Turner Classic Movies July 2022

 A rather good slate of classic films this month

July 1:  Howard Hawks's Red River (1948), Nicholas Ray's They Live by Night (1948), Anthony Mann's Side Street (1950), Billy Wilder's The Apartment (1960)

July 2:  John Ford's She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)

July 4: Eugene O' Neil's Ah, Wilderness (1935) directed by Clarence Brown.

July 5: Three by Val Lewton, including The Seventh Victim  (1943) and Otto Preminger's Laura (1944)

July 6:  John Ford's Tobacco Road (1941)

July 9:  Stephanie Rothman's The Velvet Vampire (1971)

July 10::  Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941), Howard Hawks's Only Angels Have Wings (1939)

July 11:  Two by Eric Rohmer Summer (1986) and Claire's Knee (1970)

July 12: Two by Howard Hawks, The Big Sky (1952) and Rio Bravo (1959) and Budd Boetticher's beautiful Western Ride Lonesome (1959)

July 13: Otto Preminger's Daisy Kenyon (1947)

July 16:  Terence Fisher's Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)

July 17:  Jean Renoir's Rules of the Game (1939), Mark Sandrich's The Gay Divorcee (1934) with Rogers and Astaire and Vincente Minnelli's Bells Are Ringing (1959)

July 19: Otto Preminger's Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950)

July 20:  Fritz Lang's Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956)

July 23:  Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place (1950)

July 24:  Vincente Minnelli's Two Weeks in Another Town (1962)

July 31:  Anthony Mann's Raw Deal (1948)

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about the above movies or anything else showing on Turner Classic Movies in July.

Arnold Laven's Down Three Dark Streets (1954)

Down Three Dark Streets was recently presented on TCM's Noir Alley, hosted by Eddie Muller. Muller did his usual superb commentary on the role of the movie in film history, making reference to Gordon Gordon and Mildred Gordon, who wrote the screenplay based on their books about FBI agent John Ripley (Gordon Gordon had briefly been an FBI agent), played in Laven's film by Broderick Crawford (who later played J.Edgar Hoover in Larry Cohen's 1977 film The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover). Although I would not call this movie a film noir (not enough neurosis and fatalism, among other things) it is an excellent police procedural, as Rip's partner Zack Stewart (Kenneth Tobey) is shot and killed and Rip has to investigate the three crimes Zack was working on -- car theft, murder, extortion --to find out why he was killed, crimes that affected three women: Connie Andersen (Martha Hyer), a floozie whose lover is a killer; Kate Martell (Ruth Roman), a widow and mother who is being extorted; and Julie Angelino (Marisa Pavane), whose husband is involved in a car theft ring. Broderick Crawford is effectively low-key with the women in each case, though there is an undercurrent of some feeling for Kate, though it never goes anywhere.

Laven and his cinematograper Joe Biroc -- an experienced professional who worked with Sam Fuller, Frank Capra, Robert Aldrich and others -- shoot mostly on location in the many seedy areas of Los Angeles, with a violent climax directly under the famous HOLLYWOOD sign.  Laven directed only a handful of movies before making his way to television, where he directed twenty-two episodes of The Rifleman (1958-1963) and episodes for many other series. After Down Three Dark Streets Crawford mostly worked in TV, including five years of Highway Patrol in the fifties,while continuing to do occasional movies.

An Unsuitable Attachment by Barbara Pym

 In her house Ianthe made a determined effort to pull herself together, as her upbringing and training told her that she should.  She bathed her eyes and face in cold water, changed into a cotton dress and comfortable sandals, and went into the garden.  She did not fling herself down on the grass as Penelope might have done, but lay in a deckchair with her eyes closed.  If only she could have loved Rupert Stonebird!  Could she not even now, by some effort of the will, turn her thoughts towards him and make herself care for him?  It would be much easier to love Rupert than to love Mervyn, she thought..                                                                                                                                                      Barbara Pym, An Unsuitable Attachment (E.P. Dutton, 1983)

