fwmurnau Reviews

The Magnificent Ambersons (2002 TV Movie)

Staggeringly bad TV movie is an insult to Tarkington & to Welles

[1/10 · 24 November 2012]

This clumsy catastrophe is NOT made from Orson Welles' screenplay for his genius 1942 version, though it uses bits of it. The creators of this remake do everything wrong. The unforgettable prologue and narration are dropped entirely, important scenes are cut to make room for stupid new ones, others are shuffled and rewritten so they no longer make sense, and banal, foolish dialog is added.

Tarkington's story is deeply grounded in a particular time and place: a century ago in the American midwest. Welles, a midwesterner born in 1915, knew the place and the people well. This version's Mexican director, Alfonso Arau, shows so little understanding of his characters and story, you wonder if he's ever met an American.

Arau's choice of an isolated Irish country house to stand in for the Ambersons' urban mansion, located near the downtown of a city based on Tarkington's native Indianapolis, shows how clueless he is. That's like filming HUCKLEBERRY FINN in Vienna, with the Danube as the Mississippi.

Every choice is as wrong as the mansion. There is no sense of place or period. All of the leads are grossly miscast. The speech, the manners, the attitudes, the tone, the bad acting, the cheap suggestions of incest ... nothing in this remake rings true.

For George Minafer, the most American of protagonists, Arau weirdly goes to Ireland again, casting the amateurish Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who overacts like crazy in a phony, inappropriately-contemporary accent. Where Tim Holt was subtle and low-key, Rhys Meyers shouts, leaps about, and twists his pretty lips into sneers and scowls worthy of a circus clown.

Granted, the 1942 cast was perfection. Arau's casting makes you wonder what he was smoking. Madeleine Stowe is nothing like Isabel, but she comes off better than most of the others. Morgan is the bland Bruce Greenwood, whose wrongness reminds one how profoundly sensitive and right Joseph Cotton was in the part. Major Amberson looks and talks like an ex-hippie; and the frail, sexless Wilbur is played by a handsome, hearty actor who has way more sex appeal than Greenwood, which makes nonsense of the love triangle.

In the crucial role of Fanny -- the prim, plain-faced, repressed spinster aunt -- Arau casts (I am not making this up!) the vulgar, sexy Jennifer Tilly. Agnes Moorhead, heartbreakingly memorable in the Welles version, is rolling in her grave.

When Arau tries to get arty, he falls right on his face ... turning George's birth into a 1960s acid trip and adding an absurd scene to the ball sequence, where Morgan waltzes with Isabel in the snow while two butlers try to hold parasols over their heads. This sub-Fellini touch is so idiotic, like much of the movie, it becomes unintentionally funny.

Blunder piles on blunder. Isabel, Fanny, and George all appear to have collagen-injected lips, which sums up director Arau's apparent belief that Indiana in 1900 was exactly like Beverly Hills today. The dancers at the ball do the tango (!) as if the story's set in Buenos Aires. Nothing here seems to be happening in the United States, let alone Indiana.

If you know the novel or Welles' flawless, if studio-mangled, adaptation, you will shake your head in amazement: how could this remake turn such wonderful material into such an embarrassing train wreck for all concerned?

PLEASE don't let this inept, tone-deaf mess be your only acquaintance with THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS. See the brilliantly written and directed, perfectly acted Welles version or read Tarkington's masterful Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

Buried Alive (1939)

Awful, boring, inept noir -- AVOID!

[1/10 · 23 November 2012]

A prisoner with a spotless record, about to be paroled, encounters a series of misunderstandings, unlucky accidents, and set-backs that jeopardize his freedom and his future with the blonde prison infirmary nurse he's fallen in love with. Sound interesting? IT'S NOT!

This movie is so badly written, it might be used as a textbook example of how not to construct a story. The exposition wanders around, trying to get a story started, and fails miserably.

It's not even clear who the main character is until about 45 minutes in. The script seems to have been written as some kind of protest piece against capital punishment. A worse punishment is trying to sit through this movie to the end.

Wooden dialog, poor acting and direction, and scene after scene in which characters' actions make absolutely no sense. This is almost Ed Wood- bad, but sadly it's not "so bad it's good". It's "so bad it's depressing".

The Legend of Suram Fortress (1985)

Parajanov -- an inspiration to other creative artists

[8/10 · 14 May 2012]

SURAM FORTRESS has a bit more narrative than some of Parajanov's films but, as with the others, I still don't always understand what's going on or why. Still, his very eccentricity, breaking every rule of narrative and filmmaking, inspires me in my own work as a playwright and composer.

His use of striking, associative images -- powerful, even when they don't make literal sense -- recalls the great Tarkovsky, who does something similar in his films, in his own very personal style.

Parajanov, like Bresson -- another director who can fascinate and baffle me at the same time -- does everything differently from the way it's usually done, infuriating viewers expecting believable characters and comprehensible stories. With both directors, the results can be uneven, but at their best, they really inspire, stimulate, and get your creative juices flowing.

Bresson, Tarkovsky, and Parajanov prove you can truly try ANYTHING while following your own artistic vision. But, unlike some overpraised fraudulent directors, they are never pretentiously avant- garde for its own sake, phony, insincere, or "different" just to come across as cool, perverse, or faux-profound.

Parajanov and Bresson's boldly individual styles embolden me to be fresher, more original, and think outside of the box in my own work.

I'm No Angel (1933)

My Favorite Mae West movie -- funny, wise, very daring for its time

[10/10 · 7 February 2012]

I've loved this movie ever since I was a kid, seeing it many times on TV as I grew up. The memorable quips and funny scenes just keep coming and West's confident star personality conquers all. It's not a "great film" as a film, or brilliantly directed or anything, but it's the ideal showcase for everything that makes West great, so I give it ten stars.

It's hard to realize now how radical Mae West's attack on Victorian views of women and sex was. In a world where "good women" were expected to be virgins before marriage and to never enjoy sex, even afterwords ... a world where men who played around were good ol' boys, but a woman who did so was banished from good society as "damaged goods" ... West arrived on the movie screen like a nuclear bomb, blowing away old attitudes and double standards with her wit and swagger.

West took the Victorian stock character, "the Vamp", which was still current in 1933, and turned it on its head. Vamps liked sex -- something no "good woman" was supposed to admit to -- and they seduced married men, wrecked homes, destroyed families, and were hated by other women.

Mae's character reversed all of this. She was open and frank about loving men and loving sex, but she was never a home wrecker, and in her films is always a good friend to other women, unless -- like the unforgettable prude "Miss Hatton" in this film -- they attacked her first.

Americans in 1933 were used to stories where decent, good women had no interest in sex, and disapproved of those who did, and sexy women were bad, tainted, and generally evil. Mae assaults this view from the beginning of this film to the end. Her sexy heroine is not a man-eater, but a generous, good-hearted woman who likes and has been fair to every guy she's ever dated, even the pickpocket Slick.

In "Miss Hatton", West reveals the prudish virgin as a snooty, nasty man-hater, not to be trusted by men or women. It's something of a miracle that Mae managed to dynamite the Victorian madonna-whore hypocrisy and other double standards so effectively, while entertaining the masses and making a fortune in the process.

The ultimate moral of this delightful comedy is that true morality has nothing to do with sex -- that decency, kindness, fairness, and generosity are what make a woman good, not avoiding and disapproving of sex.

Il trionfo di Maciste (1961)

Unoriginal but not bad peplum

[3/10 · 5 October 2011]

This movie trots out all the usual peplum clichés, but gives some of them a little spin. The good girl, for once, is a brunette, which makes her confusingly resemble the evil queen who bewitches Maciste, making him her love slave, in a plot twist stolen from HERCULES UNCHAINED. In the typical test of strength, the hero here has to survive with a team of horses chained to each arm -- this scene occurs in a number of pepla, but here they add the touch of having sharp scythes attached to the chariots, threatening to decapitate proisoners buried up to their necks in the ground ... a little extra creative sadism, lol.

Kirk Morris is, as always, a beautiful physical specimen, with the face of a Botticelli angel.

I've only viewed this film in the awful, fuzzy, color-faded print in the WARRIORS DVD pack.

Can someone explain one thing to me? This is billed as Morris's first peplum, yet it contains a long underground sequence lifted from THE WITCH'S CURSE, released the following year. Was WITCH made first and released later? Or was the WITCH footage added to this one some time after its release, maybe to pad its length?

Goliath and the Dragon (1960)

One of the more fun and entertaining peplums

[16 September 2011]

Mark Forest looks incredibly handsome and acts very competently in his first peplum outing. His physique is awesome and he handles the fights and action sequences with aplomb, even battling silly rubber monsters with passion and conviction.

The two things that make so many peplum movies boring -- talky court intrigue and confusing, interminable battle scenes -- are kept to a minimum here, which make this faster-moving and more entertaining than most.

The film serves up of a lot of what most of us watch peplum for: crazy monsters and imaginative, surreal action scenes like the one where Forest demolishes a palace by knocking down the stalactites in the cave beneath it.

Definitely recommended for fans of the genre. One thing I don't understand, though. Goliath's wife dies near the end, but in the final shot we see her alive again, smooching with her husband. Was this contrived "happy ending" created by moving a shot from early in the film to the end? I haven't seen anyone else comment on this.

Colossus and the Amazon Queen (1960)

Self-spoofing peplum is entertaining and different

[20 August 2011]

Many of the Italian peplum (sword & sandal) movies from the period 1959- 1965 are unintentionally funny, but this one is made as a spoof. It's not great but it's different enough to make it pretty entertaining.

Unlike most pepla, this one focuses more on cheescake than beefcake. Colossus, the Hercules character, is played by a slim Ed Fury who looks like he hasn't been to the gym in a while. He's no more built than the other men in the film, and his role is surprisingly small.

Most of the story concerns his comrade, a wily mercenary played by a very hammy Rod Taylor (the leading man of Hitchcock's THE BIRDS) who enjoys being captured by a tribe of gorgeous Amazons.

The Amazons turn their captives into male housewives, cooking, sewing, and doing housework for the women. There is much role-reversal comedy where the men act and speak like put-upon wives -- some of this is actually funny. There are a number of bizarre touches like a talking parrot, never explained, that sometimes comments on the action, and an insane musical score made up of 1960s lounge-type jazz and hackneyed "funny movie" music of the kind used in bad TV sitcoms during the sixties.

This movie has mercifully little of the elements that make so many pepla boring: (a) endless battle scenes of soldiers, horses, and plebeians rushing back and forth, where you don't know or care who's fighting who, and (b) long dialog scenes about court intrigue that are as convoluted as they are irrelevant.

Peplum fans should definitely check this out for its peculiar differences from the run-of-the-mill muscle man flicks. It should also appeal to those who feel there's too much male flesh on display in most pepla and not enough female. This movie is all about hot Amazon babes in revealing outfits, led by their gorgeous, sultry queen (who resembles a young Joan Collins). Absurd scenes like a girl fight sequence are included just to up the cheesecake factor.

Not great, but for the most part good fun.

Two English Girls (1971)

Flawed, yes, but so moving, the flaws don't matter ...

[9/10 · 23 March 2011]

Growing up, I eagerly saw each new Truffaut film when it opened in the United States. This one had the biggest impact on me of all.

It's interesting seeing the dichotomy in the reviews here: about half call the film melodramatic, pointless, and dull. The other half find it beautiful, touching, even a masterpiece.

The flaws are easy to pick out. Leaud is awfully low-key to the point of blandness, and the (thankfully) few English language scenes clearly suffer from Truffaut's unfamiliarity with the language -- he failed to catch some really bad English line readings.

But the narration totally works for me, giving the film the "tempus fugit" feel of a great nineteenth century novel. The purposefully rushed, monotone narration keeps the story from becoming overly sentimental. The voice-over sounds like the cold wind of Fate, sweeping the characters through the years from naive youth to the disillusionment of early middle age.

I think one's response to the film has a lot to do with one's own nature: if you have loved passionately and experienced serious heartbreak, you may really GET this movie. If you're a cynical hipster who is simply embarrassed by passion, romantic love, and strong emotions, it's not for you. This is a highly emotional film for highly emotional viewers.

Muriel's letter scene will divide these two groups of viewers. Some posters here call it laughable and ridiculous, perhaps because they're sexually immature or repressed, so the topic of masturbation automatically gives them the giggles. To me, this scene is heartbreaking, when you realize this poor young woman's guilt over masturbating has warped her life and spoiled her chances for happiness. It shows how a small misunderstanding or character flaw can lead to loneliness or lifelong unhappiness.

This film affects me more strongly than the more famous and acclaimed JULES ET JIM, where the characters' actions strike me as more peculiar and clinical than moving. But that's just me.

Few films give such a strong sense of time passing as this one, and life running through the hourglass as we poor human beings bumble, blunder, and suffer as we search for love.

The final scene of an aging Leaud walking through a changed Paris he hardly recognizes as the city of his youth is unforgettable, justifying the movie's length. With a shorter running time, the film could never give you such a sense of time passing, characters growing, changing, and missing chances for happiness.

For those who respond to it, this is one of the most beautiful, affecting films of the 1970s.

Blue Valentine (2010)

Well-done but WOW is it depressing ...

[5/10 · 6 February 2011]

Gosling is excellent and Williams is even better (a remarkable actress!) in this hyper-naturalistic kitchen sink drama of a working class couple's unraveling marriage.

It's full of deliberately grim and ugly details like the death of the family dog at the beginning, sex scenes that will make you never want to have sex again, and an abortion clinic scene that -- at the showing I saw -- sent several traumatized female audience members charging out of the theater.

With its focus on everything negative -- despair, degradation, alienation -- BLUE VALENTINE reminds me of those Ingmar Bergman films of the 60s and 70s about horrible couples in horrible relationships. These films are so relentlessly morbid and depressing they're almost unwatchable now.

The story is very well-observed, well-written, there's a lot to relate to, but still it's not exactly fun to view. Mainly because the characters are not interesting people; they're just helpless and pathetic, though the leads do everything they can to make them sympathetic. Still, much of it plays like watching a car wreck with fatalities.

If you like this kind of kitchen sink realism, this may be for you; it's a fine example of the genre. For others it may seem like enduring a two hour root canal.

Only Angels Have Wings (1939)

One of the BEST FILMS ever made in Hollywood

[10/10 · 7 March 2009]

1939 is often called the best year in Hollywood history, but this superb, and superbly-original, movie gets overshadowed by THE WIZARD OF OZ, GONE WITH THE WIND, DARK VICTORY and other classics from that year.

ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS can be enjoyed as a terrific, fast-paced action/adventure movie, but beneath the surface there's much more going on.

The story deals with big themes -- honor, character, love, guilt, redemption -- in profound ways worthy of Tolstoy or Shakespeare. Jules Furthman, the greatest dialog writer in Hollywood history, outdoes himself here with laconic exchanges where what's said is only the tip of the iceberg. A world of meaning and emotion churn BETWEEN the lines.

One example: How many viewers even notice that Rita Hayworth, when she's first alone with Grant, produces a match to light his cigarette without him asking? In the context of the story, this tiny detail is a key to their relationship, past and present. The whole film is like this, stuffed with small details that illuminate the backstories, thoughts, and feelings of the characters.

ONLY ANGELS is a high watermark of intelligent, grown-up writing for the screen. It's a smart film written for a smart, observant audience.

Cary Grant should have won an Oscar for his intense, deeply-felt performance -- this from a star we usually associate with comedy. Many in Hollywood were jealous of Grant, of his good looks, skill, talent, versatility, and success. So they wouldn't give him awards.

The film is perfectly cast, written, directed -- even photographed. The opening scenes of the exotic port dazzle in a rich B&W chiaroscuro worthy of Von Sternberg. Above all, this film -- if you open yourself to it -- delivers a hell of an emotional punch. The flying scenes are as exciting as the personal scenes are sensitive and affecting. The nail-biting drama and suspense are leavened with just the right amount of comedy.

Here you see Rita Hayworth's star quality emerging for the first time, while D.W. Griffith's early-silent film leading man Richard Barthelmess underacts brilliantly as a man haunted by a guilty secret.

The first time I saw OAHW, I remember thinking the scene with the condor was far-fetched, but after the bird-caused plane crash in the Hudson River recently, I realize I was just ignorant about aviation. Hawks, a pilot and friend of pilots all his life, knew exactly what he was doing.

Movies do not get better, or richer, than ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS. It's one of my top-five favorite films of all time. You can see it over and over and get more out of it each time.

Non ti scordar di me (1935)

Low-budget Gigli vehicle is a delightful surprise!

[7/10 · 13 February 2009]

After the great tenor Gigli was essentially dropped by the Metropolitan Opera, he went to Europe and made a number of films. I expected little from this 1935 curio, but it surprised me.

The story, built around a series of musical numbers by Gigli, is quite effective. Well-written and well-acted by the lead actress, Gigli, and the rest of the cast.

The language barrier between the leads is the most realistic depiction I've seen in a film of people attracted to each other but unable to communicate because they don't speak the same language. The early scenes aboard the ocean liner are very well-done and give one the real flavor of crossing the Atlantic in the 1930s.

And there is real suspense about how it will end. This is no great film, but you do care about the characters. I was nearly biting my nails to find out what decision the conflicted heroine would make at the end.

This is not the film to appreciate Gigli's brilliant singing, which is poorly recorded by the British sound engineers, but it's very worth seeing. I actually had tears in my eyes during the final plot twists. Recommended!

Forever Yours (1936)

1930s Gigli vehicle is a delightful surprise!

[7/10 · 13 February 2009]

After the great tenor Gigli was essentially dropped by the Metropolitan Opera, he went to Europe and made a number of films. I expected little from this 1935 curio, but it surprised me.

The story, built around a series of musical numbers by Gigli, is quite effective. Well-written and well-acted by the lead actress, Gigli, and the rest of the cast.

The language barrier between the leads is the most realistic depiction I've seen in a film of people attracted to each other but unable to communicate because they don't speak the same language. The early scenes aboard the ocean liner are very well-done and give one the real flavor of crossing the Atlantic in the 1930s.

And there is real suspense about how it will end. This is no great film, but you do care about the characters. I was nearly biting my nails to find out what decision the conflicted heroine would make at the end.

This is not the film to appreciate Gigli's brilliant singing, which is poorly recorded by the British sound engineers, but it's very worth seeing. I actually had tears in my eyes during the final plot twists. Recommended!

Witness for the Prosecution (1957)

One of the screen's best courtroom dramas

[10/10 · 3 April 2008]

Everything snaps, crackles, and pops in this delightful courtroom mystery, one of the best films Wilder ever directed. The cast is superb. Laughton and Lanchester, of course, and Marlene Dietrich gets one of the best roles of her career. Although she gained fame originally as a sex symbol, movies like this show what a fine and intelligent actress she was. It's really a shame she didn't win -- or even get nominated -- for an Oscar. She certainly deserved it.

The seamless mixture of comedy and drama in the brilliant screenplay should be studied by all aspiring screenwriters. The funny scenes never detract from the suspenseful, serious story -- they actually make it stronger. Some may feel the melodrama of the final moments seems a bit contrived, but that's a very minor quibble.

WITNESS is one of those rare perfect movies. What a pleasure to watch a film where everything -- writing, direction, acting, music, photography, you name it -- is exactly right and blends into a terrifically entertaining whole.

Pepe (1960)

So bad, it's almost fascinating ...

[2/10 · 31 March 2008]

Lavish sets, thousands of extras, and cameos by virtually every big star in 1960 Hollywood can't save this disaster, done in by its stupid story, witless script, and endless running time -- originally 3 hours and 15 minutes! What were they thinking?!! I turned on TCM and discovered Shirley Jones, of all people, playing a sexy, bitter, beatnik hoofer. Huh??? I was hooked. I had to watch it to the bitter end.

They made several super-duper "cavalcade of stars" films like this around the same time: IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD, AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS, and so on. None of them were great, but this may be the worst of the pack.

Jones looks radiant and Cantinflas's charm and talent are obvious, but both are done in by the stupidity of their roles and of the story. Jones, one of the finest singers in movies, cast as a DANCER who hardly gets to sing? Dailey, a great dancer, cast in a downbeat dramatic role where he barely gets to dance? Casting doesn't get much more perverse.

Don't miss the WEST SIDE STORY rip-off, a lengthy Apache-dance sequence featuring a comely, half-naked Jones trying to make like Cyd Charisse without being given a single note to sing ... all of this with loud faux-Bernstein music on the soundtrack.

Even weirder is Judy Garland's "appearance" -- actually she doesn't appear, but the characters hear her voice singing a song, supposedly on the radio. As Alice would say, PEPE just gets "curiouser and curiouser ..." This must have been one of the overblown, elephantine messes that helped kill the Movie Musical in the 1960s.

The Big Bluff (1955)

Cheap but effective little noir

[5/10 · 27 February 2008]

W. Lee Wilder's THE BIG BLUFF will never be a threat to his brother Billy's genre-defining classic, DOUBLE INDEMNITY, but on its own terms it's a nifty little quickie with a good story and a nice trick ending.

When it starts, this film looks so cheap -- I mean, Ed Wood cheap -- you're tempted to hang it up, but stick with it. It improves as it goes along. The writing and cast are perfectly adequate and it's more entertaining than a lot of big budget A pictures.

An unusual feature of this film is a reversal of the usual noir femme fatale dynamic. Here it's a sexy guy, an "homme fatal" if you will, who seduces a rich, love-starved widow.

Maltin's book (2003) doesn't even list this film, but it's included in the inexpensive 6-CD "Ultimate Film Noir Collection", which I recommend for its intriguing line-up of public domain B-picture rarities, which range from junk to cult classic B's (DETOUR, THE HITCHHIKER) to even a couple great ones (Welles' THE STRANGER).

The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

Lessons for today's filmmakers

[9/10 · 22 February 2008]

THE ASPHALT JUNGLE is an unusually lean and well-structured heist film, remarkable for its depth of characterization. Crime here is portrayed with a realism very unusual for Hollywood -- as a business, run by ordinary people. These thugs and crooks have loved ones and families, backstories and lives like anyone else. The writing, direction, and cast are uniformly outstanding. I've never seen a crime picture that portrayed the relationships between its characters so deeply and effectively.

The film avoids traps most films of this type fall into: glamorizing the criminals or making them seem super-human. There are no diabolical geniuses here, just crooks, some smarter, some dumber. The speech at the end about the police probably draws laughs from some cynical modern viewers, but I would say it gives an enriching moral dimension to the story. The story walks a very fine line, allowing one to sympathize with the crooks' human qualities and vulnerabilities while not encouraging sympathy for their predatory activities.

THE ASPHALT JUNGLE is vastly superior to the gory, nihilistic neo-noirs of today, where ruthless killers are portrayed just because -- well, because ruthless killers are "sexy" projections of our discreditable human impulse to live free of conscience, scruples, or remorse ... and because shock and blood are easy ways to keep restless audiences in their seats.

The violence in the film is discreetly handled, yet much more effective than the buckets of blood directors resort to nowadays. Filmmakers in the 1950s may have wished they could portray violence more frankly, but now that the net is down, we can see explicitness doesn't make violence more realistic. The modern approach to violence actually distracts the audience from the story and characters. Either they're distracted by repulsion -- ick!, nervous laughter -- ha ha! -- or they're distracted by evaluating the special effects. How did they make that guy's face look blown-off? Prosthetics? CGI? It sounds old-fashioned to say it, but no on screen violence can match in realism what audiences imagine off-screen. I hope the current gore-fest approach will go out of fashion soon. Grand Guignol is the opposite of realism, provoking laughter more often than fright. Watching SWEENEY TODD in the theatre recently was interesting -- while the film is in no sense realistic, the over-the-top bloody scenes elicited yawns and groans from some in the hip young audience. Even hipsters seem to be growing tired of Grand Guignol at this point.

This is truly a fascinating noir masterpiece and that rare thing, a genuine ensemble movie that works on every level. There is no definite protagonist, just a group of crooks who pull a daring burglary, then a group of cops who hunt them down. The protagonist is the unnamed city itself, where the police struggle endlessly to control the crooks, including the ones in their own ranks. The tone is cold and fairly bleak, but never nihilistic in the modern fashion.

The ending, where Sterling Hayden dies in a field on the farm where he grew up, as curious horses sniff at him, is both predictable and unexpectedly moving. A real stroke of poetry, standing for the way we all fail to live up to our youthful dreams and the futility of the dream we all have sometimes of returning to a lost innocence.

Kiss Me, Stupid (1964)

Even Wilder can stumble ...

[2/10 · 17 November 2007]

The brilliant Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond created some of the screen's most memorable films. This, sadly, is not one of them. In the 1950s Wilder tried very, very hard to make delightful sex comedies in imitation of his idol, Ernst Lubitsch.

But Wilder and Diamond's acidic cynicism could not be further from Lubitsch's affectionate, sophisticated farces. Lubitsch loved his charming cuckolds and adulterers and made us love them too. Wilder and Diamond seem to HATE every one of the crass, tacky characters in this movie.

Walston's deluded husband and his grease monkey friend are repellent and the women are degradingly portrayed as trashy sex objects or mindlessly compliant Stepford wives. The tone is as far from Lubitsch as A is from Z.

The misanthropy that proved so effective in the underrated ACE IN THE HOLE is totally wrong for this sex farce, whose characters act in ways that bear little resemblance to human behavior.

When the innocent wife peeks through a window and sees her husband embracing a prostitute, what does she do? Barge in and ask what the heck is going on? No. She repairs to the local brothel and gets blind drunk. HUH??? Similarly, the husband tries to drive his loving wife out of the house, so he can implement his money-making scheme, by being gratuitously cruel to her -- in a long scene so cringe-worthy it makes you feel like taking a shower after watching it. How could Wilder and Diamond possibly have thought this was funny? In place of Lubitsch's witty, risqué repartee, we get smutty one-liners that would be rejected by a third-rate burlesque comic.

Is KISS ME STUPID a neglected masterpiece? Some think so, but every bad movie has its passionate defenders. I've read that Wilder later came to his senses and disowned this mean-spirited misfire.

Lubitsch loved all his characters, even the ones who behave the worst. He never patronized or looked down on them. KISS ME STUPID is so filled with disgust, you can't help wondering what its creators were going through at the time that made them so bitter about love, marriage, and women.

"What would Lubitsch do?" read the sign Wilder kept over his desk. I'll tell you what Lubitsch NEVER would have done: KISS ME STUPID. Every genius is off his game from time to time. KISS ME STUPID is to Wilder's oeuvre what A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG is to Chaplin's. I bet Wilder wished in later years he could make it disappear.

(P.S. to the poster who wonders whether Dean Martin could act. See RIO BRAVO and you'll see with the right director he could. Dino is terrific in that late Howard Hawks masterpiece.)

Diabolique (1955)

Don't spoil the plot twists for your friends ...

[9/10 · 1 November 2007]

This superb psychological thriller ranks right up there with the best of Alfred Hitchcock. Someone posted that Hitchcock tried to get the rights to the story, but Clouzot had already snagged them. Bravo, Monsieur! The story was right up Hitchcock's alley, but I doubt he could have done any better with it than Clouzot does. What makes this film so extraordinary is the ORDINARINESS of the setting, a grim boarding school in the perpetually grey and rainy French countryside, and the everyday naturalness of the characters.

Nothing is exaggerated or over-the-top and the cast behaves like regular folks, not movie stars. The banality of these people and their workplace makes the violent story chillingly believable. A big-budget Hitchcock version may have had trouble achieving this believability, if cast with movie stars like Grace Kelly modeling the latest Hollywood fashions, make-up, and hairstyles. (This Hollywood glossiness has made, say, REAR WINDOW date more than it should have.) Simone Signoret drips Star Quality, yet she's still very credible as a provincial schoolteacher. Meurisse makes a fine abusive husband, never becoming too melodramatic. And Vera Clouzot is touchingly effective as his submissive, mistreated wife.

Recommend this movie to your friends but DON'T ruin the surprises for them. As with PSYCHO, the film is most enjoyable when you see it for the first time without knowing what's going to happen next.

The Lion of Thebes (1964)

Peplum at its best

[8/10 · 27 September 2007]

Mark Forest's personal favorite of his films is one of the best Italian sword & sandal films of the 1960s. Superior writing and direction, and handsome Egyptian sets and costumes, make it seem like a wonderful comic book come to life. Forest, in great shape, has never been better or been better-photographed. Furneaux capably heads a strong supporting cast.

The story finds the Pharaoh Rameses in love with Helen of Troy (Furneaux), who prefers Aryan (Forest), her beefy bodyguard. A mythological mix-up, but it's one of the genre's strongest, most logical and compelling stories.

A film like this, in an unfaded print with strong bright colors, makes one wonder if some of these films aren't actually better than they seem in their ludicrously-dubbed American TV versions. If this had been made by Fassbinder, David Lynch or some other fashionable director, it might be acclaimed as an avant garde masterpiece.

Down Among the Sheltering Palms (1952)

Mediocre musical -- yawn

[3/10 · 17 February 2007]

Oddball cast fails to enliven unimaginative rip-off of SOUTH PACIFIC. Songs by the brilliant Harold Arlen and Ralph Blaine make little impression.

Mitzi Gaynor is amusingly miscast as a native Polynesian girl (with honey-colored hair?!)

Lundigan has about as much charisma as one of the coconuts Gaynor keeps dropping on his head (in real life, of course, a coconut falling on you could easily kill you). Still, the three women in the picture compete madly for his attentions while a pack of love-hungry G.I.s act really stupid every time they glimpse a woman's ankles.

Filmed in 1950 but not released till 1953 -- that suggests to me the studio knew it was a stinker.

Ballets Russes (2005)

Superb documentary, affecting, loved it

[10/10 · 15 December 2006]

Of the fine arts, dance is the one I know the least about so I wasn't sure if I would find this too technical or too dry. It turns out to be one of the best documentaries I've seen, alternating beautiful archival footage of these dancers forty to seventy years ago with delightful and illuminating interviews with them today. It includes their tours, their work in Hollywood and on Broadway ... a wonderful story.

Though most are in the eighties or even nineties, these are fascinating interviewees, with the whole history of 20th century dance in their blood and their souls. It's incredibly moving seeing them pass along the tradition of Western ballet, their techniques and steps, wisdom and artistry, to young dancers of today.

This is a must-see for any lover of music and the arts or anyone interested in the history of the performing arts in the twentieth century. Even if, like me, you don't know an arabesque from a jetee, I bet you'll find this film very moving and rewarding.

Everybody Sing (1938)

Great cast undone by poor writing and direction

[3/10 · 31 October 2006]

Movie fans who think great stars are enough to make a film great should see EVERYBODY SING. MGM threw together this vehicle for an assortment of wonderful performers they had under contract, but bad writing spoils it.

The following year the same studio would do everything right in THE WIZARD OF OZ, also with Garland and Burke, but here they do everything wrong. A stupid plot, bad dialog, and a director who doesn't know how to tone down veteran stage performers for the camera make for a shrill and charmless musical. Humor here consists of everybody yelling at each other, belting out third-rate songs and then reprising them. (Oh no! Here comes THAT lousy number again!)

Legendary stage and radio comedienne Fanny Brice's inexperience in films is painfully apparent. She gives a performance which would work on stage, but in camera close-up she comes across as hammy and annoying -- bugging her eyes, over-inflecting her lines, and making goofy faces.

Billie Burke, so funny and charming in THE WIZARD OF OZ and other films, is overbearing and shrieky here. Allan Jones, a handsome and likable young tenor, is wasted; in 1938, with operetta going out of style, the movie business no longer had a place for singers like him and Deanna Durbin.

The one reason to watch this is to witness the beginnings of the girl who the following year would blossom into the greatest musical performer in the history of film: Judy Garland. Even Judy is too loud and frantic here -- she's still Frances Gumm, vaudeville's "Little Miss Leatherlungs", with her mother hissing from the wings, "Louder, Frances! Smile, baby! Bat your eyes!!" But there are a few moments where Judy's musical phrasing or reading of a line take your breath away -- she's not yet the unique genius she would become, but she's getting there.

Garland fans should definitely see this, to see her in her "diamond in the rough" stage -- but you'll be in no hurry to see it again.

