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Archive for the ‘ESCAPE DRAMA’ Category

Room

07 Nov

Room directed by Lenny Abrahamson. Drama. 117 minutes. Color. 2015

★★★★

The Story: A mother and her young son live in a room; the world is also a room.

~

If you don’t know what this movie is about before you go, well then, neither did I, so I am not going to tell you now. I am going to say: see it.

The first half of the film is an extraordinary piece of movie writing and making and acting, almost entirely confined to scenes between Brie Larson the young mother of a boy Jack just turned 5.

Larson plays her part as a woman with a high morale, which is to say she does two things: she plays against her character’s circumstances, which is essential considering the circumstances, and she plays it dry-eyed. Modern actresses have the tendency to turn themselves into aquariums. This is both unprofessional, inartistic, and counter productive in high dramatic roles — indeed, in any roles.

She is met gesture for gesture by the performance of one Jacob Tremblay as the 5 year-old son. His is one of the most remarkable child performances I have ever seen in my life. The script gives him a big range and he seizes it without compunction. You must see him.

The second half of the film is less well written. It concerns the response of people, even family, who must engage with those who have come from a set of circumstances so odd that no conversational routine will breach them. People don’t know how to behave at these times. It’s understandable. There’s no language for it. But it also presents a problem for the writer, which here has not been met, and certainly not on the level of the first half.

So in part two we get B-Grade TV-writing – a digressive scene, for instance, with the press, and a finale with big fat music tying up the package with a big fat ribbon, and, of course, a dog.

This second half introduces a very interesting character played by William H. Macy, the grandfather of the boy. His prejudice against the boy should be the subject of the second half, instead of which Macy is banished, and we get a cheap and easy recovery, which, considering where we have been, is insulting.

However, the boy’s grandmother is played by Joan Allen, an actress of impeccable discretion and power. Her presence in a picture makes it always worth seeing. Watch her in her early scenes – how dumb the situation would make any human being. Not noble: dumb. A wise choice for an actress, because true.

Taking into account what I have said, consider it recommended highly. Go.

 
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Posted in ESCAPE DRAMA, FAMILY DRAMA, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, Jacob Tremblay, Joan Allen: screen and acting goddess, William H. Macy

 

The Bitter Tea Of General Yen

15 Jan

The Bitter Tea Of General Yen – directed by Frank Capra. Drama. 88 minutes Black and White 1933.

★★★★★

The Story: A girl from a nice New England family is kidnapped by a Chinese warlord.

Nils Asther is certainly one of the more fascinating actors of motion pictures. The actor he puts one in mind of is Garbo. Like Garbo he was Scandinavian, and like Garbo he was very beautiful, and unlike Garbo he was called The Male Garbo – although in a way she was also the male Garbo. In any case, he is a power of subtlety as General Yen (oh, rightly named!) hankering after Barbara Stanwyck. He wears a brilliant make-up, achieved by shaving his eyelashes (which caused his eyes to bleed) and a viperish mustache. He smokes a cigarette so you know exactly what six things he is feeling at the moment, and you presently come to care about his soul, which is his main resemblance to Garbo after all. His eye make-up is so severe he never blinks.

For we are in the arena of miscegenation, and there is no doubt about the story playing upon our inner horror of mating outside our race. We wait out the story to see if it will take place. Oh, horrors! Can a white girl from a proper old New England family actually give herself to An Oriental? We are not dealing with preaching what is Politically Correct here. The film starts with the fine actress Clara Blandick laying it out flat: “They are all tricky, treacherous, immoral. I can’t tell one from the other. They are all Chinamen to me.” So we are immediately thrust into in the underground of our own natural prejudice.

The great character actor, Walter Connolly makes his film debut here in a ripping role, that of a scallywag financial wizard finagling the General’s power. His acting, his presence, and the writing of his part keep tipping the scales not just backward and forward but everywhichway, so our expectations are all a-tumble.

The great cameraman Joe Walker, who filmed many of Capra pieces, brings glory to the screen. His camera placements and lighting are a university education in camera craft.

The only difficulty is that Stanwyck is miscast as a girl from an upper crust New England family, for she is nothing of the kind and does nothing even to suggest that she is. She is common. Stanwyck brings her fabled honesty to the part, which she did all her long life, but that is not enough. But sometimes it was just enough, as here, but she never played deeply with accents, never learned character work. She brings herself at the moment. She started as a dancer so she brings physical certainty to her roles. There are never two things going on. If she says yes and really wants to say no, the “Yes,” will sound like “No.” She is without ambiguity, uncertainty, or subtext. But she is steady on. She has a fine voice for film and a face camera ready in any light and under any conditions. And, a rarer thing than you might think, she is an actor with the common touch. She never blinks either.

The film is magnificently produced. It cost over a million to make. It was the first movie ever to play at Radio City Music Hall (where it failed), and Frank Capra said it was his favorite film. The material is surprising and real, and the treatment unforced and free. It certainly is one of the most interesting films of the ‘30s.

