried to make a horror-thriller out of a sci-fi mystery), and it won't be the last. If you liked the flawed but stately beauty of Rob Marshall's MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA, there's much to enjoy in Cronenberg's slow moving film of M. BUTTERFLY, just don't go looking for the Tony Award winning play. If there's an upside to the film's commercial failure and almost total disappearance after the initial 1994 VHS release, perhaps it's the hope that another filmmaker will have a crack at the great underlying property.

Charlie Chan at the Olympics (1937)

Decent entry, but "pulled from circulation shortly after its release"?

[7/10 · 21 March 2008]

Some unnamed source at IMDb alleges that CHARLIE CHAN AT THE OLYMPICS, a film capitalizing on the then recent 1936 Berlin Olympics (taking place in Germany under Chancellor Hitler) and released on May 21, 1937, in the U.S and in the early fall of that year in Europe, was "pulled from circulation shortly after its release because it takes place in Nazi Germany." Could someone please define "shortly after its release"? The film, while sympathetically portraying the civilian police force in Berlin (interestingly played for irony and possibly surprise or subtext by frequent film villain Frederik Vogeding), pointedly incorporated actual newsreel footage of Jessie Owens' Olympic triumph which was so upsetting to the Herr Hitler. The film plot had considerable hurdles to surmount in avoiding the identification of the foreign power trying to steal the "McGuffin" military device. Most U.S. or British films of the period would have been more blatant in assuming the national guilty party, but Germany was still a major market for U.S. motion pictures (even if the Chan character himself must have been an anathema to Nazi Party leadership).

Even with the unsettling Anschlus in Austria and the Munich Crisis over the dismembering of Czechoslovakia; with the invasion of Poland and the formal start of European hostilities in World War II still a little more than a year away (U.S. entry into the conflict more than four years away!), America and much of the rest of the world was doing its best to ignore distressing realities within the Reich. While CHARLIE CHAN AT THE OLYMPICS had to do a fine dance to play to that desire to turn a blind eye, it largely succeeded. It is difficult to believe that 20th Century Fox would withdraw an entry in the wildly popular Chan series in anything which could be realistically considered "soon" (anything less than six months). A specific DATE of the withdrawal would be appreciated.

While the film over all may be one of the lesser Chan efforts, it has moments (the initial set-up in the U.S., the travelogue race to Berlin, the scenes in the Olympic Stadium and the final confrontation with the killers) which are as good as any in the canon. To be dismissed as "pulled from circulation shortly after its release" if it is demonstrably not true would be unfortunate.

Charlie Chan's Courage (1934)

Still lost as of 2008, but a shadow found

[4/10 · 19 March 2008]

Who wouldn't want to find a lost Chan film? ...especially one from the early Warner Oland years when Fox was lavishing first rate writing talent on the solid Biggers inspired films.

No one has yet unearthed an actual print (in '34 at the end of the circulating run of a film more than a few well worn prints made their way into the private collections of local projectionists, so there may still be hope), but in issuing the original Chan films still in their vaults on lovingly restored DVDs, 20th Century Fox has included a "recreation" of this lost film (studio actors reading from the production script while production stills are shown of the scenes being read) as a "Bonus Feature" on the first of the Sidney Toler Chans, CHARLIE CHAN IN HONOLULU (in the 4th set of Fox Chan DVDs). They had done this once before with a "reading" of CHARLIE CHAN'S CHANCE on the DVD of THE BLACK CAMEL in the third set.

As was the case on the ...CHANCE reading, the actors for the reading are not remotely appropriate to the original actors shown or characters as written (hence the low ranking), but based on this bare bones reading and the photos, the actual film - based on the Biggers novel "The Chinese Parrot" - should be a solid addition to the canon when eventually found. Chan is hired to deliver "the Cavanaugh Pearls" from Honolulu to a San Fransisco jeweler's and on to the buyer (despite ambiguous directions as to his location) when the reluctant seller's son's poor management has left her estate nearly bankrupt.

Naturally complications ensue in scenic locales - especially in San Fransisco, a ranch in the desert and various planes, trains and automobiles. No parrot seemed to be mentioned in the film version, but as was frequently the case, not everyone is who they seem and Charlie too passes himself off as "a poor Chinese laborer" to observe events - and become a suspect in a murder.

BBC Play of the Month: In Good King Charles's Golden Days (1970) Season 5, Episode 5

Lost minor gem of a play - worth rediscovering

[7/10 · 18 March 2008]

Almost forgotten today, this amusing Shaw play from the same year he won an Oscar for his screenplay for PYGMALION lacks something in structure - not a lot actually happens when good King Charles (II) and half his court (three mistresses and the more confrontational brother fated to succeed him as the unlucky James II) drop in uninvited on Sir Isaac Newton's home - but it more than makes up for it in the almost nonstop laughter of the first two acts of miscommunication, insult humor and crossed ideologies. There's also the leather clad founder of the Quaker movement (unable NOT to be a "Friend" even to the notorious but accommodating actress "friend" of the King, Nell Gwen) and Newton's protective housekeeper for good measure.

