Director: Ray Enright
Two of the best fast-talkers of the early thirties – Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell – star in Havana Widows, one of their nine screen collaborations. As expected, the picture delivers wise-cracks by the dozen: in one scene, Farrell is dismayed to find Guy Kibbee sleeping on the bed in her hotel room and asks Blondell, “Has he got his knees raised or is all that his stomach?” Frank McHugh and Allen Jenkins, character actors that were always a welcome sight, mirror each other as hapless schlubs who are wrapped up in the women’s schemes. McHugh was talented as a drunk and welcome in small doses – he mastered the art of slurring speech and delivering his familiar high-pitched chortle – but his act is overused and runs stale before too long. The same could be said for much of the picture. In the climax, the narrative dissolves into a live-action cartoon. A chase through a chicken-coop sees feathers and chickens flying out of windows; Guy Kibbee is pursued while crawling on a roof in his pajamas. The zaniness is not quite fit for the stars – Blondell and Farrell are both so good at delivering their repartee, and when the film dismisses such humor for a witless madcap finale, it inevitably disappoints. As well-rounded as the cast is, so much plot is packed into such a meager running time that little stands out, and actors like Kibbee and Lyle Talbot are short-changed. Girl Missing, released earlier the same year and also starring Glenda Farrell, did the gold-digging chorus girl act much better.
Director: Robert Florey
A pair of gold-diggers are on a murder case in Robert Florey’s Girl Missing. Glenda Farrell, one of the great wise-crackers of the early thirties, is paired well with Mary Brian, who is the dimmer one of the two but also the better man-eater. On screen, they have a satisfying, fast-talking chemistry – one wishes that they starred in a number of similar mystery thrillers, as opposed to the hard-boiled male detective type that was too-often recycled. In a memorable opening scene, a pathetic sugar daddy played by Guy Kibbee has suspected Brian of being after his money, and he requests that she accompany him to bed to prove her loyalty. In the morning, having refused to accompany him, Brian finds that he has left her with the $700 hotel bill for making a fool out of him. Once one of their old friends from the chorus goes missing and a substantial reward is offered for her discovery, they pursue the culprits of a convoluted scheme that places the victim’s husband as the sucker. Ben Lyon, the husband, is dull as a leading man, but Brian and Farrell, especially, inject every scene with impeccable comic timing and wit. Screenwriters Carl Erickson, Don Mullaly, and Ben Markson balance the comedic elements with the mystery plot with impressive ease, contributing to Warner Brothers’ pre-Code reputation of producing quickly-paced, highly entertaining yarns packed with plenty of attitude.
Director: Alfred E. Green
A third of the way into I Loved a Woman, Kay Francis looks into Edward G. Robinson’s eyes as she bids him farewell. Their love has been requited at last, however she has encouraged him to continue his business venture over pursuing their romance. “There’s nothing in it but you and your dream! That’s the way I see it! That’s the way I’ll travel to the top! […] Promise me to be ruthless! Ruthless as our love!” Ayn Rand would blush. A disaster of an attempt at a prestige picture, neither Robinson nor Francis were at all enthusiastic to be attached to the project, and Francis would later dismiss it as a complete dud. The bulk of the blame should rest on the shoulders of screenwriter Charles Kenyon, who adapted a novel by David Karsner. In every line, the characters speak their thoughts directly and often with hilarious bluntness – “I’m going to corner the Argentine grain market! [...] Just to see if it can’t be done!”, says Robinson unsolicited. One gets the sense that the project was massacred in the editing room, as the eventual reunion between Robinson and Francis happens without any suggestion of its imminence. Concerning a 40+ year period, Alfred E. Green fails to establish a pace or create any sort of momentum, and as he filters through wartime stock footage and newspaper clippings, one begs for a reprieve. That it finally comes with the least graceful of final lines – “I’m sleepy.” – is quite fitting. The production values are there, and Genevieve Tobin fares well in her performance as Robinson’s bitter wife, but considering the talent attached to the picture it is astounding that they produced such a flop.
Director: W.S. Van Dyke
Just after completing A Free Soul, the film which earned him his only Academy Award (he was also nominated for Best Director for Madame X in 1929), Lionel Barrymore went into production on Guilty Hands, a “perfect murder” thriller that sees him face off against Kay Francis in one of her best pre-Warner Brothers roles. Director W.S. Van Dyke – a reliable enough asset at MGM who famously shot his pictures at an impressive speed – begins the picture in a darkened train car as Barrymore, a former district attorney, argues that, “in certain cases, a murder is justifiable.” The inciting cause for his eventual crime comes when a wealthy client reveals that he intends to marry Barrymore’s daughter, whom the DA clearly has feelings for that are beyond paternal. In the simple device of allowing the audience in on the identity of the perpetrator, screenwriter Bayard Veiller (most famous for directing the important starring vehicle for Norma Shearer, The Trial of Mary Dugan, in 1929) initially forces the audience to root for the charismatic Barrymore as he out-thinks those that might incriminate him. While the element of mystery is absent, the suspense is just as pronounced as the genre demands – in one brilliant, moody sequence, Francis traces Barrymore’s steps on the night of the crime. With Veiller’s script – rife with infidelity, incest, and murder – and the game performances, Guilty Hands satisfies as a Hitchcockian thriller, a precursor to Shadow of a Doubt.
