2025 - February

01-02-2025

Greta Garbo made such a reputation for herself as the star of historical weepies that her first comedic vehicle was released with the (now legendary) tagline "Garbo laughs!" It must have been quite a shock for her fans to watch "Ninotchka" and never see that brave solitary tear roll down their idol's iconic stony face. Before 1939, Garbo was synonymous with quiet suffering (Garbo of misery). A mere two years later, she would make her final film appearance and become an infamous recluse evading legions of stalkers on the streets of New York like Laurence Olivier at the end of "Marathon Man" (Garbo of mystery). "Ninotchka", then, is a rare treat to see Garbo in unusual material - being playful, happy, and, yes, laughing.

The irony of it all is that in "Ninotchka", Garbo plays one of her sternest characters - the titular single-minded Communist envoy sent to Paris in order to negotiate a sale of diamonds "legally confiscated" from the old aristocracy. Troubles arise, however, when the former owner of said diamonds, the Grand Duchess Swana (Ina Claire), interferes in the sale and demands that the jewellery be returned to her. Complicated legal negotiations ensue with Ninotchka arguing for the Soviet state and Swana's toy-boy Leon (Melvyn Douglas), arguing on behalf of the Grand Duchess.

Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, arguably the greatest writing duo in film history, find a gold mine of satire in the situation. The Communist envoy is staying in the Royal Suite of a swanky Parisian hotel and is served by a waiter who is a Russian count. Meanwhile, Ninotchka's trio of sidekicks Iranoff, Buljanoff, and Kopalski become so enamoured by the Parisian lifestyle that they exchange their ushankas for top hats.

But this is, first and foremost, an Ernst Lubitsch picture so romance cannot be too far away. Before you know it, Ninotchka has unforgivably fallen for the caddish Leon and as their affair progresses all thoughts of Stalin and the homeland are repressed in favour of champagne and roses.

"Ninotchka" is so often referred to as an anti-communist film that I had come to believe it myself. After seeing the film, however, I beg to disagree. It's a Lubitschian fantasy, a romantic fairy tale that is about communism just as much as Cinderella is about child labour laws.

It is true that the film does turn its strong satirical edge mainly on Soviet Russia but Wilder & Brackett's satire of life in the Eastern bloc is not only accurate but it is also immediately relatable to anyone who's lived there. In fact, in many ways, it's far sweeter than the comedies actually made behind the Iron Curtain!

A more persuasive argument could be made that the film is pro-capitalist. After all, its chief running gag is repressed Soviet communists attaining personal and financial freedom through their exposure to swanky Parisian life. There is a lot of truth here as well, however, as denizens of the Eastern bloc could attest. Let me put this way - there is a reason why "Dynasty" was the most popular show behind the Iron Curtain and why "Columbo" was Romania's favourite detective. In both cases, it had more to do with the luxurious sets and costumes than the quality of the writing.

More importantly, however, "Ninotchka" does not concern itself with such didactic matters as political talking points. This is a film which uses politics only as hurdles for our protagonists to joyfully hop over on their way towards a kiss. If it has any political message, it's one against repression! It's a film which gleefully discards such repressive societies as the USSR or, for that matter, the French haute société, and argues instead for the freedom to love, wear goofy hats, and listen to music instead of the news on the radio.

The closest the film has to a villain is neither a communist nor a capitalist. It's the smarmy, deceitful Swana whose villainous motivation is not politics but jealousy. She wants Leon all for herself and plots to have Ninotchka sent back to Russia. Ina Claire is quite superb as the nasty Dutchess who's shed her Russian accent to hide her bitterness beneath a thick layer of snobbishness. However, in true Lubitsch fashion, there is a compelling humanity to Swana, who is all too aware that much like her royal status, her youth is rapidly slipping through her fingers.

The romance between Garbo and Douglas is simply marvellous. I'm not sure whether Garbo had much of a future being funny but her charisma sizzles on the screen and she could have erotic tension with a lamb chop. Douglas, meanwhile, is a first-rate comedic foil. A mix between the caddishness of David Niven and the nimbleness of Fred Astaire.

But it's Iranoff, Buljanoff, and Kopalski, played by reliable members of the Lubitsch stock company (Sig Ruman, Felix Bressart, and Alexander Granach), who steal the picture with their hilarious side quests. Their buffoonish trip to the Paris train station is among the funniest scenes I have ever seen in my life. Played out like a section from a silent comedy, it is proof positive that Lubitsch was just as good at visual gags as he was at shooting hilarious dialogue scenes.

Written by Wilder & Brackett, the film's script is imminently quotable. To reveal a single joke, however, would be like revealing the killer's identity from an Agatha Christie novel. The film's construction is a tad messy (I'm sure it has upwards of five acts) but every line is a zinger and the humanity they give to each and every character is positively disarming.

Fast-paced, ruthlessly funny, and charmingly romantic, "Ninotchka" is even better than its reputation would suggest. It's the rare Hollywood picture which breezes past propaganda and surface-level politics to deliver a universal message of love. Tonight, Garbo wasn't the only one who was laughing.

4/4

02-02-2025

How's this for a meet-cute? A man comes to a store looking to buy pajamas but because he's thrifty he only wants to buy a pajama top. The shopkeeper is outraged by this request and calls the man a communist! Just at that point, a woman interrupts their conversation and presents a solution to their problem. You see, she's also looking to buy a pajama but she's only interested in pajama pants.

Even decades later with many more fondly remembered films behind him, writer Billy Wilder still proudly claimed that this meet-cute was his idea. He was rightly proud as it's an imaginatively clever and witty prologue for a romantic comedy. Not to mention that it's on just the right side of being sexually suggestive to be deemed tasteful and sophisticated while also providing a few furtive giggles for the more discerning audience. If that's not the Lubitsch touch, I don't know what is.

The film in question is, of course, Ernst Lubitsch's "Bluebeard's Eighth Wife" written by the great duo of Billy Wilder & Charles Brackett. It is the third in my increasingly more enjoyable semi-marathon of Lubitsch pictures and also, unfortunately, the weakest so far. After the undisputable masterpiece that was "The Shop Around the Corner" and "Ninotchka's" wildly imaginative combination of broad political satire and romance, this minor screwball comedy feels rather conventional and a tad sleepy.

But back to the plot. The man is Mike Brandon, a brash American multimillionaire well played by Gary Cooper. The woman is Nicole de Loiselle, a penniless member of the French aristocracy played by the devilishly charming Claudette Colbert. Of course, Brandon falls head over heels in love with the quick-witted Nicole but she's not so terribly keen on him.

The first half of the film is quite enjoyable even if it dutifully hits all the expected plot points of a screwball comedy. The dialogue is full of zingers, the actors are full of charisma, and the French setting gives the film a nicely exotic flavour. I enjoyed Mike's abortive attempts to woo Nicole with the help of a Louis XIV bathtub and there is some of that amusing Lubitsch visual flair to keep things interesting. Especially good is a crane shot following the shopkeeper's ascent up the corporate ladder in order to clear Mike's bizarre pajama request.

However, the film falters in its second act which sees our protagonists hitched far too soon. Namely, Nicole agrees to marry Mike but on their wedding day learns that he's already been married... a whopping seven times! Suspecting her new hubby of being an incorrigible lothario, she launches a complex plot to tame him.

"Bluebeard's Eighth Wife" is based on a play by Alfred Savoir and its stagy origins show quite badly in this second half. The film suddenly becomes stuck in the Brandon household - a rather bland-looking art deco apartment which began to bore me within minutes. Lubitsch, who was so adept at making the similarly interior-bound "Shop Around the Corner" visually dynamic, fails to inject any kind of visual pizzaz in the proceeding preferring to largely stage the film like a proscenium play.

The usually nimble writing team of Wilder & Brackett similarly struggle to make the plot clear and sensible. A sudden time shift between the two halves left me confused and it took me a good few minutes to pick up on what this newfound situation was. Why is Nicole treating Mike so coldly? Why is Mike suddenly acting so erratically? The character's motivations remain messy and unconvincing. Meanwhile, the logic of Nicole's plan to tame Mike's urges is creaky at best even by the rules of screwball comedy.

I gather that the original play is a rather short and thin affair so Wilder & Brackett had to pad out their script with additional characters and subplots. They introduce a whole host of potentially amusing supporting players who end up playing no role in the narrative whatsoever. For example, a very funny Elizabeth Patterson shows up as Nicole's imperious Aunt Hedwige and then promptly disappears without a trace.

The most egregious victim of this is David Niven who plays Nicole's bumbling fellow aristocrat Albert. He keeps popping up throughout the film for no particular reason so I assumed that Wilder & Brackett were setting up his character to play some part in a later plot point. Unfortunately, the climax of his entire role is to be a punchline in a mildly amusing and wholly predictable throwaway gag.

The biggest problem with the film, however, is that I never for a second believed that Nicole and Mike are truly in love. Colbert and Cooper are terrifically charming actors but they share absolutely no chemistry. As a result, their zingy back-and-forths feel less like lovers' quarrels and more like debate practice. Consequently, I never became invested in their romance. Whereas, the witty one-upmanship between Garbo and Douglas in "Ninotchka", for example, felt like an elaborate seduction ritual, Colbert and Cooper verge dangerously close to marital abuse.

Combine all this with some cringe-inducing 1930s misogyny and a truly uncomfortable comedic scene in which Cooper spanks Colbert, and the whole becomes less charming than the sum of its parts.

Still, while I did expect more from a Wilder/Brackett/Lubitsch team-up, "Bluebeard's Eighth Wife" is mostly a pleasant watch. It never breaks from the conventionalities of the genre and it has few big surprises up its sleeve, but it delivers its laughs confidently and elegantly. Colbert, especially, is very funny but the picture is stolen by Edward Everett Horton who plays her scheming father. Wherever there's money to be earned, skimmed, or pocketed, he shows up with a few ideas at the ready. Part of the reason why the film's second half feels so stagnant is the fact that Horton is absent from it.

3/4

03-02-2025

The film opens on a moonlit Venetian night when a suave baron has a date with a glamorous countess. In what appears to be a rather mundane scene, the two exquisitely costumed courtiers exchange saccharinely trifle dialogue ("I shouldn't have come," moans she. "But you came," coos he.) But nothing is quite as it appears in a good picture and in a delightfully unexpected cutaway we find out that the countess is actually a thief named Lily (Miriam Hopkins) getting ready to rob the baron blind. Thankfully, the baron is also a crook, so he doesn't really mind. His name is Gaston Monescu (Herbert Marshall), a famed burglar who supposedly once walked into the Bank of Constantinople and walked out with the Bank of Constantinople.

The saccharine tone of the scene never changes but the method of their courtship does which turns the previously familiar scene on its head. Instead of cooing sweet little nothings into each other's ears, Lily and Gaston begin picking each other pockets until they've stolen each other's hearts. By the end of the scene, they're crazy about one another and so are we.

Ernst Lubitsch had a real knack for beginning his films with a bang and "Trouble in Paradise" is no exception. Of course, it's a lot easier to make thieves into loveable rogues when they're played by such charismatic actors. Herbert Marshall, unfairly forgotten nowadays, has the most laidback screen presence I've ever seen. Perhaps he doesn't have the striking good looks of Gary Cooper but he oozes charm and seems to glide across the screen. His smooth voice is the perfect match for his silky suave demeanour. As wonderful as Marshall is in the role, I think that his co-star Miriam Hopkins rather steals the picture from under his feet. Hopkins has an entirely different screen presence - impish and feisty - and yet they are the perfect pairing.

After this brief Venetian prologue, the film flashes forward a year when we find our protagonists teamed up in Paris. Their latest mark is Mariette Colet (Kay Francis), a filthy rich heiress who quickly falls for Gaston's wily charms. Intrigued by his directness and lack of deference, she first hires him as her secretary and then tries to recruit him to be her lover.

In an ordinary caper film, this is the point at which a well-planned con would begin to go awry. In "Trouble in Paradise", however, the con continues going just as smoothly as planned. It's Gaston, however, who begins to waver if ever so slightly and a potential for a love triangle develops.

Like all of the Lubitsch pictures I've seen so far, "Trouble in Paradise" suggests a great deal more than it confronts. Gaston's true feelings for Mariette are hinted at and then briefly exposed but there's no time for him to act upon them. The two may have feelings for one another but they're a poor match destined to move in opposite circles.

Societal norms play a great role in the film. The Parisian haute société is aghast enough that Mariette is developing feelings for her secretary, what would they say if she shacked up with a thief?! As in "Ninotchka", Lubitsch takes a lot of pleasure in undermining and satirising the performative morality of the rich. In one of the film's best scenes, Gaston points out that even though they're more than willing to turn him in to the police they'd be far less eager to report a company director skimming from the top.

If I had any criticism to level at "Trouble in Paradise" it's that Kay Francis' prim heiress is no match for the typhoon of charisma that is Miriam Hopkins. There is no real suspense as to which one Herbert Marshall will choose. But curiously, Lubitsch doesn't seem to be all that interested in suspense. Just like "The Shop Around the Corner", this screenplay by Samson Raphaelson could have easily been played as a fast-paced farce or even a broad screwball comedy. Instead, Lubitsch focuses on the characters and turns the film into a surprisingly low-key comedy of manners.

