Cinéma Inhabituel for September 1-15

A Guide to the Interesting and Unusual on TCM

By Ed Garea

September 3: Marcel Pagnol's delightful film Cesar is being shown at 2 am. In addition to being the final film in his Marseille trilogy concerning the lives of Fanny (Orane Demazis) and Marius (Pierre Fresnay), it’s only one of the three he directed himself.  The first, Marius (1931), was written by Pagnol (based on his play), and directed by Alexander Korda. Fanny is the daughter of a fishmonger on the Marseille waterfront. She’s in love with Marius, the son of Cesar (Raimu), who runs a waterfront bar. Marius is torn between his love for Fanny and his longing to go to sea. In the end, he goes to sea, leaving Fanny behind and pregnant. In Fanny (1932), also from a Pagnol play and directed by Marc Allegret, Fanny marries the much older Panisse (Fernand Charpin) to give her child a father. 

Cesar takes place 20 years later with Marius and Fanny's son, Cesariot (Andre Fouche), all grown up. But he doesn’t know that Marius is his real father. When Panisse dies, Fanny tells her son the truth and with Cesar's help, Cesariot sets out to find Marius.

This is a remarkable film, and it’s a shame the first two weren’t shown before it. But the plot is such that it can stand alone and is aided by the fact that Raimu, who plays Cesar, is now in the forefront. He dotes upon Cesarian as a godfather, not a grandfather due to the family situation. It’s a story of family and how it faces up to its transitions, the revelation of unpleasant truths and simmering resentments. Over the course of the film the family moves toward forgiveness and rebirth. Definitely worth seeing, even without the other two in the series. Raimu is an actor of powerful presence.

September 3: The original silent version of Camille from 1921 with Nazimova as the notorious Parisian courtesan who falls passionately for young and unsophisticated law student Rudolph Valentino will air at 12:15. It is basically the plot we see in the 1937 remake with Garbo and Robert Taylor, but this version is way more frank, having been made lone before the Code was so ruthlessly employed.

JERRY LEWIS

September 4: TCM is devoting the evening to the films of the late Jerry Lewis. The schedule is as follows: 8:00 pm - The Nutty Professor (1963); 10:00 pm - The King of Comedy (1983); 12:00 am - The Stooge (1952; 2:00 am - The Bellboy (1960); 3:30 am - The Disorderly Orderly (1964).

ROBERT BENCHLEY

September 5: Humorist Robert Benchley has a morning dedicated to the wonderful shorts he made at MGM from 1935 to 1945. The fun starts at 6 am with How to Behave from 1936 and is followed by How to Train a Dog (6:15), How to Read (6:30), How to Raise a Baby (6:45), How to Watch Football (7:00) and How to Eat (7:15). Benchley’s wry sense of humor, combined with his befuddled screen presence make these ones to catch.

CELEBRATING WOMEN DIRECTORS

September 8: Seven films from directors Mabel Normand, Lois Weber and Alice Guy-Blanche are scheduled to air from 10:30 am to 4:45 pm. It starts at 10:30 with Mabel Normand directing Fatty Arbuckle, Edgar Kennedy and Mabel Normand in the 1915 short, Wished on Mabel, for Keystone Films. 

Lois Weber takes over at 11:00 with the amazing 1916 message film, Where Are My Children? Lois scripted and directed with husband Phillips Smalley. The film brings attention to the feminist issues of abortion and bringing unloved children into the world. Banned in many states when released, it was nevertheless hailed by Universal, the studio that made it. Studio head Carl Laemmle saw it as a landmark film made by one of the studio’s premiere directors. At that time Lois Weber was seen by the moviegoing public as the equal of Griffith and DeMille. Her salary was $5,000 a week, unheard of for a woman in Hollywood who didn’t work in front of the camera. Over the years, as Hollywood become more and more a male preserve, her work was forgotten and many of her films, including this one, were presumed lost. Where Are My Children? was located and restored by the Library of Congress. 

Set in an anonymous big city, District Attorney Richard Walton (Tyrone Power, Sr.) is trying the case of Dr. Homer (C. Norman Hammond), a proponent of birth control, who from his experience of working in the slums, feels that only those children who are wanted should be born. He is found guilty of malpractice by the all-male jury.

But Walton gets the shock of his life when, in the course of trying abortionist Dr. Malfit, (Juan de la Cruz), it comes out that his dear wife (Helen Riaume, who performed as Mrs. Tyrone Power) had two abortions. As a result of these abortions Mrs. Walton is unable to have children and the film ends as we see the couple growing older and further apart in their huge mansion. Further melodramatics are added as pictures of the babies Dr. Malfit (a revealing name) aborted are shown on screen as Mr. and Mrs. Walton sit silently. 

The power and controversy of this film can be seen by the fact that abortion became a distinct no-no on the screen, even in the supposed freewheeling Pre-Code days. The Pre-Code film Men in White danced around this issue when a young nurse, impregnated by Clark Gable’s character, dies in an operation to save her life. (See our review of the film here.) The extreme melodramatics ultimately do the film in, but as a product of its time, it’s fascinating to see.

