Three Films Make A Post: Meet The Gayest Lady Who Ever Went To Town!

Theodora Goes Wild (1936): This screwball comedy by Richard Boleslawski with the great Irene Dunne (and Melvyn Douglas, though he’s not really Dunne’s equal here) is still a joy to watch. Of course, the joyless puritanism and churlish conservatism it argues against does tend to get in style again and again – and too many progressives can get as badly infected by it as the reactionaries do – so it felt unexpectedly topical from time to time. The film also puts a nice bit of emphasis that enjoying one’s life as much as one can and being a good person towards others are not in opposition. Still news to some today.

This being a great bit of screwball, it does not use its message to bury the fun; instead the film’s an absolutely joyous mixture of the slightly frivolous, the just plain silly, and the sort of absurd set-pieces the genre is well known for.

Choose or Die (2022): I found this very low budget Netflix horror effort by Toby Meakins rather frustrating. There are several really cool set-pieces here – particularly the diner scene is excellently disturbing – but there’s also a clear ambition to do more than just set-pieces. And it’s here where the film falters for me: while it is pretty clear what it is trying to achieve thematically, namely talk about matters of race and class, of the lack of hope you get when you’re black and poor and how it buries one, it does so in a manner that’s so blunt and flat, and has so little to do with how most of the horror scenes play out, the whole film falls flat on its face, even before the godawful ending.

Infinite Storm (2022): At times, this survival movie with Naomi Watts in a fine acting mood, directed by Malgorzata Szumowska, about a grieving woman saving a suicidal young man (Billy Howl) by literally dragging him down a mountain in terrible conditions, is surehandedly, quietly human, using the usual and typical tropes of this kind of wilderness survival affair to explore the fine lines between grief and hope, will to live and will to die. It is sparse (the right kind) and rather beautifully shot, as well. This good impression is regularly marred by moments where the film suddenly seems to lose trust in its own – and Watts’s – ability to express what it is trying to say, and suddenly swerves towards the cheese of badly used licensed music and badly written monologues that are meant to explain what the film is already expressing, but only turn it banal.

In short: Ghost Story (1981)

Every couple of years, I’ve forgotten enough about John Irvin’s all too free adaptation of Peter Straub’s fantastic eponymous novel to try and change my mind about the film.

Alas, once I start watching, I remember again why I’ll never be able to call this one worth rediscovering, a hidden gem, or anything else positive. The problem really isn’t me here, it is that the film’s just a mess. In part, that’s the fault of a lot of heavy-handed studio intervention that tried to pull the film away from subtlety to more obvious shock effects, as if all that a film needs to be visceral are some often very awkwardly added in shots of a bad looking corpse make-up job. Director John Irvin has quite a bit to answer for, too. The glacial pace in which the film develops through pointless scene and pointless scene of little specific happening is all on him and scriptwriter Lawrence D. Cohen, as are the bizarre tonal shifts between the film’s main timeline and the long, long, way too long flashbacks.

That the film needs to cut back considerable parts of Straub’s novel to fit into anything but a modern mini series runtime (this one could really make a great contemporary streaming series) is obvious. It just seems to wilfully cut out the most important parts of the book, while keeping elements in that do not make sense anymore without what’s been lost. The completely rewritten elements of the film – particular the nature of its big bad - go out of their way to weaken one of the book’s main themes - the destructive force of male fear of women. That the originals many-coloured play with the traditions of the written (or really, told) supernatural tale have gone the way of the dodo is no surprise, but it makes it hard to see the point of the old men telling each other ghost stories at all.

But then, this is a film that makes a big thing out of featuring Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and John Houseman in the leads and does sod all with them, focussing on their flashback selves (played by nobody you need to remember), and on Craig Wasson, who, I’m sad to point out, could not act his way out of a wet paper bag, and is actively, wilfully bad here. Alice Krige as our villainess is great, mixing cold anger and strange sensuality perfectly, but again, the film never seems to understand the performance Krige gives (or even what the point of her character is) and simply wastes it on nothing of consequence.

All of this is little improved by Irvin’s failings as a horror director: slow burn horror, shock horror, American Gothic mood, mild (and therefore heavily toned down from the novel) surrealist horror – there’s no mode of the genre you’ll see any ability for here.

Past Misdeeds: The Old Dark House (1932)

The married couple of Margaret (Gloria Stuart) and Philip (Raymond Massey) Waverton and their car guest Roger Penderel (Melvyn Douglas) whose connection with the two is never quite explained, are driving through the Welsh countryside during a spectacular rainstorm. As it is usual in cases like this, they have lost their way completely and the couple is bitching at each other with some aplomb, while Penderel proceeds to sing sarcastically.

Fortunately, this very special kind of revelry is broken by a landslide. The trio and their car barely manage to find their way to the titular old dark house, which is the only place where they can find shelter before they are all blown away by the forces of nature.

