Before the year ends, here are a few more films.

Forced Landing (1941), directed by Gordon Wiles. Hollywood in the 1930s and 40s loved aviation, and this Paramount cheapie is about an American flyer working for the Mosaque government. Mosaque? Apparently, this is a Pacific country in which the locals look like Latinos, including the revolutionary leader Andros Banshek (J. Carrol Naish). The government military leader is Colonel Jan Golas (Nils Asther) who is engaged to Johanna Van Deuren (Eva Gabor in her first film), is not a good fellow. He is out to sabotage work to build a defense system; the work is headed by Johanna’s father. The American flyer, Dan Kendal (Richard Arlen) does, of course, have eyes for Johanna, and the two of them eventually find themselves imprisoned in the jungle by Banshek. They fall in love, and this does not please Col. Golas. The film runs just over 60 minutes, and during this time we have plane crashes, shootings, intrigue, and romance. We also have monkeys. The script has its moments, and the cinematography, courtesy of John Alton, also has its moments. All in all, this is a pleasing programmer, something to while away the time on the indoor bike.

 

Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961), directed by Roger Corman. As the cartoon credits, filmed by Monte Hellman no less, indicate, this is a zany horror film. It has a monster made of 150 dollars worth of tennis balls, oil cloth, and steel wool. The script is in league with Little Shop of Horrors. For example, one character notes, “It was dusk. I could tell because the sun was going down.” The speaker here is the film’s narrator, agent XK150 (Robert Towne, here billed as Edward Wain), who has infiltrated gangster Renzo Capetto’s (Antony Carbone) gang in Cuba just after the revolution that has brought Castro to power. The plot has something to do with a large amount of gold smuggled out of Cuba by Capetto, along with a number of Cuban soldiers who hope to use the money to pay for their return to Cuba and the ousting of Castro. Capetto’s gang consists of a number of misfits, a manic-depressive, an animal voice impersonator, and a wicked Moll. The film is a lot of fun, and the monster is a hoot. Do not expect the Creature from the Black Lagoon. But you might delight in a zany odd ball romp. This film along with Little Shop of Horrors and Bucket of Blood form a nifty trifecta. 

 

The Lost Moment (1947), directed by Martin Gabel. This is Gabel’s only outing as a director, and his film is based, ostensibly, on Henry James’s The Aspern Papers. The film is an exercise in the Gothic, something akin to Rebecca. A young American publisher with ambition arrives in Venice where he plans to take up residence with an elderly, well an ancient, woman who was once the lover of a famous nineteenth-century poet, Jeffrey Ashton, whose portrait makes him look amazingly like Percy Bysshe Shelley. The 105-year-old woman is Juliana Borderau (an unrecognizable Agnes Moore), and she is attended by her grand-niece Tina Borderau (Susan Hayward). Tina, as it happens, suffers from lapses during which she takes on the personality of Juliana, and when the young man arrives, assuming the identity of a writer, but really in search of lost love letters sent to Juliana from the poet Ashton, she takes him as her lover Jeffrey when she is having one of her spells. The American, played by Robert Cummings, thinks he will make a sensation, and a lot of money, by publishing the lost love letters. Anyway, the story works out in a large, dark, labyrinthine house by a Venetian canal, a Venetian canal crafted on a Hollywood set. The plot holds little in the way of surprise, but the performers bring intensity to their roles. The make-up for the 105-year-old Juliana reminded me of the make-up work for Dustin Hoffman in Little Big Man. The sets for the house are effective. All in all, this is an interesting exercise in the gothic, if a bit wan.

 

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), directed by Don Siegal. Remade several times, this film still retains its power. What was once a 1950s McCarthy era film in which the pod people could be taken for soulless communists infiltrating small town America as a base from which to spread throughout the land, now seems prescient in its depiction of a people easily led to accept a world in which freedom and democracy are no longer worth struggling to maintain. It all begins with the farmers who have taken to growing giant seed pods that grow into replicas of human beings, taking over not only their bodies, but also their memories and minds. Siegal’s direction is efficient reminding us of lighting and angles familiar from film noir. Indeed, this is a dark picture, even darker without the prologue and epilogue demanded by the studio to temper the horrific initial ending with the Kevin McCarthy character stumbling among traffic on a highway trying desperately to convince someone to stop and take him seriously. “You’re next,” he shouts right at the camera in what was initially the end of the film. Now we have the frame in which he eventually convinces people at a hospital to believe him. The film is unrelentingly dark as young doctor Miles J. Bannell (McCarthy) arrives home from a conference to find people in his bucolic small town beginning to turn strange. This is a chilling story as we watch friends and family become the same, yet different, until the doctor and his girl, Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter), find themselves on the run, fleeing what once was a safe haven and is now a den of soulless people out to gather the two of them into their way of life. Just sleep and wake to a new and better and emotionless world.

 

The Gang’s All Here (1941), directed by Jean Yarbrough. This is not the lavish musical from 1943, with Carmen Miranda; no, this is a mall budget film that teams Frankie Darro and Mantan Moreland (they made about nine films together) as two truck drivers that are hired by a trucking company that has experienced a series of accidents with some of these accidents proving fatal. So we have a mixture of comedy and serious mob activity. Mantan Moreland does his thing, and we have familiar racial stereotypes, especially in scenes that have Moreland interacting with Laurence Criner who plays bad fellow Ham Shanks! The script has its moments; for example, we have young Patsy Wallace (Marcia Mae Jones) trying to convince the fellow she fancies, Chick (Jackie Moran), that woman are important helpmates of men. She mentions Napoleon and Josephine, Anthony and Cleopatra, and Alexander the Great and Mrs. Alexander the Great. Moreland also manages some subtlety when he remarks, “When you have been beyond the pale as much as I have…” The film also has Keye Luke in a small but important role. All in all, this film, at 61 minutes, serves to while the time away as I ride the indoor bike!

 

The Treasure of Ruby Hills (1955), directed by Frank McDonald. This is a low-budget western with Zachary Scott as hero, reformed bad guy Ross Haney. Efficiently filmed, and with an amiable cast of familiar faces (e.g. Raymond Hatton, Rick Vallin, Barton McLane, Dick Foran, and Lee Van Cleef), The Treasure of Ruby Hills is quite watchable. The plot is not novel. A fellow rides into town where two rival ranchers vie for control of the valley. He positions himself between the rivals, has an eye for a local woman who is supposed to be marrying the foreman of one of the two rival ranchers. This foreman has plans of his own; he not only has designs on the young woman, Sherry Vernon (Carole Mathews), but also on the land run illegally by the two ranchers. What they do not yet know is that Ross Haney has laid claim to the area’s only water source. Does all this sound familiar? Anyway, proceedings are handled well and things roll along. We even have Splinters from the Roy Rogers movies turning up here as bad guy Jack Voyle (Gordon Jones). The film offers riding, shooting, punching, romancing, and smart talk all in just 71 minutes.

