TCM TiVo Alert for August 23-31

TCM TiVo ALERT

For

August 23–August 31

DAVID’S BEST BETS:

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT (August 24, 10:00 pm): Peter Lorre is outstanding as Raskolnikov, an intellectual yet poor and hopelessly confused criminology student in this 1935 film loosely based on the classic Russian novel. Upset by his financial situation despite his brilliance, he convinces himself that he's a superman and therefore the laws don't apply to him. He needs money and he's going to take it. To prove to himself that he's superior to most people, Raskolnikov kills an old pawnbroker and her sister in a botched robbery. As he was a client of the pawnbroker, he is questioned by the police. Lorre is so good that even his facial expressions show his paranoia and guilt. It's definitely a movie worth viewing largely for Lorre's performance.

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (August 28, 8:00 pm): TCM shows this film regularly and we are very lucky that it does. This is the greatest anti-war war movie ever made, and that includes Charles Chaplin's The Great Dictator, which is a brilliant piece of cinema. The message of All Quiet on the Western Front is as strong today as it was when it was released in 1930. Beautifully filmed and flawlessly directed by Lewis Milestone, it's about a group of German youths who sign up to fight in World War I after being whipped into a frenzy by a teacher. The boys learn firsthand the horrors of war. What's amazing about this film is it's about Germans fighting and killing Allied soldiers and we have sympathy for every one of them. And it pulls no punches showing the senseless deaths of young men in battle. The final scene is one of the most tragically beautiful you'll ever see in cinema. This timeless and important film comes with my highest recommendation.

ED’S BEST BETS:

ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT (August 24, 2:00 pm): Humphrey Bogart had many good qualities as an actor, but the ability to take a bad film and elevate it with his performance was not one of them. However, give him a good film and he often elevated it with the quality of his performance. This is a perfect case in point – a film with a lead that, in the wrong hands, could potentially sink it. Bogart, however, takes to it like a fish to water and comes off totally believable as a gangster who finds himself up against Nazi saboteurs led by Naughty Nazi Conrad Veidt. The performances supplied by such as Judith Anderson as Veidt’s assistant, Peter Lorre (in a wonderful turn as a sadistic henchman), William Demerest as Bogie’s sidekick, Jane Darwell as Bogie’s mom, and Kaaren Verne as a singer in peril give the film a luster that raises it above others released that year. The fact that this was made as Bogie began to catch fire with movie-going public as an actor to watch certainly helped, but we must also give kudos to director Vincent Sherman (his first film) and producer Hal Wallis, who kept a close watch on the movie as it was shot. It’s a film that works on every level.

GINGER AND FRED (August 30, 10:00 am): This was one of Fellini’s last films and the man who made a career of exposing various charlatans takes on a medium that embraces charlatans: television. Amelia (Giulietta Masina, Fellini's real-life wife) and Pippo (Marcello Mastroianni) are two aging, second-tier hoofers once famous for their impersonations of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. They are years past their prime and have completely lost touch with each other. They have been engaged perform one last ballroom routine on the TV show “We Are Proud to Present,” alongside a veritable sideshow that includes such acts as a priest who has married and will kiss his new bride on the air, a troupe of dancing midgets, a transvestite who offers sexual favors to prison inmates, and an inventor who will eat his new edible panties off of a model. The years have not been kind to the duo, especially Pippo, an alcoholic who is only appearing for the money. Amelia becomes less and less enthused as the freak show nears, with both becoming unsure about whether or not they want to perform. However, when they finally do decide to take to the stage, through their very dignity they manage to transform a vulgar spectacle into a magical recreation of 1930’s Hollywood. The film is replete with all the Fellini touches and both Mastroianni and Masina are engagingly wonderful, even though in real life Ginger Rogers was so insulted she tried to stop the film from being shown. Never mind her, this is a magical and enchanting display of human dignity among the ruins.

WE DISAGREE ON ... CAGED (August 27, 2:15 pm):

ED: C. Caged is basically an remake of Barbara Stanwyck’s Ladies They Talk About, and – surprise, surprise – it outdoes its Pre-Code predecessor in grit and innuendo. It was originally scheduled as an A-production starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford (Can you imagine?), but the studio wisely opted for a lesser-known cast and chose Eleanor Parker (she of the limited acting skills) as its star. Though it contains all the tropes we later came to enjoy in women’s prison flicks, because at heart it’s a social message film it mostly eschews the exploitation in favor of characterization and film noir archetypes. The characters include the innocent ingenue, Marie Allen (27-year old Eleanor Parker trying to pass for 19), who will get a the equivalent of a post-grad education for the $40 she heisted; lesbian big shot Elvira Powell (Lee Patrick in an excellent performance); reform-minded warden Ruth Benton (Agnes Moorhead) who naturally has to fight the corruption of the system both inside the joint and out; “Queen Bee” Kitty Stark (Betty Garde), who loses her special status inside the joint when Elvira arrives; and the reason to see this laff riot: Big Evelyn Harper (the deliciously hammy Hope Emerson), head matron and aggressive lesbian. The fact that the film takes itself with the utmost seriousness gives it a distinct camp quality for today’s audiences. I saw it in New York while in grad school, and the audience laughed throughout at lines like “Think it over, sweetie, but get this through your head: if you stay in here too long, you don't think of guys at all - you just get out of the habit.” (Kitty); “Come on you tramps - line up for Christmas.” (Harper); “Don't kid me, Harper's first name is filth.” (Kitty); “At least we have honest matrons in here. When I bribe one, she stays bribed.” (Kitty); and my favorite, “Find me something to wipe my shoe with!” (Harper after she stomps the kitten Marie has smuggled in). And as for Marie, after Elvira puts the fix in she finally gets her parole and sets off on a new career as a hooker. This sets up the terrific last line when Warden Ruth is asked about Marie’s file. “Keep it active. She'll be back.” If Caged was in the public domain, it definitely would have made it to Mystery Science Theater 3000, but as it is the film is something the gang at Rifftrax should check out. Should you want to see an out-and-out exploitation version of the film, check out Reform School Girls (1986), with Wendy O. Williams, Sybil Danning and Pat Ast in the Hope Emerson role. You won’t be disappointed.

DAVID: B+. This is the mother of all women-in-prison films. Unlike nearly all the others in this unusual but often-visited film genre, Caged is well acted. Eleanor Parker was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar as the young innocent Marie Allen, Agnes Moorehead is great as warden Ruth Benton, and Hope Emerson was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar as the deliciously evil matron Evelyn Harper. Almost anything bad you can imagine happens to Marie – her new husband is killed in a robbery, she ends up in prison because she is waiting in the getaway car, she's pregnant while serving her sentence, she's victimized by other inmates and Harper, she has to give up her baby for adoption, and finally becomes bitter and hardened from all of her bad experiences. The story is similar to other women-in-prison movies minus the T&A. We still get a shower scene (no nudity as this is during the Code era) and the stereotypical prison lesbian! But there's a huge difference between Caged and the women-in-prison films of the 1970s. It's not only the excellent acting, but the powerful dialogue and actual plot – it was nominated for a Best Writing Oscar – that makes this gritty, stark, realistic film stand out among others in the genre. The viewer is given reasons as to how and why the innocent Marie turns into a hardened criminal from the brutal scene in which her head is shaved to having her baby taken from her to the hopelessness of one inmate driven to suicide to the murder of Harper by one of Marie's friends who uses a fork to do the job. It's also a damning indictment of a penal system that doesn't try to rehabilitate the inmates, but largely treat them like caged animals. It can be somewhat cliché at times, but it's definitely in a class by itself.

For the complete list of films on the TCM TiVo Alert, click here.