Rather less fortunate for them are the inhabitants they find inside. Head of the household seems to be Horace Femm (Ernest Thesiger), an older gentleman who acts terribly afraid of something or someone within the house, at least when he is not passive-aggressively bickering with his sister Rebecca (Eva Moore). Rebecca herself is half deaf (at least when she wants to be) and in the grip of some sort of religious mania caused by old wounds from the relationship with her long-dead sister that makes her rather nasty to young pretty women like Margaret. This assortment of weird characters is completed by the siblings' servant Morgan (Boris Karloff), a mute, bearded, less than friendly seeming sort of fellow (and since this is a film from 1932, he is in fact not friendly). The siblings inform their guests merrily that he tends to get quite violent when drunk.

While everyone's still getting acquainted and/or scaring the shit out of each other, another pair of weather refugees arrives to make the cast complete for now. It is the jolly seeming Sir William Porterhouse (Charles Laughton) and the woman whose sugar daddy without sexual benefits he plays, Gladys Perkins (Lilian Bond). Gladys and Penderel are really hitting it off, and after they have known each other for about ten minutes, he is all good and ready to propose marriage to her.

Their romance will have to wait a little, though, because the night will be filled with a drunk Boris Karloff doing Frankenstein's monster in drunk and mean, creepy giggling by the Femm's ancient father (for no clear reason and very obviously played by a woman, Elspeth Dudgeon in her film debut), and another, fire-loving surprise family member.

For some time, James Whale's The Old Dark House was thought to be lost, but after some adventures in film restoration the movie is now watchable on an excellent DVD by Kino. I must say that I find it quite disturbing that even a film like this - produced by a major studio like Universal and directed by someone as highly acclaimed as Whale - can come so close to being lost.

Having said that, I also have to add that I am not as completely enamoured of the film a some of my acquaintances are. This isn't to say that I don't find The Old Dark House worth watching, but it is far from perfect and far from being Whale's best film.

But let's talk about the film's good sides first. First and foremost, there is Whale's sure-handed direction, with the typical atmospheric and adventurous use of shadow and light you will find complimented in every single review of one of Whale's films ever written. Whale is also enthusiastically avoiding the stagey feel that drags down many of the films of his contemporaries. While there is quite obviously only a very small number of sets, the director is not satisfied with just letting stiffly arranged actors talk at each other (which is the typical way an old dark house movie would be set up). Instead, there is much more movement on display than usual. A feeling of liveliness pervades the film, making it very much the stylistic opposite of the Poverty Row films that define the Old Dark House genre.

Also quite excellent is the acting. While I wouldn't call any of the characters very original even for 1932, the script does its best to give most of them a little more depth than usual or strictly necessary. Laughton's Porterhouse for example is not just an obnoxious loudmouth with a talent for making money, but someone who hides the pain the loss of his wife brought him behind it. His relationship with Gladys is not based on sex, but rather on a mixture of blunt honesty and real affection, and a way for Porterhouse to cope with the loneliness he feels after the death of his wife. The film doesn't show Gladys as a gold digger, and therefore doesn't feel the need to punish her for living her life. This aspect of the film has a the sort of proper grown-up feel to it Hollywood would soon have to give up for the trite moralizing the censor expected of it.

I have to say that I have my problems with the Gladys/Penderel love aspect of the script. It is not that they fall in love (Lilian Bond and Melvyn Douglas do have a good bit of chemistry going on between them), but really the absurd tempo in which it happens that bugs me. It is unavoidable in a film that takes place in a single night, yet still manages to strain my suspension of disbelief more than mad relatives in the attic.

The film's second and larger problem is also the script's fault. It is the nearly complete absence of a plot for much of the running time, as well as the movie's near Italian exploitation-like avoidance of really putting the motivations and elements it contains together to make something like a whole, until everything culminates in a badly set up, hyperactive finale.

What would ruin another film completely only drags The Old Dark House down from the chance of being a great film to being a good one. Whale's visual mastership and the excellent acting ensemble are a joy to watch, and I'm more than willing to overlook sloppy plotting in favour of mood and character depth.

Some modern viewers will also have their problems with the way the film shows its age - women belong in cupboards when it is getting dangerous, mentally ill people roll their eyes and giggle before they are going to kill you, etc etc. Like most art, The Old Dark House is a product of its time, for better and for worse, and like with most art, we have to live with this, or will probably not be able to relate to it at all.

In short: Arsene Lupin Returns (1938)

Someone attempts to steal a particularly valuable emerald necklace from the de Grissac family just when they’ve come to the USA to sell it, yet only manages to steal a copy of it. The would-be jewel thief leaves all the hallmarks of the famed Arsène Lupin behind, if you ignore the fact he’d never by so unstylish in his approach as he’s shown to be here, would hardly confuse a copy with the original, and that he’s supposed to be dead.