What makes the film even more fascinating is that it never tries to minimise the hypocrisy or the corruption of its protagonists. As likeable as Lily and Gaston are, there are no attempts to make them moral or palatable to the middle class. They're not stealing Mariette's money to pay for surgery or in order to survive. In fact, for the most part, they seem to be doing it for the thrill of the chase! On the other hand, the buffoonish haute société is portrayed in all of its bizarre primness. This is, after all, interbellum France when all the archaic rules of the game were still in effect. For that reason, certain scenes (especially Mariette's garden party) reminded me of a certain Jean Renoir film.

For a film with so much grey morality, "Trouble in Paradise" is riotously funny. Raphaelson's script is full of quotable one-liners and delightful exchanges which could rival the best Howard Hawks comedies. The supporting players are wonderful as well and I have to note that this may be the only film in which the entire credited cast is absolutely hilarious. I love Robert Greig's mumbling butler and C. Aubrey Smith's perpetually frowning company director. The funniest of all, however, are Charles Ruggles and Edward Everett Horton as Mariette's ill-fated courtiers whose amorous advances are always met with flat rejection. A few of the uncredited members of the ensemble also deserve some praise most of all Fred Malatesta who, in perhaps the film's funniest scene, stars as the simultaneous translator between a Frenchman and the Italian police.

I also have to praise Lubitsch's extraordinarily fluid visuals which show that as early as 1932, he embraced the advent of sound in a way most of his contemporaries never would. His camera is positively untethered and more than once flies around sets and miniatures. Even more impressive is the lightning-fast editing which gives the film its unstoppable pace. Just look at the extraordinary ease with which Lubitsch dispenses with exposition through nimble montage sequences or the way he repeatedly cuts on key lines to emphasise their importance. No, there's none of that stilted visual quality here that most films had in the early 1930s.

Finally, there's W. Franke Harling's deliciously vivacious score which illustrates the action throughout in a manner similar to silent film accompaniments. For example, when a character thinks back to Venice, an excerpt from "O, sole mio!" is briefly heard. And when Gaston speaks about his adventures in Constantinople, Harling underscores his speech with an Arabic-sounding cue. Most amusing of all are the vertiginous arpeggios heard whenever Gaston runs up or down Mariette's tall stairs.

"Trouble in Paradise" is both charmingly delightful and morally complex which I suppose is the famed Lubitsch touch. As fast-paced as it is, the film always finds time for character development and satirical jabs at the haute société. Funny and troubling in equal measure, it's Lubitsch at the top of his game.

4/4

07-02-2025

It's interesting that Billy Wilder's revered and varied directorial career is bookended by two largely ignored and overlooked films - "Bad Seed" and "Buddy Buddy". Not only are they rarely seen or discussed even by Wilder's many biographers and analysts but they were also ignored by the director himself. Joseph McBride relates in his excellent recent book "Dancing on the Edge" how the walls of Wilder's office were lined by the screenplays he had written over the years - the scripts for "Bad Seed" and "Buddy Buddy were not among them.

Of the two, the overlooked status of "Bad Seed" makes more sense. Not because it's bad or uninteresting but because it is something of a false start to Wilder's directorial career. Made after his dramatic 1933 escape from Berlin but before his 1934 arrival in Hollywood, his sole French film was conceived in a grimy Parisian hotel by a group of German emigrees. By the time the film was released, Wilder had already left Paris so the film's positive reception ultimately had no impact on his career.

The film was written by Wilder, Max Kolpe, and Jan Lustig all of whom were Jews who had worked at UFA before the Nazis assumed power. Furthermore, the film's composer was none other than the legendary Franz Waxman who also left UFA after Nazi supporters brutally attacked him in the streets of Berlin. This ragtag group of out-of-work filmmakers banded together and independently produced "Bad Seed" with the help of Alexander Esway, a somewhat mysterious Hungarian producer/director whose French connections helped them raise the budget. Esway was also given a co-directing credit but according to star Danielle Darrieux, he was never actually present on set.

The story behind "Bad Seed" is arguably more interesting than the film itself but it could give a potential viewer false expectations. Despite being made by refugees on the run from the emerging Nazi threat, "Bad Seed" is no urgent political warning or parable about the rise of evil. It's a rather conventional attempt at commercial entertainment - a melodrama about a wayward rich kid who gets embroiled with a goofy gang of car thieves. With its attractive leads, jovial tone, simplistic story, and moments of pure slapstick, it's a fairly decent approximation of popular French entertainment of the time.

What makes the film more interesting, however, is the filming style imposed by its extremely low budget. Without the money needed for back projection or building sets on soundstages, Wilder and his crew shot their film guerrilla-style on real locations - beaches, ports, garages, and the streets of Paris. Most striking of all are the film's several chase scenes in which our heroes are clearly driving the old-timers themselves while being filmed by a camera in the back seat or precariously perched on the hood of the car. This gives the film a sense of visual dynamism and an urgency otherwise lacking in the predictable and largely sedate script.

Wilder would later joke that "Bad Seed" invented the Nouvelle Vague but there is more to his claim than mere wisecracking. This tale of charming antiheroes basing their personalities on American gangster films and committing petty crimes to spite their bourgeoise parents does have a few things in common with Godard's "Breathless". Among them is the choppy editing style imposed, no doubt, by the low budget and the general inexperience of the crew. While it's hard to find much intention behind Wilder's jump cuts and occasional fragrant disregard for narrative continuity, it wouldn't be impossible to interpret "Bad Seed's" hectic visuals and fly-on-the-wall camerawork as ancestors to Godard's influential style.

The film also reminded me at times of Jean Renoir's bizarre "Night at the Crossroads". This was partly due to the garage setting and partly due to the car chases shot from the point of view of the drivers. Both films also feature a car chase in the nighttime in which the road is illuminated only by the headlights of the pursuing vehicle.

It should also be noted that this is not Wilder's first experience with guerrilla shooting and ultra-low budgets. His big break in the film business came when he co-wrote Robert Siodmak's "People on Sunday", a pioneering docudrama shot on the streets of Berlin and starring a cast of amateurs. Unlike that film, "Bad Seed" has no pretensions at documentarism but its improvisational, hectic production must have been a useful experience for Wilder.

Outside of such cinematic contexts, however, "Bad Seed" is far less interesting. The first problem with the film is that it doesn't seem certain what it's trying to accomplish. It's too silly to be dramatic, too melodramatic to be funny, and too frivolous and lightweight to deliver any kind of social critique. Its portrayal of car thieves and gangsters is naive to an almost self-parodic level. In "Bad Seed", criminals are a quirky bunch of best friends who commit their elaborate robberies using dress-up and charm.

Our hero, Henry (Pierre Mingand), kind of stumbles upon them after a fight with his imperious father and is immediately welcomed into the gang. Before long, he has become best friends with Jean (Raymond Galle), a youth obsessed with neckties, and is in love with the beautiful Jeannette (Danielle Darrieux) who distracts the cars' owners while the gang steals them. The 33-year-old Pierre Mingand is far too old to play a wayward kid under his parent's thumb. Not to mention the fact that he's far too old to romance the 16-year-old Danielle Darrieux!

The screenplay has no particular narrative shape proceeding instead like a series of vignettes. The result is a tonally eclectic film with little suspense and a meandering narrative. The dialogue is also unusually dull for a Wilder script, probably due to the fact that he wasn't all that fluent in French. Visually, the film is saved by its interesting locations and guerrilla style. However, it is telling that whenever the filming moves inside, the scenes become far more stilted and dull. Overall, much like the screenplay, the visuals are eclectic and unsystematised. The product of a rushed production adapting to situations encountered on the fly.

"Bad Seed" is then far more interesting for its backstory and historical importance. The film itself is a tentative first step of a group of emigres trying to enter an already saturated film market. Full of commercial concessions and limited by its budget, "Bad Seed" is too self-conscious and unsteady to reflect any sort of reality. A shame really, because the reality Wilder and co. were experiencing in 1933 was far more dramatic and fascinating than anything they could have thought up in that grimy Parisian hotel room.

2.5/4

07-02-2025

Whenever comedies of a certain age are brought up on the internet you can bet your socks there will be at least one comment moaning about how you couldn't make films like that today. Unfortunately, as I observe the changes in the world around us, I've come to suspect that the moaners are correct. Except for one thing. I don't think the reason why studios would hesitate to make films like "The Producers" and "To Be or Not to Be" is the offence it might cause some supposed "woke" activists. After all, why would leftists oppose a film taking the right ol' piss out of the Nazis? No. I think Hollywood studios would get cold feet about making films like these lest they offend the actual fascists who seem to be making a grand return to world politics. The only person who could take offence at Concentration Camp Ehrhardt is Nazi-Salute Musk.

And what a shame it would have been if some pencil pusher decided not to let Ernst Lubitsch make "To Be or Not to Be". This film is a simply dazzling work of art! A cinematic tightrope walk without a safety net. The ideal mixture of comedy and tragedy, thriller and farce, made all the more perfect by the fact that all of these disparate elements work perfectly both individually and in unison.

"To Be or Not to Be" is the only film I can think of which is as rip-roaringly hilarious as it is profoundly tragic. It's as suspenseful as it is goofy. Lubitsch does this switching so deftly that at times it resembles a sleight of hand. Tears of laughter turn into tears of sorrow with a single flick of the splicer.

The key, I think, is the superb set-up in which everything is played completely straight. Lubitsch and his writer Edwin Justus Mayer structure the film like a classic farce. The first half is all exposition and there really aren't that many laughs. Lubitsch plays it straight and some scenes play out like a classic wartime spy thriller. It's impossible to think of any comedy made after the 1970s which would trust its audience so much that it would make them wait 45 minutes for the big laughs to come.

The film begins in 1939 but most of it is set in 1941's Warsaw. Our heroes are a troupe of actors led by the conceited Joseph Tura (Jack Benny) and his flirty wife Maria (Carole Lombard). Before the war, Maria had a brief affair with an RAF pilot and now, suddenly, he has returned on a secret mission. His name is Sobinski (Robert Stack) and Joseph is not particularly happy when he returns home to find the dashing soldier sleeping in his bed and wearing his slippers. But, duty calls, and Joseph is ready to die for Poland... Well, maybe not die but certainly act!

The first half of the film is minutely assembled. It's Lubitsch and Mayer lining up all the dominos before pushing them over in one fell (and utterly hilarious) swoop. It would be quite impossible to describe the ensuing mayhem in a concise manner nor would I even want to try. You see, the brilliant thing about "To Be or Not to Be" is the way Lubitsch wrongfoots the audience at every turn. This may very well be the twistiest film ever made. Every premise is turned around on its head, every scene ends in a totally different place from where it began, and no character is quite as daft as they may seem. Lubitsch is the master of recontextualising material. The line "So, they call me Concentration Camp Ehrhardt" is repeated at least six times over the course of the film but every time it has an entirely different subtext.

As mentioned before, the film works in multiple genres. Of course, it's primarily a comedy and all the mistaken identities, perfect disguises, and comings-and-goings resemble a Feydeux farce. If you've ever seen the brilliant British sitcom "'Allo 'Allo", you'll know what I mean except that Lubitsch manages to squeeze an entire season's worth of plot into the tightest 100 minutes I've ever seen. To say that this film flies by would be doing it a disservice. It's so fast-moving that a bird would think it's a Concord.

However, the film is every bit as suspenseful and there are several sequences, especially in the first half, which had me ripping out my Hitler moustache. Especially atmospheric is a sequence in which a group of men in Nazi uniforms search a dark theatre for a spy. One of them turns on the spotlight and directs it at the audience. All we can see are flashes of Nazi uniforms and hastened movements as the light relentlessly scans the auditorium. It's a sequence worthy of Hitchcock in his prime.

What grounds the film and, ultimately, blends the suspense and the hilarity is the drama. The all-infecting tragedy of the war can be deeply felt in every scene. Lubitsch establishes the decidedly anti-war sentiment right away. After the first bombs are heard, Maria turns to the camera and says "It's really war. People are gonna kill each other and be killed." It's quite a simple sentiment really. Unusual for the gung-ho wartime cinema, stripped of false jingoism and brutally straightforward.

The ensemble is superbly balanced with everyone delivering a different shade. Stanley Ridges is wonderfully menacing and sly as a Nazi, Robert Stack is aptly hunky and heroic as an RAF flyboy, and Felix Bressart is unusually serious as the sorrowful Jewish actor who once dreamed of playing Shylock. On the goofier side, we have the scene-stealing Sig Ruman as the bumbling Colonel Ehrhardt and an unusually comedic Lionel Atwill as the troupe's resident ham.

Jack Benny gets all the best lines and all the best gags as the grumpy Joseph Tura but it's Carole Lombard who walks away with the picture. Her role is maybe the hardest because she is the only character in the film who has to walk constantly on the tonal tightrope. She gets to be the flirty lover in her scenes with Stack, the wisecracking goofball in her scenes with Benny, and the damsel in distress in her scenes with Ridges. And she does them all superbly! It's a tour-de-force performance which deserves much more praise than it has gotten over the years.