Weber is also represented by Too Wise Wives (12:15) and The Blot (1:45), both made in 1921, before the reins are turned over to French director Alice Guy-Blache for three shorts made in 1912 beginning at 3:30 - Algie, The Miner, Falling Leaves and Canned Harmony. Guy-Blache was a true pioneer, one of the first to make a narrative fiction film. By 1907 she had made over 1,000 films and later ran her own studio, Solax, in New Jersey, where she experimented with sound syncing, color tinting, interracial casting and special effects long before the other giants of early cinema had caught on. World War I slowed her momentum and after divorcing her husband, Herbert Blaché, she moved back to France with their children and faded into obscurity. She returned with daughter Simone to Mahwah, New Jersey, in 1965, where she died in a nursing home on March 24, 1968. Guy-Blache is notable in the history of film because she worked in the days before the studio system set in and producers and directors basically made it all up on the fly, crafting stories and experimenting with the new technology. In doing so, Guy-Blache created the concepts off which today’s directors work.

WERNER HERZOG

September 7: The evening is dedicated to the German director Werner Herzog with five of his films being shown: Fitzcarraldo (1982, 8:00 pm), Stroszek (1977, 10:45 pm), Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1972, 1:00 am), Cobra Verde (1988, 2:45 am), his 1982 documentary on the making of Fitzcarraldo, Burden of Dreams (1982, 4:45 am), and the bizarre documentary Walter Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980) at 6:30 the next morning. Herzog, who historian David Thomson describes as “profuse, undisciplined and unpredictable,” was responsible, along with Rainer Warner Fassbinder, Jean-Marie Straub and Wim Wenders, for establishing West Germany as a major hub of filmmaking in the ‘60s. Francois Truffaut called him “the most important film director alive,” and critic Roger Ebert, in his tribute to the director, Herzog by Ebert, said that he “has never created a single film that is compromised, shameful, made for pragmatic reasons, or uninteresting. Even his failures are spectacular.” On this night, his most “spectacular failure” is probably Stroszek, a tale of an alcoholic ex-con (Bruno Stroszek) in Berlin who joins up with an elderly friend and a prostitute determined to leave Germany to seek a better life in Wisconsin. Herzog is definitely offbeat, but never dull, possessed of as quick mind that expresses itself in quirky and fascinating camera movements, eccentrically drawn characters and plots that go where we least expect.

SATYAJIT RAY

September 10: Indian director Satyajit Ray its featured with two films running back-to-back beginning at 2:30 am. First up is Charulata (aka The Lonely Wife, 1964), a tale of Charu (Madhabi Mukherjee), a housewife in 18th century Calcutta who leads a very lonely life. Husband Bhupati (Shailen Mukherjee), who spends more time at his newspaper than at home, sees she is lonely and asks his brother-in-law Umapada (Shyamal Ghoshal) to keep her company. At the same time Bhupati's brother, Amal (Soumitra Chatterjee), a would-be writer comes home finishing his college education. He and Charu bond immediately over a shared love of literature, but soon their relationship goes beyond friendship.

The Coward (aka Kapurush, 1964) follows at 4:45 am. Amitabha Roy (Soumitra Chatterjee) is a scriptwriter who has a breakdown near a tea-estate. Estate manager Bimal Gupta (Haradhan Banerjee) offers him a place to stay at his bungalow. Amitabha later discovers that the manager is married to his ex-girlfriend, Karuna (Madhabi Mukherjee) and that Bimal invited him to mitigate his own boredom. Bimetal also fails to notice the obvious uneasiness between Karuna and Amitabha. The movie takes place over a period of approximately one day when they have dinner, breakfast and go for a picnic. Small gestures rekindle Amitabha's memories, and via a series of flashbacks, he remembers their first meeting, courtship and separation (which was due to his lack of courage to make a commitment). Amitabha, combining the fact that he is now affluent with his suspicion of that Karuna is unhappy, decides to propose to her once again. However, Karuna is inclined to believe that the time for courage is long gone. 

CAROLE LOMBARD

September 15: Carole Lombard is honored with an evening of her films beginning with Hands Across the Table (1935) at 8 pm, and finishing with the screwball classic Nothing Sacred (1937) at 4:45 am. In between we will get to see Love Before Breakfast (1936, 9:30), The Princess Comes Across (1936, 11:00), Now and Forever (1934, 12:30) with Gary Cooper and Shirley Temple, The Gay Bride (1934, 2:00), and Brief Moment (1933, 3:30 am). As these, with the exception of Nothing Sacred, are rarely shown, they should be on major interest to the film buffs. Fans of Carole Lombard (Who isn’t?) should also be interested.

PRE-CODE

September 1: Tough by-the-book submarine commander Walter Huston and Robert Montgomery clash in Hell Below (1933) at 8:00 am. Read our essay on the film here.

