Cinéma Inhabituel for September 16-30

A Guide to the Interesting and Unusual on TCM

By Ed Garea

NOTABLE

September 17: At 2 am it’s Roberto Rossellini’s excellent historical drama Socrates. The 1971 film focuses on the last days of the famous philosopher: his trial, imprisonment and death. Featuring a French and Spanish cast and shot in Spain due to the source of his financing, Rossellini, as with his other historically based films, stays close to the facts, only straying occasionally for dramatic effect. In this case Rossellini went straight to the source: the Dialogues of Plato. When I first saw the film on TCM I noticed Rossellini made parallels between Socrates and Jesus, almost interpreting the philosopher from a Roman Catholic viewpoint. His students, who are referred to as “disciples” in the film, call their teacher “the good shepherd” and even share a cup with their teacher that reminded me of the chalice Jesus shared with his disciples. What amazed me about the film was the close to the vest view it gives us of Socrates and his activity in Athens, conversing with nearly anyone and more privately with his disciples. Even more astounding was the screenwriters inserting arguments summarized from several of Plato’s dialogues. Those looking for an accurate portrait of the philosopher couldn’t do better than that. Though the film won a special award at the Venice Film Festival, it didn’t do well with either audiences or critics. In recent years, though, critics and film historians are taking a fresh look at this film and the rest of Rossellini’s later work.

September 21: During a morning and afternoon devoted to films about India, Jean Renoir’s exquisite drama, The River, is being shown at 4:30 pm. It’s a gentle, touchingly moving adaptation of Rumer Godden’s novel about English children growing up in Bengal, along the Ganges River. 12-year old Harriet (Patricia Walters) is the oldest of five daughters and a son of a British owner of a jute factory (Esmond Knight) and his wife (Nora Swinburne), while the nanny, Nan (Suprova Mukerjee) looks after the children. Renoir provides us with a thoughtful meditation on life as seen through Harriet’s experience with first love that occurs when the family's neighbor invites his cousin, Captain John (Thomas E. Breen), to live with him on his plantation. When John arrives, the girls discover he has lost one leg in the war. Despite his handicap, his abundance of charm and a sophistication that surrounds him has all the daughters smitten. They issue a formal invitation in writing to a Hindu celebration, hand-delivered by Harriet. Harriet, totally taken with Captain John, even shares her diary with him in an attempt to bring them closer. His reaction is more kind and fatherly than what she might be expecting from a suitor. It is when she sees Captain John locked in a passionate embrace with her best friend Valerie (Adrienne Corri) that Harriet is crushed. Her reaction goes to the extreme, but she is saved in the nick of time. It is an awe-inspiring look at the clash of cultures and a child’s-eye view of it, aided by sumptuous photography and Harriet’s narration.

September 24: Director Kenji Mizoguchi made many a fine film in his career, but none better, or sadder than his 1952 masterpiece, The Life of Oharu, which airs at 2:00 am. Roger Ebert called this “the saddest film I have ever seen about the life of a woman.” I have to agree. It’s a simple story: a 50-year old prostitute named Oharu (Kinuyo Tanaka) looks back on her sad life in flashbacks. We learn that she was born into a respectable family in Edo-period Japan and was a lady in waiting at the court when she and a young page named Katsunosuke (Toshiro Mifune) fell in love. This was forbidden. Katsunosuke was sentenced to death and Oharu and her family were exiled. Her father never forgives her for what happened, especially now as, because of the scandal, she is considered unworthy to wed in respectable circles. Her father sells her as a concubine to the household of Lord Harutaka Matsudaira (Toshiaki Konoe). Her duty is to bear him an heir. Once she does, she is sent back to her family. Her father tries selling her as a courtesan, but when she refuses, sells her into service as a maid. She loses the job because one of her employer’s customers recognizes her from her time working in the red-light district. From here on it gets no better, as Oharu suffers one insult after another, and we arrive back to her current life as an over-the-hill, poor prostitute.

Although this sounds extremely lurid, Mizoguchi avoids taking advantage of these sensational episodes in her life. No one but Oharu knows what her life has been; society judges her as an immoral and detestable woman, and we come to realize this is the role society has assigned her to play. But though this is the case, Mizoguchi assigns no villain, not even the father. Rather, he shows that the men are simply acting within the boundaries of their assigned roles and traditions in Japanese society.      

Mizoguchi made prostitutes a frequent subject, as in his 1956 Street of Shame (1956). He was a frequent visitor at brothels, not merely to purchase sex, but to fraternize with their workers and learn from their points-of-view. He also had a personal stake in the drama in an episode that had a great impact on him: his sister, Suzo, who raised him, was sold by their father as a geisha.

