By Ed Garea
STAR OF THE MONTH
As
we wrote in the last column, because of the theme for the month,
there is no special star to be highlighted.
OUT
OF THE ORDINARY
Despite
the fact that it threatens to be more of the same old, same old,
there are actually some movies on tap that are rarely seen, and these
are the ones we will feature.
February
17: Straight off his Oscar nomination for playing Minnesota
Fats in Robert Rossen’s The Hustler in 1961, and
lauded for his innovative television work, Jackie Gleason was
absolutely full of himself. He was no longer a comedian-actor. No, he
was now a Serious Artist. And as we all know, when actors begin to
get that idea in their otherwise empty skulls, the next stop is
Trouble with a Capital “T.” And nothing befits a Serious Artist
like a Prestige Project, for that will show the public what a great
artist he truly is.
The
ideal of the Serious Artist for most comics is Charlie Chaplin. His
mix of slapstick with sloppy sentimentality has solidified over the
years to represent a sort of grand artistry; one that every comic
with grandiose plans seeks to capture. The gold at the end of this
rainbow, of course, is the Oscar, affirmation of one’s greatness
from his peers. Gleason had such a project in mind: Gigot,
the tale of a janitor who lives alone in a basement in Montemarte and
who is taunted by neighbors because he is mute. Then one night he
finds a “fallen” woman and her daughter and brings them back to
his place, where he cares for them – with the predictable results.
The woman comes to scorn and badger him, but the little girl comes to
love him. He gets into trouble for stealing money so they could be
well fed and clothed. As critic Bosely Crowther noted in his review
for The New York Times (9-28-1962): “ . . . Mr. Gleason
fairly opens the faucets that are connected to the mammoth reservoir
of his own simple sentimentality and lets the syrup gush.”
Gleason
wanted none other than Paddy Chayefsky to write the screenplay. He
declined. Gleason wanted none other than Orson Welles to direct.
20th Century Fox, his production company, put the
kibosh on that one. So in the end Gleason ended up with John Patrick,
the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hasty
Heart and Teahouse of the August Moon, whose
screen credits included Three Coins in the
Fountain (1954), High Society (1956),
and Les Girls (1957). Instead of Welles, Gene Kelly,
another actor with an overblown opinion of the importance of his
work, signed on as director and the film was shot in France. The
cinematographer was Jean Bourgoin, who previously filmed Mon
Oncle (1958) for Jacques Tati and Black
Orpheus (1959) for Marcel Camus. The film flopped at the box
office. Kelly and Gleason blamed Fox for the way it was cut, which
was not the way they would have wanted it. Watch and judge for
yourself. Also look for Jacques Marin as the practical joker and
Albert Remy as Alphonse, one of the neighbors.
February
18: Such a lousy hour for such a grand picture, but Jacques
Demy’s musical, The Umbrellas of
Cherbourg, is set to air at 8:00 am. It’s a lovely
film about Genevieve (Catherine Deneuve), a woman of 16 whose
mother, Madame Emery (Anne Vernon), operates an umbrella shop in
Cherbourg. She is in love with Guy (Nino Castelnuovo), a 21-year old
auto mechanic who lives with his sickly Aunt Elise (Mireille Perrey)
and her companion, young Madeleine (Ellen Farner). When Guy is called
up for two years of military duty and sent to Algeria, they plan to
marry when he returns. To bind their love to each other before he
leaves, they make love. But after several months, Genevieve has
received only one letter and she discovers she’s pregnant to boot.
Enter wealthy diamond merchant Roland Cassard (Marc Michel), who
falls in love with Genevieve and proposes, declaring his willingness
to raise Guy’s child as his own. Though Genevieve is shocked at
first, as time passes with no communications from Guy, she becomes
convinced that he has forgotten her, and she marries Cassard.
When
Guy returns and discovers that Genevieve has married, he is crushed
and returns to his old job. When Aunt Elise dies and Madeleine
prepares to leave, Guy and Madeleine realize they love each other.
They marry and Guy buys a gas station with an inheritance Aunt Elise
has left him. Three years later, Guy and Madeleine are a happy family
with a young son. It is Christmas Eve and Guy is alone at the gas
station when an emotional reunion is about to take place: Genevieve
drives into the station. The word “awkward” does not begin to
describe this heart-wrenching scene, as both characters muse about
their present lives and what could have been if only they kept in
touch.
The
story of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is told entirely
in song (their voices are dubbed), which gives it almost a poetic
feeling in spots. Combined with the bright colors that predominate,
this gives the film an almost otherworldly feeling. (Filmed in the
town of Cherbourg, the citizens allowed Demy to paint their homes in
bright colors.) Demy’s film comes across as almost a sort of
anti-musical – instead of loud, rousing song and dance numbers
popping up throughout the film, Umbrellas is restrained,
muted, almost underplayed as it were, emphasizing not love itself,
but the complicated river of feelings and tribulations that run
underneath the euphoria. This feeling carried the movie all the way
to becoming the Grand Prize winner at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival.
February
20: Another film shown at the milkman’s hour, but
certainly worth recording, is the 1929 version of The
Letter, from Paramount, with Jeanne Eagles in the role
Bette Davis later made famous, that of planter’s wife Leslie
Crosbie, who shoots and kills cad Geoff Hammond (Herbert Marshall) in
a jealous rage after he tells her he’s dumping her for the
half-Chinese Li-Ti (Lady Tsen Mei). Leslie pleads self-defense,
claiming Hammond was going to rape her. She’s swaying the jury her
way, until Li-Ti contacts Leslie’s lawyer about a letter that
thoroughly incriminates her.
The
Letter is a fascinating film to catch for several reasons:
its production values were far and above those of its time; being
filmed before the Code was adopted, it is truer to the play’s theme
about racism; and last, but not least, Eagles is an interesting actor
to watch plying her craft. One can only wonder what she might have
accomplished had not her life been cut short by a lethal mixture of
alcohol, chloral hydrate, and heroin. For those reasons, this is a
film to catch.
February
24: Spy films during the ‘60s came in two forms: the
popular half-spoofs of the James Bond series and its many imitators,
and the serious, twisted intellectual studies of those who work in
the fields of espionage and counter-espionage. Of this latter
category, Martin Ritt’s The Spy
that Came in From the Cold (1:15 am), an
excellent adaptation of John LeCarre’s thriller of the same name,
is not only one of the best spy dramas of the period, but one of the
best ever filmed. LeCarre’s reputation comes from his unsentimental
look at the business of espionage: Human-all-too-human characters
trapped in distinctly unglamorous surroundings working towards an
ideal they’ve long ago forgotten and undertaking assignments that
can best be described as ethically ambiguous. LeCarre’s world is
not that of Ian Fleming’s James Bond, where suave beautiful people
meet other suave, beautiful people over drinks amid super villains,
but rather of burned-out workers often at the end of their tether
toiling in seedy surroundings for little or no gain. Richard Burton
is impressive as Alec Leamas, an operative in British Intelligence
who is given a final assignment before he retires and who slowly
comes to discover the assignment is part of an elaborate double-cross
instigated by his superiors. Claire Bloom and Peter Van Eyck provide
sterling support and convince us theatergoers of their total
believability in their roles.
PSYCHOTRONICA
As
the month winds down, the choice of psychotronic movies follows suit.
Still, there are some gems to be mined.
February
17: The Wonderful World of the
Brothers Grimm (5:30 am) is on at a really
crappy time, but is worth recording and watching for those interested
in fantasy films and the Puppetoons of George Pal. Laurence
Harvey and Karl Boehm (star of Michael Powell’s brilliant, but
ill-fated, Peeping Tom) are the brothers, while Claire
Bloom, Walter Slezak, Barbara Eden, and Oscar Homolka provide them
the solid support. George Pal realized the project was too big for
him to handle alone and wisely brought in Henry Levin to direct the
biographical parts while he concentrated on the fantasy sequences.
And those sequences are simply beautiful to watch, with the
Puppetoons and an animated dragon. The reenactments of their stories
include “The Dancing Princess,” “The Cobbler and the Elves,”
and “The Singing Bone.” Do catch this if you haven’t seen it
before.
February
18: Chitty Chitty Bang
Bang (5:30 pm), a lushly produced musical fantasy
based on a novel by Ian Fleming, was a commercial flop when released.
However, over the years it has become a beloved family film as those
who loved it when they were kids have shown it to their children.
Dick Van Dyke stars as Caractacus Potts, an inventor who spins a tale
for his children about a remarkable flying car. Look for Gert Frobe
(Goldfinger) as Baron Bomburst, Desmond Llewelyn (most famous
as “Q” in the Bond films), and Benny Hill in a small role as a
toymaker.
February
19: Begin the day at 8:15 am with Stanley Kramer’s
overwrought atomic apocalyptic drama On
the Beach and stick around at 8:00 pm for the
classic ghost comedy, Topper.
Then, if you’re still awake, tune in at 2:00 am for Frank Capra’s
decidedly psychotronic love story, Lost
Horizon. Shangri-La never looked so good, especially
in that haunting finale, and dig Sam Jaffe as the High Lama. The
story behind the film is just as interesting. The normally fiscally
responsible Frank Capra, said to absolutely ga-ga after reading James
Hilton’s novel, went Erich Von Stroheim and asked Columbia boss
Harry Cohn for $2 million. Capra constructed 65 sets, while the
studio’s property men created over 700 props to be used in the
depiction of daily life in Tibet. (The Lamasery set was reputedly the
largest built in Hollywood during the sound era until that time.)
Then,
to garner even more realism, Capra rented space at the Los Angeles
Ice and Cold Storage Warehouse for the plane interior shots and the
snow shots. While the extreme cold added authenticity, it played
havoc with the equipment, especially the film stock. Soon Capra
exceeded the $2 million budget, running near $3 million. His habit of
shooting multiple takes used up over a million feet of film. Rumors
of the film’s budget spiraling out of control included a plea from
Cohn to the film’s employees not to cash their paychecks right away
because there wasn’t enough money in the bank to cover them. In the
end, Capra had a six-hour film, which he cut for audience previews to
3½ hours. After a disastrous first screening, Capra cut two more
reels of film, containing the introduction where star Ronald Colman
is on a cruise and is prompted by fellow passengers to the story of
Shangri-La. Still, the film ran for more than three hours. It was at
this point that Cohn took the film away from Capra and had it cut to
his specifications. Later it was cut even further to 118 minutes for
theater re-issue and television. The film was restored to 132
minutes, though some of the footage still remains missing and was
replaced with stills with the original soundtrack.
And
now, if you’re still awake, John Ford’s epic 1937 disaster
film, The Hurricane,
follows at 4:15 am. This is why recorders were invented. This is the
film where Dorothy Lamour made the sarong into a must-have by women
all over the country, though practically none of them could wear it
the way she did. The real star of the film, however, is the hurricane
that threatens life on the island paradise where Lamour, husband Jon
Hall and their child have made their home.
February
21: Gaslight (1:00
am) is the psychotronic pick. Ingrid Bergman gives a stellar
performance as the young wife who is being slowly driven insane by
her jewel thief husband, Charles Boyer. It also makes the film debut
of 17-year old Angela Lansbury as the maid. It’s actually a remake
of the 1940 English production of the same name, directed by Thorold
Dickinson and starring Anton Walbrook in the Boyer role and Diana
Wynyard as the young bride. MGM tried without success to buy all
existing prints and negative of the original to consign to the
flames, but some prints survived, although this version was not
screened for over two decades and when it finally was, it was
retitled Angel Street.
February
22: The Snake Pit (1:30
am) is our pick this day. Olivia de Havilland is a bride who displays
erratic behavior following a bout with depression and is committed by
husband Mack Stevens to an institution. Told mainly from the
perspective of the patient, this is an engrossing film about a
mentally ill woman and the psychiatrist (Leo Genn in a terrific
performance) who attempts to get to the bottom of her illness despite
the conditions at the asylum, including an insensitive nursing staff,
overcrowding, psychiatrists more interested in procedure rather than
the patient, and facilities that resemble zoos or prisons. But most
of all, watch de Havilland – she gives the performance of a
lifetime, making this a picture that can be seen more than once,
despite its discomforting subject matter.
February
24: Mighty Joe Young (4:15
pm): Although this film falls well short of the bar established
by King Kong, it still finishes ahead of Son of
Kong in the animated gorilla department. It boasts marvelous
stop-motion special effects (by Willis O’Brien and a young Ray
Harryhausen), but the story is wanting, and Terry Moore is certainly
no Fay Wray in the acting department in this story of a girl and her
gorilla. Gorilla my dreams? Why Robert Armstrong’s character is
named Max O’Hara instead of Carl Denham is a slight to all us who
loved him in both King Kong and Son of Kong.
At least this film has a happier ending. As a kid, I and other
wrestling fans all watched the famous tug-of-war scene to notice how
many wrestlers were in it.
February
25: Although Green Dolphin
Street (12:15 am) is decidedly not a
psychotronic film, film buffs will want to tune in anyway for the
uncredited role of Lila Leeds as a Maori girl in this romantic epic
set in 19th century New Zealand. Leeds, as we film
buffs know, was a rising young starlet whose career was derailed when
she was arrested, along with Robert Mitchum, in a bust on a marijuana
party. His career survived, hers did not. Her only featured role
after that was in the Sam Newfield directed exploitation
classic, Wild Weed, and guess what that was about?
February
27: If you haven’t seen this before, do catch the 1932
Paramount version of Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde (12:30 am) with an Oscar-winning
performance by Frederic March as the drug-addled Doctor Jekyll. March
split the Oscar that year with Wallace Beery, who won for the
Kleenex-fest, The Champ. March would be the only actor
winning the Best Actor statue for a horror film until 1992, when
Anthony Hopkins won for The Silence of the Lambs.
February
28: At 8:00 pm it’s that hallowed psychotronic
classic, Casablanca. To
any adult reading this who has not yet seen this film, I can only
ask, “Where the hell have you been all these years?”
--
Edited by Steve Herte
No comments:
Post a Comment