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, Barbara Stanwyck: THE QUEEN, Directed by Frank Capra, ESCAPE DRAMA, FILMED BY Joseph Walker, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, HOLLYWOOD HEYDAY 1930 - 1950, Mid-Tragedy, Nils Asther, PERSONAL DRAMA, Walter Connolly, WARTIME ROMANCE

 

All Is Lost

11 Nov

All Is Lost – directed by J.C. Chandor. Survival Drama. A lone yachtsman finds himself in the middle of the Indian Ocean with a broken hull. 106 minutes Color 2013

★★★

Robert Redford is an actor to whom nothing can happen. For he has spent his life fortificationed by his appearance. So as one watches this picture, one knows he must escape. From the start, this demolishes the story for us. For as the damaged vessel goes from bad to worse, Redford remains resolute, calm, unmoved. He is never awkward; he is never funny; he never falls apart; he is without quirk. He goes through the motions of restoring the vessel to seaworthiness, that is all. He might as well be in a marina for all the worry he feels.

So one does not feel anything for him. But that does not mean that one does not feel anything about the situations in which we find him. With those as they mount, we feel more about them than he does, for our tension is consistent from the start – although we are baffled why it is not present in Redford at all. Yet, while he is never afraid, one does take an interest in the measures he employs to save the boat. One wonders what he is up to, but, as he is not an actor to reveal himself, he does not talk to himself, and we are not vouchsafed the information. Besides, those measures are never taken for him to save himself, only the boat, for he knows that he is a movie hero, and movie heroes do not die in the last reel. They never make mortal fools of themselves. They are really actors in serials, and they have to survive for the next episode, except the serials are full length movies. Gary Cooper laid down the law about that years ago, and Redford has honored it here. Though wounded, uncomfortable, soaking wet, imperiled, and drowning, Redford is not afraid for himself. He works hard to save the vessel, but he is diffident – so it is not surprising to find him frequently falling asleep. He is stalwart; he is practical; he is perfectly carved; he is iconic. He is a totem pole. He could float to safety.

Obviously, I would have enjoyed the film more if a more human actor had played it. As to Redford? – what does he risk? Anything? Why is this damn fool all alone by himself out of the shipping lanes in the middle of the Indian Ocean, without a working radio? That would be an interesting situation to explore. Except Redford could never play a damn fool. It wouldn’t occur to him. Yet there the character is, a jerk foundering without a working radio.

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE: SILENT PANTOMIME REALISTIC, ESCAPE DRAMA, Robert Redford, SURVIVAL DRAMA

 

Torn Curtain

30 Aug

Torn Curtain  – directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Suspense. An American scientist defects to East Germany followed by his girl-friend/Friday, and both must extricate themselves before ITTL (It Is Too Late). 128 minutes Color 1966.

★★★★

After To Catch A Thief I stopped seeing Hitchcock films as they came out, and I know why. The sets look fraudulent.

Why? What aid does this give to the tension of the stories?

Does this come about because Hitchcock story-boarded everything and was only interested in the mock-ups, not in the actual making of the picture itself?

Did the people responsible take it for granted that he liked fake sets

I felt and feel the suspense undermined by the want of reality of the settings in which the perils occurred. Here, for instance, we have an extended murder sequence beautifully shot, but taking place in a little country farmhouse which from the outside looks papier-maché.

Aside from this difficulty, I have no real difficulty with the piece. Of course, the problem with script is well known as having none of the droll Hitchcock gallows humor, which Cary Grant could carry so well, provided the lines provided it. And even if it had the lines, actually we have two actors devoid of the sense of humor that would have required, Paul Newman, who is such a “serious” actor, and Julie Andrews who has pep but no sense of humor at all. And since they are surrounded by spies and scientists and police who are all German, one cannot expect humor from that quarter.

Of course, from the dramatic point of view, Julie Andrews is excellent in the role. You care about her, you wonder about her, you understand her. Newman is excellent for the same reasons. He plays the formula-revelation scene brilliantly and the slaying of the guard brilliantly: he doesn’t want to, but he has to. But both of them lose power in the final scenes, which disappear their characters in a welter of escape-action sequences, and they become lax. They are also left hanging by Hitchcock’s treatment of them. And you never believe Andrews babushka disguise for a minute – her fancy frosted hair shows. But they are both excellent fun in the sex scene with which the film starts, the tone of which is, alas, never followed through.

If Hitchcock’s films of this period disappoint, it is because Hitchcock himself loses power. He devises suspense sequences he cannot execute well, such as the bus trip, and the police entering the theatre at the end, and ditching the guard in the museum.

On the other hand, we have a priceless performance by Ludwig Donath as the key nuclear scientist., who sweeps everything before him with his excitement and authority. And we have a price-of-admission performance by Lila Kedrova as a displaced Polish countess seeking asylum in the United States. She devours the screen. You want her to go on forever, and Hitchcock almost lets her, as he close-ups her while she renders this half-mad character for us. Don’t miss her. And, if you like Hitchcock, don’t miss the film either. Why, you can see both at one and the very same time.

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE, DIRECTED BY Alfred Hitchcock, DRAMA, ESCAPE DRAMA, Julie Andrews, Lila Kedrova, Ludwig Donath, Paul Newman, SPY SUSPENSE

 

The Company You Keep

19 Apr

The  Company You Keep –– directed by Robert Redford. Manhunt Drama. A member of the Weather Underground lams from the law to find the one who can prove his innocence. 125 minutes Color 2013.

