A Guide to the Interesting and Unusual on TCM
By Ed Garea
As long as I have the time, let me expound further on TCM’s
“Summer Under the Stars.” Yes, it’s a novel way to re-package the same old fare
usually shown, but there are the shining moments when a rarely-shown star’s
work is screened. The best example of this occurs this week, when some of the
films of Catherine Deneuve will appear on the small screen August 12. As far as
I’m concerned, all of the scheduled films should be recorded for later viewing,
but I will reluctantly limit myself in this column to featuring five of her
films, each a classic. Deneuve, besides being one the great screen beauties,
could also act; rare for a movie star of her status and beauty.
That’s the good. As to the bad, we need look no further than
August 13, when Mickey Rooney is the designated star. Nothing against Rooney on
my part, for I happen to be a fan – a big fan – of his film work. But he was
Star of the Month a few months back, when the same films were shown. Also, and
more to the point: if TCM is going to run his movies on this day, they should
run one that we haven’t seen in a long while. Yes, I have just such a movie in
mind: his 1957 gangster opus, Baby Face Nelson. Besides being a
good film in its own right, it was directed by Don Siegel and co-starred the
lovely Carolyn Jones. This movie hasn’t been shown in a dog’s age and the time
is right for its return to our small screens.
August 12
6:00 am Le Petit Poucet (Le Studio Canal Plus, 2001) – Director:
Oliver Dahan. Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Romane Bohringer, Elodie Bouchez, Pierre
Berriau, Nils Hugon, & Samy Naceri. Color, 90 minutes.
Though often confused with the English fairy tale character Tom
Thumb, “Le Petit Poucet” actually originated in a story by French writer
Charles Perrault. Perrault is considered one of the fathers of the fairy tale,
having written such stories as “Cinderella,” “Puss n’ Boots,” “Bluebeard,” and
“Little Red Riding Hood.” He also created the concept of Mother Goose as the
collector of these tales, and would influence such later writers as the Grimm
Brothers and Hans Christian Andersen.
The story has been filmed many times over the years, beginning in
1905 as a silent short, Hop O’ My Thumb, directed by Vincent
Lorant-Heilbronn. This 2001 production is the most lavish, although it abandons
digital technology for the most part in favor of matte paintings and optical
tricks. This gives it an artificial look that was purely intentional on the
part of the producers and director.
It also sticks to the story: the title character is the youngest
of seven children born to a woodcutting couple in the country and uses his wits
to compensate for his lack of height. The parents’ poverty makes them unable to
properly care for the children, so they are abandoned in the woods and left to
their fate. Among the dangers they face is a hungry ogre intent on making a
meal of them.
The film retains the more macabre and violent parts of the story,
such as the ogre and his children and the brutal battles the children engage in
to survive as they try to find their way back home. My friend in France
recommended the film to me, and I must admit that being conditioned to digital
effects as I am, it took a while to become used to the look of the this movie,
but once I did, it was magical viewing. Dahan, having started as a painter,
knows how to use colors to their best effect, which increases the intensity of
the story and draws the viewer in to what’s taking place on the screen. If you
like the films of Tim Burton, you should like this excursion into the
fantastic.
7:45 am Repulsion (Royal Films, 1965) – Director: Roman Polanski.
Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Ian Hendry, John Fraser, Patrick Wymark, & Yvonne
Fueneaux. B&W, 105 minutes.
This is the movie that introduced both Deneuve and director Polanski
to the English-speaking public. Made on the relatively cheap for about
$300,000, it became a worldwide hit. Deneuve was already a star in France, due
to her breakthrough performance in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. But
Polanski was a starving artist living in Paris, having fled there to avoid the
repressive regime in his native Poland, even though he was heralded there for
his first feature, the brilliant Knife in the Water (1962).
Repulsion is an outstanding psychological thriller about a young woman
named Carol, played by Deneuve, who works as a beautician in a distinctly
un-hip part of London. To say that Carol is sexually repressed is an
understatement: she suffers from an industrial-strength case of it. Living in a
cramped London apartment with her sister and the sister’s married lover, Carol
is left to her own devices when the latter two go on vacation. She barricades
herself in the apartment and even tears out the phone after she takes an
abusive phone call meant for her sister. Her isolation, combined with the
hallucinations of men groping and grabbing at her ultimately makes her
murderous.
