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Archive for the ‘COSTUME ROMANCE’ Category

The General

02 May

The General – directed by Buster Keaton, Clyde Bruckman. Farce. 107 minutes. Black and White Silent 1926.

★★★★★

The Story: A railroad engineer, turned down by his lady friend after failing to be taken into the rebel army, thwarts the Yankee takeover of a key railroad engine. 

~

I balk at writing about this picture because the word praise is insufficient to it.

If you enjoyed Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel you will see where it comes from and what is to be learned from The General at the same time as being entertained by it.

Full frontal exposure is how film farce must work, and Keaton knew this. He grasped the two-dimensionality of the motion picture screen and reveled in it. So when something comes from the right, it must flee from the left. The actors’ responses must  play into the camera and out to the audience as though the audience knew all along.

It’s the greatest chase film ever made. He employs masses of extras as armies and stages the most expensive special effect to that date: a train falls through a bridge. Except, it’s not a special effect. It’s actually done.

And Buster Keaton is clearly performing the daredevil, life-on-your-line stunts, one after another. He was the king of the pratfall; no one has ever approached him in this.

Farce is sudden, bold, mechanical. It works like a choochoo train, and the picture takes place in, on, and around a famous engine, The General. A great deal of farce depends upon our seeing what the main character does not see, and Keaton is a master of this gag. For while he sustains super human exploits and athletic feats of derring-do, he is also a sacred innocent. He is caught up in the folly of circumstances and responds to them humbly. It makes him one of our greatest screen actors. He has the Great Stone Face, but it is a stone curiously sensitive and readable. You always know what he is feeling, despite the rigor of his visage. For his eyes are large, beautiful, and subtle.

You see how Keaton makes me babble. I have no hallelujah large enough for him.

I suppose he is the greatest performer/entertainer ever to appear in film.

Will that do it? If not, shoot me.

No, no, not in the foot, you fool, you’re supped to misfire, over there, where that man with the fat ass stands. So he can fall on Buster. And Buster can skitter out from under, just as fatso is about to land on him.

My version had a second disc of extra features, all of which are fascinating, particularly a reel of Buster Keaton’s many dealings with railroad engines, streetcars, buses, and autos. A gem dangling from a diamond.

 
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Posted in American Civil War, Buster Keaton: KING OF COMEDY, COMIC ACTION ADVENTURE, COSTUME ROMANCE, Farce, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, MUST SEE

 

Downton Abby, Season 3

18 Jul

Downton Abby, season 3 – various directors. Period drama, 8 part TV series. Will the great house fall or will it not fall? Color 2012.

★★★★★

Is it based on George Stevens’ Giant? It is largely the same story: enormous holdings are  invaded by the younger generation with ideas of their own and with tolerances intolerable to the masters of the spreads. Bick Benedict is the American Robert Earl of Grantham, and The Riata the holding comparable to Downton. Outsiders and lower-class folk interlope into the families, and Robert and Bick must learn new ways, or succumb. Members of the families marry outside their station, and always hypogamously. And everywhere the ranching and the farming are impressive.

Anyhow, here we have another topping season of one’s favorite characters, acted by a first class cast. I won’t summarize the story, why should I? Once you start it, two seasons back, you tell it yourself as it goes along. This version does contain the killing of two major actors, but be it far from me to reveal who. (One of them got a job in a Broadway play, and so must die. Serves that actor right.)

The clothes gain in brilliance and beauty and cut and tailoring. The makeup. The direction. The writing.

Oh, wait, the writing. This version includes the presence of Shirley MacLaine, and writing of her part is all wrong. Why is that? Because there is nothing dramatic at stake with the character being brought in. There is no question in the MacLaine character that she will provide the money. She cannot, even if she would.

