Turner Classic Movies Jan. 2022

 The first month of 2022 includes a number of excellent movies from the classical period.

Jan. 2   Alfred Werker's Repeat Performance, 1947, in which a woman gets to repeat the past year and make changes, and John Ford's How Green Was My Valley, 1941, a great film.

Jan. 3 Ernst Lubitsch's terrific comedy Trouble in Paradise, 1941

Jan. 5 James Whale's lovely period piece about theatre in the time of The Great Garrick, 1937

Jan. 6  Chaplin's The Great Dictator, 1940 and Hitchcock's innovative Rope. 1948

Jan. 7  Ida Lupino's gritty The Hitch-Hiker, 1953

Jan. 8 Raoul Walsh's rambunctious The Strawberry Blonde, 1941

Jan. 9 two oneiric masterpieces:  Edmund Goulding's Nightmare Alley, 1947 and Vincente Minnelli's Some Came Running, 1958

Jan. 14 Cy Endfield's Hell Drivers, 1958

Jan. 18 Hitchcock's North by Northwest, 1959

Jan. 19 Howard Hawks's great Western Rio Bravo 1958

Jan. 24 Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman 23 quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles, 1976 and Andre de Toth's Western Bounty Hunter 1954

Jan. 26 Jean Renoir's The Southerner, 1945

Jan. 27 William Wellman's Wild Boys of the Road 1933, Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity 1944. and Phil Karlson's corrosive The Phenix City Story 1955

Ernst Lubitsch's The Doll (1919)

 The Oyster Princess and The Doll remain landmark achievements in Lubitsch's career, each a unique and dazzlingly feat of cinematic style.  These zany films, starring the irrepressibly madcap Ossi Oswalda in very different roles (in The Doll, she is a dollmaker's daughter who masquerades as a mechanical sex toy) show Lubitsch's already-advanced sense of cinematic style, drawing on the surrealist and expressionist movements that were then so influential in Europe.

Joseph McBride, How Did Lubitsch Do It?

The sources of The Doll are two stories by E.T.A. Hoffman from the early nineteenth century, Der Sandman and Die Puppa, that were used in Offenbach's opera Tales of Hoffman as well as being the source of the ballet Coppelia.  Lubitsch packs a great deal into this movie, which runs for just over an hour and begins with Lubitsch himself building a minature set.  In the story Lancelot (Hermann Thimig) is promised his uncle's inheritance if he marries quickly and when word gets out he is chased by dozens of women (this obviously influenced Keaton's Seven Chances of 1925, where the same thing happens) until he escapes to a monastery full of greedy monks, who suggest he go to see a puppet maker named Hilarius (Victor Janson) who will make a puppet for him that he can then marry and then give the inheritance to the monks.  But Hilarius's apprentice breaks the doll Hilarius had made and because the doll looks exactly like Hilarius's daughter (Ossi Oswalda) she takes the doll's place and Lancelot buys and marries her without realizing she is not a doll; Oswalda pretends to be a doll while acting like a woman when Lancelot is not looking.  Lubitsch includes numerous fanciful sets as he progresses from Hilarius's workshop, where the numerous dolls Hilarius had made obey his orders to dance, to the monastery where Lancelot and Ossi sleep in a spartan cell and Lancelot discovers his doll is a real woman.  

Allen Baron's Blast of Silence (1961)

 Until I recently saw Blast of Silence on Turner Classic movies I would have said that film noir ended with Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly (1955), but Blast of Silence, with its film noir tropes, either signifies the end of film noir or the beginning of neo-noir, as Eddie Muller said in his erudite introduction to the film.  Allen Baron, the director, plays the hired killer Frankie, adrift in New York at Christmas in this dark film with a budget of $20,000 (equivalent to about $180,000 today).  Molly McCarthy plays Lori, the girl he runs into from his childhood as he violates his own rule of avoiding everyone and lives (and dies) to regret it.  Larry Tucker, so good in bit roles in Otto Preminger's Advise and Consent (1962) and Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor (1963) makes his acting debut as a gun broker who lives with his pet rats. There is a fatalistic narration by blacklisted actor Lionel Stander, written by blacklisted Waldo Salt, in the unusal second person.  Unusual for movies, that is, but not in radio (The Whistler, in the forties and fifties) or in comic books, where Baron had worked for a time.

