Mayerling (1936), directed by Anatole Litvak. This film may be based on the story of the doomed love affair between Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria, and 17-year-old Baroness Maria Vetsera, but it is romantic hokum, a sort of Austrian court Romeo and Juliet with a slightly different, but no less melancholy, end. The production is lavish with extended scenes of ballroom dancing, and an evening at the ballet. The ballet being performed is, what else, Swan Lake, another story of lovers facing insurmountable difficulties. The lovers in the story are Rudolf (Charles Boyer) and Maria (Danielle Darrieux). Litvak does not overlook Rudolf’s dissolute activities, his drinking and womanizing. Nor does he overlook Maria’s young innocence. Sets, costumes, performances, the fluid camera, are all spot on, making this an impressive filmic turn. Having acknowledged this, I also admit to finding the proceedings just a bit wan. Charles Boyer kept reminding me of Prince Harry in his hang-dog barking about the constricted life of a royal. His early connection to the newspaper man, Szeps (Rene Bergeron), and student unrest deserved, I think, more fulsome treatment. However, the student protests and M Szeps appear only briefly early in the film. What we have is a sumptuous costume romance telling the story of two ill-fated lovers in snowy Austria in the late nineteenth century.

It Happened Tomorrow (1944), directed by Rene Clair. The penultimate of Clair’s Hollywood films, and in the vein of The Ghost Goes West (1935) and I Married a Witch (1942), It Happened Tomorrow is a silly romp that has ebullient performances by Dick Powell, Jack Oakie, and Linda Darnell. Powell plays Larry Stevens, an obituary writer for the Evening Standard who aspires to greater things as a journalist. His co-worker, Pop Benson (John Philliber), gives him tomorrow’s newspaper, allowing Larry to know what will happen tomorrow so he can write about it today.  Of course, the knowledge comes with a price when Larry reads in tomorrow’s newspaper that he will die at 6:25 p.m. Meanwhile, he meets Cigolini (Jack Oakie) and his niece, Sylvia Smith (Linda Darnell) who perform an act of clairvoyance. The plot moves along briskly, even cheerfully despite impending doom for Larry. We have mayhem and madness, all done in good fun. A prologue lets us know that events will not turn out disastrously. And how could they, this is a comedy! We have newspaper people, police, robbers, restaurant patrons, and others. As I say at the beginning, the film is a romp.

Act of Defiance (2017), directed by Jean van de Velde. This is a film about the South African lawyer and activist, Bram Fischer (Peter Paul Muller), who defended a group of resistance fighters, including Nelson Mandela (Sello Motloung), in what is known as the Rivonia Trial, 1963-64. I was reminded of an earlier film, A Dry White Season (1989), although here, the white lawyer is a leader of the resistance and a communist who tries to hide his affiliation with the defendants, whereas in the earlier film the protagonist is a middleclass suburbanite who has no interest in politics. In An Act of Defiance, the tension arises from the connection between lawyer and those he is defending. Will the prosecuting lawyer discover the truth about his courtroom adversary? If he does, what will he do? We know how the trial ends simply because it is a piece of history. Knowing this does not diminish the scathing account of injustice and brutality perpetrated by the government on people who just want to be free to live, work, and move where they wish to live, work, and move. As a courtroom drama, this film will not disappoint.

Dance, Girl, Dance (1940), directed by Dorothy Arzner. “Go ahead and stare. I’m not ashamed. I know you want me to tear my clothes off so you can look your fifty cents worth. Fifty cents for the privilege of staring at a girl the way your wives won’t let you.” So says Judy O’Brien (Maureen O’Hara) when the male audience jeers her ballet dancing; they want Bubbles (Lucille Ball) who plays to their desire for titillation. This is a film about dance, high art and low art, women, and both the male and the female gaze. I confess I had never seen a Dorothy Arzner film before, although I have known about her for years. This first exposure to an Arzner film did not disappoint. Arzner was the first and only female director from the beginning of sound (1929) until the late forties when Ida Lupino began directing. Dance, Girl, Dance could have been a standard Hollywood musical romance, but in Arzner’s hands it is something else, something more interesting. Take, for example, the morning after Judy has spent the early hours with wealthy playboy Jimmy Harris (Louis Haywood). She returns home, looks longingly out her window at what we assume is Jimmy returning to his car, but is actually the morning star. She makes a wish on this star, not that she and Jimmy will find happiness, but that she will be a dancer: “Please make me a dancer.” Her mentor in her dance career is Madame Lydia Basilova (Maria Ouspenskaya) who dresses in mannish clothes. The one time she dons a fancy woman’s hat, she is struck down by a car! This is delicious. The plot follows these two women, Judy and Bubbles, and it takes turns we do not expect. Much of the action takes place in a burlesque hall. Arzner’s willingness to forego the familiar Hollywood fare is refreshing and important. Now to see more of her films.

Beau Travail (1999), directed by Claire Denis. Loosely based on Melville’s Billy Budd, Beau Travail is a film of bodies, mostly men’s bodies, faces, fences, lattices, and other signs of confinement, open vistas of desert and ocean, and seething emotion that, like a volcano, lies silent and hidden just waiting to bubble and boil over. The men are members of France’s Foreign Legion stationed in a former colony, Djibouti. We watch the men undergoing training exercises of various kinds, all looking arduous, but carried out by the men in dance-like fluidity. Dance plays a significant role in the film. Take, for example, the remarkable final scene in which the suicidal Galoup breaks into feverish, but intricately beautiful, dance. The sequences of men training are not only dance-like, but also machine-like. We also watch the men doing domestic work: ironing, washing clothes, preparing meals, sweeping, and so on. All of this takes place without much dialogue. What moves the narrative along is the voice over by Galoup (Denis Lavant), something that lessens as the film goes on. Galoup is a wolf on the prowl. He is also the pivotal character in this tale of envy, jealousy, and twisted loyalty. Galoup sets his sights on Gilles Sentain (Gregoire Colin), the Billy Budd character here. Much of what we understand is communicated by facial expression and camera angle, not dialogue. The cinematography is crisp and hard-edged and sensitive to colour, vibrant as well as muted colour. This is a remarkable film, so unlike the kinetic sort of films we are most familiar with. Anything kinetic in this film has to do with the motion of men’s bodies, not with the editing or furious action. There are nods to both Godard and Truffaut evident throughout.