Director: Herbert Brenon
Kay Francis’ star was on the rise in the early thirties after her noted performances in pictures like A Notorious Affair, The Virtuous Sin, and Ladies’ Man at Paramount. It was RKO, however, that perhaps most influenced the fruitful course that her career would take over the new decade. On loan from her home studio, RKO’s Transgression accompanied the top-billed Francis with impressive sets, a talented supporting cast, and a noted director of the silent era, helping to establish her as a leading lady and a go-to talent for this brand of high melodrama. The film is elevated above many of its adulterous brethren for its intelligent, dignified treatment of Francis, who comes into her own as a woman without ever feeling as though she’s being shamed, as even the risky pre-Code pictures were wont to do. In the first act, her husband, a businessman, uproots the budding relationship when he leaves to spend a year in India for his work. These early scenes establish the already problematic relationship, and particularly his prioritization of his career over his wife. One can hardly blame Francis, then, for being swept away by a Spanish aristocrat who initially seeks to spoil her with tremendous adoration and respect. She heeds his advances with reluctance, and eventually accompanies him to his villa, where his less-than-ideal intentions are finally revealed. The way that Francis plays these moments at the mansion – with a thunderstorm raging outside, echoing her own inner anguish – suggests that she acknowledges the character’s naivety, but nonetheless understands the tragic plight of a woman who has been discarded and feels trapped in a precarious marriage. Director Herbert Brenon had trouble adjusting to talkies and, indeed, he makes some unusual choices in the picture – such as shots in which a wide-eyed Francis stares directly into the camera to deliver key lines – but Francis’ talents, as well as the great production values, provide much pleasure for fans of the genre.
Director: Lloyd Bacon
Among the most celebrated of screen beauties in the late 1920s was Billie Dove, a Ziegfeld girl who famously starred alongside Douglas Fairbanks in Albert Parker’s The Black Pirate. She would be pursued by a number of men in Hollywood, including a brief romance with Howard Hughes, before retiring from the screen in 1932 to spend time with husband Robert Kenaston, an oil executive. Her earliest available sound picture (many of which are reported lost) is A Notorious Affair, a by-the-numbers adultery melodrama in which she plays the loving wife to Basil Rathbone’s violinist. Rathbone was a major success on the stage and, after his performance as the lover of Norma Shearer in 1929′s The Last of Mrs. Cheyney, would find a number of starring roles on screen. Aside from his charms at Sherlock Holmes in that series of films, his performances were often stilted and forgettable. He is perhaps never worse than he is in this pre-Code picture, falsifying an absurd Italian accent and single-handedly undermining the drama with laughable camp. It is certainly not a coincidence that director Lloyd Bacon seems to have little interest in his performance, or even a wish to further explore the capable yet forgettable ingenue in Dove, but instead affords Kay Francis the lion’s share of his attention. Playing a man-eating vamp, Francis wears short hair and with her deep, sultry voice, captivates with an androgynous eroticism. The only great joys of the picture are in seeing her chew men up and spit them out, at one point heartlessly complaining, “I never noticed you had pale blue eyes before. I hate pale blue eyes.” Bacon affords her a number of luminous close-ups and allows her character to occupy the screen alone in several introspective moments, an acting luxury that he doesn’t afford her co-stars. However, as good as she is, one still can’t quite recommend such a dull affair, and Francis’ best work was yet to come.
Director: Terry Zwigoff
“How perfectly goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure”, quotes Robert Crumb, reflecting on a favorite quote of his disturbed brother, Charles. The sarcasm that veils the pain in that simple line is beautifully emblematic of Crumb itself, Terry Zwigoff’s harrowing documentary about the underground comic artist behind Fritz the Cat. At one point in the picture, Charles admits to his brother that he often had to fight the urge to bash his skull in while they were growing up. They both share a laugh. As much as Crumb is a great documentary about art criticism – and, indeed, it takes a step back at several moments to allow a critical discourse to occur between scholars of Robert’s work – it is, more significantly, a film about family, and neuroses, and terrible repression. Ofttimes one has to wonder whether they’re getting too close to the characters – Charles and Maxon seem particularly unbalanced, and the film almost provokes the audience to fancy themselves as amateur psychiatrists as they observe the two – but such is the dilemma within all great personal documentaries. Moreover, as much as the film dwells in their despair, it is also important to note the beautiful humanity that is captured in other scenes, such as Robert helping his son develop his artistic talents. The empathy with which Zwigoff treats his characters is noble, and as such Crumb never feels condescending, but instead remains an incomparably tragic portrait of an unusually gifted family.