Ironically, the quieter coda of Act III between the King and his much ignored Queen (reminiscent of the "Interlude" between a fictional king and his mistress from Shaw's 1929 APPLE CART) brings a satisfying end to the festival of ideas and half remembered history.

While largely unperformed today and to date unmounted on Broadway, IN GOOD KING CHARLES' GOLDEN DAYS does hold the surprising record for the longest run of any Shaw play in New York for an Off-Broadway production starting January 24, 1957, and it's easy to see why. Based on a recent (3/17/08) reading by the "Shaw Project" at the Players' Club, this may well be simply Shaw's funniest play. It may not offer a satisfying plot like some of his best - ARMS AND THE MAN, PYGMALION, MAJOR BARBARA or CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA (after Shaw's 1925 Nobel Prize winner, SAINT JOAN, he seemed to lose interest in simple "story telling" to support his satires), but like his earlier examination of Caesar, ...CHARLES... does offer a warmly sympathetic view of a famous monarch (and what an ideal monarch could be) and a LOT of very satisfying laughter.

Someone should find and clear the rights to this all star abridgment to get it out on DVD for a wider audience to enjoy.

Men of the Sky (1942)

Recruiting short remains a colorful reminiscence of 1940's self image

[6/10 · 13 March 2008]

21st century eyes may see the stereotypes heavy handed (racist "gung-ho" "kill the evil enemy" pep speeches and sexist views of the women back home) and the introductory message to graduating air recruits in the Midwestern nasal twang of real life Army-Air Corps commander "Hap" Arnold quaint, but that accent was familiar to viewers when the film was first released. Give a listen on "archive.org" to famous radio news broadcasters H.V. Kaltenborn or Elmer Davis. The Army Air Corps (the army and navy each had their own air branches before a unified air force was later created) six months into the start of World War II was scrambling to fill its ranks with the best men it could find and Hollywood co-operated with "human interest" short.

Films like this (and full blown plotted programmers) combined promise of adventure, honor and idealized pictures of the nation's self image - what the fighting men felt they were being called upon to defend. Of equal concern - nicely addressed in this lavish Technicolor short - was the morale of those either left behind or working in war support production industries. They needed to be assured they were important too.

The image may seem too well scrubbed and naive at sixty plus years remove, but it was a fairly accurate picture of what most of non-urbanized "middle America" thought of itself in 1942 - and the little touches can be fascinating. A notable part in the latter half of the one reeler deals with domestic military facilities being camouflaged and defended "when they arrive" to attack or bomb them. In mid-1942, the tide of battle had not yet turned in Europe or the Pacific, and this was a real concern for the target audience.

MEN OF THE AIR may not be great film making, but it is a colorful and honest (if idealized) snapshot of middle-America at the start of an earlier crisis - just as it was coming out of the Great Depression and before the depth of rationing and total commitment to the war effort reached a country that thought of itself as safe.

An interesting side note is the subsequent career of the cast. Unless they were featuring pre-war movie stars who had been "called to the colors," these recruiting shorts usually tried to cast unknown "everymen" that the audience could theoretically identify with. When this film was first released as "filler" between the main films you paid to see in the theatre - just the way Turner Classic Movies is showing it un-billed today - the biggest recognizable name to most audiences was General Arnold, but most audiences today will recognize the faces and voices of several of the recruits and their sweethearts (even if you don't know their names immediately) from long careers in films and TV work after the war.

Worth a look - whether or not you feel called upon to set your video recording device.

The Enemy Below (1957)

A good film that was great in reshaping the story telling of its era

[8/10 · 25 February 2008]

There are many great, entertaining films set on and around submarines covering all aspects of the service and kinds of films from the silent era with 1916's CIVILIZATION through 1937's SUBMARINE D-1, 1943's DESTINATION TOKYO, 1958's RUN SILENT, RUN DEEP, 1959's delightful OPERATION PETTICOAT to the greatest of them all, 1981's DAS BOOT, but 1957's THE ENEMY BELOW will always have a special place in my heart.

It was the first film I saw when growing up which attempted to take a relatively objective view of the people fighting on opposite sides in World War II (or any war) without in any way dismissing the audience's understandable feeling that there WAS a right and wrong side in the over all conflict.

The "cat and mouse" conflict between the submarine commander and the destroyer captain is first rate, but the effect of seeing film story telling which respected both side's combatants (honoring the centuries old tradition at sea that once the battle is done, defeated mariners are fellow mariners in distress and treated as such regardless of side) was revolutionary. The final scenes between Curd Jürgens, Robert Mitchum and their crews are still remarkable and moving even if arguably contrived.

The film still plays well. The "special effects" to modern eyes will occasionally betray studio tank origins, but this remains a well made thriller with a heart and well worth 98 minutes of your time.

