Turner Classic Movies May 2022

A fairly quiet month on Turner:  war films around Memorial Day, Busby Berkeley films throughout, Fatty Arbuckle shorts, a tribute to Raoul Walsh.  My recommendations are limited, mostly of films I have not recommended before.  Please e-mail me if you have questions about any film in May

May 1: Otto Preminger's beautiful film noir Laura (1944)

May 4:  John Huston's elegant The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

May 6: Andre de Toth's Western of betrayal Springfield Rifle (1952)

May 8: Mitch Leisen's No Man of Her Own (1950), based on a Cornell Woolrich novel

May 12: Josef von Sternberg's beautiful Shanghai Express (1932)

May 14:  Nicholas Ray's gaudy Party Girl (1958)

May 15: Budd Boetticher's The Killer is Loose (1956)

May 17:  Ernst Lubitsch's delightful The Shop Around the Corner (1940)

May 18:  Raoul Walsh's corrosive White Heat (1949)

May 22:  Joseph H. Lewis's dark My Name is Julia Ross (1945)

May 23: King Vidor's moving Bird of Paradise (1932)

May 29: John Ford's magnificent They Were Expendable (1945)

Well-Schooled in Murder by Elizabeth George

 He felt distinctly uncomfortable and wished for the first time that he had thought far enough ahead to bring Sergeant Havers.  Her working-class background and sartorial nonchalance would have eased them through the superficial difficulties created by his own blasted upper-crust accent and his Savile Row clothes.                                                                                                                                                         -- Elizabeth George, Well-Schooled in Murder (Bantam, 1990)

I've never been particularly fond of Agatha Christie's novels (too formulaic) but I find Elizabeth Geroge's novel full of detailed characters, psychological insight and complex plotting, more like P.D. James and Ruth Rendell, two British mystery writers I do like.  Elizabeth George is American, however, and brings an outsider's view to the class differences of English life, exemplified by upper-class Thomas Lynley of Scotland Yard and his working-class partner Barbara Havers.  In  Well-Schooled in Murder they are investigating the murder of a scholarship student at a public, i.e., private, school in West Sussex, a co-ed school full of competitive students and ambitious faculty, as well as a headmaster who is most concerned with avoiding scandals and keeping wealthy donors happy.  So far, so routine, but George takes the time to create a significant number of interesting characters among the students, the parents, the staff and the teachers, all of whom have their personal and significant peccadillos that in many cases contributed, directly and indirectly, to the murder and which George limns with precision and style. 

Gordon Douglas's Girl Rush 1944

 Previously on this blog I have written about ten different Gordon Douglas movies and I have referred to him as "protean" because of his ability to work in many different genres, from war movies to science fiction to Westerns.  Girl Rush can best be described as a Western, a musical and a comedy.  It stars Wally Brown and Alan Carney, who are remembered today (if they are remembered at all) as RKO's attempt to produce their own Abbot and Costello; they made eleven movies together.  The film also includes Robert Mitchum (still working his way up after making twenty movies in 1943), at one point in drag as the men bringing women to a mining town during the gold rush have to dress as women so they don't get shot (it's a long story, as the film has a great deal of plot, as well as musical numbers, in a sixty-five minute running time).  Brown and Carney make a good comic team, taking turns as the straight man, cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca is a master of lighting (especially in the interior scenes), writer Robert Kent keeps the plot moving swiftly, Frances Langford sings some charming songs by Lew Pollack and Harry Harris, there is some vigorous can-can dancing staged by Charles O'Curran and Gordon Douglas directs with impressive energy. 

Balanchine's Apprentice by John Clifford

 I did begin to notice, though, that with Mr. B's ballets, the more I watched them, the more I saw in them, including the ones I didn't at first like.  I found something new in them every time, and I was never ever bored.  Robbins's steps and combinations were clever, and I enjoyed their inherent drama and theatricality, but they did not have the same depth of Balanchine's works.  I not only discovered different layers in Balanchine's ballets -- I'd find whole new ballets.                                                              -- John Clifford, Balanchine's Apprentice:  From Hollywood to New York and Back (University Press of Florida, 2021)

John Clifford was born in Los Angeles in 1947 of parents who were vaudeville performers when vaudeville was coming to an end.  He started taking ballet classes when he was eleven and was chosen to dance in The Nutcracker when Balanchine presented it in Los Angeles:  he went to New York in 1966 on a scholarship to the School of the American Ballet, Balanchine's school for NYC Ballet dancers, and Clifford danced for the company from 1966 to 1974.  He danced as a principal and soloist in forty-six different ballets and choreographed eight others for the company.  

Eventually Clifford wanted to concentrate on choreography and felt he needed to get away from Balanchine's orbit in order to choreography independently.  He returned to Los Angeles in 1974 and started a company in a city that was not that interested in ballet; his company survives as a very small company called Los Angeles Dance Theatre, subsidized by Warner Brothers, for whom Clifford choreographed Casablanca, based on the Warner Brothers movie. 

Clifford's book mostly sticks to his years with Balanchine at NYC Ballet and the works of Balanchine and Robbins.  Clifford emphasizes the ballerinas he partnered -- Kay Mazzo, Allegra Kent, Melissa Hayden and others -- but also writes about Suzanne Farrell and Gelsey Kirkland, who at the time he was there had problematic relationships with the company and with Balanchine.  Lots of detail about Balanchine's ballets and his creation of them are included, including the difficulties with Variations pour une Porte et un Soupir, which Balanchine choreographed on Clifford and Karin von Aroldingen.