 

Spectre of the Rose (1946), directed by Ben Hecht. This is a one-of-a-kind noir that focuses on ballet dancer and schizophrenic Andre Sanine (Ivan Kirov), who supposedly murdered his first wife while he and she were dancing the ballet, Spectre of the Rose. Bohemian poet, Lionel Gans (Lionel Stander) brings detective McFarlan (Charles “Red” Marshall) to Mme La Syphe’s (Judith Anderson) dance studio to investigate, mostly because Gans fancies the young dancer, Haidi (Viola Essen), who fancies Sanine. Mme La Sylphe knits, reminding us of Mme Defarge. The film is melodramatic, over-acted, and filled with dance. The noir hero is the tormented Sanine. The script, by Hecht, has some good one-liners, e.g. “Press yourself against me so hard that you’re tattooed on to me,” and “love is a seasonal thing among artists.” This is a strange film to come from Republic Studio with its combination noir and art house pretensions. It is perhaps over-heated, a curious entry into the noir catalogue.

 A mix of movies for December.

Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), directed by Chantal Akerman. Sight and Sound Magazine has, for the past 52 years, selected the greatest film in film history. They do this every two years, and first named Bicycle Thieves (1948) as the greatest. Soon they changed the selection to Citizen Kane (1941), a selection that lasted until 2012 when they chose Vertigo (1958). In 2022, a surprise came when the magazine selected Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles as the greatest film ever made. This film focuses on three days in the life of the eponymous character, played by Delphine Seyrig, as she goes through her daytime routine making meals for her and her son, washing the dishes, making the beds, doing necessary shopping, looking after a neighbour’s infant for a few minutes, entertaining men each day of the week from 5:00 to 5:30, and doing all this with a stoic resolve. We watch her peeling potatoes, making breaded meatloaf, eating, and going about her activities with ritualistic sameness. She does all this in the confined space of her apartment. The camera never moves (or at least I do not recall it moving); it sits there usually at a level Ozu would understand and delivers images of Jeanne framed by walls or objects such as chairs or cupboard doors, or even a milk bottle and coffee container. Outside long streets with shops provide a frame. Her life is contained. She and her son Sylvain (Jan Decorte) spend little time together and the time they do spend together is mostly silent. Indeed, the film contains very little dialogue. As for story, we have the three days in Jeanne’s life during which we begin to see a breakdown in her meticulous routine. She neglects to do up all the buttons of her housecoat, her hair is a bit dishevelled on the second day, she forgets to turn off lights or she forgets to replace the lid of the soup tureen in which she keeps the money she receives from the men she entertains, she overboils the potatoes, she finds her coffee unpalatable, she rises early and arrives at the bank before it opens, and so on. Something is happening in Jeanne’s emotional life, and the ending comes as a brutal surprise. The film is long at 3 hours and 22 minutes, and it may seem longer because screen time can feel longer than real time; take, for example, a scene such as the one in which Jeanne sits at the kitchen table and peels potatoes, or the final shot of the film in which Jeanne simply sits at the dining room table. These shots seem interminable. As I watched the film, I saw echoes of such film makers as Godard, Warhol, and Ozu. Apparently Michael Snow also influenced Akerman. Finally, what does one say about this film? It differs strikingly from the previous films selected by Sight and Sound, all made by men. This film is clearly something different and clearly a film by and about women. Most of the film crew are women. Jeanne’s life is the life of a widow, mother, and housewife. She has no activity outside her closed world as mother and home maker. This is a remarkable film. But is it the best film ever made?

Persona (1966), directed by Ingmar Bergman. The last time I saw this film, I was an undergraduate at the University of Toronto, some 59 years ago. The film made a profound impression on me then. Seeing it again after all this time, I wonder just what went through my mind back then. What goes through my mind now are the echoes of films by the likes of Luis Bunuel, Kenneth Anger, and the French New Wave directors, especially Jean Luc Godard. Bergman sets out to alienate the viewer by beginning the film with artifice and a collection of images that clearly announce that what we are seeing is a film. He also teases us with the image of a young boy who, after closing the book he is reading, looks at a large and cloudy image of a woman’s face on a screen in front of him, as he, like a film viewer, like us, sits looking toward the screen and away from us. Is this the expression of an Oedipal emotion or is this just a dream image or is the boy looking at a movie screen? What is real and what is reel, the film seems to ask. The boy reaches out to touch the face. But touch is impossible. Neither he nor us can actually get in touch with the image we see. Once the story, such as it is, gets going, we find ourselves in a world not much clearer than the real/reel confusion at the beginning. Elizabet (Liv Ullman) is an actress who, while playing the part of Elecktra, suddenly decides to cease speaking. She has seen footage on television of a Buddhist monk in Vietnam setting himself on fire, and this act of self-immolation appears to have caused her to go silent, her way of rejecting a world of violence and suffering. Elizabet ends up in hospital where the young nurse Alma (Bibi Andersson) is charged with caring for her. The two women go to Elizabet’s country home by the sea where we have images that suggest that either they become as close as lovers or they become estranged or they really are one person. We see the two women at times with a mirror and at times by a window, and the suggestion or question is whether cinema is a mirror or a window, something we see through or something that reflects ourselves. Persona does not clarify; rather it suggests cinema is both. The dialectic between silence and compulsive talk may also take us to cinema’s tug between the visual and the verbal, while at the same time saying something about the virtues of silence and the benefits of verbal expression. Ultimately this film will work if the viewer can delight in a series of almost hallucinatory images that take us inside the workings of film itself.

Blitz (2024), directed by Steve McQueen. As we expect from Steve McQueen, this film offers excellent visual recreation of war-torn London in 1940 during the intense bombing known as the blitzkrieg. The story follows the adventures of nine-year-old George (Elliott Heffernan) who is separated from his mother Rita (Saorise Ronan) and grandfather Gerald (Paul Weller). George is a mixed-race child whose father was cruelly deported before George was born. Anyway, the film has something of a picaresque feel to it, taking on perhaps too much to deal with adequately. First there is the blitz itself and the devastation brought on the city and the disruption in the lives of the citizens. Then there is the stuff about the factories and women workers. Then there is George, his family and its background and then his travels as he jumps from the train evacuating him and many other children to the countryside. Then we have the bits that foreground the racism apparent in the city. Then there is the focus on the failure of authorities to adequately prepare for the safety of the citizens, mostly working and middle-class people who demand shelter in the underground. And then we have the bit that echoes Dickens’s Oliver Twist with the Fagin-like Albert (Stephen Graham) with its ghoulish scene in a bombed night club. Perhaps because of the wide brush strokes here, characters remain sketchy. In short, this is an ambitious film that is uneven in its presentation of a time in history that might resonate more than it does. We have the shots of London in rubble that might remind us of places today in the Ukraine, in Gaza, in Beirut, and so on. The end of the film reminds us just how  tragic war is, while at the same time giving us something of a “happy ending.” Tragedy should, I think, overshadow all else.