Vilely costumed and wigged, her entrance is a put-up job. The scenes she plays are also not well written in terms of the other characters. All Americans are thought of as vulgar upstarts by the aristos of Downton, and perhaps by the author Julian Fellowes as well. Indeed she is even given the Jewish name of Levinson, although nothing is made of this. Her daughter, The Countess Cora, beautifully played by Elizabeth McGovern, is the finest lady in the Abby – so how could she have such a woman for a mother?

To play the part, Shirley MacLaine, who actually as a person is vulgar, is hired, I imagine, in order to confirm this view of American vulgarity. And she does. Therefore the play, even on the level of character surprise has nowhere to go when she comes on.

Nor does anything witty or rare arise in the playing of MacLaine with the other characters, such as Mrs Crawly or The Dowager. Their scenes together are not filmed as matches.

Nor indeed can MacLaine actually act them. She has no timing. It is as if she cannot act at all any more; doesn’t even know what acting is. To all reports she is great off-camera, but on camera she is inexplicable and a mess.

But this is a minor error. The rest is tops. Of course, you will see it. It is not a question of volition. It is inevitable as birth. If you were born, then sooner or later Downton Abby lies before you.

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE: ENGLISH REALISTIC, COSTUME ROMANCE, ENGLISH ROYALS, ENSEMBLE DRAMA, FAMILY DRAMA, Filmed in England, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, Maggie Smith, Shirley MacLaine

 

Emma

18 May

Emma – written and directed by Douglas McGrath. High Comedy. A young woman tries her pretty hand at match-making, with unexpected comical results. 121 minutes Color 1996.

★★★★★

Yes, a timeless comedy. And in a rare version of it, the director/writer of Emma has reduced a novel of over 600 pages in which nothing happens at all, which has no plot, no story, and which all we are concerned with is who is visiting whom next – and which, once taken up, it is impossible to put down.

For here we have, in Jane Austin’s hand, the creation of a character in Emma of Shakespearean veracity.

You read along, and you cannot help but love her, because she always means well and she is always absolutely wrong. From the point of view of character creation, Emma is a masterpiece of human life, someone who simply stands apart from the novel and walks around through its pages as though she wrote them herself, foibles and all. Like Falstaff, Emma has a life of her own.

Two exceptions worth making to this highly entertaining film.

Ewan McGregor is not only badly miscast; he also, one after another, looks terrible in his costumes And he also cannot play the part. The part of Frank Churchill is the best looking male in the story: he is devastating to women; he is high-spirited, he is dark, he is slender; he is beautifully turned out, he cuts a wonderful figure; he is lots of fun. But McGregor is accoutered in a hideous blond wig, his clothes are dowdy and don’t fit through the shoulders, he is frumpy of temperament, wants joi de vivre, wants mystery, and, in short, is so clunky no woman would look twice at him nor any man envy him.

The second exception is that the story does depend upon Emma’s falling for Churchill, sign of which gives her true love long pause. This movement is omitted, and so when Jeremy Northam must question it we have no idea what he could mean.

Otherwise the film is a gem. Otherwise if there is anything to forgive it is not worth noticing. We have Phyllida Law, a study as old Mrs Bates, Polly Walker perfect as the reserved and beauteous Jane Fairfax, Juliet Stephenson hilarious as the society-bitch Mrs Elton, Sophie Thompson as the impossibly voluble Miss Bates, Greta Sacchi kindness itself as Mrs Weston (née Taylor), Alan Cumming as the worry-wart health-nut Mr, Woodhouse, Emma’s father, whom she so much resembles. And Toni Colette, an actress who probably can do no wrong, as the gullible teenager Harriet Smith.

But the jewel in this jewel, the heart of its heart, is the big-hearted Gwyneth Paltrow, perfect.