Clifford seemed to aspire to run NYC Ballet after Balanchine's death in 1983 but the board decided on Peter Martins (Balanchine had never actually designated a successor).  Clifford was barred from the company by Martins and became a repetiteur of Balanchine's ballets for other companies around the world.  Clifford said working and teaching Balanchine's ballets has given him a broader view of Balanchine's genius and brought him a great deal of satisfaction.  Clifford's ballets also are performed internationally.

I saw Clifford dance many times after I started seeing NYC Ballet in 1970; he was a dynamic dancer of Balanchine's and Robbins's ballets.  One thing he does not mention in this book is the considerable work he has done tracking down tapes of Balanchine's work, including a video of Suzanne Farrell in Concerto Barocco from Canadian television, which we have been able to watch during the many months when NYC Ballet was unable to perform live because of the pandemic. 

The King's Painter: The Life of Hans Holbein by Franny Moyle (2021)

The weather in the winter of 1526 and 1527 was atrocious.  According to the chronicler Edward Hall, the first few months Holbein spent in England were dismal:  November and December suffered "aboundans of rayne."  If nothing else the country was living up to Erasmus's description of it as damp.  There was no let-up in the new year, with a daily deluge of bitter wet, and 16 January was notable for "such a grete rayne that there ensued greate fludds which destroyed corne, feldes, and pastures."                                        -- Franny Moyle, The King's Painter (Abrams Press, 2021)

Moyle's book is a successful combination of biography, history and art connoisseurship of 16th century painter Hans Holbein and the court of Henry VIII, where Holbein did most of his impressive portraits.  Holbein (sometimes called "the younger" because of his artist father with the same name) was born in Germany, moved to Switzerland where he established himself as a painter of religious subjects until the Reformation began and he started doing portraits as religious patronage started to dry up.  Holbein did a portrait of Erasmus, who recommended him to Henry VIII in England.  Holbein spent two years in England, returned to Switzerland for four years and then came back to England until his death in 1543 at the age of 46.

Holbein was a Renaissance (Nothern version) man in more ways than one, doing everything from portrait painting to interiors of houses to book illustration and designing of jewelry.  As Moyle writes: "Holbein's extensive oeuvre serves up a series of coordinates that chart one of the most fascinating eras in the history of Europe, England and the evolution of Christianity.  Through Holbein one meets the humanists rediscovering Europe's classical heritage, the entrepreneurs in the vanguard of publishing and communications, those in the forefront of religious debate and reformation, and the men and women holding the reins of political power.  And we see this era through the creative eyes of Holbein.

Joseph H. Lewis's Cry of the Hunted (1953)

The director's somber personality has been revealed consistently through a complex visual style. -- Andrew Sarris on Joseph H. Lewis

Lewis's complex visual style is beautifully on display in Cry of the Hunter, with the help of the chiaroscuro black-and-white cinematography of veteran Harold Lipstein filmed on location in a swamp (where Lewis's great Gun Crazy also ended), where Lt. Tunner is chasing down escaped convict Jory (Vittorio Gassman).  Tunner is a fish out of water as he chases Jory from asphalt of Los Angeles to the swamp water of Louisiana.  Tunner and Jory represent two side of what a man can be, as they both have dedicated wives who support them in their dangerous careers, one criminal and one law-enforcement, and at one point Tunner is so thirsty he drinks swamp water, passes out, and dreams of a weird relationship with Jory.  Tunner is helped in his search for Jory by the intense Goodwin (William Conrad) and the local sheriff (Harry Shannon), who are both ready to shoot-to-kill.

Tunner, after meeting Jory's passionate wife Ella (Mary Zavian), develops a sympathy for Jory and they end up helping each other out as they seek a way out of the swamp:  Jory rescues Tunner from quicksand and Tunner helps Jory recover from an injury as Tunner's cynicism falters; eventually he mentors Jory during Jory's last year in prison.  There's too much redemption and too little fatalism to call this a film noir -- as were the earlier Gun Crazy in 1950 and Lewis's later The Big Combo (1955) -- but it is an impressive meditation on the influence of background and environment. 

Yaujiro Ozu's An Inn in Tokyo (1935)

An Inn in Tokyo is a dark but beautiful film about looking for work and love in pre-war Japan, made as a silent film because Ozu did not yet trust the technology of sound recording (Chaplin was the only American director who was not yet using sound in 1935). Kihachi (Takeshi Sakamoto) is looking for work in a wasteland of factories and not finding it, as his two young sons accompany him in his search.  Eventually they run out of money and have to choose between dinner and an inn and end up in the rain with no place to stay.  Fortunately Takeshi runs into an old female friend, Otsune (Choko Iida) who at that point loans him money and helps him find a job.  Meanwhile Kihachi has met Kumiko (Kazako Ojima) and her young daughter.  Kihachi convinces Kumiko to give up her job as a "hostess" and when Kumiko's daughter gets sick Kihachi steals money to pay the hospital bills and turns himself into the police, asking Otsune to take care of his two sons.

An Inn in Tokyo, like all of Ozu's film, is low-key but intensely emotional.  In his sound films, e.g. Tokyo Story (1953), Ozu does not move the camera at all but in 1935 there are still a few tracking shots and a few of the "pillow shots" (quiet shots of trains, laundry drying, etc. with no people in sight) that become more extensive later, offering a brief interlude between emotional scenes.  Although Ozu almost always dealt with relationships within families An Inn is Tokyo is considerably more pessimistic than his post-war films.