"To Be or Not to Be" is a staggering cinematic achievement. I cannot think of a single film which packs so much in such a compact, constantly entertaining package. The film shifts through so many tones, themes, and moods that in lesser hands it would certainly be a disjointed mess. And yet, Lubitsch is so fleet-footed that you barely notice the seams. You just sit back and enjoy the wild ride, laugh when you're told to, cry when you're told to, and, somehow, walk out of a film set in occupied Poland with a large grin on your face.

4/4

07-02-2025

It's not often that a comedy begins with a murder. A man walks into a car. Turns on the engine. The car explodes! I waited for a second expecting the man to emerge with a charred face but otherwise unscathed but he never came out. In fact, the camera lingers on the burning car to show us that, yes, a man did just burn to death in the opening credits.

Not five minutes later, another murder happens. This time, a man gets shot straight in the head. OK, this scene is less effective - the bullet wound looks more like a paintball - but it's no less surprising.

Ten minutes into the movie I was wondering if this was a comedy at all. Sure, the title is "A Pain in the Ass" and the poster is wonderfully witty but nothing so far has indicated the slightest bit of merriment. In fact, quite the opposite. DP Raoul Coutard's handheld camerawork gives the film a twitchy, anxious atmosphere and Francois Rauber's mournful music only amps up the dread. Even the colour palette is oppressively grayscale.

Lino Ventura pops up looking even grimmer and grumpier than usual. He's playing a hitman hired to kill a witness in a major trial. He books a hotel room across the road from the court and waits.

Enter Jacques Brel as Francois Pignon, France's favourite comedic idiot. He's rented the room next door to the hitman and his intentions are no less lethal. He's about to kill himself.

This is a terrific premise for a dark comedy. The hitman needs to keep a low profile. He doesn't want the cops showing up at the hotel investigating a suicide. But what is he to do? Can he just kill the suicidal man? What a bizarre act of friendship that would be!

And, to be fair, it's quite common for farces to begin in a serious manner and only get to the big laughs halfway through. Except, "A Pain in the Ass" never quite gets to the big laughs. Oh, there are a couple of guffaws along the way mostly involving people falling out of windows but this film was written by Francis Veber, France's greatest farceur since Feydoux! I expected more than a few chuckles and a lot of wry smiles.

"A Pain in the Ass" is a profoundly strange film. It's not so much a comedy as it is a remarkably suspenseful thriller in which the villain just happens to be a comedic character. Instead of watching a hero fighting a hitman, here we watch a hitman fighting a suicidal goofball who just will not leave him alone.

The hitman tries everything he can think of. He pleads with Pignon, he tries to pay him, he tries to tie him up, he even drives him to meet his estranged wife... but Pignon keeps returning like a bad penny. Clingy and needy, Pignon mistakes the hitman for a friend.

This is a comedy of frustration. Pignon is profoundly annoying and, after a while, we just want to see the hitman get on with his job. Veber doesn't make the hitman likeable so much as he makes Pignon's constant interruptions unbearable. We root for the killer not because we condone his actions but because we hate Pignon just as much as he does.

The casting is absolutely perfect. Jacques Brel, with his giant teeth and lanky body, is the ideal comedic dumbass. However, it's Lino Ventura who steals the picture with his completely deadpan turn as the harried hitman. Ventura plays the part completely straight. He never mugs for a single laugh and yet he keeps getting them. His facial expressions alone are masterful.

The film is at its best when it focuses intently on the conflict between them. Eventually, Veber introduces more complications in the form of Pignon's ex-wife and her new husband. They are extraneous characters and only serve to pad the film to 85 minutes. The real substance is in the scenes between Ventura and Brel because the film's big joke is watching the coolly professional hitman slowly turn into a nervous wreck due to the presence of the obliviously good-natured Pignon.

But the film is not all that funny. It's frustrating, it's tense, it's clever but not particularly funny. Edouard Molinaro's direction is so deadpan and anxiety-inducing that we can never relax into the laughs. Pignon is more like a slasher villain, popping up behind every turn just when you thought it was safe to go back into the hotel room.

I don't really know whether "A Pain in the Ass" works or not. The performances are superb and the film is absolutely bursting with energy. On the other hand, I have to wonder where the big gags are. This is a film by the writer of "La cage aux Folles" and "The Dinner Game", two of the most laugh-out-loud funny comedies I've ever seen. Why is "A Pain in the Ass" so low-key as to barely register as a comedy?

Decades later, Veber would go on to write and direct a film with a similar premise called "Ruby & Quentin" about a deadpan criminal (Jean Reno) who escapes from prison with an annoying idiot (Gerard Depardieu) chained to him. That film is riotously funny and Veber throws the two characters from one farcical situation into the next without so much as letting the audience catch their breath.

"A Pain in the Ass", on the other hand, is such a dark comedy it would be more accurate to call it bitter. Ridden with anxiety, suspenseful, and buzzing with nervous tension, the film kept me engrossed but I'm pretty sure I laughed more watching Dario Argento's "Deep Red".

3/4

11-02-2025

Eddie Shannon (Mickey Rooney) is an awkward guy. Socially inept, only interested in cars, he's a consummate loner who spends his days with his head buried under a hood and his nights sleeping in an empty rented room. He's easily the best mechanic at the garage where he works but he's made no friends there and his co-workers constantly tease him for not having a girlfriend.

Eddie only comes alive when he's behind the wheel of a car. There - he's a beast. We first meet him when he comes second in a tight rally race and the trophies lining the otherwise sparse walls of his room tell us he's only getting better. At night, Eddie dreams of winning Le Mans. If only he had the money to make it over there, maybe he'd have a shot.

And then he meets a dame! A sweet lady by the name of Barbara (Dianne Foster). She doesn't mind listening to Eddie drone on for hours about cars and isn't repulsed by the large scar covering his forehead. Eddie falls in love but as the shadowy photography can attest, this is noirland where a meet-cute can quickly prove to be a set-up. Barbara is working with a pair of wily bank robbers who need a good getaway driver for their latest audacious scheme. In fact, they need the best and only Eddie will do. After he's well and truly hooked by the sexy Barbara, the bank robbers make him an offer. They'll give him all the money he needs to make it to Le Mans and all they want in exchange is for Eddie to... DRIVE A CROOKED ROAD.

"Drive a Crooked Road" doesn't sound like much but it proved to be quite a neat little B-film. Sure, it stops at all the familiar noir landmarks but it never takes the predictable route to get there. The film's strongest attribute is its talented cast all of whom find unusual ways to essay the usual stereotypical characters. Take our femme fatale, for example. As written, she's a fairly commonplace honeytrap, but Dianne Foster plays her like a truly nice lady who is never quite at ease with the role she's playing. She takes pitty on Eddie and worries about hurting his feelings.

The two bank robbers are also unusual types. Kevin McCarthy is especially good as Steve, the mastermind. He plays Steve as a laidback, hip kind of guy. He's no tough-talking, street-smart Bogart-type. He's a man of the 50s. Sharply dressed in polo shirts and slacks. The kind of guy you could share a beer and a joke with. His right-hand man, played by Jack Kelly, is no heavy either. More of a stand-up comic than a gangster, he's more likely to lash out with his tongue than his fists.

Still, the film lies squarely on Mickey Rooney's shoulders. Rooney is nowadays best remembered as a caricature of himself. A diminutive grump ranting incomprehensibly through "Night at the Museum" and such low-rent trash as "Silent Night, Deadly Night 5". In his youth, he was a child superstar best known for playing the cherubic Andy Hardy.

But Rooney was a genuinely good actor as fans of "The Twilight Zone" can attest. Here, he gives one of the best performances of his career as the soft-talking, retiring, socially awkward Eddie. It's a superbly tuned performance which oozes discomfort and an ever-growing rage barely concealed beneath a taciturn exterior. He's just as good at portraying Eddie's childlike infatuation with Barbara which she describes as "a devotion, a kind of terrible worship". In actuality, Eddie's experiencing love for the first time in his lonesome life.

"Drive a Crooked Road" is an unusually low-key noir. It's subtle, deliberate, and strangely tender at times. Directed by Richard Quine, the film forgoes suspense for a slowly building sense of dread as we anticipate Eddie's reaction when he finds out his first love is a con. Even the bank robbery sequence lacks the usual action set-pieces and tension you'd expect. Instead, Quine focuses more on Eddie's nerves and his moral disquiet. It's only the thought of Barbara, waiting anxiously at home, that keeps him composed.

The only misstep Quine makes is that he never lets Eddie's rage properly boil over. The film ends far too quickly, wrapping up all its loose ends in one fell swoop. The 10-minute climax is all wrong. It's too clean, too fast, and too predictable. After letting tensions simmer for 70 minutes, the film really needed to explode like "Taxi Driver" does, for example.

Nevertheless, "Drive a Crooked Road" is a fascinating and engrossing noir B-movie. Well-written by Blake Edwards (based on a short story by James Benson Nablo) and directed with an understated, light touch by the underappreciated Richard Quine. With a superb leading performance from Rooney and a lot of great turns from the supporting cast, the film does a great job setting up a climax which sadly never quite pays off.

3/4

11-02-2025

It's always a thrill when in a single day I hear about a film, watch it, and find out it's an absolute gem. This is what happened today when I accidentally stumbled upon "The Death Kiss". I initially dismissed it as a cheapo cash-in on Bela Lugosi's "Dracula" fame but since I didn't have anything better planned, I decided to watch it anyway. To my absolute delight, that first impression was resolutely wrong.

Despite being heavily promoted as a horror film and starring three "Dracula" cast members (David Manners, Bela Lugosi, and Edward Van Sloan), "The Death Kiss" is actually a rather jovial murder mystery more in the vein of a Charlie Chan picture than something like "Mark of the Vampire". Furthermore, despite being plastered all over the advertising, Lugosi is not the film's star. He's only one of a group of suspects in an increasingly more convoluted mystery.

"The Death Kiss" is set on the soundstages of a film studio where a murderer prowls among the crew. After a film star is murdered in the middle of a scene, his ex-wife Marcia Lane (Adrienne Ames) becomes the prime suspect. With the bumbling police following all the wrong leads and zeroing in on our damsel in distress, her new boyfriend, screenwriter Franklyn Drew (David Manners), has to step in and solve the crime himself.

I mentioned that the film resembles a Charlie Chan vehicle, especially one of the Monogram films such as "The Scarlet Clue" which uses a showbusiness setting (a radio station in that case) as an excuse for hijinks and in-jokes. "The Death Kiss" takes a similar approach, at least in its first act. The opening 20 minutes are loaded with filmmaking gags as everyone reacts to the news of a film star's death. The executive is abhorred by the money he will lose. The journalists are delighted by the headlines and worried by the deadline. The director wonders how he'll finish the film. All of these characters eventually descend upon the soundstage where they're questioned by the increasingly more baffled Lt. Sheehan (John Wray).

Shot on the actual soundstages and in the real offices of the California Tiffany Studios, these early scenes are a priceless glimpse behind the curtains of 1930s filmmaking. Just getting a few close-up shots of the equipment - the giant lights, the lumbering microphones, the cumbersome cameras - was enough to keep me enthralled.

However, unlike one of those Monogram Chans, "The Death Kiss" has more than one gimmick up its sleeve. After the fascinating tour of the soundstage, the film keeps developing its central mystery beyond the confines of the studio. Another murder occurs, more suspects are introduced, and the story becomes genuinely entertaining if not particularly original.

The humour in the film is also much less intrusive and annoying than it is in Monogram films. Entirely uncharacteristically, I even liked the film's comic relief character - the goofy security guard Gulliver (Vince Barnett) who dreams of becoming a detective. Overall, the tone is a very enjoyable blend of comedy and mystery with the filmmakers never allowing either to overwhelm the picture. The dialogue especially is excellent and full of quotable witticisms and clever one-liners delivered at the speed of a screwball comedy.

Just like Monogram Pictures, California Tiffany Studios was a "Poverty Row" outfit. And yet, "The Death Kiss" is one of the most ambitious Poverty Row films I've ever seen. Not only does the screenplay by Barry Barringer and Gordon Kahn tell a genuine, decently rounded detective story but the film has more visual style and more imaginative flourishes than many of its more expensive contemporaries. Compared to the stodgy and stagy "Dracula", this film is as dynamic as a whirlwind.

The interesting visuals are probably down to first-time director Edwin L. Marin who turns this little murder mystery into a veritable directorial showreel. Within the first few minutes, there is a very funny gag involving a seemingly endless dolly shot as a piece of news travels down a row of studio employees. Later on, we'll see shots out of fridges, from behind studio lights, and quite a few more nicely choreographed dolly shots.

The most pleasing visual flourish is the occasional bits of colour in the form of hand-painted highlights including flashlight beams, smoke, and fire. Marin uses this technique sparingly but effectively. It's an unexpectedly stylish little gimmick for a Poverty Row production.

The only element of the film which I didn't immediately like is our hero. Very much moulded in the Philo Vance style, Franklyn Drew is a rather stuffy and occasionally insufferable protagonist with his supercilious attitude and relentless putdowns. Thankfully, his more annoying features dissipate as the film trods along and David Manners is allowed to use some of his trademark charm instead of being a wiseass all the time.