Until Gwyneth Paltrow, no true ingénue has appeared in film since Audrey Hepburn.  Until she retired, Hepburn played with the energy of it , even in dramatic roles, such as The Nun’s Story, for she was never a dramatic actress. But Gwyneth Paltrow finally, also, had the perfect collection of ingénue attributes, yet, after her two wonderful comedies – and ingénues must be introduced in comedy – Paltrow embarked on serious dramatic roles much more demanding that those which Audrey Hepburn took on after Sabrina and Roman Holiday. Paltrow’s two comedies were this and Shakespeare In Love, both high style costume pieces, and both requiring an upper class English accent.

But what are the qualities of the ingénue?

Many actresses have played ingénue roles without being true ingénues: Helena Bonham-Carter, Susannah York come to mind.  For someone has to play them. The ingénue is most often the second female lead, playing opposite the juvenile or jeune premier, both just under the leading lady and leading man. Thus: Hero in Much Ado About Nothing and Bianca in The Taming Of The Shrew.

But what does the true ingénue, Audrey Hepburn and Gwyneth Paltrow, have in common that  the others do not have?  What makes them true ingénues?

Well, both are tall, slender, and have long necks, and are elegant of mein. Both in private are clothes horses and on screen wear clothes well. That’s  nice, but they alone do not do it.

Both have charming, well-placed, cultivated speaking voices. Both are bright. Both are sexually innocent. Both are pretty in a way no one else is.

In both instances, they have radiant smiles.

And both are under or appear to be always 21.

But, most important, both are fresh.

And both have real big hearts.

They do not play second leads. They play leading roles because they are rare.

They are absolutely for some reason adorable, for, as soon as you see them, you fall in love with them as you would with an enchanting child.

This is the reason to see Emma. To see a magical young girl whom you have no will to resist being charmed by.

What a treat for you.

Gwyneth Paltrow this year was voted the most beautiful woman in the world. She is now 41. That freshness still remains. And – the most beautiful woman in the world because so endearing for having – its so obvious – the biggest heart you ever saw.

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE: ENGLISH COMEDIC, COMEDY OF CHARACTER, COSTUME ROMANCE, Ewan McGregor, Greta Sacchi, Gwyneth Paltrow: SCREEN GODDESS; ACTING GODDESS, High Comedy, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, Jeremy Northam, Juliet Stevenson, Light Comedy, MUST SEE, PERIOD 18th Century, Phyllida Law, Toni Colette

 

Hysteria

10 Jun

Hysteria – directed by Tanya Wexler. Women Lib Drama. Two daughters become the objects of the attention of a doctor with an unusual therapeutic practice for women in the 1890s.100 minutes Color 2012.

★★★

Oh, Maggie Gyllenhaal. Maggie Gyllenhaal. Maggie Gyllenhaal. Repeat that word over and over for as long as this page is long and for as long as you like, and consider it an hosanna. The picture is a women’s lib version of a subject, 19th Century medical masturbation as a placebo for female ailments, also dealt with concurrently by the play In The Next Room: The Vibrator Play, which I have seen and which, like this, is unworthy to witness as a subject for a cause so great as equality of gender. The orgasms we see on screen are cartooned by the actresses and by the director; they are never taken as real, deep,and important. They are executed by actresses chosen because they are funny looking: either fat or thin or blousy, and when we see ordinary women being treated, they and their orgasms are mocked by the actresses themselves. The male doctors engage in this treatment with reverence. They take it they are engaging in a medical breakthrough. Jonathan Pryce is the senior physician in a part written only one way, so we know how he and the movie will end. As we know how it will end with his two daughters, the one proper, the other a Shavian modern woman running a settlement house, played by the great Maggie G. Watch how she stands at the trial scene. She never stands foursquare, but, like Garbo, always at an angle. Her whole performance is like that, except once. See if you notice it and how telling that is! Anyhow, the script is routine, and the performance by the leading actor is  – well, let’s say he is not such as to carry a film. But with a film this flimsy, that would take Atlas. The spectacular, even scandalous subject is not sufficient to make a good story of it. It simply plays like an oddity out of an old Sears Roebuck catalogue. It presumes to find itself important. One thing it seems to be blaring out is, “Tut tut, Men don’t understand female sexuality or even consider it to exist!” So you see, it’s really mean-spirited and as dated as a zombie.  It presumes to look down on male ignorance. Everything about it presumes, except for M.G, who simply vibrates with life. She, and she alone is the vibrator.