Of course, Lupin (this time around Melvyn Douglas) is still around and kicking (see the first film from six years earlier), having settled down in the guise of gentleman farmer Rene Farrand. Ironically, Lupin/Farrand is attempting to woo de Grissac’s niece Lorrain (Virginia Bruce), despite her being the most boring character alive. So quite naturally, former lamplight addicted FBI agent, now insurance security man, Steve Emerson (Warren William), quickly gets it into his head that not only is Farrand Lupin but also trying to steal the necklace. At least he’s half right. I’m sure the fact that Emerson also has taken an interest in Lorraine has nothing at all to do with his ideas.

Lupin, particularly once someone pretending to be him is still trying to steal the necklace when everyone is back in France and even that unstylish crime known as murder happens, has to take on the unfamiliar role of detective, all the while playing a cat and mouse game with Emerson and wooing Lorraine.

George Fitzmaurice’s Arsene Lupin Returns is quite an example of how stupid the production code holding Hollywood back for a few decades actually was, with its gentleman thief (in the first, pre-code film still very much that) not being allowed to be an actual thief anymore (no charming people stealing from the rich for you, America!), and instead having reformed and doing the whole amateur detective bit. It would be a thing easily to get annoyed about, but the film at hand doesn’t actually deserve anyone’s ire.

It is, indeed, quite a fun little flick, with Douglas and William both doing different variations on the suave detective character, fighting each other over a cause and a woman with such enthusiasm and camaraderie it’s always clear these guys are doing what they do because they enjoy themselves so much. On the negative side, this leaves Lorraine as not much more than a trophy and a prop, and a particularly boring one at that. But then, criticizing this means applying deeper thought than the film actually merits.

This, after all, is meant to be slight, slick diversion that makes you smile (and probably swoon) about its smart leads while being entertained and a bit excited by their plotting and counterplotting, and at that Arsene Lupin Returns is quite adept indeed.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,crime,george fitzmaurice,melvyn douglas,warren william,virginia bruce

Three Films Make A Post: PATHETIC EARTHLINGS...WHO CAN SAVE YOU NOW?

Fast Company (1938): I know, Edward Buzzell’s film is only an attempt to launch another detective couple like The Thin Man’s Nick and Nora Charles, but I really like the resulting mystery comedy a lot. Melvyn Douglas and Florence Rice as our central couple have highly enjoyable chemistry, the dialogue’s fast and very funny, and the mystery plot goes by sprightly and without major hindrances to the enjoyment of the dialogue, so there’s little about the film that isn’t enjoyable and charming. It is not quite on the same level as the first Thin Man yet who’s making comparisons while he’s charmed?

As an added bonus for the bookish like me (and hopefully you), our heroes work as rare book traders and part-time book detectives, a fact I would probably make more of in my imagined remake where she is the more action oriented and he the one who stays behind, but it’s still the sort of thing that helps the movie become something a bit more than just an easy attempt to jump on a bandwagon.

Cut-Throat Struggle for an Invaluable Treasure aka 塞外奪寶 (1982): Despite beginning with a massacre of Shaolin monks and the ensuing theft of the Buddha’s teeth, this Hong Kong martial arts film directed by Hui Sin and Leung Wing-Tai is more of a comedy than anything else, if a comedy not prone to the outer heights and depths of martial arts slapstick. In its choreography, its sense of humour and its needle-dropped score, this is pretty much a typical second tier film of its time, and like a lot of these films, it’s damn entertaining while doing what it does with professionalism and style.

The fights are pleasantly varied in style and form, their execution is fine, and the film has a nice flow to it, even if the plot is just going through the motions to get from one fight to the next. As an added, and unexpected, pleasure, Cut-Throat Struggle is also full of very pretty location shots for its characters to fight in, adding the cheapest of all special effects.

Seraphim Falls (2006): David Von Ancken’s fascinating film starts as what looks like the final act of a modernist Western, but gradually turns into something much more surreal, the film’s outer landscapes mirroring those of the protagonists, until the difference between the metaphorical and the real becomes diffuse; people who like connections coming from Abrahamic religions will have particular fun here. In its own, peculiar way, Seraphim Falls does tell a very Western-like redemption story, even if it at first pretends to be more of a Spaghetti Western-like tale of vengeance; it’s just that the film’s concept of redemption is a bit different from that of many movies in the genre that came before it. While it is going on its way to redemption, the film plays with various audience expectations (like who the hero of the tale might be), and gives Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnan, as well as a bunch of excellently cast minor characters, much space for performances that are at once real and as idiosyncratic as the film needs them to be.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,hong kong movies,in short,mystery,comedy,martial arts,western,edward buzzell,melvyn douglas,florence rice,hui sin,leung wing-tai,david von ancken,liam neeson,pierce brosnan

On WTF: The Old Dark House (1932)

Being who I am, I find the thought of all the films that have been lost to the ravages of time and/or greedy and stupid copyright owners more than a little depressing. It is all the more exciting when a film which was thought lost reappears, like James Whale's The Old Dark House has. Read my review on WTF-Film.com to learn exactly how happy I am about it.

 

Technorati-Tags: american movies,james whale,boris karloff,melvyn douglas,lilian bond,ernest thesiger,reviews,thriller,other places