★★★★

The story is beautifully cast –– and why shouldn’t it be? – with a series of actors playing parts which revisit the terrorist activities of the early 1970s as each one reflects upon the parts the movement played and his part in those parts. Susan Sarandon starts off as the match who ignites the fuse of detonations involving her allies from the old days. Sarandon plays it as an honorable grown-up handing herself over to the law, and peaching on no one, because Weathermen never betrayed one another and she’s not going to start now.

She is interviewed by a local newspaperman, played by Shia Leboeuf, whom she trusts. LeBoeuf is admirably irritating, to his editor played by Stanley Tucci, and to everyone else, which is just right for this role. And his implacable hunger for the rest of the story leads to each of the old-timers. Richard Jenkins brilliantly embodies a man who makes flaccid excuses for his dead ideals by entertaining his students with the exploits they led to. Nick Nolte plays a man who has done well and is still willing to pitch in to help a friend in trouble from the cause. And Robert Redford plays the man on the run.

He is sought on two sides. The FBI in the person of Terrence Howard wants him for the famous bank robbery in which he was supposedly involved and in which a teller was killed. And the reporter himself seeks him for a good story. They pincer him.

The chase leads to Julie Christie, an ideologue from the old days, still fervent. However, the final scene, very much like the final scene in the recently released Sally Potter film Ginger and Rosa, is badly played and shot. Baffling.

It requires the tension of a great debate. All the issues that united them then need to be displayed, and they are, for the film is very well written, but in this scene others make several destructive mistakes.

One is that it appears they also spend the night in sex together – which is irrelevant, or ought to be.

The second is Julie Christie’s hair, which is wrong for the character. We see her hair straight when she is young. Now its curls mask her face. She cannot be seen. Someone should have said No to Julie Christie, except that to do so to her about anything is probably unthinkable. I couldn’t a done it. We’re all still too much in love with her.

The third great harm is that the scene needs to take place out of doors in full daylight, instead of in front of an unconvincing fire in a cabin by a lake where, again, it is too dark to see it.

The fourth and worse harm is that neither actor is allowed to really engage with the other, which is the fault of the director and photographer, who do the scene in a series of reaction shots. The scene collapses.

But the movie is interesting up until this the penultimate point. And Redford is quite good in the film throughout. Notice what he plays. He does not play The Hero or The Important Person Invincible. He plays someone failing at every attempt.

Actually, that’s not playable by an actor, any more than the other two are.

But watch him as he believes he is being let down by Jenkins and Nolte. He does not get mad. No. He is wounded. He is scared. Very good choice. And, while if you sit there calculating how old would have Redford been in the ‘70s, and does it seem likely he would have a nine year-old daughter, it is still one of the better pieces of acting he has done. Our attention to his beauty – the more sad being gone now – has been supplanted by our interest in his well-being as a character, which is just as it should be.

The film engaged me up to the end, which I have spent too much time on descrying and decrying. It has lots of entertainment value, and wonderful performances to behold.

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE: AMERICAN REALISTIC, Brendan Geeson, Brit Marling, Chris Cooper, ESCAPE DRAMA, Julie Christie, MANHUNT, Nick Nolte, Richard Jenkins ACTING GOD, Robert Redford, Sam Elliott, Shia LeBoeuf, Stanley Tucci: Acting God, Susan Sarandon, Terrence Howard

 

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

08 Dec

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo – directed by Mervyn LeRoy. WWII Drama. Four months after Pearl Harbor, Jimmy Dootlittle’s B-25 squadron mounts the daring bomb attack for which the airmen know they do not have sufficient return fuel. 138 minutes Black and White 1944.
★★★★★
What you have is a script by Dalton Trumbo who hypothesizes every scene into what he ideologically wishes it to be, so the script always floats slightly above the actors’ heads. They have to reach back into their Sunday School pageants to play it. But it does give Trumbo leeway for the scene where two men discuss whether they actually hate the Japanese and what it feels like to kill civilians. It’s good the scene is there at all, since it would have been a matter of discussion among troops. So “Anti-American” though; so Dalton Trumbo; so HUAC. After all a War is on! Loose lips sink ships! As usual with Trumbo, it feels at once startling and pat. An honestly acted liberal rant.

Not to be missed are terribly acted romantic scenes of Phyllis Thaxter who grinds every scene to a halt by her sparkle; she narrows her eyes and just glimmers away. You want to slap her. It’s a wonder Van Johnson can perform opposite her at all. You look at him being convincing and crown him with a halo: that he could act opposite Phyllis Thaxter and not gnashed his teeth once.

Spencer Tracy walks through the Doolittle role with his commanding presence merely. When you see him in the cockpit of his bomber in leather flight jacket, you want to laugh, and put him back in his suburban easy chair where he belongs and never left, not once, to do a little research about how it feels being a pilot.