The supporting cast is more likeable but mostly forgettable. Other than the comedic turns from John Wray and Vince Barnett, most of the other actors tend to fade into the background. Bela Lugosi and Edward Van Sloan, for example, both put in decent but unenthusiastic performances and if you didn't already know who they were you'd be surprised to hear they were famous actors. Adrienne Ames is undoubtedly photogenic but as far as romantic leads go she doesn't exactly ooze charisma. I was much more entertained by Alexander Carr's manic performance as the studio executive and a brief but welcome cameo from the legendary King Baggot.

"The Death Kiss" was a really pleasant surprise for me this evening. I was expecting a dull, stolid Poverty Row horror film and instead, I got a surprisingly lively, genuinely funny, and thoroughly charming little murder mystery. Fast-paced, stylish, and full of fascinating little insights into the world of 1930s picturemaking, this is a criminally underseen delight.

3/4

11-02-2025

How is it possible that MGM paired two of my favourite actors of all time - Charles Laughton and Vincent Price - with Ava Gardner in a steamy film noir and made a film as boring as "The Bribe"? This is one of those cinematic failures on such an epic scale that they need to be studied. Nothing quite works in this picture - not the cardboardy sets, the obvious use of stock footage, or the talented actors veering off in different directions.

The story is as familiar as they come. Rigby (Robert Taylor) is the best cop ever to have copped so his boss sends him on an urgent mission. He is to fly over to the small Central American island of Carlotta and put a stop to a war-surplus racket. Once he gets there, Rigby puts on the nonchalant air of a devil-may-care tourist and quickly susses out the bad guys. Unfortunately for him, however, he falls madly in love with one of them. Her name is Elizabeth (Ava Gardner), she's a night-club singer, and the wife of Tug (John Hodiak), one of the smugglers involved in the operation.

The screenplay by Marguerite Roberts is dreadful and feels like an approximation of a film noir written by someone who's only ever seen "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid". The dialogue is laughably overwritten as everyone speaks exclusively in platitudes and sound bites. "What happened to your hand," asks Elizabeth. "It got caught on a broken promise," answers Rigby stoically.

The plot, based on a short story by Frederick Nebel, is as simplistic as it is predictable. There's no mystery here - we know all the bad guys as soon as they appear. It doesn't help that they're played by Price and Laughton, two supreme merchants of menace neither of whom is known for subtlety. There's also almost no action. This is a surprisingly gentlemanly noir. Rigby knows who all the bad guys are and all the bad guys know who Rigby is and yet none of them really ever try to do anything about it. They just sort of circle each other, threatening one another in free verse while romancing Ava Gardner.

In one of the film's few moments of action, Vincent Price kills someone while shouting "You talked yourself to death". He might as well be talking about the script. "The Bribe" is so talky it's almost a radio play. Every scene is a five-minute conversation with no apparent purpose or structure. This is one of those films in which every bit of exposition is delivered verbally. Everyone talks about themselves endlessly, rhapsodising about their miserable lives while the audience falls asleep.

The only bit of suspense in the film is the question of whether Rigby will do his duty and send Elizabeth to prison or whether he will break his oath and become a bad guy. Frankly, who gives a damn? This is where the problem of the performances comes into play as I never cared one iota about any of the characters.

Robert Taylor is an astonishingly dull lead. He speaks exclusively in a monotone, his eyes betray nothing, and his face is as stony as the film's pacing. He doesn't have the expressiveness to convincingly portray his character's supposed moral quandaries. He's also utterly unable to produce any sort of chemistry with Ava Gardner who is left out to dry by her thankless on-screen partner. She tries her best to pretend that she's in love with Taylor but he's such a cold fish that she might as well be making love to a rum bottle.

It doesn't help that none of the leads feel like they're starring in the same movie. Robert Taylor is the lead in a deadly serious police procedural, Ava Gardner is starring in a musical melodrama, Vincent Price is still thinking about "Dragonwyck", and god almighty knows what Charles Laughton is doing. At least Price and Laughton are fun to watch and occasionally inject some much-needed energy into this profoundly listless production.

The film was directed by Robert Z. Leonard whose direction ranges from stolid to bizarrely incompetent. In one of the film's more baffling scenes, Rigby's boss gives him a mission briefing. During his long speech, he casually whips out a pointer stick just to show Rigby where Central America is on a giant map. In another frankly bizarre scene, Vincent Price berates Robert Taylor about how he's a young man who doesn't take life seriously. Taylor then responds by calling Price an old man. Not only were both men 38 when the film came out but Taylor looks older than Price!

My favourite moment of bizarrity perfectly illustrates both Roberts' terrible writing and the infuriating inefficiency of Rigby as a protagonist. In this scene, Rigby is arguing with Elizabeth after finding out some pertinent information. "I can finally do my job," Rigby exclaims, promptly falls on his face, and passes out.

"The Bribe" finally comes to life in the last 5 minutes. A superbly well-shot scene in a darkened apartment is followed by a shootout amidst fireworks in one of the best climaxes I've ever seen in a film noir. It's no surprise to find out that this exciting finale was shot by a different director - Vincente Minnelli no less. But it's way too little far too late. The previous 90 minutes are such a dire slog that no amount of explosives could make me willingly rewatch them.

1.5/4

12-02-2025

"Hold Back the Dawn" is best remembered as the film which made Billy Wilder into a director. As the legend goes, he was so incensed by how this film's director Mitchell Leisen butchered his script that he vowed never to let anyone else direct his work. If you want a job done right do it yourself... or something along those lines. Funnily enough, Wilder was not the only writer who hated this film. Ketti Frings, the author of the novel it was based on was so annoyed by the changes Wilder and co-writer Charles Brackett made to her book that she wanted to take her name off the picture. What goes around comes around... I suppose.

Ironically, of all the films Billy Wilder wrote for other directors, "Hold Back the Dawn" feels the most Wilderian. Not only does it have a flashback structure and a conman protagonist whose desperation is only matched by his deviousness but it also has a core nastiness to it. Yes, there's a definite mean streak running through this film, the kind of raging cynicism about the inherent disease of the human spirit that would come to define Wilder's own directorial works.

Don't be fooled by the kissy poster and the romantic taglines. This is a dark movie. So dark, in fact, that some of it feels downright evil. I'm no prude but a few select scenes made my skin crawl. It is every bit as devious as its main character, loaded with filth, and I loved every second of it.

Charles Boyer stars as Georges Iscovescu, a Romanian gigolo waiting for his American visa in a rundown Mexican village overlooking the border. It'll be a long wait. Five to eight years, the officials tell him. And then one day he runs into an old friend. His former "dance partner" Anita (Paulette Goddard), an immigrant who found a way to cheat the system. She tells Georges that he can the coveted visa if he marries an American girl.

Within a few days, Georges has already found his mark - a childishly naive schoolteacher named Emmy Brown (Olivia de Havilland) who goes on and on about her small town of Azusa, her boss Mr MacAdams, and her plans of attending a teaching college. With the expert nimbleness of a taxi dancer and the viciousness of a spider, Georges weaves a web around little Emmy and ensnares her into his trap. Using fancy words and tugging at her heartstrings, he seems to hypnotise her into marrying him.

The film's premise could have been turned into a screwball comedy but Leisen and his writers had other ideas. "Hold Back the Dawn" acutely paints the pure desperation of an immigrant. For Georges, there's nothing funny or romantic about this situation. He's fighting for his life. For chancers like him, opportunism is the name of the game and, after all, what harm is he doing? He'll dump Emmy after he gets his visa, won't ask her for a thing, and she'll just get on with her life. Right? Well, as Georges slowly begins to realize, there's more at stake here than just his citizenship.

I can understand why Wilder felt so protective of this film. It's a story very close to his heart and one which he imbued with a fair number of autobiographical details. Like Georges, Wilder made his living as a taxi dancer and, like George, he spent some time in Mexico eagerly awaiting a visa for a safer future. The best part of "Hold Back the Dawn" is the vivid picture it paints of that excruciating wait.

Some of the film's best scenes are set in Hotel Esperanza, the rundown fleapit where all the migrants while away their days. Wilder and Brackett give us a whole ensemble of well-drawn supporting characters. Some funny, some sad, all desperate, and all deserving of their own movies. For example, we meet Mrs Kurz (Rosemary DeCamp), a pregnant Austrian who is determined that her child will be born in America. Then there's Bonbois (Curt Bois), a French barber who may or may not be related to Lafayette himself. Note also the dreadfully underrated Micheline Cheirel in a tiny part as one of these unwilling tourists.

Even though there are a few saccharine moments in which the migrants espouse the greatness of America, this is a surprisingly dark and gritty portrayal of a problem which is as pertinent today as it was back in 1941. Leisen does a great job of portraying the atmosphere in the hotel and the way that these people are stuck in a hellish limbo. Unable to get into America and unable to go back into their war-torn countries, they're stuck in a potentially endless loop of waiting for some magical papers which might never come.

In this atmosphere of desperation, Georges' deception may not seem so grand but Emmy does not come from this world. Olivia de Havilland does a wonderful job of playing the idealistic and sweet Miss Brown who believes in the natural goodness of man and the madness of pure love. Of course, it's a lot easier to believe in such things when you've spent your whole life in Azusa, USA without ever having to doubt your future or wait for some unknown pencil pusher to show some mercy and give you a taste of freedom.

All the performances in "Hold Back the Dawn" are excellent. I'm no great Charles Boyer fan but he works wonderfully in this film because it uses his natural sleaze instead of trying to play it off as charm. Paulette Goddard proves to be a real scene stealer as well injecting a great deal of energy and gusto into a rather underwritten part.

Offsetting the dark atmosphere is a great deal of wonderful humour naturally arising from the desperate situation the characters find themselves in. This is also a very funny film, full of clever one-liners, hilarious situations, and a few flashes of the pitch black humour which would come to be associated with Billy Wilder films. In the film's opening, Georges tries to check into the hotel but there's no room. Suddenly, there's a scream from upstairs. One of the unlucky migrants has committed suicide. Without missing a beat, the hotel manager turns to Georges and says "I'll have your room ready in a few minutes".

Just as clever is the film's flashback structure bookended by scenes of Georges telling his life story to a film director played by Mitchell Leisen himself. This lovely bit of leaning on the fourth wall gives the film a good excuse to have Boyer narrate the film. The narration, fatalistic and jaded, feels like an early version of the dead man's narration from "Sunset Boulevard". Georges knows he's screwed up and he's here to tell us how.

I really don't know why Billy Wilder found "Hold Back the Dawn" so objectionable. For the rest of his life, he would talk endlessly about what a terrible director Mitchell Leisen was. Imagine my surprise then to find this to be a first-rate film. Vivid, upsetting, dark, and surprisingly funny. The performances are roundly excellent as is Leisen's pacy, suspenseful direction. The ending is a tad too neat, for sure, but they never could have gotten away with this film's pure meanness if they didn't tack on a sweet ending.

3.5/4

12-02-2025

David Preston (Ralph Richardson) is a man of routine. Every morning he wakes up at the same time, kisses his wife Janet (Margaret Leighton) goodbye, picks up the morning paper and leaves for London on the same train. He leaves his work every day at five, has a drink at his favourite pub until six, and is home at seven. This routine has stood him in good stead since before the war and David Preston has no intentions of changing it. That is, until the routine seems to begin changing him. One Monday, he returns home at seven as usual only to find his wife crying in the kitchen. You see, it isn't Monday at all - it's Tuesday and David has been missing for 24 hours. Where has he been? Nobody knows, including David who has no memory of the past day.

Now, I often forget what day it is but I've never thought about making a film out of the experience. I'm being facetious, of course, since David has a lot more to worry about. Soon, a corpse is discovered in a nearby field. The dead man is a porter at David's club, a porter David hated.

Based on an R.C. Sherriff play, "Home at Seven" is a curious little programmer. Neither a mystery nor a drama, it saddles unsatisfyingly between genres ultimately failing to deliver on either. The screenplay by Anatole de Grunwald must be partly to blame since he never finds a good way around this rather slight story.

As I see it, there are two central mysteries at the heart of the film. The first is David's memory lapse and the second is the murder of the porter. Unfortunately, after a lengthy and not all that engaging set-up, neither mystery is satisfyingly resolved. We never get to the bottom of David's memory loss and the porter's killer turns out to be a character we've never met.

Perhaps Sherriff and Grunwald never were all that interested in writing a detective story in the first place. It could be that their aim was to write a suspenseful character piece about a respectable man whose carefully routined life crumbles when he starts doubting his own morality. Could he be the killer? Why can't he be sure?

In this aspect, the film is a tad more successful but mainly due to a competent performance from Ralph Richardson. There really aren't any magnificent insights into the human psyche to be found in the script nor are any of the characters particularly fleshed out. For a character portrait, the cast of "Home at Seven" is curiously stereotypical.

Whichever way you look at it - as a thriller or a drama - the major problem with the film is the leading character. David spends the whole movie in a shocked daze, wandering around his house like a zombie, too absorbed in his own rattled mind to do anything. He is a resolutely inactive protagonist, letting things happen to him rather than trying to resolve them. Everything that happens in the film is instigated by a supporting character. Even the mystery is resolved by the sudden appearance of a previously unseen person.