 

The Chase (1966), directed by Arthur Penn. Not well received when it came out, The Chase nevertheless is a searing indictment of violence in America, racism, and small town shenanigans. It takes place in Texas where most citizens have guns, many have two guns, and they are prepared to use them. The story is a complicated combination of melodrama, social comment, family romance, and frontier mentality festering long after the frontier has gone. Sheriff Calder (Marlon Brando) appears to be in the pocket of local rich man and oil magnate Val Rogers (E. G. Marshall). When local bad boy Bubba Reeves (Robert Redford) escapes from prison with another inmate and that other inmate murders a man for the man’s car, Bubba finds himself on the run, hoping to get to Mexico. Things go wrong as they always do in these films and the local community finds itself in a snit over the actions of Sheriff Calder and the failure of the law to locate and incarcerate young Bubba. Calder receives the requisite beating (Brando often took a beating in films), Bubba receives injustice, and the town receives nothing more than ugliness from its people. The cast is impressive with the likes of Robert Duvall, Edward Fox, Jane Fonda, Martha Hyer, Miriam Hopkins, Angie Dickinson, Janice Rule, and Henry Hull. The party scenes suggest that the adults of this town are no more mature than the teenagers of this town. Both party with abandon and show little or no respect for decency, courtesy, and civility. The film is cluttered, but effective. This is the film Penn made just before he made his most famous film.

All Screwed Up (1974), directed by Lina Wertmuller. Perhaps not always coherent, this film nevertheless captures life in bustling overcrowded Milan. Too much is going on, but then too much goes on in the modern city. We have workers protests, chaotic working conditions, poor people trying to survive, police brutality, political injustice, rape, gender disparity, female cleverness, culture clashes. Ostensibly, the film follows two young lads from the south arriving in Milan and then trying to make a living and find relationships. The two lads are Gigi (Luigi Diberti) and Carletto (Nino Bignamini). The two young men find themselves living in an abandoned apartment building with a commune full of people. The place is organized by a woman. The people who live here will do almost anything for a lire. Take Sante (Renato Rotondo), for example. Sante meets a young woman. The two become a couple, and she has twins, then another five all at once – quintuplets! Before the film ends, she is once again pregnant. Poor Sante will do anything to provide for his family, including trying to be a male prostitute. The film is crowded with events, with people, with sounds, with ongoing chaos. This is a well-meaning film that tries to touch on just about all the ills of modern urban life under capitalism. The characters are likeable enough, if under-developed – there are just too many of them. Scenes in the pizzeria kitchen with the cacophony of goings on typify both the film and modernity.

Ikarie XB 1 (1963), directed by Jindrich Polak. Stanley Kubrik must have seen this Czech film. 2001: A Space Odyssey has echoes of this film in its designs. Anyway, what we have is an account of a 28-day mission to Alpha Centauri (15 years back on earth) a couple of centuries from now. The mission is to search for life forms. What the crew find is an old earth spaceship with the dead bodies of decadent westerners who had used this spaceship as a casino. It is the Cold War, and this floating casino also contains several nuclear bombs. The couple of crewmen who visit the abandoned ship get blown up. Back on Ikarie XB 1 (the name of the spaceship on a mission to discover life forms), some deadly virus or germ emanating from a black star begins to make life on Ikarie XB 1 difficult. After a lengthy sleep, the crew wake and one of them goes rather wild and crazy. Before this happens, we have a vision if life aboard the spaceship. The ship boasts a huge gym where crew members can exercise, a dancehall where the crew can dance away to their hearts’ content, large screens on which they can see and talk to loved ones back on earth, and a dining area that serves up vindaloo for the asking. The sets are minimal and geometric; they remind me of what we see on the Starship Enterprise. All this is impressive and thought-provoking. Oh, and there is also a robot, Patrick, who may remind you of Robbie, the Robot.

Mississippi Burning (1988), directed by Alan Parker. This film was made in 1988 and it focuses on an FBI investigation into three missing Civil Rights activists in Mississippi in 1964. Whether it is 1964, 1988, or 2024 the racial anger, bigotry, and violence remain with us. This film has not aged. Parker gives us the inferno that is race hatred with burning churches, crosses, and homes. The two principal figures are Agents Rupert Anderson (Gene Hackman) and Alan Ward (Willem Dafoe), and both are excellent. The rest of the cast, both of known and unknown actors, are also excellent. The locations serve to fill in the living conditions of both Black people and White people at the time of the action. The film combines melodrama, documentary realism, and police procedural in a scathing recreation of actual events. The anger on all sides is palpable. The warping of the judicial system should serve as a warning. The world here may be nominally a democracy, but certain people are denied the vote through various impediments set up by the dominant members of the community. This is a harrowing film that has not lost its power over the years. 

Wonder Boys (2000), directed by Curtis Hanson. People are crazy, times are strange, I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range, I used to care, but – things have changed. People in this film are perhaps crazy, but in a pleasant sort of way. And they have Bob Dylan and a few others singing in the background. This adaptation of Michael Chabon’s novel about a creative-writing professor’s adventures over an auspicious weekend not only won Bob Dylan an Oscar, but it also happens to be quite a joyous look at life’s vicissitudes. What’s not to like about a film that follows an English professor about as he transports his editor, a transvestite, the transvestite’s tuba, the editor’s pharmacopeia in a suitcase, and a dead dog from a party at his university’s Chancellor’s house? Then we have the troubled, but brilliant student, the student who fancies the professor, the actual owner of the professor’s car, the cleaning man, the bag of ganja, the successful novelist, a cast of misfits with success stories and stories of failure. Michael Douglas is the professor, Tobey Maguire is the troubled student, Frances McDormand is the Chancellor, Rip Torn the novelist, Robert Downey, Jr. the editor, Katie Holmes the student who makes eyes at the professor, and Michael Cavadias the transvestite. The location is Pittsburgh where it seems to have snow on the ground and torrents of rain falling from the sky. Rain and snow and Marilyn Monroe’s jacket. This is a film with affection for the human condition. It is also a film in which a person can see the 2000 plus pages of his next novel in manuscript blow away in the wind and feel liberated. Pretty much everything about this film works for me.

 More noir for November.

The Long Night (1947), directed by Anatole Litvak. This is a remake of Marcel Carne’s Le jour se Leve (1939), although the Fascist implications are muted here. The acting is fine, Henry Fonda as Joe and Barbara Bel Geddes as Jo Ann are convincing. Then we have Vincent Price as smarmy magician Maximilian and Ann Dvorak as Charlene. Charlene is a character who is under developed, and perhaps this is true to a lesser extent with the other characters. What we have is a noir, and the lighting and camera work make this clear, that focuses on star-crossed lovers. The main character, Joe, is a murderer who elicits our sympathy. As with many remakes, The Long Night offers nothing new. It is efficient and impressively constructed, but so was the original. We have some strange goings-on here with the police spraying Joe’s apartment with bullets, and Joe shooting Maximilian after relatively little provocation. From another perspective, the police action and the lying Maximilian give us something contemporary to chew on. Perhaps this film has Fascist overtones after all.