Trivia: Polanski talked Deneuve into posing nude for Playboy to
help publicize the film, a decision Deneuve was to bitterly regret years later.
But she did meet her husband, David Bailey, on the shoot. He was the
photographer.
12:00 Un Flic (EIA, 1972) – Director: Jean-Pierre Melville. Cast: Alain
Delon, Catherine Deneuve, Richard Crenna, Riccardo Cucciolla, Michael Conrad,
& Andre Pousse. Color, 98 minutes.
“Un flic” is a French slang term meaning “a cop.” In the hands of
a master like Melville, it turns into a noir, which itself becomes the
resonance of life. While in America, noirs were made fast and cheap, intended
to be no more than a violent thriller, in France, with its postwar urban
weltanschauung, the noir assumed the place the Western held in America, where
the hero wrestled with issues of good, evil, destiny, and the ironic meaning of
life. In Japan, those issues were to be found within the allegorical Samurai
films.
While directors such as Truffaut, Malle, and Dassin dabbled with
noir (although Dassin was quite at home within its borders), Melville was its
undisputed master. In his hands, noir changes from its cops vs. robbers motif
into a vulgar existential version of what St. John of the Cross called “the
dark night of the soul.” To quote writer Michael Atkinson, “The hapless
gangsters and gangsterish cops in Melville's films don't know much except two
things: one, their sense of honor is the only thing they can take with them to
the grave, and two, that date with the grave may be coming all too soon.”
Un Flic was Melville’s last film and opens with a robbery of a
seaside bank, during which one of the bandits is wounded. Leading the robbers are
Crenna and Conrad. Leading the police is detective Delon. The iconic femme
fatale uniting the characters is Deneuve, who is the girlfriend of both Crenna
and Delon. I will say no more here, lest I spoil a beautifully-woven plot.
Atkinson sees the plot machinations of Melville as heavily
influencing the screenwriting style of Quentin Tarantino, and I’m not about to
argue. His point is obvious to anyone who has seen their movies. But I also
spot an influence of this movie on Michael Mann and his dynamic neo-noir, Heat,
especially the scene where Deneuve, Delon and Crenna all sit down for a drink.
Melville is not only wildly entertaining, but he is also quite infectious.
8:00 pm The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Landau Releasing, 1964) – Director:
Jacques Demy. Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Nino Castelnuovo, Anne Vernon, Ellen
Farmer, & Marc Michel. Color, 90 minutes.
Demy’s homage to American musicals stars Deneuve and Castelnuovo
as Genevieve and Guy, an umbrella shop salesgirl and a mechanic who pledge
their love to each other. When Guy is drafted they decide to consummate their
love, with the result that Genevieve becomes pregnant. While Guy is away in
Algeria fighting, Genevieve decides she no longer lovers him and marries
Roland, a wealthy diamond merchant. Guy is wounded, returns to Cherbourg, and
discovers the truth. If you can put up with a film in which every line is sung,
and can forget the overwhelming bubble-gum colors, this is a film one can really
get to appreciate for what it is.
Trivia: Shot on location in the Normandy port town of Cherbourg, the
citizens allowed Demy to paint their houses, hence the bright, cheery colors.
2:15 am Belle De Jour (Allied Artists, 1968) – Director: Luis Bunuel. Cast: Catherine
Deneuve, Jean Sorel, Genevieve Page, Michel Piccoli, & Pierre Clementi.
Color, 100 minutes.
This was the film that catapulted Deneuve to international
stardom. She plays Severine, a bored and sexually frigid housewife plagued by
fantasies in which she is sexually and enjoyably debased by her husband, among
other men. Acting on these fantasies she moonlights as a part-time prostitute,
calling herself “Belle de jour” (Daytime Beauty). Soon, however, she is working
there every day while precariously balancing her life outside the brothel with
her husband. Based on a 1928 novel of the same name by Joseph Kessel, director
Bunuel, along with his co-screenwriter, Jean-Claude Carrire, reportedly visited
brothels, interviewing the prostitutes as to their sexual fantasies.
Trivia: In most subtitled versions of the movie, an italicized font
is used to separate Severine’s fantasy from reality.
August 13
9:45 am A Family Affair (MGM, 1937) – Director: George B. Seitz.