But he has little to do, save deliver a few gritty speeches, and the film is well worth watching for the actual bomber training of these men, at the actual airdrome they did it in, and the tiny practice runs they performed of those huge wretched bombers in preparation for taking off from the minute flight deck of the U.S.S. Hornet. So quickly after Pearl Harbor too!

And we see the actual takeoffs on that day, for it was filmed at the time. They’d been spotted by a fishing boat and had to leave many hours too soon and farther from their targets, thus reducing the return gas in their tanks. We see the actual approach to Japan. We see them see Fujiyama. We see them skim low over the paddies. We see the actual bombing raid. All of this is thrilling and valid. For we are seeing the actual footage of it

Then we see how they had to fly to a base in China, which only one of them actually made. China was Japanese occupied at the time, so when the bombers landed or crashed, their crews were either taken by the Japs or hidden by the Chinese and spirited away to secret airfields where lovely and ever-resourceful DC3s flew them off in the nick of time.

The story focuses mainly on Van Johnson’s crew, among whom we find the refreshing face of Robert Walker, a terrific actor here and elsewhere. A big team of Oriental and American actors ably acts it, including Don DeFore, Robert Mitchum, Leon Ames, Benson Fong, Hsin Kung, Ching Wah Lee, Ann Shoemaker, Stephen McNally, Bill Williams, Scott McKay, Selena Royle, Alan Napier. Most of these appear in the adventure and escape in China. Harold Rosson and the great Robert Surtees filmed it. It is action/adventure as its most documentarian and thrilling.

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, Ann Shoemaker, Benson Fong, DOCUDRAMA, Don DeFore, ESCAPE DRAMA, FAMILY FILM, FILMED BY: Robert Surtees, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, HOLLYWOOD HEYDAY 1930 - 1950, Leon Ames, MAGNIFICENT FEAT DRAMA, MILITARY, Phyllis Thaxter, Robert Mitchum, Robert Walker, Selena Royle, Spencer Tracy, Stephen McNally, Van Johnson, War Story, World War II

 

Distant Drums

23 Jun

Distant Drums – directed by Raoul Walsh. Historical Adventure. A lone settler heads a raid on a Florida fort, then leads his men back to safety. 101 minutes Color 1951.

★★★★

How did Max Steiner get a symphony orchestra into the Everglades! Oh, those Seminoles, they sure take a beating from him, as do we watching this very watchable, if over-scored, Raoul Walsh action/adventure story. Actually it’s incorrect to call Walsh’s films action/adventure, when many of them are, and when he is at his best, are tales of a journey. Up into the high Sierras in High Sierra. Through the Burmese jungle in Objective Burma. Across the Oregon wilderness in what to my mind is the greatest Western ever made, The Big Trail. For some years his films were being scored by Max Steiner and filmed by Sid Hickox, and, I always feel that both of them diminish them through overloading the color. But it is also true that Walsh by now took less trouble with the scripts; the stories and dialogue tend to the banal, and Hickox and Steiner may have just been trying to jack them up. Walsh always tells a story superbly; that’s not the question; the question is how good is the story? And then thee is Gary Cooper. I don’t like Gary Cooper. There is something phony about him. He is an actor incapable of an emphasis. I almost asked Patrician Neal once, “How could you fall in love with such a bad actor?” but at the time the lady was smitten, and that counts for a lot that doesn’t count. I watch Cooper to see if I believe him. And in this film I pretty much do. I believe he has an ear cocked for those sly Seminoles, although the costumer has them tricked up in such gaudy war paint and deer skin, you could hardly miss them. I believe his thought processes. I believe there is an inherent morality playing in him. I believe in his stalwartness, his pertinacity. I don’t believe the faces he makes, that curling down of his lower lip and that balance of his voice with his lines, which I also believe coming from him, which, considering their utilitarian nature, do demand no more than the slightest life lest they be betrayed as having so little. And this he has to give: he is an actor without temperament, of course. I believe in his masculinity. I believe in his slightly bow-legged stride. I believe in his command – which the other characters have to believe in too in order to follow him with the gaitors and cotton-mouths slithering after them. I believe in the role he plays, but not the character. He is the sort of actor males in the audience would like to be one day, and wake up when old to realize they have failed to become. Perhaps. What we know of Cooper is that he was a consummate lothario, was vain, and never would play a character who died at the end. I do not believe what others believe about him, but I can understand why others do. In real life a voluble talker, in film, though,laconic and quiet, to me he is so soft spoken he is odd. Here he is not young but he still has his fine slim figure, and he is photographed so the bags under his eyes don’t show. He is a great star because males and females equally want to carry his arms or be in his arms. He looks good, but he is good looking in a way that does not interest me. And he is American in a way that does not interest me. That is to say aloof. Even disdainful. A loner it is called. Someone who never asks for directions. He never played a part opposite a character more noble than himself. And he very often wastes the other actors’ time and cues by hemming and hawing and making cute. However, in this film, despite that you know he going to survive (for he always does), you do believe in his sense of peril, the fear and necessity that motivate him, his urgency of the story – which Walsh tells with unerring economy as usual – and right in the Everglades itself, at Silver Springs, and into the astonishing ruins of Castillo San Marcos. The qualities that define a star shine on a list that is never complete, but one thing all of them have, which is that they all belong up there in those huge moving photographs of them. Like him or not, Cooper belonged there.