 

The Raging Tide (1952), directed by George Sherman. This noir may be Sherman’s best work, although much of the credit must go to Russell Metty’s cinematography. The film boasts excellent lighting and compositions, familiar with the genre. We do have dark city streets, but we also have the open sea and a fishing boat. The plot has gangster Bruno Felkin (noir stalwart Richard Conte) murdering someone in the film’s opening frames, then finding himself on the run. We even have a bit of voice over, something the film drops before long. Since all roads and other means of travel, aside from water, are covered by the police, Bruno hides away on a fishing boat owned by crusty Swede Hamil Linder (Charles Bickford, by golly) and his son Carl (Alex Nicol). Rounding out the cast are Shelley Winters as Bruno’s girl, Connie Thatcher, and Stephen McNally as Lt. Kelsey. The script has some fine moments, especially when Connie and Lt. Kelsey are onscreen. Conte’s Bruno is a stone-cold murderer with a soft heart, if you can get you mind around this. His time on the fishing boat makes him appreciate hard work, and he comes to admire Hamil, while seeing just how much of a sap Hamil’s son Carl is. Bruno serves as something of a mentor to Carl, both in a bad way and a good way. The plot has Bruno saving Carl, literally. As noirs go, this one is well worth watching.

For the Defense (1930), directed by John Cromwell.  Suave William Powell plays slick William B. Foster, a hot-shot defense lawyer who thinks he is above the law. He also thinks his girlfriend, Broadway star Irene Manners (Kay Francis), will stay with him despite his wish to remain unmarried. He is wrong on both counts. Something of an early film noir, For the Defense finds lawyer Foster caught in a tangle he cannot extricate himself from. His conceit catches up with him. Irene accidentally kills a man while she is driving one night. The man with her takes the blame, and Irene asks Foster to defend this man. This is where things go awry, as you would expect. Kay Francis and William Powell make a fine couple. The film has something to say about corruption in the judicial system, and it does this efficiently. Cromwell’s use of back projection is excellent, especially for a film made in 1930. All in all, this is a slim film that holds up well.

Take One False Step (1949), directed by Chester Erskine. William Powell and Shelley Winters make a strange pair in this man-on-the-run movie about a university professor, Andrew Gentling (William Powell), who runs into an old flame while in Los Angeles on a fund-raising trip. The meeting does not go smoothly, and Gentling finds himself in a jam, a suspect in the old flame’s disappearance. Why he does not simply go to the police and give his account of meeting Catherine Sykes (Shelley Winters) is beyond me. But if he had, then we would not have the story of his attempt to prove himself innocent, his encounter with a mean German Shepherd, his night time meeting with a hoodlum resulting in fisticuffs, his wild ride in the night ending with a bump into a tree and a barking dog, his tense meeting with a young boy while stopped in a lineup of vehicles being checked by the police, his close encounters with two police detectives, played by James Gleason and Sheldon Leonard, and his final encounter with Ms Sykes. As noir films go, this one is flimsy, but fun. As we would expect, William Powell fits the role of a professor well. As for Shelley Winters, she manages the whiny inebriate irritatingly well. Chester Erskine ain’t no Hitchcock, but he manages to give us an engaging film, thanks to an entertaining cast.

 

Chicago Confidential (1957), directed by Sidney Salkow. This is a neat combination of police procedural and film noir. It stars Brian Keith as Jim Fremont, state’s attorney, and Beverly Garland as fiancé and secretary of Artie Blane (Dick Foran). Blane is a union boss framed for murder by racketeers who want to take over the union for their nefarious purposes, girl smuggling being one of them. The film has a voice over by an unknown narrator, some dark streets, and noir shenanigans. The cast has several familiar faces, especially Elisha Cook, Jr, as Candymouth Duggan, a drunk who finds a murder weapon and becomes tangled with the bad guys and does not end well. Other familiar faces include Douglas Kennedy as Blane’s rival for top boss of the union, Jim Bannon as a pilot, Beverly Tyler as Sylvia Clarkson, a witness for the prosecution, Dennis Moore as the jury foreman, and Jack Lambert as a tough bad guy. Much depends upon the forensic people being able to identify a voice on a tape recorder. We see police work up close. This film offers familiar fare for its time, but it does so with verve. Satisfying.

The Body of My Enemy (1976), directed by Henri Verneuil. What distinguishes this film is its structure. It slides back and forth in time to tell the story of Francois Leclercq (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a man wrongly convicted of murder who, as the film begins, has served seven years in prison. He returns to the town of Cournai, a textile centre that has changed considerably since Leclercq went to prison. Of course, he is seeking revenge on those who framed him. From this beginning, we move back in time to Leclercq’s childhood, then his rise to nightclub owner and lover of the town’s wealthiest man’s daughter, Gilberte Liegard (Marie-France Pisier), all the time keeping the story going in the present. The film is stylish in a Seijun Suzuki sort of way, with a hulking former bouncer turned cross-dresser and female dominatrix, a performance by Frida de Dusseldorf, la strip-teaseuse, and impressive locations. The story has a noirish tone. Instead of Gauloises, Belmondo smokes Marlboro cigarettes to remind us of the American noir connection. The target here is the bourgeoisie. Leclercq’s hatred of the wealthy is what has motivated him since childhood. All if this is well and good, except that all the characters, including Leclercq, are unlikeable. The young woman Leclercq meets near the end of the film may be an exception, although her naivete is likely going to derail her life as the last shot fades away.

Sudden Fear (1952), directed by David Miller. This RKO thriller has an excellent final twenty-five or thirty minutes. The finale is set up with a sequence in which Myra Hudson Blaine (Joan Crawford) thinks through her plan to murder her cheating husband, Lester Blaine (Jack Palance), and pin the murder on Lester’s lover, Irene Neves (Gloria Grahame). In her imagination, Myra’s scheme works like clockwork (a clock does feature prominently). Of course, when she tries to make her plan work in actuality, things go wrong, but perhaps not in the way you might imagine. Anyway, why is Myra setting out to “do in” her husband. Well, he is a cad of the highest order. He is also a good actor. But the main reason is that he is planning to do away with Myra in order to get her fortune for himself and his girlfriend, and Myra knows this. She knows because of a dictation machine that has inadvertently recorded a conversation between Lester and Irene in which they declare their love and resolve to arrange an “accident” for Myra. Much of this is reminiscent of Hitchcock. Crisscross, get it? The final minutes are well worth waiting for, and the longer build-up to the suspenseful climax is not without interest, especially if you find the facial expressions of Joan Crawford engaging. We get many close-ups of Ms Crawford. Mind you, we also have a number of shots that allow Jack Palance to express menace or concern or affection. The film is often taken as an example of film noir, and the final sequence does have all the attributes of noir, askew camera angles, lighting, dark streets, and so on. The earlier part of the film, however, is thorough melodrama, shot with full lighting, bright rooms or sunny days.