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE: INTERNATIONAL REALISTIC, COSTUME ROMANCE, Filmed in England, HISTORICAL DRAMA, Jonathan Pryce: ACTING GOD, Maggie Gyllenhaal, MEDICAL DRAMA, Turn of the 19th Century

 

Gentleman Jim

03 May

Gentleman Jim — directed by Raoul Walsh. Sports Drama. An Irish roughneck boxes his way to the world championship opposite Francis L. Sullivan. 104 minutes Black and White 1942.

★★★★

“What am I watching this thing for?” I ask myself, for I am full face with a type of picture I am familiar with and which thank goodness is no longer made. The over-the-top smiles and paste-thick Irish accent of Alan Hale cues the question. Oh, yes, I remember now: it’s a movie made in a period when immigrants from Europe were more recent than they are today, a period when we didn’t have the word “ethnicities,” but the word “nationalities.” We didn’t have the word “media,” but in those days there were German language newspapers, and Yiddish and Chinese newspapers, and “Abie’s Irish Rose” was the popular radio show. People were just over from the old country and felt their security depended upon living near one another and loudly holding onto the mores of their motherland. I am first generation myself. John Ford’s films were slathered with an Irishness that no longer exists, and this of Raoul Walsh is also. In the mid 1950s “nationality” dissolved, replaced by the sectionalization of popular music, but until ten years after The War, everyone listened to Bing Crosby, who no longer exists either, although Frank Sinatra does, whose popular territory is certainly bounded with a frontier of nationality. Such nationalist immigrant films as Gentleman Jim are long gone. Barry Fitzgerald is unthinkable today. But I stuck with the film, which is remarkable in several ways. Low-life, high-life, comedy, family drama, action, romance, farce commingle with Shakespearean ease. The huge fight crowds in pre-Boxing Commission days are fabulously unruly, for no one could direct films of mass mayhem like Raoul Walsh. They lend enormous excitement to the fights. The bouts themselves are brilliantly filmed, and it is clear that Errol Flynn is performing them, no easy feat, since Corbett, the father of modern defensive and strategic boxing, had easy feet himself and danced his partners into exhaustion. It is one of the best fight films ever made in terms of the events themselves. Outside that everything is hearty – a blarney shattered by such films as Raging Bull, Someone Up There Likes Me, The Set-Up, and especially The Fighter which put pat to the notion of good healthy family support for their darling of the ring which Gentleman Jim promulgates like a jig. Flynn is perfectly cast in this part, one of many he would play in Walsh’s films. He is highly energized, impenitently boastful, lithe, strong, and Irish as Paddy’s pig, although actually came from Tasmania.  He is very good, and well supported by Minor Watson, Jack Carson, Arthur Shields, Rhys Williams, and William Frawley. As with all Walsh’s films the foundation of the action is romance, but Alexis Smith is incapable of suggesting the sexuality underlying the lady’s interest in Corbett. She is always the lady, never Judy O’Grady. Walsh wanted Rita Hayworth or Ann Sheridan, either of whom would have been better at it. But the key player in this is Ward Bond — so loud and clear for John Ford so long that we never knew what a fine actor he was. The key scene of the film is his reconciliation with Flynn; his sweet shyness is riveting. Going from the brash slugger, Francis L. Sullivan, to the beaten world heavyweight champion, he makes Sullivan into the foolish titan he was. Flynn’s lines about Sullivan’s lying in bed that night, lost, is marvelous piece of film writing. I was born the year Corbett died in the town he lived in, Bayside, Long Island. Corbett Road, I was familiar with. His fights took place in the 1890s, but everyone in the country knew who he was. This was Errol Flynn’s favorite film, enormously popular in its day.  You might check it out to see why.

