Cinema Inhabituel for February 16-28

A Guide to the Rare and Unusual on TCM

By Ed Garea

It’s midway in February and we’re scratching our heads here. There is next to nothing on the TCM sked that is either rare or unusual. We could go back to last year’s format, but that is too redundant. Instead we’ll focus on a few films that could be listed under the heading of Forgotten Classics.

February 16: From 1950, it’s Mystery Street (1:30 pm), a procedural with Ricardo Montalban as a detective and Bruce Bennett as as forensics expert. The skeletal remains of a woman are found on a Cape Cod beach. Montalban and partner Wally Maher call on the help of Bennett to identify and determine the cause of death. Working together they piece together the case and eventually track down the killer. Intelligently done with excellent direction from John Sturges. We tend to be somewhat jaded today with such shows as the CSI franchise to watch, but stay with this one and it’ll pay off. Elsa Lanchester as an eccentric and somewhat shady landlord is a treat to watch.

February 21: There’s nothing like a good Pre-Code film to make one’s day, and Min and Bill (1930), at 7:45 am, starring the combination of Marie Dressler and Wallace Beery, is the ticket. It was the first time these two teamed, and the way they came off it seemed like they had been working together for years. Dressler is a cantankerous old buzzard who runs a waterfront hotel and Beery is an equally cantankerous old sailor who’s her best friend. Together they’re a pair of lovable underdogs. The plot revolves around Min’s efforts to get her adopted daughter Nancy (Dorothy Jordan) out of these crummy environs and out to a better life. In order to accomplish this she resorts to some radical tactics, such as pretending not to care about her charge as she sends her away to a more respectable home. Along the way she faces opposition from Nancy’s real mother, Bella (Marjorie Rambeau), a grasping floozie whose antics towards reclaiming her daughter (Hint: money is involved.) puts Min to the ultimate test of parental love. Adapted by Frances Marion from Lorna Moon’s novel, the parts were perfect for Dressler and Beery. Marion was quite good at this sort of thing, having also written the screenplay for one of the all-time tearjerkers, Stella Dallas, back in 1925. However, it’s the chemistry between Dressler and Beery that makes the film such a joy to watch. They are the ultimate slob actors.

At 2:15 am comes director F.W. Murnau’s 1927 silent classic, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans. It’s a simple drama about a country man (George O’Brien) locked into a red hot affair with a woman from the city (Margaret Livingston). Only known as “The Man,” he tells The Woman From the City that he is hers, body and soul. She in turn tells him to drown his wife and run away with her to the city. The man, completely hooked by the woman’s charms and beauty, convinces his wife, known as “The Wife” (Janet Gaynor) to go on an outing in the rowboat. He plans to drown her along the way and say it was an accident. However, will he go through with the scheme? This is a finely detailed and nuanced drama about three people, two of whom are besotted enough to commit murder. Forget the fact it’s a silent and go with it, but don’t expect to watch it with any younger members of your family. It’s hard enough to get them to watch a black and white film, but a silent one? Good heavens.

February 24: Charles Laughton is always worth catching on the screen, and one of his best roles was as English monarch Henry VIII in Alexander Korda’s superb 1933 drama The Private Life of Henry VIII, which airs at 8:15 am. Laughton gives an unforgettable performance as the colorful king whose obsession wth producing a male heir took him through six wives. It begins just before the execution of second wife Anne Boleyn and Korda provides a sterling supporting cast as the wives: Merle Oberon as Anne Boleyn, Wendy Barrie as Jane Seymour, Elsa Lanchester as Anne of Cleves, Binnie Barnes as Katherine Howard, and Everley Gregg as his final wife, Katherine Paar. Robert Donat, Miles Mander and John Loder are also on hand, but it’s Laughton’s show all the way, and he doesn’t disappoint. The Academy also thought so, for they awarded him the Best Actor Oscar.

February 25: One of the greatest anti-war films ever made airs at 10:30 pm. All Quiet on the Western Front, from Universal in 1930, is based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque and tells the story of the First World War from the German point of view as seen through the eyes of Paul Baumer (Lew Ayres) and three of his classmates who enlist in the German Army after being inspired by a patriotic teacher who stuffs their heads with dreams of glory. When they arrive for training, their dreams are quickly quashed, first by their former village former postmaster who is now their corporal and lets his position go completely to his head. Once on the battlefield, they discover the real horrors of war, only slightly relieved by their friendship with Katczinsky (Louis Wolheim), a protective veteran who teaches them how to scoring and survive, and a few French girls who trade a night of love for some bread and meat. After seeing most of his mates killed in battle, Baumer returns home on leave, but when he confronts his former teacher about his lies and fantasies, he finds himself quickly branded as a traitor. Disillusioned with the home front, he returns to the front to instruct his new comrades in warfare,  but by this time has become a hardened and cynical man. The film, capturing the plight of men caught in a senseless battle with little help from the military leadership and no way to get supplies short of scrounging them from the dead, sets the template for similar films that followed, such as Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1957), Peter Weir's Gallipoli (1981) and even Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (1998). Ironically, it was banned in Nazi Germany on the grounds it was anti-German while at the same time it was banned in Poland for being too pro-German. When the studio reissued the film in 1939, World War II was just commencing and Universal added voiceover narration comparing the German soldiers in the film with modern German soldiers. At the film's climax, the narration delivered a stinging attack on Nazi Germany, featuring new shots of the original novel being burned.

MOVIES ON THE BIG SCREEN

The Philadelphia Story (1940) Feb. 18 and 21.

Katharine Hepburn plays a Pennsylvania socialite embarking a remarriage — until the disruptive appearance of first husband C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant) and a tabloid reporter (James Stewart) causes her to reexamine her plans.

AGNES VARDA: OSCAR NOMINATION NICE, BUT “NOTHING TO BE PROUD OF”

Leave it to Agnes Varda to put the pretension of the Oscars in its place. The way she looks at it, she told the Associated Press, she’s been making movies for more than 60 years without any Oscars, so why would she need one now? That was Varda’s take on comments about her nomination and award from the Academy this year. The nomination is in the Best Documentary Feature, along with daughter Rosalie Varda and street artist JR for their film Faces Places, and the other is an honorary Governors Award, which she received last autumn along with filmmaker Charles Burnett and actor Donald Sutherland.

“There is nothing to be proud of, but happy,” she says. “Happy because we make films to love."

“We make films so that you love the film,” she said. “I love my own work and I’ve done it for so many years, so I didn’t do it for honor or money. My films never made money.” What they have done is to make Varda a household word to film buffs and to win numerous awards at film festivals around the globe. We really can’t blame her for the blasé attitude, for this is the first time Varda has ever been nominated for an Oscar in her long and celebrated career. It also makes the 89-year-old filmmaker the oldest Oscar nominee in history.

When it came time for the annual nominees luncheon, Varda declined to attend, citing the fact that she was too tired to attend the luncheon. However, she was there in a sense, for Varda instead sent three life-sized cardboard cutouts – one of which shows her holding a cat – to the luncheon. This obviously satisfied those in attendance who wanted a photo with the celebrated auteur. 

But Varda will be attending the Oscars ceremony on March 4, though she doesn’t expect to win for Faces Places. But then, neither does she care.