 

Crime Against Joe (1956), directed by Lee Sholem. This low budget noir has ambitions that do not quite make the grade. The story gives us war veteran and would-be artist Joe Manning (John Bromfield) who finds himself in a pickle after a night of drinking, a night in which he not only goes on a bender and has a fight, but in which he also kindly escorts a sleep-walking woman home. That same night, a woman is murdered, and Joe had been seen talking with her in a bar. Joe is accused of the crime and arrested. A local girl who works at a drive-in, Frances ‘Slacks’ Bennett (Julie London), gives Joe an alibi. He is allowed to go free, but only until the girl’s alibi for Joe proves false. To make matters worse, the father of the sleepwalking young woman lies to the police about seeing Joe that night. Then we have the matter of Joe’s “battle fatigue,” what we would now call PTSD. We have much to-do about a high school pin found at the scene. Ultimately, the mystery is not particularly mysterious. There are three characters Joe thinks may have killed the woman, but I figured out early on that none of these fellows were the perpetrator. The actual killer is someone else who proves not too difficult to discover. The cinematography is quite good and the location shooting in Tuscon is impressive. All in all, a serviceable little noir.

 Few films for November/Noirvember.

The Finger Man (1955), directed by Harold D. Schuster. Ex-con Casey Martin (Frank Lovejoy) agrees to help the authorities nab mobster Dutch Becker (Forrest Tucker). Becker is the person responsible for Lucille Martin (Evelyn Eaton) becoming a drug addict. This is quite a tough little noir with brutal beatings and the murders and disfigurement of two women. The film also sports Timothy Carey as Lou Terpe. Carey is well known for his portrayal of psychopaths and crazies. Obviously made on a shoestring, the film does manage to create the noir atmosphere of dark streets and alleys and dodgy nightclubs. Lovejoy’s voice-over also adds to the noirish elements. Noirish elements, however, do not make this an A-grade film. It is watchable, but also predictable. I have always liked Frank Lovejoy, but I confess he makes a bland hero. Peggy Castle, however, shines in her role as Gladys Baker, Casey’s girlfriend.

Motherless Brooklyn (2019), directed by Edward Norton. Set in 1950s New York, this film is a contemporary spin on the gumshoe/noir films of the 40s and 50s of the last century. It has much of the swagger of those dark contemplations of post-war America: gritty city streets, dark nightclubs, fedoras, smart dialogue, and corrupt power brokers. As well as noirs such as The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep, I am reminded of Huston’s Chinatown. What differentiates this film from those early exercises in noir is its take on masculinity. Here our hero/anti-hero is less the tough guy quick with either his fists or his gun, than he is the sensitive and even tender guy with a troubled past. He also has Tourette’s syndrome, something that has made him an outsider for much of his life. Norton’s performance as Lionel Essrog (even his name differs markedly from those early gumshoes such as Marlowe and Spade) is fascinating, nuanced, and intense. He is the “Motherless Brooklyn” announced in the title; this is a moniker given him by Frank Minna (Bruce Willis), his boss, his mentor, and his friend. The plot has to do with real estate in New York. We have a New York Commissioner of various things, Randolph Moses (Alec Baldwin), who eagerly destroys the neighbourhood of Black people in order to build a high end building or just to push through a new motorway. Sound familiar? The world Norton creates is compelling and nicely relevant to the world we still inhabit in its greed, lust for power, and racial bigotry. I like this film.

The Madonna’s Secret (1946), directed by Wilhelm Thiele. And she shall keep it to her grave! This is the one about the tortured artist whose female models have a habit of ending up in the nearby river, whether this river is in France or in New York. Noteworthy here is the cinematography by the inimitable John Alton. As for the plot, it rambles all over the place, first following a city theatre critic, then taking up with one of the artist’s models who keeps appearing in the artist’s pictures looking like a previous model. Then the current model finds her way to the river and her sister shows up. Then we have the wealthy collector of husbands who offers herself as a model until she too makes her way into the river, not to return. And did I mention that the artist has a strong relationship to his mother? The film has elements of noir (how could it not with Alton behind the camera?), murder mystery, and romance. It is something of a mish-mash. Characters come and they go. I wonder what happened to the theatre critic who styled himself after a dapper William Powell. Still and all, we have Alton’s camera to make the proceedings worthwhile. And we have the furious scenes as the artist drives his boat in wild fashion on that nearby river.

Guilty Bystander (1950), directed by Joseph Lerner. Ex-cop Max Thursday is on the skids. He has a job as house detective in a sleezy hotel run by Smitty (May Boland). But mostly Max is inebriated. One night his ex-wife drops by to ask for help; their child has gone missing in a possible kidnapping and her brother is also missing. The plot has some murky moments, but on the whole things are clear enough. The world is typically dark and edges towards sadism. Especially effective is J. Edward Bromberg as the insouciant crime boss, Varkas, who seems to spend his time taking his pulse and downing a variety of medicines. Zachary Scott as Max works hard and brings, perhaps, just a bit too much enthusiasm to his role as the inebriate detective. Some of the camera work is suitably shadowed and twisted. The scene in the subway is vintage noir. All in all, a representative work in the genre, although for the life of me I cannot figure out who the guilty bystander is. The torn cigarette package is worth contemplating.

 

The Scarf (1951), directed by E. A. Dupont. If there is such a thing as a baroque film noir, then The Scarf is it. “The doctor is allergic to irrelevant laughter.” This is one line I remember from the film, but the script is laced with such niceties. The plot has an escapee from a penitentiary for the insane holding up at a turkey farm in the desert and forming a friendship with the farmer. Then on a trip to town for turkey feed, he finds himself meeting the inevitable dame, and they go for a ride, stopping for a picnic or something. Is he innocent or guilty? Is he sane or insane? We will find out, but not before some goings-on outside of town and in town, even in LA. John Ireland plays the man on the run and Mercedes McCambridge is the woman he meets. She has a job at a bar called Level Louie’s, and Level Louie also enters the story, along with the turkey farmer who plays a cello and assorted police and doctors. The characters are refreshingly original. The film is raw and fascinating. So what if things are preposterous, this is an interesting entry in the noir cycle. Mercedes McCambridge even sings while tending tables and wearing a gingham dress.

 

Private Hell 36 (1954), directed by Don Siegel. This is a low budget noir from master of the slick narrative, Don Siegel. We have a rather well-worn plot that involves two detectives who happen upon a box of stolen loot. One pockets a couple of small stacks of the money (Steve Cochran as Sgt Cal Bruner); the other wants nothing to do with such thievery (Howard Duff as family man Sgt Jack Farnham). You can predict what transpires as things go from bad to worse. Overseeing the proceedings is Police Cpt Michaels (Dean Jagger) who provides the voiceover at the beginning and end of the film. Then we have the two women, domestic housewife Francy Farnham (Dorothy Malone) and nightclub chanteuse Lilli Marlowe (Ida Lupino, who also was one of two screenwriters for the film). The whole affair has something of a Dragnet feel, as Lilli remarks at one point. Everything is stripped down, and the film moves along at a sluggish pace, especially in the middle when the two detectives and Lilli spend days scouting local racetracks on the lookout for the crook. Siegel manages to bring a certain minimalist style to proceedings. Note, for example the huge liquor bottles that decorate the nightclub. Then we have the trailer park, with trailer number 36 serving as the place where Bruner stashes the loot. The relationship between Bruner and Farnham has the whiff of something more than friendship, one peripheral character remarking to Bruner, “Your boyfriend’s a little over-prepped for the job,” and Lilli noting that “This is the first time I’ve ever lost a man to another man.” In other words, Siegel manages to create interest from the most basic of material.