Boys Beware (1962)

Hilarious and sad

[4/10 · 26 October 2006]

Western societies have come a long way in their tolerance and understanding of gay people. This film, which one poster disturbingly tells us is STILL shown in schools in some backward parts of the country, is the REEFER MADNESS of homosexuality.

What might have been a harmless, even helpful warning to kids about pedophiles becomes ridiculous and ugly by its pretense of revealing what all *homosexuals* are like. The despicable smear that gay men tend towards pedophilia (about as factual as the ancient anti-Semitic lie that Jews kill Christian infants and drink their blood) is what this "educational" cheapie is all about.

That one poster actually commends this absurd gay-bashing propaganda as a worthy film that should be remastered and shown to kids today suggests how much ignorance and unexamined bigotry is still out there.

Reactions to the recent Tom Foley scandal showed how easily some on the political left as well as the right can fall back into the old know-nothing equation of homosexuality with pedophilia. Every educated person knows homosexuals are no more likely to be drawn to children than heterosexuals are.

This 10-minute short is worth viewing to remember how recently this kind of ignorant calumny was considered "conventional wisdom".

Spring Is Here (1930)

Historic interest, but not very good

[3/10 · 11 October 2006]

Caught this today on TCM. It's one of those run-of-the-mill early sound-era musicals that soured the public on singing films until the exciting 42ND STREET and the early Busby Berkeley extravaganzas pumped juice back into the musical genre.

Fazenda and her co-stars sing well in the operetta style that was still popular at this time, but their acting tends to be as stiff, stagy and clichéd as the story, dialog, and camera-work.

It's interesting to see the kind of brainless and virtually heartless musical comedy that was current when SHOW BOAT debuted on Broadway and then on film, pointing the way toward more heartfelt, substantial musicals in the future. Tastes in comedy change, but I doubt anyone found this one very funny even when it first appeared. The humor is really forced and lame.

The story is an ancestor of the teen comedies that would be popular decades later: a young jazz baby can't decide between two suitors, while her cranky, "old-fashioned" father and clueless mother provide comic relief.

Hit with a bunch of stagy, static movies like this one, no wonder the public at the time got sick of musicals. The genre had to be reconceived a couple years later, turned into a faster, fresher, more kinetic entertainment that was truly cinematic.

SPRING IS HERE is a typical plodding commercial product of its era. It's competent without being in any way outstanding. It will interest specialists as an example of writing and performing styles of the 1920s, but it won't win any new converts to early sound-era musicals. It's pretty bad ...

The Passion of Anna (1969)

Not Bergman's best; morbid and rather aimless

[3/10 · 10 May 2006]

Ingmar Bergman's talent and importance are not in question, but now that we can look back on his career as a whole, it's clear that not all his films are equally inspired.

THE PASSION OF ANNA is so beautifully acted and photographed, it almost disguises the emptiness at the center. Not only the characters, but the filmmaker himself seems tired, discouraged, uncertain of what he wants to say.

It's hard to be bored watching such fine actors work, but the story they're acting doesn't add up to much. Lacking inspiration, Bergman falls back on his customary verbosity and adds morbid touches, such as the unpleasant scenes of animal cruelty here, or Andreas and Anna watching on television a filmed execution in Viet Nam or somewhere, that seem to have no purpose other than arousing revulsion in the viewer.

Bergman's concentration on the cruel and the depressing almost to the exclusion of every other aspect of life must have seemed fresh and daring in the 1960s and 1970s, but now he can seem almost adolescent in his obsession with the morbid. Samuel Beckett's plays, chic during the same era, have not dated well either. There's a lot more to life, and to art, than cruelty, suffering, and death, but you'd never know it from Beckett or from Bergman films such as this one.

In an interview excerpted in the special features, Bergman says art must be useful, otherwise "we can all go to hell". It's very hard to say what the use of a film like this might be, except to make audiences weary and depressed.

Dark works which illuminate the human spirit can be valuable (O'Neill's incredibly depressing, but richly rewarding LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT is an example) but sometimes Bergman seems to have had a contract to make a film and not a lot to say. Still, everyone was being paid, the distributor required a film to be made and delivered, and it was.

One can feel Bergman using a variety of techniques in this film to find meaning in his story -- voice-over narration, improvisation, breaking the fourth wall to interview the actors about their roles -- but one senses he never really does. The film is obviously the work of a highly intelligent and talented writer/filmmaker, but it never really pays off. Viewing it is sometimes painful, sometimes boring, but rarely illuminating.

I feel the same way about CRIES AND WHISPERS, an unpleasant and, to my mind, pointless film rated very highly by others. Both CRIES and ANNA are cruel films, cold at the center. Bergman's lack of compassion seemed terribly modern, honest, and "truthful" in 1969, but now it looks more and more like a deficiency in the filmmaker's own sensibility.