September 25: At 11:30 am, The Great Train Robbery, from director Edwin S. Porter in 1903, will be shown. It’s a simple, one-reel story of a gang of outlaws who rob a train and are hunted down by a posse, but it’s one of the milestones in cinema history. It was the first film to tell a story, and contained many roughly defined characters, used several settings, and, most radical of all, used editing to move the narrative along from one scene to another in rapid succession. What we take for granted today was not the case when the film was made. Those who took an introductory class in film have seen the film, as it is a staple. But for those who never got around to taking such a class, sit back and prepare to be amazed.

September 30: As long as we’re on the subject of Japan, I’d like to note that one of the greatly overlooked war movies in playing at 5:15 pm. That movie is Tora! Tora! Tora!, a docudrama from 1970. It is an excellent factual account of the events that led up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and brought America into World War II. It is an exquisitely balanced film, looking at both sides. It was mostly panned by critics on release as dull and uninspired, lacking the “action” a blockbuster should possess, with too many scenes staged in war rooms and among military planners from both sides. Yes, there is not a lot of action until the final act, but what doesn’t work in theaters works superbly well on television, where we can sit back and reflect on the drama portrayed on the screen. Those interested in history will find the film quite edifying. Care was taken by the studio, Fox, to insure accuracy. Richard Fleischer directed the American sequences while Kinji Fukasaku and Toshio Masada handled the Japanese sequences. Akira Kurosawa was originally hired to direct the Japanese sequences, but after he tried to copy Erich Von Stroheim, the studio let him go. Among Kurosawa’s Von Stroheim-esqe antics included painting a Shinto shrine aboard a battleship numerous times because he wasn’t satisfied with the shade of white, and replacing the books in a library with those from the period even though they were barely visible. As for the critics who panned the movie upon its theatrical release I can only say to be careful what you wish for, as the 2001 release of Pearl Harbor can attest.

GARBO

September 18: A morning and afternoon of Garbo films that should satisfy her fans. Included are such silents as The Temptress (1926, 6 am) and The Mysterious Lady (1928, 10 am); Pre-Code faves such as Grand Hotel (8 am) and Queen Christina (4:15 pm); and the rarely shown dramas Romance (1930, 11:45 am) and The Painted Veil (1934, 1:15 pm), in addition to Billy Wilder’s wonderful Ninotchka closing out the day at 6 pm. But perhaps the most unusual film of the day is the German language version of Anna Christie from 1930, which airs at 2:45 pm. Germany was one of Hollywood’s largest foreign markets, and in the early days of sound, the norm was to take “important” films (films the studios saw as appealing to foreign audiences) and remake them in foreign language versions. The films were usually made after hours on the same soundstage with a different cast, but because of Garbo’s impact in Germany, it was decided to make the German language film directly after filming wrapped on the English version on the same sets, but with a different supporting cast. Later, when the technology improved, subtitles and dubbing came into being, and the days of the separate language version came to an end. 

PRE-CODE

September 16: At 12:45 am Joan Crawford and Clark Gable star in MGM’s 1933 Dancing Lady. Look for Fred Astaire and the Three Stooges.

September 21: Son Of India, a 1931 film from MGM starring Ramon Novarro as a rajah’s son who falls for an American woman (Marjorie Rambeau) touring India, airs at 7:00 am.

September 25: Murder in the Private Car (MGM, 1934), starring Charles Ruggles, Una Merkel and Mary Carlisle airs at 7:15 am. At 1:15 pm comes Danger Lights (RKO, 1931) with Louis Wolheim, Robert Armstrong and Jean Arthur. If you’re a train buff you don’t want to miss this one.

September 28: Ladies of the Jury (RKO, 1932) starring Edna May Oliver and Jill Esmond is scheduled for 6:00 am. At 9:00 D.A. Walter Huston must protect a family that witnessed a gangland killing in Star Witness (WB, 1931).

September 29: In an evening that features all three versions of A Star is Born, stick around until 3:45 am (or better yet, record it) and watch the film that helped inspire them all, What Price Hollywood? (RKO, 1932), starring Constance Bennett, Lowell Sherman and Neil Hamilton.

PSYCHOTRONICA AND THE B-HIVE

September 16: Boston Blackie becomes the prime suspect when a pearl necklace he’s been hired to guard is stolen in Trapped by Boston Blackie (1948) at 10:30 am.     