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, Alexis Smith, Arthur Shields, BIO-PIC, BOXING PIC, COSTUME ROMANCE, DIRECTED BY Raoul Walsh, Errol Flynn, HOLLYWOOD HEYDAY 1930 - 1950, Jack Carson, Minor Watson, Period: 19th Century, Rhys Williams, SPORTS DRAMA, Turn of the 19th Century, William Frawley

 

Come And Get It

06 Jan

Come And Get It — directed by Howard Hawks and William Wyler. Romantic Drama. A proto-lumber-tycoon deserts a girl and twenty years later falls for her daughter. 96 minutes Black and White 1936.

* * *

When Sam Goldwyn recuperated from his operation and saw the footage Hawks had shot of Edna Ferber’s novel he hit the bedpan, which flew into the fan, and Hawks walked out. So Wyler filmed the last quarter of it, and you can’t really tell, because the great Gregg Toland was filming it, and he controlled the art of the thing. What Goldwyn didn’t like was that the first of the dual female roles had been turned from a mousy barkeep to an impudent chanteuse with a mind of her own, a Hawks type, and Goldwyn had given Ferber promises. The girl is played beautifully in her first major role by Frances Farmer. She’s a cross between Maria Schell and Jessica Lang (who later played her in the movie Frances), and she is very good indeed. She’s a glorious milkmaid, as both the mother and the daughter. As the mother she ends up with Walter Brennan, an actor of great imagination, in the first of his three Oscar winning roles. As the daughter she ends up with Joel McCrea, who, as always, is excellent in the comic scenes. The one she does not end up with is Edward Arnold who has the lead, in what would have been Hawks’ King Lear. But Arnold does not have the latitude for a role this size, and his performance illustrates the weakness of perpetual determination as an acting method. He has his guns and he sticks to them; the problem is that they are guns. He plays out the role, but we never sympathize with his folly, as we should if we are asked to witness it. (Hawks originally wanted Spencer Tracy, who might have been marvelous.) Remarkable and famous scenes in this picture make it worth seeing and studying. Robert Rosson who was Hawks’ frequent second unit director went to Canada, Wisconsin, and Idaho and took the amazing logging sequences with which the picture begins. And there is a spectacular branagan in a saloon with round steel table trays being skimmed into mirrors and clientele. And, of course, Toland’s camera work is a study in itself.

 

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, COSTUME DRAMA, COSTUME ROMANCE, Directed by Howard Hawks, DIRECTED BY WILLIAM WYLER, Edward Arnold, FILMED BY Gregg Toland MASTER CINEMAPHOTOGRAPHER, Frances Farmer, HOLLYWOOD HEYDAY 1930 - 1950, Joel McCrea, ROMANTIC DRAMA, Turn of the 19th Century, Walter Brennan: ACTING GOD

 

Easy Virtue

09 Sep

Easy Virtue – Directed by Stephen Elliott. High Comedy. The scion of an upper crust British family brings home his American wife. 96 minutes Color 2008.

* * * *

Noel Coward’s (aged 25) drama of class snobbery is updated in diction and tone to the present day, although still set in the 20s. All that works just fine. Colin Firth, not an actor I much admire although there is nothing not to like about him, plays the veteran of WWI who fiddles with a motorcycle and keeps mum while his highly controlling wife makes life miserable for one and all. Kristin Scott Thomas plays her brilliantly. It’s the Gladys Cooper part, you understand, and we are to learn rather late in the day that she objects to the young wife because she really wishes to keep her son home because the estate is failing and presumably he can save it. But it’s a phony excuse, for the reason she is a bitch is the same as any woman is, because she wishes to blanket all the sexual energy in her bailiwick.  Some of Thomas’ lines are lost in the rush of British, a common error of English actors when scurrying through the heady regions of contempt. But the real reason the piece doesn’t work is that the American is played by Jessica Biel who is neither attractive nor fascinating and plays the character with no sense of inner style, one way or another, whatsoever. You need a modern Claudette Colbert, Mary Astor, Loretta Young in the part, but, I guess there are none. The Extras are informative and fun. The direction is excellent. The costumes are tops. The fabulous houses in which it was shot are worth the visit, and so is a fox hunt and a great tango scene, in which Firth takes the floor. He is very fine in the dance and in the part, there and elsewhere, and I may start to warm up to him after all.

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Posted in 1920s, ACTING STYLE: ENGLISH REALISTIC, Colin Firth, COSTUME ROMANCE, Filmed in England, High Comedy, Kristin Scott Thomas

 

Gone With The Wind

08 Sep

Gone With The Wind – Directed by George Cukor, Victor Fleming, Sam Wood, Alfred Hitchcock. Drama. A selfish misguided flirt becomes a misguided survivalist. 220 minutes Color 1939.

* * * * *

It is the greatest movie ever made– because of its generosity of spirit. Everyone who made it hated everyone else who made it, and everyone hated David O. Selznick who produced it, produced it in the sense that he himself made it, and remade it, to his exact and exacting specifications. He was a terrible intruder, interloper, interferer, and one longs to know which particular details he interfered with. Perhaps and probably all details. I saw it when it came out. White dishes with red borders were the door prizes, given out in intermission at the Roosevelt Theatre in Flushing, now no longer existent. My mother took us, and I was restless; I was six. On its re-release I saw it, and was mightily moved. I thought it was the story of Melanie Wilkes. I took myself to be that devoted soul, though I lacked the deep kindness. I was more like Oona Munson as Belle Watling. Later on when I saw it, I realized it was the story of Scarlett O’Hara. The part is perfectly cast, because Vivien Leigh had a divinity’s charm, the inner hellcat, the greed for life’s rewards, and the daring to go for them, and it is her greatest screen work. Scarlett seizes other people’s property to gain her ends, and she is perfectly matched in this by Selznick himself. We hand it to Scarlett on the grounds of her sheer vivacity. And we never blame her. Why? Because she represents the triumph of what, despite our failings and meanness, we all deserve and what we will sacrifice for it. Scarlett is an accomplishment, Vivien Leigh’s performance is an accomplishment, and the film is an accomplishment, and it is all the same accomplishment, and that remains stirring to this day. The production is splendid. William Cameron Menzies sets, Jack Cosgrove’s backgrounds, Max Steiner’s moving score – all are exemplary, as are the pens of those responsible for its screenplay, Sydney Howard, Ben Hecht, Oliver Garrett and others. Olivia de Haviland wept selfishly at the Oscars when her Melanie lost to the first black actor ever to win an acting award, Miss Hattie McDaniel, who is tops. Everyone is at their best except Leslie Howard who, as an actor, in fact actually appears to be the milksop someone accuses Ashley Wilkes as being. And, above all, if he is forgotten for every other picture he ever made, he will be known and remembered perfectly for the part which captures his humor, his great charm, his mountainous masculinity, his physical beauty, his irresistible sexiness, and his great skill as an actor – in the part of Rhett Butler — Clark Gable.

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Posted in ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, Ann Rutherford, Barbara O'Neil, Butterfly McQueen, Civil War, Clark Gable: SCREEN GOD, COSTUME ROMANCE, DIRECTED BY Victor Fleming, Evelyn Keyes, FILMED BY Ernest Haller, Hattie McDaniel, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, HISTORICAL DRAMA, HOLLYWOOD HEYDAY 1930 - 1950, Jane Darwell, Laura Hope Crews, Leslie Howard, MUST SEE, Olivia de Haviland, Oona Munson, Period: 19th Century, PERSONAL DRAMA, PRIZE WINNER, ROMANTIC DRAMA, SURVIVAL DRAMA, Thomas Mitchell, Vivien Leigh SCREEN GODDESS, Ward Bond, WARTIME ROMANCE

 

Slave Of Love

09 Aug

Slave Of Love – Written and Directed by Nikita Mikhailkov. High Farce. A silent film company in the 20s goes on location with a nitwit star and learns something from her. Color 1976.