Pym published six novels through 1961 but was unable to find a publisher for An Unsuitable Attachment in 1963 and it was not published until 1983 (Pym died in 1980. after publishing three novels in the 1970's).  Pym, like many great writers, portrays a world of her own, populated by Anglican clergy, spinsters and unrequited loves (no wonder everyone except Philip Larkin thought An Unsuitable Attachment was too old-fashioned for the 60's), a world in which everyone is trying too hard to do the right thing.  At the center of An Unsuitable Attachment is Ianthe Broome who works in a library and falls in love with fellow librarian John Challow, while head librarian Mervyn Cantrell and anthropologist Rubert Stonebird also attempt to court her.  Meanwhile Mark Ainger, rector of St. Basil's church in North London, and his wife Sophia are looking for someone suitable to marry Sophia's sister Penelope, who is not sure she wants to marry at all.

This makes for effectively droll comedy, as Pym lets us know what everyone is thinking, even if they don't share their thoughts with anyone else.  There is a particularly amusing section where Mark, Sophia and the parishoners of St.Basil's visit Rome and misunderstandings arise, such as when Rubert calls Penelope "a jolly little thing" as he is maneuvering to kiss her. Pym's world, like that of P.G. Wodehouse -- and I intend this as a compliment -- does not change when the world changes. 

Harry Beaumont's Unashamed (1932)

 Unashamed could be the title of many pre-Code films and in Beaumont's film it is shown in a number of ways:  Joan Ogden (played beautifully by Helen Twelvetrees) is not ashamed when she goes off and spends the night at a hotel with her lover, Harry Swift (Monroe Owsley), after he convinces her that her father (Robert Warwick) will have to let her marry him; if she doesn't get her father's permission then Swift won't get her money.  Her father refuses his permission and Joan's brother Dick (Robert Young) shoots and kills Swift.  Joan loved Swift and is unashamed to testify against her brother at his trial.  After her testimony her brother's lawyer Henry Trask (Lewis Stone) tells Joan that unless she changes her story under cross-examination Dick will go to the electric chair; in other words Trask is suborning perjury.  Joan is unashamed to change her story, portraying herself as a slut who doesn't care about marriage, and Dick is aquitted.  And because this is a pre-Code film everyone goes free. 

In the pre-Code days one could get away with murder and suborning perjury, at the price of a double standard when the woman takes the blame, even if it means that her reputation is forever ruined.  The film, of course, makes broad hints that Dick and Joan are incestuously interested in each other -- the first time we see them a fountain is spewing out plumes of water while they are kissing each other on the lips -- and that this is what motivates Joan's change of heart.  Beaumont and his veteran cinematographer Norbert Brodine photographs Joan with sexy low-angle shots when she is unrepentant and at eye-level when she changes her story.  Unashamed, like many pre-code films, is about class, as Harry Swift's father (Jean Hersholt) pleads with Joan's father not to let Joan marry Swift, whose real name is August Schmidt, because Swift is no good and extorts money from everyone he can. Bayard Veiller's original script emphasizes class differences, while Beaumont's gentle direction finds that everyone has their reasons for what they do, even showing a loving relationship between Swift and his father, in spite of all their differences.

William A. Seiter's Why Be Good? (1929)

 Why Be Good? is an effective critique of the hypocrisy of men; as Pert Kelly (Colleen Moore) says to Winthrop Peabody, Jr. (Neil Hamilton), "you bawl women out for being what you want" (one can see the class consciousness just in the name of the characters).  Department store heir Peabody falls in love with working-class Kelly and Kelly has to prove that just because she wears short skirts and loves to dance she is still virtuous, just as she has to prove to her parents that just because Peabody gives her presents does not prove that she is a "strumpet," after all, her father spent all his money on her mother when they were courting.

This is an effective jazz-age story, where the music and dancing are intense and the drinking (especially by the men) is even more so, and Colleen Moore epitomizes the period as she wears her hair in a Dutch Bowl (even before Louise Brooks did), works hard during the day as a salesgirl and dances in Charleston contests at night.  Most of the film takes place at parties and in nightclubs, with a synchronized jazz score using performers from the period, including drummer Phil Harris. Seiter directs energetically with the help of veteran cinematographer Sidney Hickox.  Colleen Moore was an extremely popular actress in the silent era but made only four sound films (including The Power and the Glory in 1933, written by Preston Sturges and directed by William K. Howard) before retiring.  William A. Seiter directed a number of other Colleen Moore vehicles and in 1929 directed a total of seven films; he directed 150 films and television shows in his career from 1919 to 1960 and died in 1964.

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Being Wagner by Simon Callow (2017)

 Before Freud and Jung, Wagner made the old myths mean something again; like them, he looked beyond the rational brain.  He saw man as a turbulent, troubled, writhing, longing, betraying, creating, destroying, loving, loathing mess of instincts and impulses so deeply buried within us that we scarcely dare look at them.  He forced us to do so.  He was all of these things himself.  Had he been anything other than a musical genius, he would have been locked up.                                                                                                 -- Simon Callow, Being Wagner (Vintage, 2017)

It took me a while to appreciate opera.  Susan and I love the ballet but after hearing and seeing the brilliant use of Wagner's Tannhauser overture by Preston Sturges in Unfaithfully Yours (1948), among other reasons, we decided to learn about and experience opera. In the 90's we went fairly indiscriminately to The Metropolitan Opera and The New York City Opera and, though we liked well enough some of Puccini and Verdi we found we particularly responded to Mozart and Wagner, the highlight of our experience being The Ring Cycle of Wagner at The Metropolitan Opera in 1999, a total immersion in the gesamtkunstwerk of Wagner, following which we saw and heard the rest of the Wagner repertory, the highlight of which was Robert Wilson's beautiful styilized production of Lohengrin.

Since our  children were born we have not been to the opera as often -- our children enjoy the ballet immensely -- but Simon Callow's book reminds me of how much I love Wagner and how beautiful his music is.  It is a detailed description of Wagner's passion to create in spite of the tremendous difficulties in his way, many of which he put there himself, with others caused by the political turmoil of the time and his constant erysipelas (an infection of the upper layer of the skin).  But Wagner persisted, with many of his operas unperformed until fate intervened with the sudden emergence of King Ludwig II of Bavaria as a patron and, as Callow says, "Wagner knew better than most how to recognize the intervention of fate." Though to some exten Wagner remained his own worst enemy he finally achieved recognition and his operas gradually began to become regularly performed, "for Wagner, it was if his lifelong dream of the artist's place in the scheme of things had at last become a reality."

Howard Hawks's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

 I'm always looking for movies that my young daughter, my older son, my fastidious wife and I can all enjoy; we all enjoyed Gentelmen Prefer Blondes, though for somewhat different reasons: my wife Susan enjoyed some of the wit and the performances of Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe, my son Gideon particularly liked the humor of Charles Lederer's script, my daughter Victoria loved the art direction of Lyle Wheeler and the costumes by Travilla, and I liked the film particularly for the choreography of Jack Cole and the direction of Howard Hawks, whose work has fascinated me ever since I read the book about Hawks by Robin Wood that came out in 1968, the same year I first saw Citizen Kane.

Of course Wood did not much care for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes because it did not conform to Wood's view at the time that art (and he considered Hawks's films art) should show a moral interest in life as well as being well-structured, a view strongly influenced by British critic F.R. Leavis, whose courses Wood took at Cambridge.  As far as I know Wood did not write about Gentlemen Prefer Blondes after he moved to Canada, came out as gay, and became interested in Marxism, psychoanalysis and structuralism, but I feel fairly certain his view of the film shifted, especially since the film contains strong homoerotic elements: Jane Russell sings "Anyone Here for Love" (by Hoagy Carmichael and Harold Adamson) while male Olympians cavort around her in skimpy bathing suits and ignore her; at the end of the film as Russell and Marilyn Monroe emerge in wedding dresses together they look as if they would prefer to marry each other than the schlubs (Elliot Reid and Tommy Noonan) they've chosen for sex (Russell) and money (Monroe). 

A kind word here about Marilyn Monroe.  In Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and some of the other films in which she appeared she reminds one of Stepin Fetchit, i.e., she effectively pretends to be something of a empty-headed sex kitten in order to exploit the considerable gullibility of men, in the same way Stepin Fetchit faked his laziness to get his way with white men.  Hawks's films, of course, are full of formidable women (Lauren Bacall, Angie Dickinson, Katherine Hepburn, Paula Prentiss, etc.) undermining the partriarchy. 

Andrew Stone's Highway 301 (1950)

 Highway 301 is a terrific and kinetic crime film, the first such film Andrew Stone made after starting out with innocuous musicals and comedies.  Although in some ways it looks like a film noir (deserted rainswept streets at night) it lacks the fatalism and moral ambiguity of that genre; it's more a gangster film in the Warner Brothers tradition, as the police track down the Tri-State Gang, led by obvious psychopath Steve Cochran.  There is no backstory of how the gang came together, they just move from one robbery to another in three different states, and there are few details of how they choose their jobs. Cochran has no scruples about shooting his girlfriend (Aline Towne) in the back when she starts to object to his crimes.  The first part of the film is devoted to the gang's crimes and the second part to the gang's attempt to kill Gaby Andre in the hospital after Cochran plugs her in a taxi when she tries to escape the gang after her lover, gang member Robert Webber, is killed by the police (he told her he was a salesman).  With the help of cinematographer Carl Guthrie and his high-contrast black-and-white photography and editor Owen Marks, Stone (who also wrote the screenplay) keeps this programmer moving quickly without skimping on the suspencse.  Like other crime films of this period (Call Northside 777 in 1948, The Phenix City Story in 1955) the film has a narration as well, in this case an introduction by the govenors of three states and brief  comments at the end by Edmund Ryan, who plays a police sergeant in the film, that "you can't be kind to congenital criminals." 

James Whale's Waterloo Bridge (1931)

 Whale's overall career reflects the stylistic ambitions and dramatic disappointments of an expressionist in the studio-controlled Hollywood of the thirties.                                                                   --  Andrew Sarris

Although Whale is known today mostly for his horror films (Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, The Old Dark House), which are effectively stylish, he also directed a number of other beautiful films of love and fatalism that are not so well known:  The Kiss Before the Mirror, The Great Garrick, Showboat and Waterloo Bridge among them.

Waterloo Bridge is a pre-code film about a soldier on leave, Roy (played by Douglass Montgomery) who meets a woman, Myra (beautifully played by Mae Clark) on Waterloo Bridge during an air raid and falls in love with her.  Myra is a chorus girl who has turned to prostitution to survive but she hates herself for it and won't accept financial help from Roy.  Roy tricks Myra into meeting his family when they take a trip to the country and Myra confesses to Roy's mother before leaving immediately for London.  Roy finds Myra again on the Waterloo Bridge just before leaving for the battlefield and they plan to marry when he returns; as Myra heads home on the bridge she is killed by a bomb.

Whale made this eloquent film on a low budget with a number of gritty sets that evoke London durning WWI, in which Whale had been a British Infantry officer.  It reminds one of Douglas Sirk's A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958) in its evocation of how brief love can be in turbulent times. Whale handles his small cast beautifully (which also includes Bette Davis as Roy's sister) with a script by Benn Levy and Tom Reed based on Robert Sherwood's play and cinematography by veteran Arthur Edeson.

 

A Great Deliverance by Elizabeth George

The Village was surrounded by woods, by the upward slope of meadow, by the feeling of absolute security and peace.  Once St. Catherine's bells ceased ringing, the birds took up, tittering from rooftops and trees.  Somewhere, a fire had been lit and woodsmoke, just the ghost of its fragrance, was like a whisper in the air.  It was hard to believe that three weeks past, a mile from out of town, a man had been decapitated by his only daughter.                                                                                                   -- Elizabeth George, A Great Deliverance (Bantam, 1988)

This is the first (of 21 so far) of George's series of detective novels about Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and his partner Dective Sergeant Barbara Havers of Soctland Yard, as well as Lynley's girlfriend Helen Clyde, forensic scientist Simon St. James and his wife Deborah (who was once Lynley's lover).  It's 400 pages long and somwhat unusual in the genre, first of all because the murderer is not in doubt and, secondly, George devotes an unusual amount of time to the private lives of the detectives and their personal responses to the criminal behavior they investigate.  George writes well, with a precise vocabulary and intense psychological insight into all the characters of the small town of Keldale, starting with the priest who brings the case to Scotland Yard.  As an American George is fascinated by the class divides in England, contrasting the upper-class Lynley with the working-class Havers as well as the insular town of Keldale with cosmopolitan London.

Hong San-soo's Claire's Camera (2017)

 Hong San-soo has made two or three films a year for the last twenty years and all of the ones I have seen (about a third of his output) have been lovely examples of how men and women interact with each other, as friends, lovers, co-workers, etc. and all Hong's films are made with low budgets (usually around $100,000) and minimal crews.  Claire's Camera was filmed in Cannes and stars Isabelle Huppert as Claire, a French photographer, and Kim Min-hee as Jeon Manhee, former marketing associate who was fired for reasons her boss won't explain (we find out later that they had the same lover) who meet there and become friends.  Much of the film consists of static two-shots with an occasional zoom as we see and hear conversations about work, relationships and personal philosophy, much of which is spoken in English, and see the body language that alludes to things not spoken. Bresson and Rohmer are obvious influences on Hong, though his films are very personal views of art and artists in South Korea. 

Bert Glennon's Girl of the Port (1930)

Readers of this blog know the esteem I have for Turner Classic Movies, where I recently saw Girl of the Port, a lively film of the early sound era.  It is directed by Bert Glennon, who directed eleven films in the early days of sound and then became one of the great cinematographers, working with John Ford, Billy Wilder, Raoul Walsh and other top directors.  At 69 minutes and with a limited amount of sets Girl of the Port is a lively film about the chorus girl Josie (Sally O'Neil) who flees to the Fiji Islands to work in a bar.  She is lusted after by McEwen (played by Mitchell Lewis), who promotes white supremacy but is actually a "half-caste" himself.  Josie fights off McEwen with the help of dipsomaniac Jimmy (Reginald Sharland), a victim of flame-throwers in WWI whom Josie nurses back to health.  The dialogue (by Beulah Marie Dix) is snappy -- "you can't confuse love with gratitude, they're like champagne and Ovaltine" -- and director Glennon maintains a tense and somewhat claustrophobic visual style with the help of cinematographer Leo Tover, who would later work with some of the same directors as Glennon did.

William K. Howard's The Squeaker (1937)

In his book American Cinema 1929-1968 (E.P. Dutton) Andrew Sarris put William K. Howard in the category of "subjects for further research" and, as far as I am able to find out, there has not yet been any significant further research, perhaps because, as Sarris says, "Unfortunately, Howard's films do not display the degree of talent necessary to overcome the problem of a difficult temperament."  At this point the one movie Howard is known for is The Power and the Glory (1933), with a flashback structure and narrative that is considered to be a significant influence on Citizen Kane. The Squeaker is based on a novel and play by Edgar Wallace, a prolific writer of so-called "thrillers" who died in 1932; Edgar's son Bryant wrote the screenplay.  The music is by Miklos Rozsa, then at the beginning of his career (he wrote the score for Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity in 1944) and the cinematography by George Perinal, who later worked regularly with Otto Preminger.

The Squeaker is a too genteel melodrama presented by the tasteful Alexander Korda in England and starring Edmund Lowe (who was in the stage version) and Ann Todd, although the film only truly comes alive when Tamara Desni dances and sings Ted Berkman's torch songs "He's Gone" and "I Can't Get Along Without You."  Otherwise it's routine intrique, as Lowe plays a disgraced Scotland Yard dipsomaniac who is trying to find "the squeaker," a fence who turns in crooks when they don't accept his terms,  and at the same time Lowe is making love to Ann Todd.