An inactive protagonist is the worst kind of character and it severely limits the performance of Ralph Richardson. Sir Ralph is my personal favourite of the great British theatrical knights but he barely has anything to do in this film. His entire role consists of worrying and muttering into his chin.

The film's sole strength is its excellent supporting cast. Jack Hawkins is especially good as David's physician who does much more to solve the situation than our supposed protagonist. Also excellent is Campbell Singer as the uncommonly jovial policeman investigating the murder. An excellent performance is also given by Margaret Leighton even though most of her scenes seem to involve helpless crying. There are a few nicely tender moments between David and Janet such as the one in which the husband makes the ultimate compliment you can give a British wife: "You always knew the way to make toast".

"Home at Seven" is the sole directorial effort of Ralph Richardson which adds another perplexing element to this film. Why would he choose to direct this material? The inherent staginess of the script would be impossible to overcome even for a seasoned professional let alone a first-timer. Despite having a good cinematographer in Jack Hildyard, Richardson's direction fails to make any kind of impression. The visuals are flat and stilted and there is no attempt to portray David's internal struggles cinematically. Consequently, the film resembles a TV play or one of those British Edgar Wallace films which were popular in the 1960s.

Altogether unimpressive and unsatisfying, "Home at Seven" is a perfectly forgettable little programmer which uncomfortably sits somewhere between a murder mystery and a psychological drama. Good performances make the film at least watchable but there's nothing particularly interesting or insightful to be gleaned here.

2/4

13-02-2025

As far as seaside noirs starring William Hartnell go, "Brighton Rock" is your best bet. As far as seaside noirs starring Peter Lorre go... well, that's at least an obvious choice. Unfortunately, this is just the way things go for "Double Confession". There's always something better to watch. This little (and by little I mean slight) British film noir was considered lost for almost 60 years. Even though it was discovered in 2013, it still remains completely obscure. Beyond an unrestored DVD release from a minor label, it might as well still be tucked away in some collector's private archive.

And yet it seems so promising with a fascinatingly varied cast, an unusual setting for a thriller, Ken Annakin in the director's chair, and the great cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth behind the camera. Where did it all go wrong?

Well, let me hazard two guesses.

The first is the screenplay by William Templeton based on a novel by John Garden. It's a confused, languid affair which meanders through a series of half-baked plotlines starring underwritten characters without ever establishing any sort of suspense or narrative thrust.

The story begins when Jim Medway (Derek Farr) steps off the train in a fictional seaside town called Seagate. He's there to visit his ex-wife Lorna who is now living in a picturesque cottage overlooking the sea. However, as he is approaching the cottage he sees Lorna's new boyfriend, powerful businessman Charlie (William Hartnell), walking out. Angered, he storms into the house only to discover Lorna dead.

Instead of going to the police, Jim decides to play a wicked little game with bad old Charlie. He begins tormenting the man by hinting that he knows he killed Lorna. Rattled, Charlie tasks his henchman Paynter (Peter Lorre) with taking care of the situation.

This is where the plot becomes awfully confusing, not because there's too much going on but because there's essentially nothing going on. After such a set-up, you expect double crosses, action scenes, suspense set-pieces... Instead, you get nothing. Jim seems to have a plan to take down Charlie but we never find out what that plan is. Instead of taking any sort of action, Jim spends his days lounging at the beach, wooing some random girl he quite literally bumps into. I've seen plenty of thrillers with inactive protagonists (all of them bad, by the way) but this is ridiculous!

The characterisations are also all over the place. Charlie is meant to be some sort of a gangster. Everyone keeps talking about how dangerous he is. Except, every time we see the man he's scared, worried, and anxious. All he does is pace around his office on the verge of tears. Instead of being menaced by him, you want to give him a hug. William Hartnell made his name playing arrogant thugs but Charlie is so poorly written that he has nothing to play.

This leads me to my second guess as to what went wrong here. The casting of Derek Farr as the leading man is all wrong. Jim Medway is meant to be your typical noir antihero - the strong, quiet type who menaces thugs with nonchalant looks and barbed one-liners. But Farr is no Robert Mitchum. Lanky and aristocratic, he sooner resembles an accountant than a gunslinger. I have no idea why Charlie is so scared of him. Farr looks like a strong breeze could knock him over.

And then there's Peter Lorre, the only actor who manages to make something out of Templeton's messy script. Admittedly, Lorre is a compelling character even without a script and in this film he puts his idiosyncratic persona to full use. Using his hangdog eyes, high-pitched voice, and distinctive stooped physique, he creates a bizarre little character - an alcoholic hitman who is so devoted to his boss that their relationship verges on homoeroticism. Unconcerned by plot requirements and other actors, Lorre seems to be starring in a film all of his own and stealing every scene along the way. He's the only bright spot in this otherwise dreary production especially in the scene in which he tries to kill Jim while dressed in what looks like a full frogman suit.

Ken Annakin, a solid British journeyman director, doesn't seem to be aware that he's directing a film noir. Instead, he treats "Double Confession" like a sequel to his seaside comedy "Holiday Camp". He devotes as much screentime to comic relief characters as he does to the thriller plot. We get plenty of asides with such goofballs as a man who paddles in the sea wearing a three-piece suit and a flustered mother taking care of a vivacious little girl. My favourite subplot involves a middle-aged woman's desperate attempts to woo a bored-looking chap who is simply trying to play with his model ship.

None of this has anything to do with the story but, quite honestly, I found these quirky asides much more interesting and well-rounded. The actual plot is as uninteresting as it is difficult to follow. The murder mystery is barely developed and gets resolved in such an offhanded manner that I had to rewind the film in order to figure out what happened. Derek Farr is a terrible noir protagonist, William Hartnell delivers a rather unenthusiastic performance, and Joan Hopkins is a decidedly unlikeable love interest with her plummy accent and contrived backstory. The height of the film's romance is the scene in which Farr woos Hopkins by saying: "They don't turn out your sort in bundles of dozens". With dialogue like that, who needs "Body Heat"?

2/4

15-02-2025

"After the Thin Man" is one of those titles that can double as a mission statement. Here's a sequel that knows exactly what it's doing - more of the same. It reunites the core cast (William Powell, Myrna Loy, and Asta the Dog) and key crew members (director W.S. Van Dyke, and writers Frances Goodrich & Albert Hackett) who made the 1934 masterpiece "The Thin Man" for another go 'round the ol' booze-fueled murder mystery screwball comedy block.

It's the same material alright but delivered in a much looser package. One of the many brilliant aspects of the first film is its breakneck pacing, a knockabout tempo established from the very first time we meet Nick and Nora - with cocktail glasses in hands, of course - and maintained throughout the cavalcade of twists, murders, and one-liners which ensue. Packed extraordinarily tightly in a breezy 90-minute runtime, "The Thin Man" is the cinematic equivalent of a sprint. It's so fast, you don't even notice the plot.

"After the Thin Man" is more of a marathon. Running 112 minutes, it never outstays its welcome but maintains a more deliberate and less engaging pace. In the film's excellent first act, we get to see two whole production numbers, a surprise party, a dinner party, and a coming-out party but there's barely a hint of plot. It takes a whopping 45 minutes for anything remotely murderous to happen and - to my utter astonishment - it is THEN that the film slows down.

OK, let me back up a bit. The (admittedly extended) first act of the film is quite superb. Powell and Loy absolutely sizzle as they trade witty barbs, sexy glances, and champagne glasses. Even Asta (the cutest terrier you've ever seen) gets some first-rate material when he finds out that his wife has been cheating on him with a local mongrel!

We meet Nick and Nora Charles a mere five days after the events of the previous film. Returning from a boozy LA trip, all they want is some rest but they find their house overrun with unknown revellers and an invitation to dine with Nora's fierce Aunt Katherine. Still hungover from last New Year's Eve, Nick and Nora decide to pay the old biddy a visit.

The sequence set at Aunt Katherine's house is easily the funniest in the film. A series of hilarious and memorable jokes ensue including an early variation on the "walk this way" gag and a very funny scene in which Nick conducts a conversation with a roomful of snoring men.

The reason they're there, however, is because Cousin Selma's (Elissa Landi) wayward husband Robert has gone missing. Rather than calling the police and embarrassing the family name, Aunt Katherine asks or rather demands that Nick find him.

Don't expect the plot to begin just yet, however. First, the action moves to a nightclub where we get a less entertaining variation of the Christmas party sequence from the first film and two whole production numbers enthusiastically performed by Penny Singleton. Eventually, Robert turns up dead and the story can begin.

Truth be told, I think the whole mystery angle is the least effective part of "After the Thin Man". This overly convoluted mishmash of gangsters, molls, and sinister scientists distinctly feels like a less-than-inspired retread of the original which was based on a typically terrific Dashiell Hammett novel. The sequel lacks Hammett's clever plotting and often runs circles around itself with a bevvy of red herrings, twists, and a body count which would make Sam Peckinpah blush.

The best scenes of the film are still the ones in which there's barely any plot. For example, there's a tremendous scene showing Nick and Nora's morning routine... at six in the afternoon. Another wonderful scene is the one in which Nick comes to bail Nora out of jail but not before playing a wicked little prank.

Director W.S. Van Dyke is still no visual stylist and has little interest in maintaining suspense. However, he does a good job staging clear and concise comedy scenes and letting his talented cast handle the rest. When Powell and Loy are on screen, the film absolutely sizzles but I felt that perhaps they're apart a tad too much in the film's back half.

"After the Thin Man" is a fun time at the movies but, perhaps inevitably, it remains in the shadow of its gargantuan predecessor. Without the relentless pacing or the clever plotting of the first film, this sequel is a flabbier and less effective retread of familiar but beloved ground.

3/4

15-02-2025

With his pencil moustache and plummy accent, Frank Chandler (Edmund Lowe) is no one's idea of a yogi and yet he has the power to look into the eyes of men and make them be as straw in his hands. He can cause them to see what is not there even unto a gathering of twelve times twelve. Or so his master tells him. The film begins with a short demonstration of his powers where he makes a rope stand firm and walks on coals. They're not the most impressive superpowers I've ever seen but hey, this is 1932, I'll take what they can give me. Note though that he also makes a child disappear but never actually makes him reappear which means that canonically the hero of this film is a child murderer.

Taking the name of Chandu, he is sent on a mission to rescue his brother-in-law Robert (Henry B. Walthall), a scientist kidnapped by the evil Roxor (Bela Lugosi) who wants to use a death ray Robert invented to destroy the world. Oh, the innocence of the lost pre-nuclear age when the inventor of a death ray could be portrayed as a quirky good guy instead of a mad scientist!

It has been said before that "Chandu the Magician" resembles one of those film serials Republic used to churn out by the boatload. Indeed, the film is structured exactly like a serial with Chandu finding himself in a succession of life-or-death situations. Whereas in a serial it would take him 15 to 30 minutes to get out of such a situation, in this film he usually figures it out within 7.

We see Chandu survive a poisoning attempt, fight his way out of an Egyptian marketplace full of Roxor's assassins, and barely escape drowning. I'll admit, some of his escapes are quite silly such as when he gets out of a locked sarcophagus by... getting out of a locked sarcophagus. Still, it's all a damn lot of fun!

"Chandu the Magician" is the most authentic bit of pulp I've ever seen. Based on a popular radio series, the film retains all of its grandstanding melodrama. The music is bombastic, the performances are larger than life (or death!), and the dialogue is brilliantly verbose. Where else can you hear lines such as "Go forth in the youth and strength and conquer the evil that threatens mankind" and "If these are to be the last hours of your life, I want them to be mine too" delivered with the gravity of a Shakespearean actor?

Unlike a film serial, however, "Chandu the Magician" has some truly impressive visuals. This is not so surprising if you know that it was co-directed by William Cameron Menzies, the man for whom the term production designer was invented. Menzies employs some wonderfully effective trickery to give the film much-needed visual flare. Using all the tricks from the proverbial bag including models, forced perspective, and Schuftan effects, he achieves some shots which would not become commonplace in cinema until several decades later. The film is consistently visually dynamic in a way we don't associate with early talkies. Especially effective is a long tracking shot through the labyrinthine corridors of a pyramid and a high crane shot showing the death ray in action.

The beautiful visuals of "Chandu the Magician" are also thanks to its cinematographer, the brilliant James Wong Howe, one of the greatest DPs of the era. Howe's lush, dramatic lighting makes the film resemble a perfectly shaded comic book and makes it look a great deal more expensive than Fox could have ever afforded.

Rounding out the fun is the game cast all of whom take the material with utmost seriousness. Irene Ware is a touchingly vulnerable damsel in distress, Herbert Mundin makes for surprisingly likeable comic relief, and Bela Lugosi is the most ideal choice for a supervillain of all time. Lugosi especially steals the picture with his energetic, menacing performance as the evil Roxor. Edmund Lowe's Chandu isn't quite as memorable but I think he does a fine job. Superheroes have always been a little bland, a tad too neat, too good.

I also love that the title specifies that this is a film about "Chandu the Magician". Thank goodness for that otherwise I might have mistaken him for Chandu the Librarian or Chandu the Chartered Accountant. It's such a common name. And if we forget there's a chorus which chants his name and profession every once in a while to remind us.