 I haven't been here for a while. Here is a grab bag of films for early November.

He Who Gets Slapped (1924), directed by Victor Seastrom. This film marks the first appearance of the MGM lion. It is a melodrama starring Lon Chaney as He – the circus clown who gets slapped hundreds of times to the delight of the circus audience. Before he was He, this fellow was Paul Beaumont, a scientist working on the origins of mankind. He discovers this origin, but when he goes before the prestigious assembly of scientists to present his findings, his benefactor Baron Regnard (Marc McDermott) steals the show and presents Beaumont’s findings as his own. When Beaumont protests, Regnard slaps him and the assembled greybeards laugh uproariously. Next Regnard proceeds to seduce Beaumont’s wife, who also slaps him. Beuamont retreats to the circus where he becomes the clown, He – who gets slapped. Here he falls in love with the circus trick rider, Consuelo (Norma Shearer). She, however, is in love with her riding partner, Bezano (John Gilbert). You can see how things get complicated. Consuelo’s father sells his daughter to the slimy Baron Regnard. He knows Consuelo does not love him, and he sets out to rescue her from a marriage she does not want with the Baron. How he does this is to arrange for the Baron and Consuelo’s father, Count Mancini (Tully Marshall), to be mauled to death by a circus lion. (Is this the MGM lion at work? I do not know.) Production values are excellent, and Lon Chaney has never been better at eliciting the audience’s sympathy. This is a fine example of silent cinema.

Hot Water (1924), directed by Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor. This one is a turkey! Well, let me rephrase, this one has a turkey in one of its extended scenes. It also has a "ghost" sequence. Here's how Wikipedia describes the plot:

"Episodic in nature (effectively three short films merged into one), the first episode features Hubby winning a live turkey in a raffle and taking it home on a crowded streetcar, much to the chagrin of the other passengers. The second features Hubby grudgingly taking the family en masse out on his brand new Butterfly Six automobile, and the third is an escapade with his sleepwalking mother-in-law. The third segment almost qualifies the film as a horror movie, as in it, Hubby mistakenly believes he has killed his mother-in-law, and when she starts sleepwalking later, he thinks she's a ghost haunting him."

Girl Shy (1924), directed by Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor. The film has Harold Meadows (Harold Lloyd) working for his father in a tailor shop. Harold is painfully shy and has a terrible stutter. Only the sound of a whistle can stop the stutter. Harold is also an aspiring writer; he is writing a book that recounts his many love affairs and his various methods for seducing women. He is the Cave Man with Flappers and the Nonchalant with Vamps. Anyway, he finds himself on a train sitting beside a beautiful young woman who has a small dog she has to keep hidden because the train line does not allow dogs on board. You can imagine the gags that ensue. As always, the biggest set piece comes at the end, and here it is Harold's mad dash in as many conveyances as you can imagine to get him to the young woman's palatial house where she is about to be married to a cad who is already married to another woman. The ending is reminiscent of a somewhat later film, The Graduate. Those who have seen The Graduate will have an excellent idea how Girl Shy ends.

Continuing our Harold Lloyd festival, we watched Dr. Jack (1922), directed by Fred Newmeyer. In this film, Dr. Jack believes less in medications and more in physical activity and positive thinking to restore his patients to health. And his least concern is receiving money for his services. He manages to get two old fellows from the doldrums by boxing and with music. He rescues a doll from a well. He cures an ill boy who does not want to go to school. He perks up an elderly lady by getting rid of her medicines and bringing home her grown son. He also drives a car, gets out of it while it is running, and walks in front of it to clear cattle before getting back in. He rides a bicycle that lacks its chain. Anyway, you understand. The plot has him cure the Sick-Little-Well Girl and also fall in love with her. In order to remove her from the clutches of the sourpuss doctor who has prescribed medicines and total rest, something akin to what we have in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," Dr. Jack brings some excitement into the young woman's life. He does this mostly by assuming the disguise of a hunchback, fanged, long-haired, and black cape clad robber who flits about the premises causing mayhem. All this is amusing, if not hilarious. It reminds us of a time when doctors made house calls and put health before profit.

 

Harold Lloyd's second sound film is Feet First (1930), directed by Clyde Bruckman. The story tells of likeable young man, Harold Horne (Lloyd). He is something of a milquetoast. He works in a large shoe store, and is trying to move from stock boy to salesperson. His superior at the store says he needs more "personality," and so he takes a six month course in Personality. He also meets the daughter of the company he works for, although at first he does not know who she is. We have a series of mishaps that follow familiar sight gags of silent cinema until Harold finds himself in Los Angeles on the side of a building high above the busy city street. If this sounds familiar, it is. The last long sequence in the film reprises the famous sequence with the clock high on a building in Lloyd's Safety Last (1923), possibly his most famous film. Here there is no clock, but there is a painter's platform with two burly painters on the roof pulling the platform up and letting it down, all the time Harold rolls, falls, clutches, scrambles, and so on to save himself. He gets amusing assistance from a person he calls "Charcoal," and this part of the wild sequence is the most unfortunate part. Enough said. Frances and I kept focusing on Harold's right hand, knowing that he had lost a good part of it in an on-set explosion some ten years or so earlier. His physical agility is quite amazing, and the high-on-a-building sequence remains thrilling. Of the three most prominent comedians of early cinema - Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd - Lloyd made the most normative move into sound film. Feet First is amusing and shows a distinct connection to the films that went before.

We have been watching Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin comedies on Friday evenings, and last evening we decided to watch a few of Buster Keaton's short films. We watched The Boat (1921), and The Paleface, The Electric House, The Blacksmith, and The Frozen North, all from 1922. At this same time Keaton made a few of his genuinely funny and creative films such as Cops, The Balloonatic, and Seven Chances. These three films are among the best silent comedies ever made. The five we watched, however, are not among Keaton's best - by any stretch. They do have their interest. For example, The Frozen North is a surreal parody of the likes of William S. Hart and Erich von Stroheim, although its casual violence strikes me as unsettling. Or take The Paleface, a film that makes an attempt to present Native people in a positive manner, but cannot overcome the White man saves natives plot and the familiar stereotypical presentation of Indigenous people. The Paleface makes for uncomfortable viewing. The Boat gives us a variety of gags that stem from Buster's attempt to take his family on a boat trip. The boat, like the engine in The General, provides Buster with a location for his antics and he wrests as much humour from this location as he can. But somehow what we have is not nearly as inventive as Buster's work in The General. The Electric House has its moments, in a Chalpinesque way, with Buster playing an electrician who fixes a large house with electronic gadgets. And finally The Blacksmith in which Buster creates a shock absorbing saddle for a horse, a device that is as ugly as it is ungainly. Buster also fits the horse for shoes, using a brannock device.