The film opens with a tiny dot of light, that becomes bigger and bigger as the train carrying Frankie from Cleveland to New York comes into Grand Central Station on Christmas Eve.  We follow him as he carries out his errands, from following his contracted victim to obtaining the gun with a silencer that he needs for the job and eventually throws into the river.  Baron plays the role quietly and intently, looking rather like George C, Scott in the intensity of his concentration.  Once he meets Lori he tries to get out of the job but the guy who hired him says "no" and "now you're in trouble."  After trying to force himself on Lori he returns to her to apologize and finds another man there, shaving.  Frankie goes ahead with the job, then goes to collect the money on a rainy and windswept Jamaica Bay and ends up dead, shot to death and covered with mud. 

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Ernst Lubitsch's Rosita (1923)

Rosita has an engagingly vivacious central character, some amusing sexual intrigue, and emotional scenes that alternate between the overwrought and the quietly touching. 

Joseph McBride, How Did Lubitsch Do It?

Mary Pickford in the 1920's was one of the most powerful people in Hollywood and was responsible for bringing Lubitsch to America from Germany  Originally they were going to make a version of Goethe's Faust but for various reasons -- including anti-German sentiment still alive after the world war -- they settled on Rosita instead, based on a play by Phillipe Dumanoir, taking place in a mythical 18th century Seville.  For reasons still unclear Pickford disliked the final film and didn't save a print, as she did with all her other films.  It was considered a lost film (like 90% of silent films) until a print was discovered in Russia and restored by the Museum of Modern Art.  This was the Rosita that was recently shown on Turner Classic Movies.

Rosita is a combination of humor and drama as only Lubitsch could do it.  Pickford is a street singer who mocks the king for his high taxes.  The king (played by Holbrook Blinn, who looks rather like Lubitsch) hears her sing and brings Rosita and her impoverished family to the palace (beautifully designed by Seven Gade and William Cameron Menzies) in an attempt to make her his mistress.  But Rosita falls in love with Don Diego (George Walsh), who saved her life and who the king had condemned to death.  Rosita pleads for Diego's life and the king agrees to spare it and then changes his mind when he realizes how attracted to Diego Rosita is.  But the queen, who is aware of the king's passion for Rosita, countermands the king's order and Rosita and Diego are reunited.

This was Pickford's attempt to play a grownup after years of playing young girls.  Although she is delightful in the film, which was financially successful, she felt it wasn't what the public wanted and clashed with Lubitsch, who stuck to his own vision of the work, with its subtle behavioral nuances, such as Pickford's circling a bowl of fruit when she is first brought to the palace, unsure whether it's okay to eat a piece. The film is beautifully lit and photographed by Charles Rosher, who three years later was the cinematographer for Murnau's Sunrise.

Ernst Lubitsch's Three Women (1924)

Where Three Women occasionally come alive is in its sardonic as well as compassionate treatmemt of Mabel's anxiety over aging and Lamont's indifference to her feelings.

--Joseph McBride. How Did Lubitsch Do It?

Sleazy businessman Edmund Lamont (Lew Cody) sees Mabel Wilton (Pauline Frederick) at a ball and can't help but notice how bedecked with jewels she is, especially since he has huge debts and no money with which to pay them.  Lamont courts Mabel until Mabel's daughter Jeannie comes home suddenly from college and Lamont switches his courting to her and marries her; Lamont knows how to exploit weakness, insecurity and vanity.  Meanwhile Jeannie's college beau Fred (Pierre Genron) follows Jeannie, only to discover that she has married Lamont after Fred (now a doctor) has been called to tend to Lamont after a brawl in a nightclub -- Lamont had been out with a third woman, Harriet (Marie Prevost) when he was supposed to be at a business meeting.  Mabel is doubly angry for first being spurned and then seeing her daughter spurned; Marie shoots and kills Lamont, is acquitted by an all-male jury and Jeannie goes back to Fred. 

This overwrought drama is handled with impressive subtlety by Lubitsch; there is a minimum of titles in this silent film, as Lubitsch makes visually clear the content of the dialogue.  It has been suggested by some that the film would have been more believable if Lamont had been played by someone (Adolph Menjou has been suggested) less slimy but that would have have made for a very different movie; I find Lew Cody effectively cast as a suitor who knows how to get what he wants from women.  There is also an interesting contrast between Mabel as a mother and Fred's mother (Mary Carr):  in neither case is a father present, or even mentioned, and each mother finds different ways to encourage their child to become educated and independent.

 

Ernst Lubitsch's Die Austernprinzessin (1919)

The dazzling pirouettes of Lubitsch's visual style throughout The Oyster Princess are always in the service of pure humor rather than self-concious artistry, though unforced cinematic artistry is present in abundance.

--Joseph McBride, How Did Lubitsch Do It?