September 3: The original The Front Page from 1931 is shown in all its Pre-Code glory, starring Pat O’Brien as Hildy Johnson and Adolphe Menjou as his scheming editor Walter Burns at Noon.

September 8: James Cagney and Loretta Young star in the excellent Taxi! (1932) at 8:00 pm.

September 11: It’s a morning of Jimmy Durante Pre-Codes with Jimmy and Buster Keaton in Speak Easily (1932) at 6:45 am, followed by Meet the Baron (1933) at 8:30, Jimmy and Buster again in What! No Beer? (1933) at 10:00 am, and Jimmy and Lupe Velez in Strictly Dynamite (1934) at 11:30 am.

September 12: Pre-Codes today include Son of the Gods (1930) with Richard Barthelmess at 6:00 am, Winnie Lightner and Charles Butterworth in Manhattan Parade (1931) at 7:45 am, Three Who Loved (1931) with Betty Compson, at 9:15 am., James Cagney in Winner Take All (1932) at 10:30 am (read our essay on it here), Spencer Tracy and Loretta Young in A Man’s Castle (1933) at  11:45 am,  This Side of Heaven (1934) with Lionel Barrymore, Fay Bainter and Mae Clarke at 1:00 pm, and Warren William, Mary Astor and Ginger Rogers in Upper World (1934) at 2:30 pm.

September 13: Two on tap today. First, George Brent  and Eugene Palette pioneer the use of scientific methods to solve to acquit accused murderess Margaret Lindsay on From Headquarters (1933) 11:15 am. Then, at 6:30 pm Walter Huston is an honest police captain taking on mobster Jean Hersholt in Beast of the City (1932). Jean Harlow and Wallace Ford co-star in this Dirty Harry-esqe tale with a distinctly downbeat finish in a hail of bullets, a la Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

PSYCHOTRONICA AND THE B-HIVE

September 1: An evening of surf films begins with the classic Frankie-Annette pairing, Beach Party (1963) at 8:00 (read our essay on it here), followed by its sequel, Muscle Beach Party(1964). At Midnight Bobby Vinton and Jackie DeShannon star in Surf Party (1964). James Darren, Pamela Tiffin and Bob Denver take over at 2:00 am in For Those Who Think Young (1964). Nancy Sinatra also stars, but it’s comic Woody Woodbury who steals the film. Finally, Fabian, Tab Hunter, Shelley Fabares and Barbara Eden Ride the Wild Surf (1964) at 4:00 am. 

September 2: Boston Blackie battles a phony spiritualist who dabbles in blackmail on the side in The Phantom Thief (1946) at 10:30 am. 

The evening is dedicated to computers that have gone rogue, beginning with the classic tale 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) at 8:00 pm. Next, the robotic Yul Brenner blows a fuse in the entertaining Westworld (1973) at 10:45. The ridiculous Demon Seed (1977) airs at Midnight, followed by Scanners (1981) at 2:15 am.

September 8: A psychotronic double feature begins at 11:30 pm with the hilarious Carry On Cabby (1963), followed by Martin Scorsese’s 1976 milestone, Taxi Driver (1976), with Robert DeNiro and Jodie Foster.

September 9: Boston Blackie brings a magic show to a women’s prison and gets involved in an escape for which he is accused of being an accomplice in Boston Blackie and the Law (1946) at 10:30 am.

An animated double feature begins at 2:00 am as a woman sells her soul to the devil to lead a rebellion against a corrupt baron in Belladonna of Sadness (1973), an allegorical feature from Japanese director Eiichi Yamamoto. Producer Osamu Tezuka had previously overseen two animated series that became wildly popular in U.S. syndication: Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion. Following at 3:30 am is 1973’s Fantastic Planet from French director Rene Laloux, who expands the nouvelle vague to the world of animation in this tale about a race of highly advanced giants called “Draags" that bring humans to their home planet and turn them into household pets, known as “Oms.” But when the pets are left in the wild, like any formerly domesticated animals, they turn savage and become a subject for extermination. Tiwa, a highly intelligent Om, has mastered the Draaga language, and plants the idea of a widespread rebellion against their keepers.

September 14: In an evening devoted to Counter Culture films of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, four fit the category of psychotronic, beginning with the execrable Alice’s Restaurant (1969) at 11:30 pm. It’s followed by Michelangelo Antonioni’s megabomb, Zabriskie Point (1970), at 1:30 am. The film’s star, Mark Frechette, later went to jail for a bank robbery he claimed was carried out for “political reasons.” He later died in a prison accident while lifting weights in 1975. At 3:45 am, Bruce Davison is a college student who becomes radicalized by the presence on campus of Kim Darby and the National Guard in The Strawberry Statement (1970). Finally, it’s the loony and wildly entertaining Wild in the Streets (1968) from AIP with Christopher Jones and Shelley Winters at 5:45 am.