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, Arthur Hunnicutt, COSTUME DRAMA, DIRECTED BY Raoul Walsh, ESCAPE DRAMA, Gary Cooper, Period: 19th Century, SURVIVAL DRAMA

 

Snow White And The Huntsman

17 Jun

Snow White And The Huntsman – directed by Rupert Sanders. Fairy Tale Escape Action Adventure. A ghoulish queen strives to eat her fleeing stepdaughter alive. 127 minutes Color 2012.

★★★

The problem with live-action fairy tales is that they sink under the specious particularity of the naturalistic, to which by temperament they are alien. A fairy tale is like a very important dream. It is an external narration of an internal contraption. It is parsed out into characters, such as the queen, the witch, the dumb third son, the cunning daughter, the dragon in the gold, the prince, and so forth. Reading them or listening to them we know we ourselves are these things. Even though not externally, our identification is absolute and therefore hypnotic. These are the inner paths, the inner adventures and floorplan of the psyche. They are wise and cautionary stories, and they are absolutely true in the largest sense of the word, since they must be embarked upon and lived out, but they have nothing to do with realism as a style – and realism is a style which live-action cannot avoid. That is why the true film medium for all fairy tales is animated cartoon. In this picture, for instance, which is very well done, beautifully cast, expensively made, very well played, directed, edited, filmed, and scored, we at one point witness Snow White with dirty fingernails, a completely unnecessary and, in fact, counter-productive detail for the meaning and carriage of the fairy tale of Snow White, but inevitable since she has been slogging through the wilds and falling down in mud before our eyes. So there is a sense when watching such films of a remoteness forced upon us by an incorrect medium. When there camera rises high above her collapse in The Dark Woods, we see her lying screened behind the tall branches of the trees far below, and we see that, despite their cruelty, her vicissitudes protect her. That is because we are at that moment witnessing the scheme of cartoon. With fairy tales, live-action rules out identification. There’s too much unelectable detail. Disney’s version was correct. The theater would also be correct. Opera would be correct. Aside from this failure which is nobody’s fault and everybody’s fault, the pictures is beautiful in every scene and sense, rare in its display of nature and anti-nature, by which I mean the queen’s costumes. Charlize Theron plays her, and her character is given many scenes. Set before the days of face-lifts, her step-queen’s political and magical powers depend upon the retention of her looks. With her oceanic beauty, Charlize Theron really is the fairest of them all. But she is also the older sister of a brother who is clearly in his fifties, while she herself is Charlize Theron. She’s wonderful in the part, and her playing of her death scene is imaginative and unusual. The film never fails to interest and never succeeds to fully interest. It is extremely intelligent and completely obtuse. But it is not a waste of time. And as set forth it certainly supports the activism and the vitality and the cunning and the stamina of the female of the species, right along with the males who help her escape and eventually come to follow her.

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE: INTERNATIONAL REALISTIC, Bob Hoskins, Charlize Theron, COSTUME DRAMA, ESCAPE DRAMA, FAIRY TALE, FAMILY FILM, PERIOD, SURVIVAL DRAMA, TEEN DRAMA

 

Objective, Burma!

06 May

Objective, Burma! – directed by Raoul Walsh. Action/Adventure World War II Drama. A company of soldiers after completing its demolition mission must walk two hundred miles through the Burmese jungle while tracked by Japanese intent on killing them. 142 minutes Black and White 1945.

★★★★★

Nominated for three Oscars, George Amy for editing, Alvah Bessie for writing, and Franz Waxman for the score, any one of them deserved it, but, apart from Raoul Walsh, the key genius in all this is James Wong Howe who filmed it. One of the great film artists, he brings a raw look to every shot, and every shot tells. Particularly in light of the fact that we always believe we are in a jungle in Burma, when, in fact, it was shot at the arboretum in Los Angeles and at a California ranch. The uniforms and equipment are authentic, not props and costumes, and the combat footage is actual footage from the China-Burma-India Theatre. So we get real parachute jumps and actual glider landing operations of that period, with tanks and trucks and troops pouring out of them in Burma, and takeoffs, too, which Howe’s footage and Amy’s editing match perfectly. Again Errol Flynn is Walsh’s star, and, with all the guns going off, and the peril of the jungle, the sweat, the hunger, the polluted water, he plays the leader of the slogging men quietly, modestly. The subtle shift in his eyes as he sees the dismembered bodies of his men is so great a film moment that we never have to see the bodies at all. Of course, while the other men grow beards during the long arduous trek, Flynn’s jaw remains shaved – but at least it is dirty, sweaty, and drawn. Walsh made many war films, and this is one of the most commanding World War II films by anyone. His supporting cast is admirable, with George Tobias as the company clown, Mark Stevens as the rescue pilot who cannot rescue them, Richard Erdman aged 19 playing a 19 year old, Warner Anderson as the young Colonel who must abandon them to their fate, James Brown as a doughty sergeant, William Prince in his first film, Frank Tang marvelous as the translator, and Henry Hull who speechifies his lines grandiosely, alas. (“All right, boys, no Hamlets in the jungle,” Walsh told them, but Hull didn’t listen. He was always that way, though; after all, he’d acted with Barrymore.) If you like action/adventure films, Walsh was the top director in his day of them. This is one of his best.