Although I have admiration for Lubitsch's German films I don't think they come even close to the beauty and style of his American films, which began with Rosita in 1923.  The Oyster Princess has some successful satire of the wealthy, as the princess (touchingly played by Ossi Oswalda) and her father (Victor Janson) are attended to by dozens of servants for every purpose, including holding the father's giant cigar between puffs, and the importance of nobility, as the princess wants to marry a prince, no matter how poor.  There are many of Lubitsch's touches throughout the film but they exist for their own sake rather than as integral to the plot and style of the film, as they became in the American films. We even see a precursor to the delightful dancing in Lubitsch's American films (such as 1934's The Merry Widow) in "the Foxtrot Epidemic" in The Oyster Princess, with wild dancing by the wedding guests as well as the cooks and servants, led by the incredible gyrating of the orchestra leader.  Oswalda is charming indeed but too much of the humor consists of episodic dipsomania as well as peeking through keyholes.

Ernst Lubitsch's To Be or Not To Be (1942)

 To Be or Not To Be was an astonishing act of courage for any filmmaker to make in 1941-42, particularly for a German Jewish emigre, and it is audacious aesthetically as it is politically.

Joseph McBride, How Did Lubitsch Do It? (Columbia University Press, 2018)

I first saw To Be or Not To Be on a double bill at Film Forum with Preston Stuges's Unfaithfully Yours; both could be described as serious black comedies but at that viewing the Lubitsch lost out to the considerably more aggressive Sturges.  The Lubitsch, however, is in many ways a gentle comedy about love and relationships, even as it lampoons the Nazis as both buffoons and savages.  Jack Benny and Carole Lombard are both superb as married members of an acting troupe in Poland when Hitler invades the country and the actors use their costumes from a banned play to impersonate Nazis in order to stop a traitor from revealing the addresses of families in Poland of fliers fighting in exile from Britain (Truffaut once said he loved the film but could never quite figure out the plot).  Lombard is elegant in the center of the plot, as she is fancied by flier Robert Stack, who tells her about the traitor, who is exposed and shot by the actors in an empty theatre, with the help of Benny playing the role of Nazi commander.  At times the hammy actors have to tone down their impersonations, stopped by other actors from going too far.  There are many wonderful moments of both suspense and humor in this Lubitsch film,  one of my favorites being Felix Bressart, as actor Greenberg, quoting the "if you prick us do we not bleed?" speech from the Merchant of Venice to Nazi soldiers.

Cy Endfield's The Argyle Secrets (1948)

 There are so many interlocking and often paranoid intrigues crammed into one 24-hour storyline in The Argyle Secrets that I'd defy anyone to come up with a comprehensive synopsis even after a couple of viewings.

--Jonathan Rosenbaum, The Chicago Reader (Jan. 15, 1993)

Cy Endfield was a writer and director blacklisted because of HUAC who fled to England in 1953, where he continued his successful career after writing and directing The Underworld Story (see my post of Aug. 18, 1993) and The Sound of Fury in 1950, two corrosive views of America.  The Argyle Secrets was first written by Endfield for the radio show Suspense, broadcast as The Argyle Album, directed by William Spier on Dec. 13, 1945, starring Robert Taylor.  The film, The Argyle Secrets, was made in 1948 on a budget of $100,000, shot in eight days by cinematographer Mack Stengler, who photographed an incredible 13 films in 1948. 

The Argyle Secrets follows the radio play fairly closely, with some additional scenes and complications, including Harry Mitchell's (William Gargan) escape from thugs down the fire escape and through the window of an apartment where an old friend lives with her two sons, one of whom is a cop with a newspaper headlining Mitchell's being wanted for murder.  Mitchell, a reporter, visited a sick fellow report to find out about the Argyle document and when the friend ended up dead Mitchell went on the lam in an attempt to find the Argyle report.  But others were looking for it, too, including femme fatale Marla (Marjorie Lord), who tells Mitchell that the missing document details the financial help given Nazi Germany by wealthy American industrialists.  Marla and others want to use the document for blackmail.  Endfield's bleak view of postwar America is very much in the film noir tradition, as Mitchell's search for The Argyle Album leads to half a dozen violent deaths in this dark and complex 63-minute film.

Dorothy Arzner's Dance,Girl, Dance (1940)

 The gender power asymetry is a controlling force in cinema and constructed for the pleasure of the male viewer, deeply rooted in patriarchal ideologies and discourses.