Ridiculously fast-paced, constantly at fever pitch, and brilliantly pulpy, "Chandu the Magician" is about as much fun as it is possible to have watching a movie. It's complete and utter nonsense, of course, but the combined powers of Menzies, Howe, and Lugosi give the material an elegance it almost doesn't deserve.

3/4

16-02-2025

16-02-2025

18-02-2025

When William Hartnell was cast as the first actor to play The Doctor in BBC's flagship sci-fi series, the producers and the other actors were pleasantly surprised that such a big film actor would agree to do a scrappy little TV series. Indeed, Hartnell's film career was lengthy and prolific having already spanned some 40 years and a whopping 70+ titles. Nowadays, however, Hartnell is easily the most obscure of all The Doctors. His theatre work has largely been forgotten, his other TV appearances are mainly lost, and most of his films are now unavailable save for an occasional airing on the wonderful Talking Pictures channel. That is until Olive Films, for reasons unknown to me, decided to resurrect "Appointment with Crime", one of his starring vehicles and release it on BluRay back in 2016. In typical Hartnell fashion, even the BluRay remains obscure. I had no idea it existed until a few days ago when I decided to give it a spin.

In "Appointment with Crime", Hartnell plays one of his typical characters - an aggressively macho gangster bursting with bravado. There's the typical Hartnell posture - back straight, shoulders tense, face twisted in a devious sneer, and head raised in a display of overbearing arrogance. Every line he says is tinged with bitter sarcasm, every move he makes is sudden and threatening. Leo Martin is a ticking time bomb and Hartnell makes damn sure you know it!

The film begins with an all too brief scene in which Martin is betrayed by his fellow gangsters and left at the scene of a robbery to face the music alone. Some years later, Martin is released and decides to track down his old pals for a bloody reunion. There are debts owed to Martin and he's not the kind of guy to let you pay in installments.

It's unfortunate that this is the first Hartnell vehicle to make it to BluRay since it's not one of Hartnell's finest performances. Don't get me wrong, it's a decent display of his usual gangster schtick but there are no shades to Leo Martin for him to play. The character as written is a distinctly one-note caricature and Hartnell spends the whole film sneering and menacing his former colleagues. Later on in the picture, a love interest for Martin is introduced in the form of taxi dancer Carol (Joyce Howard). However, since Hartnell hasn't given Martin any softness, kindness, or emotion beyond pure hate, their brief and torrid love affair is never particularly compelling.

In an attempt to make Leo Martin interesting, writer/director John Harlow gives him a disability. You see, when he was arrested, Martin's wrists were crushed by a falling shutter. A great deal of attention is paid to Martin's broken wrists and yet they never come into play in the film at all. He's quite capable of firing guns, engaging in fisticuffs, and picking an occasional pocket. Martin himself is quite sensitive about his injuries but Harlow never explains why since they're not in the least debilitating.

The first half of the film focuses on Martin's cockamamie revenge plot involving a murder, a planted gun, and two glasses of orangeade. There is very little grit or realism in "Appointment with Crime", a film which embraces pure pulp nonsense. In fact, Leo Martin with his impeccable dress sense (bowties abound) and broken wrists could have come out straight from the pages of some 1940s comic book.

Other similarly colourful side characters pop up from time to time including a criminal with impeccable manners nicknamed The Professor and the bespectacled, piano-playing, fey mob fixer played by Alan Wheatley. Unfortunately, the film's requisite hero is a real dullard. His name is Detective Inspector Rogers and he's played with all the charisma and presence of an extra by Robert Beatty. To be fair, Beatty's given even less of a character to play than Hartnell. Most of his dialogue is exposition and he's not even given a love interest to spice things up.

The film picks up its pace significantly in the second half when Martin's revenge plot is interrupted by Gregory Lang. Lang is a suave art dealer who moonlights as the big kahuna of the London crime scene. It helps that Lang is played by Herbert Lom, one of the few cast members who managed to squeeze out some nuance and wit from this plodding screenplay. The best performance, however, comes from Joyce Howard who plays the taxi dancer with a heart of gold. It's tough to have chemistry with Hartnell when he's in his beast mode but Howard pulls it off. She delivers an unexpectedly heartfelt and likeable performance as a woman whose biggest weakness in the dog-eat-dog world she inhabits is her compassion.

But even with Lom and Howard, "Appointment with Crime" is never as compelling or as entertaining as it should be. The screenplay is dull and predictable, John Harlow's direction is flat and distinctly lacking in suspense, and our anti-hero is disasterously short on characterisation. Besides a few interesting supporting characters, this shabby little noir is rather short on imagination or interest. For better Hartnell fare stick to "Murder in Reverse" and "Temptation Harbour".

2/4

19-02-2025

"It took me years to realize you just don't fall into a tub of butter... You jump for it!"

So says Eve Peabody (Claudette Colbert), an American showgirl from Kokomo, Indiana who has somehow found herself standing in the Parisian rain with nothing but the gold dress on her back. How she got there would take a paragraph to explain. Where she goes from there would take at least three.

The pleasure of "Midnight", written by the great duo of Billy Wilder & Charles Brackett, is partly in the way the plot unfolds. Or rather, the way it winds itself up tighter and tighter in decreasing concentric circles. It has the structure of a magic trick with an onslaught of set-ups and prestiges constantly one-upping our expectations. With every passing scene, Eve finds herself in new, entirely unpredictable situations as a plot worthy of a thriller is imperceptibly spun around her. With its complex web of double-crosses, false identities, and conflicting motivations expressed through circumloquacious verbal acrobatics, "Midnight" is the screwball equivalent of a David Mamet script. OK, the plot itself is not so complicated but the chain of circumstances which conspire against our heroine are organised like a Rube Goldberg machine ruthlessly pushing her towards the inevitable conclusion of every screwball comedy - love, glorious love!

It would be quite unreasonable to even try to summarise the labyrinthine set-up through which Eve Peabody, an American showgirl from Kokomo, Indiana, finds herself posing as Baroness Czerny at a ball in Versailles. Still, let me give you the basic shape of the plot so you can follow the rest of the review. In essence, she has been hired by a rich man named Georges (John Barrymore) to seduce and marry a gigolo named Jacques (Francis Lederer) and in doing so break up Jacques' affair with Georges' wife Helene (Mary Astor).

So far, so simple (yeah, right!). Except that there's a Hungarian taxi driver actually named Tibor Czerny (Don Ameche) who is nuts about our girl Eve and who shows up uninvited at the mansion in Versailles. Screwball hijinks ensue!

"Midnight" is an interesting example of an early Billy Wilder script. Made before he himself became a director and right after writing Ernst Lubitsch's "Ninotchka", there is a strong sense here of both Wilder's future and his immediate past. The aforementioned structure (best visualised as an inverted cone) in which a great deal of characters and situations are introduced in the first act only for them to slowly whittle down as the film hurtles towards its climax is pure Wilder. On the other hand, the sophisticated, even gentle tone and a more deliberate pacing than you'd expect of a farce is pure Lubitsch.

Of course, "Midnight" was directed by neither. Instead, the film was helmed by Mitchell Leisen, a very competent if unremarkable director who was rather unfairly maligned later on by Wilder and his admirers. There is no doubt that Lubitsch would have given the film more elegance and wit or that Wilder would have tightened up the pacing but Leisen is no slouch. Quite unexpectedly, he injects the film with some tangible suspense as Eve's deceptions become more complicated and more likely to fail.

Actually, if there is a problem with the film it's not with the direction but rather with the script. Wilder and Brackett wound the plot so tightly that they clearly had no clue how to unwind it. As the film moves towards its final act, the story becomes increasingly contrived and convoluted relying less on Eve's ingenuity and more on the stupidity of everyone around her. The climax is utterly preposterous as if Wilder and Brackett threw away the script in desperation and just let the actors improvise the ending.

But "Midnight" does end up working like gangbusters in no small part due to its phenomenal cast. As far as screwball stars go, Claudette Colbert is as screwy as they come. She makes Eve into an instantly loveable protagonist by finding the perfect balance between a guileful con artist and a naive showgirl from Kokomo, Indiana.

She finds a perfect partner in crime in John Barrymore who gives one of his funniest performances here (rivalled only perhaps by his turn in "Twentieth Century"). His Georges is a real cad with a devilish grin and a mischievous glint in his eye. With his messy hair and an unparalleled talent for double takes, Barrymore walks away with every scene he's in.

Don Ameche is unsurprisingly charismatic and impishly sexy as the hairy hound from Budapest. And yet, I don't particularly like the way Wilder & Brackett wrote his character. I wish there were more scenes with them together before the inevitable meeting at Versailles. Far too little time is devoted to their budding love affair which is, after all, the central relationship in the picture. I think they were intended to be portrayed as instantenous soulmates temporarily torn apart by a cockamamie plot, sort of like Herbert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins in "Trouble in Paradise", except that such a relationship requires more chemistry. Strangely, Colbert seems to spark more with Barrymore than Ameche.

Nevertheless, "Midnight" is a real gas. A screwball comedy which keeps winding up tension and at the same time unfolding in the most unpredictable of ways all through the runtime. Full of offbeat Wilder touches, it also has some of the funniest dialogue he and Brackett ever wrote. And, of course, whenever the script hits a rut, the cast is there to save the day. Colbert shines, Barrymore sizzles, while Ameche threatens to ruin all of their best-laid plans like a bull in a china shop. After all, don't forget that every Cinderella has her midnight.

3.5/4

20-02-2025

With his leather jacket and laidback, wisecracking attitude, adventurer Tom Martin might well have served as an inspiration for Indiana Jones. They both share those Boys' Own Adventure roots and that same rotten luck which keeps bumping them into Nazis at the most inopportune moments.

We first meet fearless flyboy Tom Martin (Roy Milland) as he awaits execution in a dingy Spanish prison. Shot down during the Spanish Civil War, this "crusader, champion of the underdog, avenger of the oppressed, standard-bearer of the great cause" is resigned to his fate. He's even penned a last will leaving all of his Earthly possessions to the firing squad. And then, at the last moment, as the rules of melodrama insist, he is saved. His loving wife has petitioned the governor and he's heard her pleas. Tom is a free man! Well, except for one little problem. Tom Martin is a bachelor.

The woman in question is Gusto Nash (Claudette Colbert), a former fashion journalist determined to get a big scoop and become "a serious reporter". The two make it as far as the prison gates before her little fib is discovered. Hounded by Fascists, Tom and Gusto have only one way to get out of Spain - by air!

What follows is a highly entertaining comedic action scene which further compounds my suspicion that Spielberg and Lucas must have seen "Arise, My Love". Especially telling is a brief fight in which Tom commandeers a plane by knocking out a mechanic at a military airport. Before long, Tom and Gusto are flying in a jet pursued by the Spanish Air Force while trading quips and making passes at each other.

The first act of Mitchell Leisen's "Arise, My Love" is quite simply superb. A compelling mixture of adventure and screwball comedy which promises a film full of hijinks and action. I couldn't wait for the further adventures of Gusto and Tom as they travel Europe evading Fascists and falling in love.

Unfortunately, the film doesn't follow through on its promises. Instead, our bickering lovers land their plane in France and the film settles down into conventional screwball cliches. Tom loves Gusto, Gusto loves her career. Tom hits on Gusto, Gusto hits Tom... If you've ever seen one of these films, you'll know every step this film will take.

I'm sad to say that the middle hour of "Arise, My Love" is quite a slog. Colbert and Milland are terrific but the screenplay just doesn't sing. Their barbs are clever but not particularly original or memorable. The gags are funny but more chuckle-worthy than gut-busting. The romance is tangible but it fizzles rather than sizzles. The problem, at least in part, is that the opening sets up such suspense and excitement that this unexpected change in gears is rather disappointing. Instead of escalating tension and speeding up the pace, the film slows down considerably and settles into an all too-familiar rut. I've seen all of this before and done with more style and... well, gusto.

The screenplay was written by the great duo of Charles Brackett & Billy Wilder. Wilder, in particular, hated working with Leisen and would later cite the experience as the chief reason why he became a director. Of the three films the trio worked on together, "Arise, My Love" is the only one which feels like it would have benefited from a different directorial approach. This is a story which needs more urgency, more drama, and more speed than Leisen is accustomed to. It needed some of that Hawksian haywire energy or Wilder's penchant for mixing darkness and light to give it some much-needed edge.

The film finally picks back up after a gruellingly predictable 60-minute stretch in Paris. Tom and Gusto find themselves in the French countryside as the Nazis invade and the sudden onset of WWII begins to spoil their blissful romance.

The third act of "Arise, My Love" plays like gangbusters. Reintroducing the encroaching threat of Nazism gives the film that shot of energy it desperately needed. Leisen does a terrific job of shifting the tone from screwball into pure drama as the citizens of France and the foreigners who find themselves there quickly begin to realise the horrors which will ensue. There are two absolutely tremendous scenes here. The first portrays the chaos of Americans scrambling to get back home. The second is a marvellous moment in which the employees of the Associated Press watch in horror as Nazis march into Paris. A woman breaks down in tears and Leisen follows her as she stumbles through the messy office.

Made as early as 1940, the film is notable for its strong interventionist message. The screenplay was apparently rewritten during filming to include the most recent developments in Europe. For once, the obvious rewrites are much, much better than the original script. The scenes dealing with the war are excellent, exciting, and still feel urgent. The middle portion, however, is a fairly dull romantic comedy without the pacing and the wit which make the best screwball comedies fire on all cylinders.

Running at a bloated 110 minutes, one wishes that Leisen had compressed the Parisian portion. The first act is pure action-adventure fun. The third act is devastatingly laden with dread. The middle hour, however, is a chore to get through and rather sours my admiration of this film's urgency and activism.

3/4

21-02-2025

"Ball of Fire" has a premise that only a foreigner could have concocted. The result is a film rooted in language, its malleability, its intricacies, and its inconsistencies. Where else can you find a scene in which the film's protagonists debate the different meanings of the word "corny"?

The film was written by Billy Wilder, a Polish Jew who grew up in Austria, started his career in Germany, escaped to France, and then became an icon in America. Learning languages, understanding idioms, and adapting to cultures must have been second nature to him. Apparently, Wilder spoke very little English when he moved to Los Angeles in 1934. By 1941, he was the master of witticisms, marshalling grammar with the same acrobatic nimbleness with which Buster Keaton used his lanky limbs.

Wilder's immigrant experience indelibly influenced his screenplay for "Ball of Fire", an unusually gentle screwball comedy about a group of professors assembling an encyclopedia. Professor Bertram Potts (Gary Cooper), the resident lexicographer, decides to get down and dirty and do some actual research on the grubby streets of New York. Along the way, he bumps into Sugarpuss O'Shea (Barbara Stanwyck), a dizzy showgirl who just happens to be the moll of a gangster named Joe Lilac (Dana Andrews).

Desperately in need of a hideaway, Sugarpuss accepts Potts' invitation to help him with his research into the colourful New York slang. She moves in with him and the other seven professors and quickly causes havoc in their scientifically ordered lives. Before long, the esteemed scientists are doing the conga in the living room and Potts is hopelessly in love.

The last film Wilder ever wrote for someone else to direct, "Ball of Fire" feels like a prelude to Wilder's own illustrious directing career. It is especially reminiscent of Wilder's comedic masterpiece "Some Like It Hot" which also mixed screwball comedy with gangsters and musical numbers. Even the dames' names are similar in both pictures (Sugarpuss here, Sugar Kane there).

It's no coincidence, however, that this picture was directed by Howard Hawks. It has become a fact often repeated that Wilder's mentor was Ernst Lubitsch but it seems to me that there is more similarity between Wilder and Hawks. Hawks' unrestrained energy, unfussy visuals, rapid-fire dialogue, and lighting-fast pacing would echo through all of Wilder's comedies. Like Hawks, Wilder was also never afraid of getting down and dirty among gangsters and reporters on the beat, unlike the sophisticated and elegant Herr Lubitsch who preferred the gentle lovemaking of ladies and gentlemen in evening dress.

All that said, "Ball of Fire" is an unusually sweet picture for both Hawks and Wilder. Populated with loveable kooks and jokey gangsters, it has none of Wilder's trademark dark humour. The gangsters in "Some Like it Hot" meant business. When they fired their machine guns, people died. In "Ball of Fire", when the gangsters fire their machine guns they make toy globes spin and books explode in feathers.

It's a shame that Wilder's script isn't edgier since the film could use a little more conflict and danger. Without the quippy rapport of, say, Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, the romance at the heart of "Ball of Fire" feels awfully pat and simple. And without the murderous villainy of the gangsters from "Some Like it Hot", the central threat which pushes the plot forward feels underwhelming and lacking in suspense. The result is a screwball comedy which is a little too gentle for my liking.

And yet, there's plenty to love in "Ball of Fire". For one, the cast is excellent. Especially good is Barbara Stanwyck, probably the ultimate screwball broad. She makes Sugarpuss tough, sharp, and wily while also giving her an inner warmth which ultimately melts her hardened exterior. The goofy professors modelled after the seven dwarves are an absolute delight as well. Especially funny is the mousey-voiced Richard Haydn as the aptly named Professor Oddly who believes himself to be the expert in male-female relationships.

Secondly, Howard Hawks' direction is as always a delight to behold. Other than perhaps Busby Berkley, no other director of his time staged musical interludes quite as well as Hawks. I absolutely love the number that Sugarpuss sings when we first meet her. Hawks applies that musical sensibility to dialogue scenes just as well and the verbal swashbuckling between Stanwyck and everyone else in the cast is indeed a ball of fire.

"Ball of Fire" didn't quite live up to my expectations from a Wilder/Hawks team-up but the film is still a fun late entry in the screwball genre. Barbara Stanwyck gives her usual tough-cookie routine, Gary Cooper is funny if a tad unconvincing as the repressed professor, and the supporting cast is delightful. The best parts of the film, however, are Wilder's explorations of American slang and the aforementioned scene analysing the various uses of the word "corny". Funnily enough, some of the twists in the third act are indeed straight off the cob.

3/4

21-02-2025

The opening title card of "His Girl Friday" warns us to get ready and, for once, that's not just a promotional puff line. Here's a comedy so fast paced that its dialogue breaks the speed of sound. The film's opening scene prepares us for what's gonna come as Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell rat-a-tat-tat their way through 20 pages of dialogue in half as much time. When it came out, the film was declared to have the fastest dialogue ever recorded. The contest seems to have been suspended since then but I think that the only film whose pace could compare is Billy Wilder's "One Two Three".

The film is based on the iconic Broadway play "The Front Page" by Ben Hecht and Charles McArthur. The play revolves around Hildy Johnson, a Chicago reporter who is quitting his job to get married. The best character in the play, however, is his conniving editor Walter Burns who has to scheme, lie, and cheat in order to keep his best reporter on the payroll while covering a city-wide manhunt.

By 1940, "The Front Page" had entered the public lexicon. Having already been turned into a hit film, its plot was well known, the sparkling dialogue was widely quoted, and it must have seemed that there was little novelty that another film adaptation could bring to such a classic play. And yet, director Howard Hawks made one solitary change that turned the whole thing upside down. He made Hildy Johnson a woman!

By changing the protagonist's gender, Hawks and his writer Charles Lederer, upended the very core of the play. Instead of the central conflict being between a lovelorn journalist and his sneaky editor, the conflict was now between potential lovers. Hecht & MacArthur's barbed dialogue acquired a whole new dimension, a sexual charge which was missing from the original play and which re-energized their 20-year-old material. That's how Hawks turned a farce into a screwball.

The film's plot follows "The Front Page" fairly closely. There are changes here and there, mostly reducing the ensemble parts in order to allow the leads to shine, but there are few narrative surprises for those who already know the play. And yet, "His Girl Friday" is a completely different experience. The change in Hildy's character ensures that. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it improves the play. It makes the material sharper, smarter, sexier, and more dangerous. Walter Burns isn't only fighting for his paper anymore, he's also fighting for the girl he loves.

Rosalind Russell plays Hildy Johnson, the intrepid reporter who has decided to hang up her typewriter in order to get married. Russell is one of the most underrated actresses of all time, one of that great breed of golden-age stars who were just as captivating in broad comedies as they were in tear-jerking melodramas. Her performance in "His Girl Friday" is an absolute masterclass. Her Hildy is as tough as any crime-beat reporter and as sensuous as any romantic lead. She handles the film's speed like a racing car, making elegant swerves between moods, conversations, and situations at a second's notice. Her distinctive raspy voice is the ideal instrument for Lederer's high-speed verbal acrobatics. It works perfectly whether it's shouting headlines down a telephone or whispering sweet nothings into her fiancee's ear.

Cary Grant is not the most obvious choice to play a sleazy American newsman but he turns out to be the ideal Walter Burns. In fact, he offsets the character's innate nastiness with his trademark suave charm making him much more likeable than any other actor ever could. Grant gives us a screwball take on the character. After all, he has to work both as a sharp-tongued charlatan and a romantic lead. A tall order indeed!

Finally, there's Ralph Bellamy as Hildy's ill-fated fiancee Bruce Baldwin. As his name would suggest, Bruce is something of a wet blanket. A timid country bumpkin attached at the hip to his domineering mother. It's obvious from the start that he's a bad match for the urbane Miss Johnson and yet I cannot help but feel bad for the way he's treated in the film. Poor old Bruce gets kicked around more than a football at the Super Bowl. He gets arrested, dumped, and misses his train all while the audience actively roots against him. His only sin is falling in love with Rosalind Russell! Can you blame him? In fact, let he who is without that particular sin throw the first stone.

Everyone rightly focuses on the brilliance and the speed of the dialogue but I was just as taken with the little bits of business everyone has throughout the film. Note the way Walter Burns lights his cigarette at the beginning of the restaurant scene or how he goes to shake Bruce's hand and ends up shaking his umbrella instead. Watch the way Hildy holds a phone in her hand while going through her purse or the way she always seems to be carrying and dropping her luggage. This is a film in which everyone knows what to do with their hands and it's always something funny.

"The Front Page" has been adapted to film three other times none of which work nearly as well as "His Girl Friday". Hecht & MacArthur's play is innately stagy and difficult to turn into a cinematic experience. Strangely, watching this film again, I was surprised to see that its screenplay is every bit as stagy as the play. It is set largely in two interior locations and it has very long, talky scenes. In fact, the film's final 30 minutes take place entirely in a single room with characters coming and going as they would in a theatre.

But the film never feels stagy and that is entirely down to Howard Hawks. That man had a sixth sense for cinema. He injects so much energy and dynamism into the film that it seems to sizzle before our very eyes. His smooth camera movements, extremely dynamic mise-en-scene, and lightning-fast performances make every shot feel novel. In fact, I didn't even notice that the finale was stuck in a single room until it was almost over.

4/4

22-02-2025

For his American directorial debut, Billy Wilder deliberately set out to make the most conventionally commercial film he could - a screwball comedy starring Ginger Rogers. On the other hand, he ended up making an absolute mockery out of some of the tenets of American virtue: childhood innocence, the army, and the idea of love without sex. It's nice to know that at the beginning of his directing career, Billy Wilder was already the master of bad taste.

"The Major and the Minor" is every bit the perverted spin on screwball that its title would suggest. It begins when the crafty Susan Applegate (Ginger Rogers) realizes that she cannot afford the train ticket to get back home to Stevenson, Iowa. In one of those hasty decisions that only pass muster in screwball comedies, she pulls up her socks, puts on a kiddy voice and poses as a 12-year-old in order to get a 50% discount.

On the train, little SuSu Applegate meets Major Philip Kirby (Ray Milland), a charming teacher at a military academy for teenage boys. Through a series of mishaps and misunderstandings I won't bother to recount, Sue finds herself staying at the academy where she has to maintain her charade for three long days. Before you know it, she causes havoc among the cadets, she's set upon by teenaged sex pests, and arouses the doubts of Philip's haughty fiancee Pamela (Rita Johnson).

Of course, this being a screwball comedy, Susan finds herself falling madly in love with our virtuous Major. But what is she to do? He thinks she's only a scrappy 12-year-old. In a delightfully bizarre twist, the Major also begins falling for Sue which confuses him to no end.

A lesser director would try to mask the inherent creepiness of the premise with a jokey veil. Instead, Wilder leans into it making the creepiness itself the central joke. Look, for example, at the scenes in which the horny teenage cadets try to woo the naive little SuSu with some decidedly unsavoury techniques. On the one hand, it's creepy that these teenage boys are being led on by a woman in her 20s posing as a child. On the other hand, it's creepy that these 16-year-old boys are being so handsy and pushy with a seemingly naive 12-year-old. What makes it hilarious is that you're watching both sides playing underhanded tricks on each other and failing in the most bizarre of manners. Here, Wilder employs cringe comedy at its finest decades before it would become a household term.

Our virtuous Major is no exception. He takes SuSu under his wing, lets her sleep at his house, and insists she call him uncle. On the other hand, he also cannot stop waxing lyrical about her good looks, charm, and glowing hair. Ray Milland does a terrific job of playing the Major's sexual confusion for big laughs. There are several moments where he catches himself being a creep about a minor and yet he cannot help it. Of course, we know that at some instinctual level, he must realize that Sue is actually an adult but his conflicting feelings begin bothering his conscious mind.

In another brilliant twist, the only person who's not taken in by Susan's deception is Pamela's 12-year-old sister Lucy (Diana Lynn). You see, Sue is putting on a show for adults. She's the picture-perfect little kid from Hollywood movies - all sweetness and light and candy-coloured unicorns. Lucy, on the other hand, knows that no real kid is that innocent. A real 12-year-old girl hides cigarettes under her bed, dreams of boys, and uses much more unsavoury language.

"The Major and the Minor" is irreverent about every topic it touches on. The army is populated by pompous buffoons and their domineering wives, children are rotten little sex pests, and the only way to get back home is to lie, cheat, and steal. Wilder and his brilliant co-writer Charles Brackett weave all this bad taste into a fantastically frolicsome farce full of hilarious situations and characteristically sparkling dialogue.

Billy Wilder obviously picked up a great deal from the directors he wrote for - Lubitsch, Leisen, and especially Hawks. His direction is deft and elegant. Unfussy but imaginative. He is especially good at delivering exposition in a manner which is both purely visual and perfectly clear. The opening scene at the train station is a superb example as we watch Susan's preposterous plan slowly form inside her head.