 

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, ACTION ADVENTURE, DIRECTED BY Raoul Walsh, EDITED BY George Amy, ENSEMBLE DRAMA, Errol Flynn, ESCAPE DRAMA, George Tobias, Henry Hull, HISTORICAL DRAMA, HOLLYWOOD HEYDAY 1930 - 1950, Mark Stevens, MILITARY, MUSICAL SCORE BY Franz Waxman, PERIOD: WWI, SURVIVAL DRAMA, War Story

 

Papillon

24 Apr

Papillon — directed by Franklin J. Shaffner. Drama. Prisoners in a French Jungle Prison plan an escape. 155 minutes Color 1973.

★★★

Papillon does not hold up as well when it came out. The interiors are sound stage stuff, and they are overlit. And, if we are to take the native Indians on Honduras seriously, what on earth is Victor Jory doing there in all that makeup? Strong as such, the script is by Dalton Trumbo and reflects his stand for independent action by individuals, which is heartening and impractical at the same time. The picture has the virtue of being shot in sequence, first in Spain, then in Jamaica, but the direction is ragged and the execution of the principal escape is noticeably improbable. Dustin Hoffman resuscitates his stage performance of 1966 in The Journey of the Fifth Horse, a fuddy duddy fussbudget he was to put in play again in Rainman. Hoffman is the least affectionate actor in the world. He is not interested in acting a character; what he is interested in is playing an actor playing a character. This means he is interested in being noticed for his “acting,” which is why he does not really qualify for character parts and why he is not to be taken seriously in Tootsie and Rainman. So once more we get Hoffman’s automaton, a fancy characterization that never leaves the studio easel. The result is that he does not really relate to his co-star, which leaves Steve McQueen to carry the picture. McQueen is a limited but interesting actor of great technical cleverness and masculine sex appeal for both genders. He has beautiful wary blue eyes in a small eventful face in a well-shaped head. Here he and Hoffman wear rot-tooth dentures and a ruination of clothes, which help, but one never puts money down on their partnership in escape. For all his carryings on, Hoffman is just no fun. His plaintive whine is designed to elicit pity, but it inspires exasperation instead. On the other hand, McQueen’s other-side-of-the-tracks tuning aid him forcefully in being this pertinacious underdog who refuses to stop escaping. The film is his and it remains one of the proudest efforts of his craft.

 

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE: AMERICAN REALISTIC, CRIME DRAMA, Dustin Hoffman, ESCAPE DRAMA, Steve McQueen, Victor Jory

 

The Hitchhiker

07 Mar

The Hitchhiker — directed by Ida Lupino. Drama. Two men are abducted into the desert of Mexico by a deranged killer. 71 minutes Black and White 1953.

★★★★★

This is thrust, as so many others are, into the category of film noir, with which it has nothing to do. That’s just a sales strategy. But it is just as well, for, because of the interest of folk in noir, attention is then paid to a picture which otherwise is uncategorisable. Ida Lupino was a very gifted director; any film she set her hand to is worth seeing. In this case, one can imagine the influence of the long association she had with the great Raoul Walsh, who directed her in a number of films, and who became a like-minded friend and mentor. Like him, she moves the action along licketty-split; the pace never lets up; her sense of camera position is superb. Her sense of human frailty is superb. She even gives us one small scene in which two actors speak Spanish, and it is not translated. You have to lean forward into that scene, and wake up your silent film eyes, to interpret its value. The two kidnapped men are played by Frank Lovejoy and Edmund O’Brien, middle class guys with thickening waists and probably buddies from The War, eight years before. The sizzling live-wire at the center of the film, however, is William Talman, as the madman with the gun. He’ll scare the liver out of you. The Hitchhiker was famous in its day and has come down as a classic. What that means is that you are supposed to take a visit to the museum. But of course, with The Hitchhiker you’ll be thrilled by what you find there. In its day, it would have been programmed as a B-picture, the lower half of a double bill. It’s a pity they don’t make B-pictures any more. All we get is Important Films straining to be blockbusters, instead the B-film strove only to provide proficient entertainment, and sometimes, as in this case, surpassed that really admirable aim.

 

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, Directed by Ida Lupino, Edmund OBrien, ESCAPE DRAMA, Frank Lovejoy, PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR DRAMA

 

To Have and Have Not

20 Dec

To Have And Have Not — Directed by Howard Hawks. Drama. A man shifts loyalties from none to two. 100 minutes Black and White 1944.