Cast: Lionel Barrymore, Cecelia Parker, Eric Linden, Mickey Rooney, Julie
Haydon, Charley Grapewin, & Spring Byington. B&W, 69 minutes.
Who knew back in 1937 that this little B-throwaway film would lead
to one of MGM’s most profitable series ever? Based on a 1928 play titled Skidding,
by Aurania Rouverol, the film concerned the lives of Judge Hardy (Barrymore),
his wife Emily (Byington), their daughters Joan (Haydon) and Marion (Parker),
and their youngest, Andy (Rooney). The Judge is running for re-election in what
appears to be a tight race because of an unpopular decision he has made that is
affecting the townsfolk. And he has his family’s problems to deal with at the
same time. The film proved a hit with audiences and exhibitors alike and Louis
Mayer rushed a sequel into production, You’re Only Young Once. This
time, however, the roles of Judge Hardy and Emily Hardy were filled by Lewis
Stone and Fay Holden, which was fine by Barrymore, because he never wanted to
do the film in the first place. He only did it because he was contractually
obligated. Ann Rutherford replaced Margaret Marquis as Polly Benedict, Andy’s
girlfriend, and the character of the oldest daughter Joan was dropped. Though
the character of Andy Hardy was secondary in the film, as Rooney’s career at
MGM took off, so did his screen time and billing in the Hardy Family series.
Trivia: It was producer Sam Marx who convinced MGM to buy Rouverol’s
play with the idea of making it into a B-movie.
August 14
6:00 am Parachute Jumper (WB, 1933) – Director: Alfred E. Green. Cast:
Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Bette Davis, Frank McHugh, Claire Dodd, & Leo
Carrillo. B&W, 73 minutes.
I love Davis’s early movies, before she hit it big and chucked her
natural acting for a series of mannerisms. This film was made during a time in
Davis’s career when she seemed to be playing an endless succession of
girlfriends. Here she plays stenographer Patricia “Alabama” Kent. She’s the
girlfriend of Bill Keller (Fairbanks), who, along with his pal “Toodles” Cooper
(McHugh) are ex-Marine flyers who can’t find jobs in Depression America. Keller
and Toodles eventually do find jobs as muscle for gangster Kurt Weber
(Carrillo), flying blind to Canada at night to pick up illegal booze. But –
wouldn’t you know it? – Alabama also finds work, as the receptionist for
Carrillo’s front business. Implausible, of course, but Warners films of the
early ‘30s are entertaining, and this one’s no different.
Trivia: When Robert Aldrich was filming Whatever Happened to
Baby Jane? in 1962, he chose two film clips to represent the decline
of Davis’ character, Baby Jane Hudson. One was from Parachute Jumper, and the other was from Ex-Lady, also
made in 1933 . . . Davis has always cited Parachute Jumper as
her least favorite of all 94 films she made.
7:30 am The Girl From 10th Avenue (WB, 1935) – Director: Alfred E. Green. Cast:
Bette Davis, Ian Hunter, Colin Clive, Alison Skipworth, Katharine Alexander,
& John Eldredge. B&W, 70 minutes.
More early Davis. This time, she gets top billing is this
programmer from Warner Brothers affiliate, First National. Based on a play by
Hubert Henry Davies from 1914 titled Outcast, it had been filmed
three times previously (in 1917, 1922, and 1928) under that title. This time,
in recycling it, the title was changed, but the plot is basically the same.
Lawyer Geoff Sherwood (Hunter) recently dumped by his fiancé, Valentine French
(Alexander), gets stewed to the gills and marries a perfect stranger, shopgirl
Miriam Brady (Davis), also three sheets to the wind. Coming to the next day,
they realize what they’ve done, but still decide to give the marriage a chance.
That is, until Geoff runs into Valentine, who tells him what a dreadful mistake
she made in marrying John Marland (Clive). Geoff decided to move into his club
to think things over. There he runs into Marland, who tells him in no uncertain
terms what a fool he would be to leave Miriam.
While The Girl From 10th Avenue
is a B-movie, it’s entertaining from beginning to end due to the performances
by leads Davis and Hunter. Also look for scene-stealing Skipworth as Davis’s
landlady who gives Davis’ character an impromptu lesson in charm. It also
represents a new turn in the characters Davis would be playing – the female
underdog.
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