Speaking of whom, Ginger Rogers is absolutely marvellous here delivering what might just be her career-finest performance. Not only is she remarkably convincing as a 12-year-old girl but she also manages to convey that striking charm and glow which makes all the boys go ga-ga for SuSu.

"The Major and the Minor" is sadly one of Wilder's more overlooked pictures. I don't understand why since it's such a spellbinding delight. Gloriously irreverent, entirely in bad taste, and gut-bustingly funny, it has all the hallmarks of vintage Wilder.

4/4

23-02-2025

I have always argued that actors playing real people in movies don't necessarily have to resemble them. It's something of a controversial take perhaps but one I believe is absolutely true. The most recent slew of biopics has given us a number of actorly "transformations" - Timothee Chalamet is the spitting image of Bob Dylan, Angelina Jolie learned to sing just like Maria Callas etc. etc. - but none of those movies have left any indent on my impression of that real person. When I think of Dylan or Callas, I still see Dylan and Callas. As good as they were in the films, Chalamet and Jolie will always be just limitations.

Now consider this. Only today have I realised that my mental image of Field Marshal Rommel is actually Erich von Stroheim in Billy Wilder's film "Five Graves to Cairo". Even though I'm a lover of history, especially all things WW2, whenever I read or heard about the great strategist, I'd always picture Stroheim. That is the power of a true performance instead of a great impersonation!

Stroheim looked absolutely nothing like Rommel. However, he perfectly embodies the essence of Rommel - the wily desert fox wielding the power of the Afrika Korps, holding life and death in his hands, defying Monty's troops against all odds. Stroheim's screen presence is that of a Field Marshal. He struts his way around the cramped set like a wild beast waiting to pounce. His imposing physique is imbued with the pomposity of an Austro-Hungarian officer now in the service of a meaner power. His performance is the perfect blend of menace and elegance. He gives us a Rommel who can comment on Italian opera in one breath and issue a death sentence in the very next. He is gregarious yet forceful, funny yet terrifying. More simply put - he makes for a better Rommel than Rommel himself.

Funnily enough, I had never seen "Five Graves to Cairo" before. Just a few clips and photos of Stroheim's magnificent performance. So, how is the film itself? Pretty entertaining, I have to say.

In his second directorial outing in America, Billy Wilder proves that he is just as capable of directing a suspense thriller as he is a light comedy. Of course, Wilder would go on to make several great thrillers - "Double Indemnity" and "Witness for the Prosecution" chief among them - so this comes as no particular surprise but in 1943 it must have been a startling change of pace for a neophyte director.

The film begins with a memorably spooky, almost silent sequence in which British Corporal Bramble (Franchot Tone) wakes up in his tank after a brutal battle. The rest of his crew is dead, so he sets out on foot through the unforgiving Egyptian desert in search of sanctuary. Eventually, he quite literally stumbles into a small desert hotel where he is revived by the genial owner Farid (Akim Tamiroff) and his icy maid Mouche (Anne Baxter).

Unfortunately, Bramble's safety is short-lived. In a cruel twist of fate, the hotel has been selected as a temporary headquarters for the invading German army. Rommel and his officers arrive shortly after Bramble making his escape impossible. The crafty Englishman assumes the identity of a recently killed waiter Davos and plans to wait for the British to return. But wouldn't you know it! Another twist ensues! It turns out that Davos was a German spy who held top-secret information which could change the course of the war.

The screenplay written by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder was based on a dusty old melodrama by Lajos Biro. Despite their best efforts, the film still bears its traces. The plot is preposterously convoluted relying more on coincidence than any good thriller really should. Twists and turns occur almost mechanically without much input from the paper-thin characters. Like in any melodrama, our protagonists are nothing more than pawns of fate, blowing in the winds of destiny like tattered pieces of paper... or some nonsense like that.

The characters are strictly stereotypes. Farid, for example, is the stock innkeeper complete with a giant belly and a comedic urge to please his unannounced guests. Played by Akim Tamiroff, he is a far too broad caricature to feature in what is otherwise a serious thriller. Similarly cartoonish is the portrayal of the Italian General Sebastiano (Fortunio Bonanova) who is depicted as a friendly idiot with a penchant for singing arias and courting pretty ladies.

There are only two serious characters in the film. The first is Rommel though mostly due to Stroheim's tremendous performance. As written, the character is not all that interesting. He's a fairly conventional depiction of a Nazi general. Still, it is interesting to note that Rommel's depiction in this film flies right in the face of the popular Rommel Myth which usually portrays the Field Marshall as a "good German" who fought fairly and didn't believe in Nazism. In this film, however, Rommel is a beast, a villainous killer whose charm masks an unrestrained bloodlust.

The screenplay itself only fleshes out one character and that is Mouche. She initially seems like a typical collaborator eager to please the German invaders. Wilder and Brackett, however, give her a touching backstory to motivate her actions. You see, her brother is a prisoner in a concentration camp and she hopes to bargain for his life with the brutish Germans. Anne Baxter is quite good at portraying the remains of Mouche's sensuality concealed behind her cold, determined exterior.

Our protagonist, Cpl. Bramble, on the other hand, is a complete mystery. An underwritten, cardboardy hero who is equally adept at commanding a tank, assuming false identities, and wooing the ladies. He must have received the same training as James Bond. We learn next to nothing about him for the duration of the film and we're expected to sympathise with him just because he's "on our side". Unfortunately, he's so thoroughly overshadowed by Stroheim and Baxter that he almost becomes a nuisance. We wonder if the film wouldn't have been better without him.

Wilder originally wanted Cary Grant for the part. I think that bit of casting would have significantly improved the film. Much like Stroheim, Grant would have been able to infuse his part with qualities absent from the script. I could see his charm and laconic sense of humour fleshing out Bramble and making him likeable if not particularly compelling. Unfortunately, Grant refused and Wilder was stuck with Franchot Tone instead. Tone does a decent job in the part but he's not particularly memorable and ultimately Bramble is a poor lead.

"Five Graves to Cairo" is the least of Wilder's thrillers but that doesn't mean it's not good. Stroheim's performance alone makes it worth seeing. Furthermore, the film is beautifully shot by John F. Seitz and features a roaring orchestral score by the great Miklos Rosza. Finally, Wilder's direction is terrific, a first-rate showcase for the up-and-coming director desperate to be taken seriously by his studio bosses. There are several moments in the film which would make Hitchcock envious such as the tremendous dolly shot revealing Bramble's dog tags on a whisky bottle and a fight scene illuminated only by a flashlight.

The film is formulaic and melodramatic, for sure. It's also full of that annoying wartime ra-ra propaganda. However, it is also tremendous fun in the manner of a good pulp serial or a goofy adventure film. With its preposterous plot twists and moments of genuine suspense, it's bound to keep you engaged if not exactly riveted.

3/4

23-02-2025

"The Uninvited" must be the gentlest horror film I've ever seen, consistently offsetting its scares with a delightful undercurrent of romance and comedy. That is not to say that the film isn't spooky - it most certainly is! - but it's a sophisticated, elegant kind of spookiness. Based on a novel by Dorothy Macardle, the movie approaches a ghost story with the same kind of drawing room sophistication that murder acquires in an Agatha Christie novel. At the end of the day, it's all in awfully good taste.

The film begins when siblings Roderick and Pamela Fitzgerald (Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey) buy a beautiful but mysteriously abandoned house on the English coast. On their first night there, however, they discover why it's been empty for years. A horrific wailing betrays the presence of a ghost! Roderick and Pamela do some digging and uncover a connection with the house's past owner or rather the owner's granddaughter Stella (Gail Russell). Stella's mother died in the house decades ago but it seems that the mother is not willing to part from her daughter that easily.

The plot of "The Uninvited" is not much to write about. It moves quite confidently down the well-worn path of previous ghost stories. Still, screenwriters Dodie Smith and Frank Partos weave it into a pleasing little mystery, a kind of ghostly whodunnit for our characters to untangle while sipping gin and exchanging witticisms. The ending is a tad abrupt and a little too neat but the journey there is quite engrossing.

Both the comedy and the horror elements of the film are splendidly accomplished. Ray Milland is especially good at balancing the two tones as a musician unexpectedly thrust into a supernatural entanglement. He's rather ill-prepared to deal with the undead but must put on a brave face so as not to scare the ladies. There's a rather funny moment in which he assures his sister that there's nothing to fear and then, once she's out of sight, leaps into bed and pulls the covers over his head.

Director Lewis Allen must be commended for accomplishing this delicate blend of tones and genres. The film is occasionally riotously funny but without ever losing suspense. The ghostly sightings are particularly well done with some of the best sound design I've heard in a 1940s film. The wailing noises which seem to emanate from nowhere and echo everywhere, the mysterious groans, and the creaking of the stairs give the film a genuinely unsettling atmosphere.

Just as effective is Charles Lang's chiaroscuro photography relying on small streaks of light struggling to illuminate the great hallways of the ancient house. Meanwhile, Victor Young's eerily melodic score underscores both the romance and the terror. This is a film which perfectly captures the marriage between the sublime and the horrible which is at the heart of gothic horror.

The romance is depicted with just the same degree of elegance and restraint. Roderick develops a protective relationship with Stella which slowly evolves into love throughout the film. Equally understated is Pamela's budding relationship with the local GP, Dr Scott (Alan Napier) which is built mainly through looks and subtle gestures of care.

Unfairly overlooked in favour of Universal creature features and Val Lewton's more obviously psychosexual melodramas, "The Uninvited" is a well-crafted ghost story which achieves a dazzling balance between romantic comedy and proper ghostly scares. Genuinely spooky yet pleasantly endearing, this is indeed your grandmother's idea of a horror film and all the better for it.

3.5/4

24-02-2025

There's something quite unconvincing about this production. The stock sets, the archaic dialogue, Ray Milland's toupee, a woman dying in hospital with a perfectly white bandage around her head, the way the police pick up evidence with their bare hands, the way English gentlemen pass out in the streets and get up without their suits getting wrinkled. Individually, these are minor flaws but as the film trods along they add up and conspire to break the delicate cinematic illusion.

"Hostile Witness" was based on a play by Jack Roffey and its stagy origins are evident. After an extended and ultimately unnecessary prologue, we're thrust into a story about Simon Crawford (Ray Milland), an arrogant barrister who now stands accused of murdering a judge. We're told that the motive for this incredible crime is that the judge was the hit-and-run driver who killed Simon's daughter. However, the film spends so little time on either the daughter or her death that the motive might as well have been a disagreement about the weather.

The rest of the film is then confined to a rather cramped courtroom of the Old Bailey where Crawford is defended by his brilliant junior Sheila Larkin (Sylvia Sims). In the first act, the film hints that Miss Larkin might be secretly in love with Crawford but this subplot is completely forgotten about once the trial begins.

The courtroom scenes are conventional but amusingly written. The judge (Felix Aylmer) is a sleepy old-timer who occasionally rouses from his slumber to say a few witty one-liners. The prosecutor (Raymond Huntley) presents his case in a bombastically antagonistic manner which the young Sheila Larkin counters with soft-spoken intelligence and some damn sharp rhetoric.

The onslaught of witnesses includes a very funny performance from Geoffrey Lumsden as the blustering Major Maitland and Richard Hurndall's arrogant Superintendent Eley. Also in the cast are such British luminaries as Ronald Leigh-Hunt, Percy Marmont, Ewan Roberts, and Dulcie Bowman. The ever-sinister Norman Barrs appears as Crawford's loyal clerk Milburn.

For fans of British film and television, "Hostile Witness" is the ultimate example of comfort viewing. A whole host of beloved character actors come on and deliver familiar dialogue. Everything from the sets to the twists has been featured in countless other thrillers some better and some worse.

The film was directed by Ray Milland who does a perfectly reliable job staging the predictable action in the most obvious way. There's very little suspense or mystery in this film but that sort of fits with the idea of comfort viewing. Nothing to make us too anxious while we drink our afternoon tea.

The material, however, is awfully clunky and that is something that cannot be so easily excused. A great deal of the plot is devoted to figuring out who the killer could be if it's not our hero Crawford. Unfortunately, the way the story is laid out it truly could be anyone from the comedic major to the sleepy judge. Once the truth was revealed, it felt like the answer was plucked out of a hat. Where were the clues? Where was the foreshadowing? Where was the detective work? Certainly not on screen...

At 62, Ray Milland is far too old to play an ambitious and arrogant lawyer. Instead of strutting about Old Bailey and seducing his juniors, Milland looks more like he should be enjoying early retirement. Milland had played the role on stage a decade before but he really should have found a younger man to play the part on film. Much more compelling is the performance of a young Sylvia Sims who is quite commanding in the courtroom scenes.

Ultimately, "Hostile Witness" is a decent bit of fluff. Perfectly watchable in the same way as Francis Durbridge thrillers or lesser episodes of "Rumpole of the Bailey". There are no real surprises here and no tremendous artistry, but the cast is capable and the plot is relatively engaging. It's no glowing recommendation, I agree, but "Hostile Witness" is the perfect fodder for a slow day on Talking Pictures TV.

2.5/4