* * * * *

Like a gold panther she moves slowly and deliberately through every scene, as though to move quickly would tip her hand. The humor that lies behind her calculation keeps her from being witchy, and Hawks presents her with the Walk-Around-Me scene which makes her sure she will not be possessive. But she will be loyal, and her becoming that is her arc here. Hawks or his wife Slim or the studio brought Bacall from modeling in New York and made of this girl with the unusually suggestive  good looks a star. When Hawks met her he told her to go off into a room for two weeks and practice lowering her voice, which she did. She came back a contralto. She was completely come-hither throughout and always keyed up. She  has a knowing eye and moves slowly at all times toward or away from her prey, much the same thing either way. She was something new in sexual effrontery. She was a teenager. It’s difficult to judge her skills as an actress here because she is so effective in everything she is confined to do. Like a very dangerous cat she is handled carefully. In just the same way it is difficult to judge Bogart, because here he is in a part well within his intense but narrow range, sardonic but truly humorous, taciturn, slow to anger, but terrifying when he does, and eyes gleaming with fear. When in danger he evinces perfect groundedness, a quick draw with a wisecrack,  and a superhuman aplomb. He’s perfect for the part. He performed many parts in film for which he was not particularly suited, especially after The War, but this is not one of them. The picture is a redaction of a Hemingway novel, via one of Hawks’ favorite screenwriters, William Faulkner. Bogart plays the owner of a for-rent fishing boat in Martinique, which is Vichy French during The War, and his character is established long before Bacall appears on the screen, in his relations with his drunken crewmember played by Walter Brennan, whom Hawks had used years before in Barbary Coast and would use often again. Brennan is brilliant in the execution of an imaginative parcel of tics and gimps, and is so screwy that we see that Bogart’s snideness does not exclude loyalty and courage in defense of Brennan and in defense of … loyalty and courage. It is not hard to follow the small story that ensues, although at times it is quite swallowed up by fascinating side-scenes between B & B. It is not about nostalgia as Casablanca is, but it resembles Casablanca in that it all takes place in a café; it involves the rescue of important anti-Nazi patriots, boasts, in Hoagy Carmichael, a seductive singer pianist, and even has the fine expatriate French actor Marcel Dalio, plus Bogey. A masterpiece of editing, beautifully lit and filmed by Sydney Hickox, for some reason it is impossible to not watch it. For, after all, what is this thing? Does one really care about any of these people and their ambitions? No. So why is it so engrossing? It is unanswerable. Its hold is a mystery. But what that means is that it hasn’t dated. Enjoy it once again.

 

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, Directed by Howard Hawks, ESCAPE DRAMA, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, HOLLYWOOD HEYDAY 1930 - 1950, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Marcel Dalio, MATING, Sheldon Leonard, Walter Brennan: ACTING GOD

 

They Live By Night

24 Aug

They Live By Night – Directed by Nicholas Ray. Young Romance Escape Drama. With the law barking at their heels, an escapee and a farm girl try for a better life. 95 minutes Black and White 1947.

* * * * *

The first film of Nicholas Ray and a good one. George Diskant filmed it noirishly, but it is not noir, it is Hollywood teen romance. But with a good script and with a powerful supporting cast on all levels, particularly Howard Da Silva who sports a blind eye somehow — he’s really something to watch as the shaky violent holdup man. But you can see excellence and power in every actor: in the tragic Helen Craig the foolish wife, in Ian Wolfe who plays the bogus preacher, in Will Lee as the screwy jeweler, in eager-toothed Byron Foulger as the motel owner, in Will Wright who plays the drunken farmer, in Jay C. Flippen as the sweet but violent ex-con. Each of these performances is strong, detailed, and eccentric, and the film is carried by them. As it is not carried by the leads Cathy O’Donnell and Farley Granger. O’Donnell begins well – surly, withdrawn, wary, rude – but before long she dies of saccharine poisoning. Why do actresses take that route? They begin salty and turn merely sugary. The part would have been perfect for a young Barbara Stanwyck, a lower class girl and ruthless, or Cissy Spacek, a hick. But O’Donnell is clearly a nice middle class miss, and after she gets out of her dirty overalls, she’s a right proper Hollywood glazed-over thingamajig and all reality is lost. As to Farley Granger he is quite miscast as a JD on the run. Granger was 21 when he made the picture, and he’s just a nice-looking, spoiled, middle-class NYU geek, with no liaison in the character between scenes and no underpinnings either in his own character or in imagination about the character. He plays everything manfully, though, but he is just too privileged to be imperiled. However, a good strongly written story carries them all forward and holds our attention with its unexpected narrative and its individual scenic fulfillments. The film’s a gem that shines brightly and entertainingly, even though and perhaps because it is made of paste. Check it out.

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Posted in ACTING STYLE: AMERICAN REALISTIC, Byron Foulger, CRIME DRAMA, DIRECTED BY NICHOLAS RAY, ESCAPE DRAMA, Farley Granger, HOLLYWOOD HEYDAY 1930 - 1950, Howard Da SIlva, Ian Wolfe, Jay C. Flippen, MATING, NOIRISH, TEEN DRAMA, Will Wright

 

Desperate

18 Aug

Desperate – Directed by Anthony Mann. Escape Drama. A framed trucker has to keep getting out of town because gangsters want him dead. 110 minutes Black and White 1947.

* * *

Desperate lacks money and talent behind it and is undermined by a weak performance by the wife. Anthony Mann’s writing leaves the women unfulfilled. The wife has no fight in her and is therefore not worth fighting for. Steve Brodie plays the good boy. He’s a decent enough actor, but his role and its writing and its playing are boring compared to that of Raymond Burr, The Villain  of this Old Fashioned Melerdrmer who sinks his fangs into the vengeful pursuer, letting you see what a real actor can do when he sets his mind to it. Desperate is not noir. Noir does not have a choirboy as a protagonist. It has a cynic or someone about to be a cynic. What this is is an escape picture in a gangster milieu. Poor happily married Brodie rents his truck unwittingly to robbers, and all hell breaks loose. Jason Robards Sr. brings his nail file and nail file voice to the role of the cop.

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Posted in ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, Directed by Anthony Mann, ESCAPE DRAMA, HOLLYWOOD HEYDAY 1930 - 1950, Raymond Burr, Steve Brodie

 

Two Women

01 Aug

Two Women – Directed by Vittorio De Sica. Low Tragedy. As World War II ends, a mother and her daughter seek shelter from destruction. 100 minutes Black and White 1960.

* * * * *

One of the great humorists of film and a master of many styles, De Sica was the most gifted, varied, and accessible of all the neo-realist film-makers of the New Wave. He made more films than any of the others, many of them before the War, and they ranged from White Telephone movies through neo-realistic movies like Bicycle Thief, to The Garden of The Finzi-Continis. Why the neo in neo-realism? I dunno. It was the first and only realism since silent pictures. Anyhow, this is a remarkable picture. Sophia Loren was slated to play the daughter, but when Anna Magnani was asked to play the mother she said, “Let Loren play her own mother!” and slammed the door on the role that won Loren The Cannes, The BAFTA, The Donatello, The Italian National, The San Jordi, The New York Film Critics, and The Oscar for the Best Performance By An Actress for 1960. She well deserved it. She plays a cunning, susceptible shopkeeper intent on preserving her 12 year old daughter from destruction from the bombing of Rome. They strike out for her native village in the mountains. There they live and survive. There she meets a student revolutionist, an intellectual wearing glasses, cast, in a stroke of genius, with the most sensual actor in films, Jean-Paul Belmondo. Loren is 25 when she does this, and is completely convincing as the widowed mother protecting her daughter like a tigress. Both Neapolitan, she and De Sica make wonderful film together. She has the energy and internal power of the lower classes from which she came, their knowledge, passion, strength, humor, and forgiveness. Moravia wrote the novel, Zavattini the screenplay. In all of this De Sica is never without humor, most of which is gestural and therefore all the more telling. See it.

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Posted in ACTING STYLE: INTERNATIONAL REALISTIC, ESCAPE DRAMA, ESCAPE STORY, Filmed in Italy, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Low Tragedy, MUST SEE, OSCAR WINNER, Raf Valone, Sophia Loren: SCREEN GODDESS, SURVIVAL DRAMA, War Story, Written and Directed by Vittorio De Sica, WRITTEN BY Raffaello Zavattini

 

The Road

23 Jun

The Road – Directed by John Hillcoat. Escape Drama. A father and his 11 year-old son head for the salvation of the ocean after an apocalyptic scourge. 111 minutes Color 2009,

* * * *

Scriptwriter’s failure. The father is sentimentalized with hugs and kisses and fond looks at his son, and the language which, as him, the remarkable Viggo Mortensen is obliged to speak makes one turn away in shame. The emotion of apocalypse never needs to be spelled out verbally. We do not need to know verbally what survivors’ feelings are. We can see it for ourselves and we can imagine it for ourselves. For the task, the pleasure, and the raison d’etre of an audience is to supply 50% of what is going on. And a picture of this kind, in its desolate tracts, needs to be mute. At other times, the script is darn good. As witness by what power Charlize Theron invests with it in her key scenes, and what Robert Duval brings to it as a decrepit vagrant. The two actors are remarkable in their daring and their clarity of statement. Guy Pearce fares far less well as the deus ex macchina at the end. He appears out of nowhere, as all good D.E.M.s should, and he is abetted in his role by his adoption of yard-long locks and bad teeth, which make him look like no expected savior – a very clever strategy because of its ambiguity. But then Pearce’s family is unnecessarily dragged in, his kindly wife, his same-age children, and a fumbled finale which we, having gone along through this film’s difficulties, must stumble off with. The director should have left Pearce alone on the screen with the boy, for the boy is the thing. Pearce’s scenes lie on the cutting room floor and we can see them, and they are no better than what is included. The cast is international: Mortensen is from South America and Denmark, Theron from South Africa, Duvall from USA, Pearce and Kodi Smit-McPhee, who plays the boy, from Australia. Master Smit-McPhee is simply amazing throughout the film. Not only does he physically resemble Theron, who plays his mother, but he is entirely open and responsive and full – qualities any fine actor might envy. The film as a whole is beautifully produced, scored, edited, and directed. It’s a film about a very hard journey. I would embark upon it if I were you.

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Posted in ACTING STYLE: INTERNATIONAL REALISTIC, Charlize Theron, ESCAPE DRAMA, ESCAPE STORY, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Robert Duvall, SURVIVAL DRAMA, Viggo Mortensen

 
 
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