-- Laura Mulvey

Dorothy Arzner was the only female director in Hollywood in 1940  (Ida Lupino would not direct her first film until 1950) and Dance,Girl,Dance is an impressive critique of "the male gaze."  Maureen O'Hara plays Judy O'Brien, who decides she will never be a good ballet dancer after seeing a rehearsal of a serious ballet with lead dancer Vivian Fay; her friend Bubbles (Lucille Ball) gets Judy a job as part of Bubbles's burlesque act:  Judy plays a stooge who dances classical ballet, leading the male audience to demand the return of Bubbles.  Judy finally gets fed up, stops her dance and speaks directly to the audience:  "I know you want to see me tear my clothes off so you can look your fifty cents worth.  Fifty cents for the privilege of staring at a girl the way your wives won't let you."  Throughout the film the dancers are watched and leered at by the men who decide what jobs they will get and what they will do. There is some beautiful choreography by Arzner's longtime lover Marion Morgan, who finds beauty in both nightclub dancing and classical ballet, though power in both cases is dominated by males.

I don't mean to make the movie sound particularly didactic; the critique of "the male gaze" is going on somewhat beneath the surface of an enjoyable musical, with Judy and Bubbles competing for the same man and eventually battling it out on stage and in court.  Arzner cleverly undercuts the usual traditions of musicals, with the most authority going to Judy's ballet teacher Madame Lydia Basilova, played by Maria Ouspenskaya, and the males being mostly leering fools, with the exception of Steve Adams (played by Ralph Bellamy), who takes Judy and dance seriously.

Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby

The Buick sailed off the overpass.  It plummeted twenty-five feet like a stone.  The trunk slammed into the pile of dirt , but the dirt helped to cushion their fall.  The edge of the overpass rapidly receded into Beauregard's vision as they fell.  He braced himself by gripping the steering wheel and leaning back in his seat as hard as he could.  The rear bumper took some of the force.  The load-leveling shocks he had installed took the rest.  He coule feel every inch of the steel plating he welded to the chassis stretch to its tensile limit.

--S.A. Cosby, Blacktop Wasteland (Flatiron Books, 2020) 

Blacktop Wasteland is a riveting crime and chase book and, like the best crime novels (Raymond Chandler, John D. MacDonald, Wahloo and Sjowall) it works on multiple levels, including the politics and economics of a particular milieu; in the case of Blacktop Wasteland it's about the poor whites and Blacks in southern Virginia.  Beauregard Montage is a Black auto mechanic whose shop in losing business to a newer, whiter place and Beauregard needs money badly:  his daughter is going to college,  his mother is about to get thrown out of her nursing home and rent on his shop and trailer are due.  So he takes a job driving the getaway car in a jewelry store heist.  Some of the details of the robbery strain credulity but Cosby describes the caper and the getaway with style, as the diamonds they steal turn out to belong to a local mob, who track down the robbers and make them do a dangerous robbery of a rival gang, and that's when things turn to hell, with everyone eventually dead except Beauregard, who feels like he is repeating the sins of his long-absent father against the wishes of his second wife and two young children. Can he stop?  As he says to his wife, "I don't know if I can."

Southern Virginia is effectively described by Cosby:  beautiful scenery with plenty of poverty and Confederate flags, full of hard workers, the unemployed and the methheads, where life is sometimes cheap and almost everything else is expensive.

The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science by John Tresch

Many of Poe's admirers became influential innovators.  From his blueprints they built the modern genres of detective fiction (Arthur Conan Doyle), science fiction (Jules Verne) and horror, particularly of a weird and psychological cast (Robert Louis Stevenson, H.P. Lovecraft, and eventually Stephen King).  While these advances in genre fiction have had a remarkable long-lasting popular success, for a long time they were not treated as "high literature" worthy of serious critical attention.

In antebellum America the institutional markers separating professional scientists from amateurs or cranks were just beginning to take shape, and Poe made the most of this ambiguity to put forward his own analyses in aeronautics, conchology and psychology and put his stamp on cryptology, information theory, and cosmology.  With these neglected achievements we might be inclined to add him to the pantheon of contrbutors to what his contemporary David Brewster called the "one vast miracle" of modern science.

--John Tresch, The Reason for the Darkness of the Night (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2021)

This is a fascinating book that interweaves the life of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) with the science and scientists of the first half of the 19th century, as well as the worlds of journalism and publishing.  Most of the names, lives and achievements of the people Poe knew and sparred with were unfamiliar to me -- George Combe. Samuel Morton, Alexander Dallas Bache -- while other important figures of the time -- Daguerre. Mesmer -- I have heard of but knew little about.  I have read most of Poe's stories and poems as well as the marvelous novella The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym of Nantucket, but I was unaware of Poe's involvement with the scientific issues of the day and his journalistic exposures of the frauds and humbug of his time, all analyzed and documented in Tresch's book, as he follows Poe and his writing from Virginia to West Point, Boston, New York and Baltimore.