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Director(s): Albert & David Maysles
Of all of the films to emerge from the New Hollywood movement – including Easy Rider, Head, and Bonnie and Clyde, among others – perhaps none better encapsulates the disillusionment facing youth culture in the late 1960s than Albert and David Maysles’ non-fiction telling of the fateful Altamont Free Concert, Gimme Shelter. The pictures begins, as one might expect a concert documentary to begin, with a lively performance of one of the Rolling Stones’ biggest hits, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”. In the next scene, the Maysles’ bring the band into the editing room to watch elements of their production, which includes cryptic references to the deaths that occurred at the concert that the film addresses. After that, a performance from the same Madison Square Garden concert that began the picture is played – this time, however, it is muted by a sense of foreboding, its pleasure no longer so vivid. Anyone could have made a harrowing picture about a spectacle like Altamont, but it is the Maysles’ ability to structure the material that makes Gimme Shelter one of the great American documentaries. Although the filmmakers are often spoken of in terms of naturalism, they were, in fact, quite deliberate and manipulative in the editing room (in the very best of ways). After the horrors of Altamont have concluded and the crowds walk home through the fields, one reflects on the myth perpetrated by Woodstock – that music could bring people together. Altamont was the antithesis of such optimism. If Michael Wadleigh’s important documentary Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music was about people coming together, Gimme Shelter is about people being driven apart. It not only deconstructs the image of the Rolling Stones through its unwillingness to mythologize the band, but it tears apart and exposes the falsity of the 1960s as a “peaceful” era.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 2011, jean-pierre dardenne, luc dardenne, the kid with a bike
Director(s): Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne – the Belgian filmmaking duo with two Palme d’Ors to their name – have established an uncompromisingly naturalistic visual aesthetic over their six features since 1996′s La Promesse. Each picture could also be said to involve a significant moral burden, ultimately culminating more often than not with a hopeful, redemptive note. Great as each of their films are, one grows suspicious that their world is so specific that they risk self-parody. The Kid with a Bike, their latest, while utilizing the familiar handheld camera work and telling a story subjectively through a pair of distinct points-of-view, comes as a bit of a departure. The kid of the title – dressed in bright reds and blues – is, relatively speaking, visually flamboyant, and their occasional use of music is startling. While these aesthetic differences are slight, it is the film’s sense of the world – it, as the Dardennes themselves have put it, is reflective of a “fairy tale structure” – that most distinguishes it from their previous, better efforts. The convenience of the plot is not necessarily a hindrance. After all, every one of their narratives involves a fairly contrived set-up. What is frustrating, however, are its compromises in character by way of broad generalizations – it dwells in the cliches of the guardian woman, the wayward son, the absent father. Although there is the occasional moment of surprise – Cécile de France nearly gives up on the boy after a pivotal scene – nowhere is the dynamism of The Son, for instance, in which the characters didn’t correspond with the genre-defined traits that one might expect them to fulfill. As much as one can admire the way that the brothers so adeptly skirt sentimentality – and they quite often dwell in cute, idyllic moments before complimenting them with dread-inspiring sequences – their simplifications of what made them such exciting voices comes as a great disappointment.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 1947, black narcissus, emeric pressburger, michael powell
Director(s): Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
In the 1940s, the British filmmaking duo of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger completed a series of masterpieces in what was their most prolific decade. Although A Matter of Life and Death can more accurately be described as the first film in which Powell, Pressburger, and cinematographer Jack Cardiff utilized color as a means of expressing the interior emotions of a character, perhaps no singular effort is more emblematic of their collective talents than Black Narcissus. As a film very much about repression, so much is completely left unsaid – Deborah Kerr, calmly determined and angelic in her nun’s veil, is the image of Christian stoicism in the face of David Farrar’s relentless sexual pursuit. The highly-stylized finale is a virtuoso effort of technicolor cinematography, but just as important is the way in which the moment is led up to with the shadows on Sister Ruth’s face and the burgeoning use of red (including a dramatic washing of the screen with the color). Kathleen Byron, certainly a talented actress, was never quite as haunting as she is here, and it is a circumstance in which her performance can be credited to Jack Cardiff as much as it can herself – he suggests her temperament in the angles created on her face and the hues with which he lights her. Beyond the picture’s pleasures as a psycho-sexual, quasi-horror film, the ending sequence is a beautifully reflective echo of the newly independent India. As the colonizers leave the mountain, Farrar looks back to Sister Clodagh, wiping the rain from his face, as if pondering the world that this group of people had never fully credited or understood.