Archeologist Charlton Heston discovers his daughter is possessed by the malevolent spirit of an Egyptian queen in 1980’s The Awakening at 2:30 am. Following at 4:30 am, Hammer gives us practically the same plot nine years earlier in Blood From the Mummy’s Tomb (1971). Given the choice of the two, I’d go with the Hammer version.

September 21: TCM’s Special Theme for September is “Counter Culture Classics,” and it begins at 8 pm with the concert film Monterey Pop from 1969. At 9:30 pm comes Don’t Look Back (1967), a record of Bob Dylan’s 1965 tour of England. At 11:45 it’s the Maysles Brothers’ classic 1970 documentary Gimme Shelter. Woodstock: The Director’s Cut follows at 1:30 am, and the night closes out with the documentary Jimi Hendrix (1973) at 5:30 am. 

September 23: Bumbling press agents Brown and Carney run into Bela Lugosi in 1945’s Zombies on Broadway at 6 am. The Boston Blackie films come to an end with Boston Blackie’s Chinese Venture (1948) at 10:30 am. 

Nature strikes back beginning at 2:00 am with Of Unknown Origin (1983), followed by Rattlers (1976) at 3:45 am.

September 25: Herbert Lom is the crazed composer in Hammer’s version of Phantom of the Opera (1962) at 9:45 pm. 

September 26: An entire morning and afternoon of psychotronic films is on tap, with the best bets being the underrated World Without End(1955) at 8:30 am and the wonderfully ridiculous Queen of Outer Space (1958), starring the one and only Zsa Zsa Gabor, at 4:30 pm.

September 28: The TCM Special Theme on “Counter Culture Classics” continues, with The Love-Ins (1967) at 8 pm, starring Richard Todd as a former college professor who becomes a messiah for a cult and avails himself of the women there. At 10 pm comes Sam Katzman’s 1967 Riot on Sunset Strip. Laff Riot is more like it, as LA detective Aldo Ray’s juvenile delinquent daughter Mimsy Farmer falls in with a gang looking for “kicks.” 

At midnight Al Pacino has his first starring role as a small time crook who introduces his girlfriend to heroin in Panic in Needle Park (1971). His performance helped convince Francis Ford Coppola to cast him in The Godfather. The film was considered strong stuff when originally released and packs a powerful, if forgotten, performance from leading lady Kitty Winn. 

At 2 am it’s another viewing of The Big Cube (1969), followed by Barbet Schroeder’s tragic look at a young couple (Mimsy Farmer and Klaus Grunberg) who fall into the drug culture underbelly of the hippie movement in Europe in More (1969). It was Schroeder’s first film.

September 30: Glenda Farrell, Fay Wray and Lionel Atwill star in Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) at 10:30 am. Made in two-strip Technicolor, it still holds up well today, with Farrell giving a great performance as the intrepid reporter.  

At 2:00 am comes David Lynch’s weirdly compelling Eraserhead, his 1977 feature directorial debut. A filmed nightmare, the plot of which defies any semblance of description, revolves around Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) who exists in a totally bleak urban environment of industrial surroundings. One night he’s invited to meet the parents of his fiancee, Mary X (Charlotte Stewart). After repeated interrogation by Mary's mother (Jeanne Bates) and dining on a dinner of miniature chickens that squirt some form of black goop, he's told that Mary has given premature birth. He must immediately marry her and bring her to live with him in his apartment. The marriage lasts only a few days, as the mutant child’s non-stop crying frays everyone’s nerves, Mary leaves Henry and leaves their child in his care. This leads to a series of even stranger events – one with the hooker across the hall (Judith Roberts) and a bizarre woman who lives in Henry’s radiator (Laurel Near). The child itself reminds one of Prince Randian, the human torso in Tod Browning’s 1932 Freaks. As nothing that happens in the movie is explained, we are left to draw our own conclusions. To quote Michael Weldon in The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film (p. 219), some “will identify with the completely alienated, sexually retarded characters. Many viewers (usually female) walk out of the theater in disgust. Many others watch it faithfully every week at midnight showings. You probably wouldn’t feel comfortable alone in a room with one of the frequent viewers.” It took Lynch, who described the movie as “a dream of dark and troubling things,” five years to finish it with partial financing from the American Film Institute. It made a splash on the Midnight Movie circuit, hailed by critics such as J. Hoberman, Jonathan Rosenbaum and Danny Peary. David Bartholomew in Cinefantastique described it as “a true rarity, an original work that seemingly has no antecedent in the horror genre. It is not abstract, but it defines a coherent plot description, in fact it defies description of any kind.” The only advice I can give is to watch it and decide for yourself, but keep in mind that it’s the movie that propelled Lynch to bigger and better things, such as The Elephant Man, Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet.