TCM
TiVo ALERT
For
November
15–November 22
DAVID’S
BEST BETS:
SOYLENT
GREEN (November 15, 6:00 pm): This is one of my
"go-to" movies. I can watch it dozens of times (and have) and
never grow tired of it. Charlton Heston
plays tough New York City Police Detective Robert Thorn in the year
2022. Something awful has happened that has resulted in almost no
fresh food or water (only the very wealthy and/or
politically-connected are able to obtain some). There are serious
problems with the death of most animals and plant-life,
overpopulation, poverty, pollution and people surviving on wafers
provided by the Soylent Corp., which comes out with a new
"high-energy plankton" called Soylent Green. It's supposed
to be better than Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow, though they all
look like plastic. As a cop, Thorn has some perks, primarily a
tiny apartment that he shares with Sol Roth (Edward G. Robinson), an
elderly scholar who remembers what life was like before the
environmental disasters (likely caused by mankind). Thorn is
investigating the murder of a high-level Soylent executive (Joseph
Cotten in a far too small role). Thorn immediately suspects a
conspiracy is the cause of the murder. While at the murder scene, an
expensive apartment complex, Heston lifts fresh food, including a
small steak and some fruit. One of the most joyous moments in the
film has Thorn and Roth eating the food with the latter talking about
the old days. Eddie G.'s performance, sadly his last, is one of his
finest. It's beautifully tragic with the scene in which
Eddie G. goes to a place called "Home," a
government-assisted suicide facility that looks like Madison Square
Garden, is one of the most touching I've seen. And the ending is
one of cinema's most memorable with an injured and possibly dying
Thorn screaming, "Soylent Green is people! We gotta stop
them somehow!"
SUNRISE (November
17, 10:00 pm): This 1927 film, directed by German Expressionist
F.W. Murnau, is one of my favorite silent dramas. It's the story of a
farmer (played by George O'Brien) who falls in love with a temptress
from the city (Margaret Livingston) visiting his small town. She
manipulates the man into killing his wife (Janet Gaynor), but he has
second thoughts. The scene on the boat with O'Brien and Gaynor
runs the gamut from suspense to terror to tragedy. The film is
impressively stylized with the characters showing a wide range of
emotions and wonderful cinematography, particularly in how scenes are
filmed in the city and the country. Also of note is the use of
multiple exposures. Ahead of its time, it's one of the first silent
films to use sound effects, paving the way for talkies.
ED’S
BEST BETS:
THEM! (November
22, 4:00 pm): Not only is this the best of the “big bug” films
that came out in the 1950’s, but it also has elements of a noir
mystery. And if that wasn’t enough, it’s
also one of the best “Red Scare” films of the period. The cast is
terrific: James Whitmore, pre-Gunsmoke James Arness,
veteran supporting actor Onslow Stevens, promising actress Joan
Weldon, a young Fess Parker, and the great Edmund Gwenn. And look
sharp for a very young Leonard Nimoy in a small role. It’s proof
that when a sci-fi film is made intelligently, it’s a legitimate
classic.
FIVE
MILLION YEARS TO EARTH (November 22, 6:00 pm): While
their Gothic horrors could oft times be hit-or-miss affairs, Hammer
Studios always managed to hit a home run with their science-fiction
films. And it’s no different here: Hammer took a BBC serial from
the ‘50s called Quartermass and the Pit, added a
little, subtracted a little, but on the whole remaining faithful to
the original story. Hammer and director Roy Ward Baker capture the
intelligence and the mystery of the original not by throwing special
effects at the viewer, but in telling the story through the
characters. What begins as the discovery of a Nazi bomb in an
Underground tunnel being dug up for repairs, soon leads to the
finding of ape-like skulls surrounding it, which leads to the
realization that this is a not a Nazi weapon, but a spacecraft not of
this Earth, but from Mars, complete with arthropod corpses stored
inside. In the end we are wrestling with the philosophical issues of
history and evolution before reaching a climax by recalling the
Collective Unconscious and, especially, its archetype of the Devil.
And despite all these weighty subjects, the film is an excellent
piece of suspense and terror, supplying some pretty good jolts along
the way.
WE
DISAGREE ON . . . MAFIOSO (November 16, 4:00 am)
ED:
C. This is a film that, for me, started out
wonderfully as a social satire, then drifted into the world of Could
Cuckoo Land. Alberto Sordi, one of my favorite actors, is a man from
Sicily who has migrated north to Milan and now has a fine position as
an efficiency expert with Fiat Motors. He’s given a package to
deliver to the Don in Sicily by his boss at Fiat and, along with his
family, visits his old village. But is this a satire of the
North/South cultural divide in Italian society, a buffoonish comedy
of manners, or what? The Don asks him to deliver a letter to New
York, and so Sordi is placed in a crate and shipped to New York,
where he’s told he has to whack someone for the Don, which he does,
knowing that his family may themselves be whacked if he doesn’t do
what he’s told. The latter part of the film loses me completely and
reminds me of The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, a
mob “comedy” that wasn’t funny, either. If director Alberto
Lattuada had simply stuck to the North/South cultural divide, he
would have had a satire for the ages. But as it is, Mafioso fails
to impress.
DAVID:
A-. Alberto Sordi is incredibly funny in this Mafia
spoof as Antonio, a straight-laced Fiat car factory manager who takes
his wife and kids to where he was born and raised – a
small mobbed-up Sicilian village, in this 1962 Italian dark comedy.
The opening scene inside the factory is essentially a tribute to
Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times with very humorous
bits about assembly lines and the silliness of structured work.
Antonio, called Nino, has made it big in Northern Italy, the part of
the country that is much more sophisticated and advanced than the
South, where he grew up. Heading back to his birthplace with his
sophisticated Northern wife and their kids is hysterical as his
family is horribly out of place. One of the funniest scenes has his
wife Marta (Norma Bengell) begging off eating after the food keeps
coming. It turns out the massive amount of food is just the
appetizer. The contrast shown between the two cultures is highly
amusing and done with great satire. Nino's sister has a unibrow and a
mustache with Marta finally getting in good with the family when she
waxes the mustache and the middle of the unibrow to make two
eyebrows. "You better get married before they grow back again,"
Nino's father says when seeing his daughter's new look. Mafioso takes
an unexpected twist going from a satirical comedy to a dark movie
with Nino, a crack shot, asked to perform a hit for the local Mafia
boss, who he's known his entire life. Using a hunting trip as a
cover, he comes in a crate to New York City to kill an old mobster in
Trenton, New Jersey. After the hit, he is brought back to Italy. Yes,
the hit isn't nearly as funny as the scenes in Sicily. Actually it's
quite disturbing, but very compelling. When he returns, Nino isn't as
nostalgic for his hometown and acts like nothing happened though his
personality has certainly changed. Sordi definitely carries the film
though the strange characters he reunites with in the Sicilian
village are highly entertaining. It's a quirky film, and one of the
first that deals bluntly about the Mob. It's fascinating throughout.
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