 

Friday night Chaplin: from Keystone, Between Showers (1914), Recreation (1914), Cruel, Cruel Love (1914), and from Mutual, Easy Street (1917), The Cure (1917), The Rink (1916). The first three from Keystone show Chaplin at the beginning of his film career and the films rely on mayhem, pratfalls, punches, and general rowdiness you would expect from the studio responsible for the Keystone Cops. The humour is more than broad and crude, but there are flashes of what is to come. While Chaplin worked for Keystone, he also in 1915 signed with Essanay and later with Mutual. The second of the three films here are from the Mutual period when Chaplin worked with Edna Purviance and Eric Campbell. These films show a marked change for the better in both plots and action. Chaplin is now perfecting his choreography and timing, and experimenting with his character. For example, in Easy Street the Tramp joins the police force, and he single-handedly cleans up the constant brouhaha that takes place outside the Easy Street Mission. We are also seeing a more pointed commentary on both the working class and the wealthy class. In The Cure, a well-to-do Chaplin, taking a trunk full of booze, enters a rehab centre for the rich. You can guess what happens once that trunk is opened. Chaplin often plays a tipsy character. In these two films Chaplins looks at both ends of the economic spectrum. In The Rink, the classes come together in that Charlie's Tramp character finds himself among the wealthy crowd enjoying a skating party. In The Rink we see his balletic prowess on roller skates, something he will reprise much later in Modern Times (1936).

A few Tod Browning films.

Drifting (1923), directed by Tod Browning. Browning loves the exotic, and here he goes full oriental in a crime melodrama that dazzles with its sets and costumes, but unsettles with its easy orientalism. It also unsettles with a thrill moment near the end when a horse and rider climb a steep set of steps and just at the top, they tumble off the steps and hurtle down probably thirty feet or more. This was before there were restrictions against harming animals. Anyway, what we have here is a portrait of China as the source of opium, and I suspect the title refers to the state of mind one might have while feeling the effects of opium. One character, the prostitute Molly Norton (Edna Tichenor), spends her screen time drifting while her friend Cassie commiserates with her condition. Two shady Americans are in Shanghai, Cassie Cook (Priscilla Dean) and Jules Repin (Wallace Beery), trafficking in opium when another American, government agent Captain Arthur Jarvis (Matt Moore) appears disguised as a mining engineer. Jarvis is in a remote village to stop the opium trade. He finds himself with two women who fancy him, Cassie Cook and the daughter of the local drug lord, Rose Li (Anna May Wong), who steals the show. The final scene when the battle between the poppy growers, the villagers, and the Chinese government troops is spectacular with the red-tinted screen (sorry I found only a couple of lesser screen captures of this part of the film) and flaming buildings. The film does hold interest, but it is not one of the best Browning silents I have seen. J. Farrell MacDonald takes a turn as a sort of comic relief, playing Murphy, Jarvis’s sidekick, who sets his hat at fifteen-year-old Rose Li. As we expect from Browning, the film does offer instances of the weird. 

 

White Tiger (1923), directed by Tod Browning. The eponymous White Tiger is that wrath that sits inside a person making him or her do criminal things. Here it sits inside Sylvia and Roy Donovan (Priscilla Dean and Raymond Griffith), brother and sister separated while children and later reunited (although they do not know their true identities) through the nefarious huckster, ‘Count’ Donelli (aka Hawkes played by Wallace Beery). Donelli too has the White Tiger inside. The three of them use a mechanical chess player in order to dupe wealthy people and steal their jewels. As things move along, they find themselves on the lam, hiding in a country cottage with another fellow, Dick Longworth (Matt Moore). Here their distrust of each other makes life awkward, until things get out of hand, identities are revealed (I neglected to say that Donelli, aka Hawkes, was responsible for the death of the siblings’ father!). All this is typical for Browning – see for example, Outside the Law (1920) or The Blackbird (1926). We have false identities, betrayal, the hint of incest, a wax museum, a few touches of the uncanny (the number 13, a black cat, and so on), unsavoury characters, claustrophobic settings, the usual Browning world. Unfortunately, the action is somewhat less than coherent. This may be the result of lost bits of the film, I don’t know. The film is, however, essential for Browning completists!

 

More Tod Browning, The Unknown (1927). In this one Lon Chaney plays Alonzo the Armless Knife Thrower. Alonzo's passion is for Nanon (Joan Crawford), daughter of the circus owner. Nanon has a great fear of men, especially men's hands. This makes her repel the advances of the circus strong man, Malabar. She feels safe with Alonzo because he has no hands - or arms. She thinks. It turns out that Alonzo not only has arms, but that he hides them because of his double thumbs on one hand. These thumbs would identify him as a deadly felon, and so he pretends to be armless. Anyhow Alonzo is smitten and to assure Nanon will continue to show affection for him he secretly blackmails a surgeon into removing his arms. When Alonzo, now truly armless, returns to the circus expecting to marry Nanon, he finds that she has overcome her fear of men's hands and has agreed to marry Malabar. Needless to say Alonzo does not take this news as good news. Quite the contrary. Nastiness ensues. Once again, we have Browning indulging his love of circuses and outsiders and strange characters. This is a cautionary tale!

 A few John Ford films.

Hell Bent (1918), directed by John Ford. This is one of many Ford silents with Harry Carey playing a bad man reformed by a woman, here Bess Thurston (Neva Gerber) whose brother Jack (Vesper Pegg) loses his job and joins the villainous band of outlaws headed by Beau Ross (Joe Harris). We have much galloping, some impressive stunts, wry comedy, and gay innuendo. The opening is especially noteworthy. Here we have western novelist looking at a painting by Frederic Remington, “The Misdeal,” and this painting transforming into live action. Later in the film, above the bar in a saloon, we see another Remington painting. The paintings inform not only the western themes, but also Ford’s painterly visual style here and throughout his career. The bad guy, Beau Ross, also references the historical figure, Mazeppa (Byron wrote a poem about him in 1819), who was tied naked to a horse and then ridden until he was close to death. Something similar happens to Cheyenne Harry (Carey) here. We also have Beau and Harry crossing a barren desert, a scene reminiscent of Ford’s later Three Godfathers films. Landscape is essential to the sweep of the film. Although some 20 minutes of the film are lost, what we have is engaging and worth a look for western and Ford afficionados. The scene in which Harry rides his horse into the saloon, upstairs and into Cimmaron Bill’s (Duke R. Lee) bedroom is worth the price of admission. Later Bill and Harry duet drunkenly with “Sweet Genevieve, My Genevieve.” Despite the film being silent, the duet works. This film lacks the experimental aspects of two other Ford films shot around the same time, Straight Shooting (1917) and Bucking Broadway (1917).

 

Up the River (1930), directed by John Ford. When Ford made this film, The Informer was still five years away. The Informer brought Ford into greatness, although some might say it was The Iron Horse (1924) that signalled greatness. In any case, Up The River is not the film one would screen to illustrate Ford's full skill as a filmic artist. Still, the film has its virtues and it does exhibit some Fordian touches. We have the marches and singing men that Ford delighted in presenting right up to his self-parody in The Horse Soldiers (1959) when the confederate kids in their spiffy uniforms march in defiance of Northern soldiers. We also have the trio of men (see Ford's 3 Bad Men 1926 or 3 Godfathers 1948 or others) who share values and aid and abet each other. We have the ritual of prison life (Ford likes the ritual of military life and ritual in general), and we have the touch of sentimentality that Ford always struggles to contain. The three main characters are likeable rascals. Up the River does not have the visual beauty of later Ford films, but it does position its characters well, using corridors and fences and bars and gates and fences and space carefully. In short, the film is about the fine line between being framed and being free. Oh, and I dare not forget the zebra!

The Whole Town’s Talking (1935), directed by John Ford. This is Ford’s only foray into screwball comedy, with Jean Arthur and Edward G. Robinson taking the romantic leads. Already this is strange! The plot turns on mistaken identity, the mild-mannered clerk Alfred F. Jones being misrecognized as ‘Killer’ Mannion, the gangster who has just escaped from prison as the film begins. We also have the familiar gaggle of newspaper reporters who often report “alternative facts.” Lots of misinformation gets tossed about, something that takes centre stage in Ford’s next film, The Informer. Fordian touches include Robinson, as Jones, getting drunk and singing loudly, and the stuff about police and prisons that turns up in earlier Ford films Up the River and Born Reckless, both 1930. The film, however, has a Capraesque quality with little guy Jones finding, after tense goings-on, success and happiness. The film does swerve into violence at the end when Mannion’s minions take their boss Mannion for meek Mr. Jones and plug him repeatedly with a tommy gun. All in all, this is amiable, but hardly top tier Ford.

The Grapes of Wrath (1940), directed by John Ford. Ford and cinematographer Gregg Toland fashion a lyrical film version of Steinbeck’s novel of the Great Depression. At times, Toland’s lighting gives us scenes in which the people are ghostly beings, shadow people, whose lives have seen the darkness drawing down. The lighting and compositions constantly take us to the pain and confusion experienced by people dislocated from their homes, sent on the road looking for work, and confronting greed and corruption among those who hold control of the economic system. The film is perhaps a tad preachy, but its preaching is powerful and moving. There are some great Ford moments, such as the scene in the small café where the owners give Pa Joad (Russell Simpson) a break on the cost of a loaf of bread, and two candy sticks for the children. Henry Fonda as Tom Joad has never been better. His face, circled with darkness and shining in the dark, is the face of the people, the dirt farmer existing and surviving by the skin of his teeth. John Carradine as Casy, the failed preacher, has also never been better. The rest of Ford’s stock company also perform well, even with Ford’s tendency to excess and caricature. This is a film with a message, and the message has to do with the corrupt way of capitalism, the exploitation of workers, and the growing divide between the rich and the poor. Plus ca change … As Ford films go, this one is near the top. Peckinpah reprises some of the early parts of this film for Junior Bonner. Among the many uncredited actors are Bill Wolfe, Tom Tyler, Jack Pennick, Jack Perrin, and Rex Lease. Jane Darwell as Ma Joad also deserves mention for her heart-felt performance.

How Green Was My Valley (1941), directed by John Ford. The past tense in the title lets us know the past is a fine country, but that time changes all that fineness. The Welsh valley of the title was once green and pastoral, and then it became black and polluted by the relentless coal mining. The story is something of a coming-of-age tale focusing on Huw Morgan (Roddy McDowall), as he looks back on his younger years in the changing valley. Huw has four stout brothers and a sister, a long-suffering mother, and a stern father. The four stout brothers and the father work in the mine. When the mine owner reduces the miners’ wages, the brothers talk of unionizing, whereas the father thinks such talk smacks of “socialism.” Meanwhile the new preacher has caught the eye of Angharad (Maureen O’Hara), Huw’s sister. We have much singing and much sorrow. One of Huw’s bothers dies in a mine accident, two others leave for foreign lands (Canada!), Huw has an accident that leaves him bed ridden for a long time, Angharad marries the son of the mine owner and moves to South Africa, until she leaves her husband and returns to the valley. The preacher is drummed out of the parish by vicious gossip. Finally, we have another mine disaster and the father, Gwyllym Morgan (Donald Crisp), dies in young Huw’s arms. So much anguish. So much nostalgia. And yet so much faith in family. Shot in black and white by cinematographer Arthur Miller, the film consists of exquisitely composed scenes, and a fine sense of place. Like the later The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, this film is about time and change and the importance of education. The desecration of the valley through coal mining is what Huw leaves behind, taking family lessons and family dignity with him.

3 Godfathers (1948), directed by John Ford. Here’s another Christmas story, rather sentimental and unbelievable. This is a western take on the story of the 3 Magi. This is also the fourth time the story had been filmed, two earlier versions, in 1916 and 1929, being directed by Ford. This 1948 version serves as homage to Harry Carey who had starred in the 1916 version and who was part of Ford’s stock company. He died in 1947, just before filming for this picture began. Anyway, what we have is one of Ford’s most beautifully photographed films. The location shots in Death Valley are as impressive as anything we have on film. The actors, familiar members of the Ford company, are sturdy. We have the 3 bank robbers, Robert Hightower (John Wayne), William Kearney (Harry Carey, Jr.), and Pero Roca Fuerte (Pedro Armendariz). Other familiar members of the company include Ward Bond, Mildred Natwick, Jane Darwell, Ben Johnson, Jack Pennick, Hank Worden, and Francis Ford. The film shows Ford’s sentimental side at its most maudlin. The musical score rings with familiar Ford tunes such as “Shall We Gather at the River” and “Streets of Laredo.” What stands out here is the look of the film. It is, in short, stunningly beautiful. 

Rio Grande (1950), directed by John Ford. The is the last of the Cavalry trilogy and the first of Ford’s films to star Maureen O’Hara and John Wayne. It was shot in Moab, Utah. The film has all the Fordian touches: children, lusty men singing, majestic landscapes, male humour often turning on fights, dramatic stunt work, careful compositions, fluid camera, and a rather complicated use of Native Americans. O’Hara, playing Kathleen Yorke, wife of Lt. Col. Kirby Yorke (John Wayne), is reminiscent of the Hawksian woman, a woman in a largely male environment, and a military one to boot. She manages successfully to control events, and in the film’s final shot we see her standing with her husband and Lt. General Philip Sheridan (J. Carrol Naish) watching the troops parade as the sounds of Dixie ring out. Sheridan and Yorke had been responsible for burning her family's home during the Civil War. She twirls her parasol and moves to the sound of the music and she impishly smiles. Also noteworthy in this film is the ‘Roman riding’ undertaken by Harry Carey, Jr., Ben Johnson, and Claude Jarman. The story has something in common with She Wore a Yellow Ribbon in that Col. Yorke must find a way to stop a band of hostiles from running amok. He also has to rescue a wagon-full of children who are held prisoner by the hostiles. We watched the film on the spur of the moment, as it were, and I was pleasantly surprised. This is the film Ford made in order to receive the go ahead from Herbert Yates at Republic Studio to make a film Ford had wanted to make for some nine years: The Quiet Man. Rio Grande may have been a job of work for Ford, but it sits well with his world; it has action, nostalgia, sentiment, and the bravery of men! It also has Maureen O’Hara!