The First World War (2003)

Exhaustive but biased documentary disappoints despite high promise

[6/10 · 25 February 2008]

I was eagerly looking forward to this ten episode, four DVD set (8 hours and 23 minutes in all) based on the claims on the box of previously unseen film footage and newly accessible archival material from Central and Eastern European sources and most especially the ties to a book by a "professor" (presumably of history - Hew Strachan). Unfortunately, as assembled (in an initially promising chronological format) by BBC 4, there is little or no pretense of objective history and far too many omissions and distortions in the service of a strictly British viewpoint. The over all effect, despite copious quotations from participants on all sides, is like a history of World War II's "D-Day" told entirely from Field Marshall Montgomery's aide de camp's viewpoint.

The vast majority of film footage (mostly acknowledged - but not some of the obvious naval model work; possibly from faked "newsreels"?) is from 1920's and 30's film reconstructions and fictionalizations mixed with color footage of locales as they look today. While there is interesting period movie footage, it is almost all behind the lines and of close-up non-action scenes and TV cameras scanning across still photos.

One of the single most desired sequences, the final newsreel footage of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand leaving the Serajevo City Hall moments before his assassination, is only shown in the abbreviated and already much circulated cut. The reasons for Franz Ferdinand - a fascinating, complex figure given very short shrift here (and his Sophie) being in Bosnia that day (their 14th Wedding Anniversary) are totally omitted - as are any understanding of his reigning Uncle, Emperor Franz Joseph at the head of a great multi-cultural empire or the reasons the majority of Moslem Bosnia was opposed to Eastern Orthodox Serbian pretensions over their territory since both broke away from the shrinking Ottoman Empire.

Once the war itself started (you will be hard pressed to understand why from the sketchy story told here), the British documentary almost entirely ignores the original combatants but focuses on the British and their conflict with Austria's unsubtle allies in Germany.

Because of the British confrontations (to their considerable discomfort) with the Ottoman Turk, much time is spent on this front, allowing at least rudimentary (and that's about all) discussion of the source of the continuing Armenian question in Episode Four, but even here, there is almost no followable line of the way the Ottoman wobbled in and out of the war until finally committing to the Central Powers following the second Russian Revolution in 1917, removing them from the war. There is even less discussion of impact of the tenuous Japanese alliance with the Russians and British springing from the settlement of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905.

A far better look at the complexity of World War I (although neither attempt or claim to be as complete in the material covered), with far more actual footage from the period in question is available in several documentaries ranging from Hollywood GOES TO WAR to WORLD WAR I IN COLOR. This Anglophile attempt at history is only for the dedicated Anglophile looking for entertainment pretending to be serious, not the serious amateur historian who will see too many holes spoiling the fun.

Costuming the Vanities (1933)

Brief peek at important artists of an era (not necessarily at their best)

[7/10 · 15 December 2007]

The Earl Carroll VANITIES had been a moderately successful series of revues through the late 20's and early 30's, running over 200 performances at a time when a show could see a profit after a hundred or so. The most recent VANITIES however, at the Broadway Theatre (Carroll had lost his handsome new Earl Carroll Theatre in the crash - it would soon be converted to a Woolworth's) could only manage 87 from September 27, 1932. It may have been footage from this edition which is included in this little short, since Carroll's next venture, MURDER AT THE VANITIES at the New Amsterdam (207 performances - a film was released May 16, 1934) didn't get up until September 8, 1933, and the database doesn't say how late in the year this short was released.

In any case, it is fascinating to see Carroll and major stage and film designer and later director (not to mention father of Liza Minnelli) Vincente Minnelli at this point in their careers, in addition to examples of the massed choreographic exercises of the era.

For a more complete picture of how good or bad the VANITIES numbers (and subject costumes) were in the context of their time (and the suspicion is that the clips were from the failed 1932 VANITIES), have a look at the Marx Brothers first film, COCOANUTS, filmed just a few years earlier in Astoria, Queens, at the end of its Broadway run and tour of "The Subway Circuit" in 1929.

Spartacus (1913)

Curio value high, but....

[5/10 · 15 December 2007]

This appears to be the same film issued the following year in the United States as SPARTACUS (the database offers no other potential films within a decade of SPARTICO). One of the joys of the silent era was that film could more easily be a truly international medium merely by the insertion of new title cards of an alternate language, and these were literate and interesting - if at strange variance with the story as usually understood from history and later films.

Unfortunately, the surviving print I have seen was severely truncated to only about an hour and with no credits. The plot refers to Crassus (the brutal Roman Consul who put down the slave revolt led by Spartacus and crucified the survivors as a warning to future slave rebellions), but has no mention either of slave rebellion (other than a bit of adultery) or crucifixion ('though there is much use of throwing prisoners and revealed "bad guys" to the lions in the Colloseum). It is presented as more of a "sword and sandal" telling of a standard domestic intrigue romance and possible murder.

In the print viewed, the use of the title would seem to be merely one of box office convenience, but who knows what might have been in the missing half hour? The production values are relatively high with excellent period sets and costumes for 1913, but fast cuts away from actual action which might have been difficult or dangerous to film - falls from walls or confrontations with actual beasts - disappoint.

To modern eyes, the set pieces of massed groups trooping in and out don't excite, but the one-on-one interactions of Spartacus and his lover are, for all the period emoting, are involving. A complete print should he interesting.