* * * * *

Singing in Rain set in the Russian Revolution. A marvelous piece, acted and directed to perfection. It is not a propaganda, but quite the contrary, I wonder how they got it produced at all, it is so daring. It’s a sound picture in color set during the making of a schlock silent picture with an airhead superstar actress. If you are interested in acting styles, here is a perfect example of Russian character work for comedy, wrought to extremes of amusement for us — the sort of acting Chekov wrote for: the man who always has a crick in his neck, the actor who always giggles when he exits, the tubby who secretly tries pull-ups between desserts. You’ll see. The amazing finale is treated like an action sequence from a silent film, and it works like gangbusters. Real life is not so far from a picture show after all. Enjoy it.

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Posted in 1920s, ACTING STYLE: RUSSIAN CLASSICAL COMIC REALISM, COSTUME ROMANCE, DIRECTED BY Nikita Mikhailkov, FILMED IN RUSSIA, FOREIGN LANGUAGE WITH SUBTITLES:, HIGH FARCE, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, HUMAN COMEDY, Showbiz Comedy, Uncategorized

 

Under Capricorn

11 Jul

Under Capricorn – Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Costume Melodrama. An early 19th Century rake from Ireland is sent to Australia where he cleans up the marriage of a childhood friend and noblewoman now married to a rich peasant landholder. 117 minutes Color 1949.

* * * *

Not a suspense story, but rather one more along the lines of Rebecca, the story of a marriage threatened by a dark past, it is a film which rewards study. It was filmed, as was Rope, in long takes, looping through rooms and circling around and around, and it also involved the longest monologues you’ve ever heard, and it is good to hear them. The great Jack Cardiff filmed it, so it is velvet in motion. Looking wonderful in Regency costumes, Michael Wilding plays the playboy younger son out to make his fortune if he does not have to raise a sweat to do so. His long face moves so curiously that it’s rather hard to understand his craft as an actor, particularly when so many of his lines are rushed, as is the way with English actors of that era. It has five principal roles, three English, one Swedish, one American. Cecil Parker, Margaret Leighton, Wilding, Joseph Cotton and Ingrid Bergman as his drunken wife. And it becomes obvious what is wrong with that mélange. Joseph Cotton is what is wrong, and it throws the entire film. He is miscast. He is supposed to be an ex-Irish stable boy who has married a milady, Bergman, well above his station. In the film, he is the one who suffers most, because of this class difference. But we never believe for a minute that he is a peasant. His opening moment is wonderful, as he enters a bank with a well-earned ruthlessness that has given him character. But he looses that thereafter, and ends up being just a middle-class American. Neither he nor Bergman tries for an Irish accent. Bergman always felt the public liked her Swedish accent, and she was right, they did. And Cotton just speaks American. Class accents are enormously important in distinguishing caste; Margaret Leighton is the only one who knows this. But the problem is that Burt Lancaster is not playing the part. (Of course there were no Michael Caines or Sean Connerys at that time.) Bergman plays her usual put-upon dame. She has no fight, she has no moxie. She never evinces the dash attributed to her. Being a victim was also what she figured her public wanted. She brings her peerless complexion to the character and a world-class charm in scenes with Cecil Parker. But the rest of the time she is making pastry. She brings a steady emotionalism of the role to bear, but was she ever deeply engaged emotionally in any part she ever played? In a way, I’ve got to hand it to her. There was something in her limited artistic imagination that allowed her audiences’ imaginations to fill in the blank. However, I found the film fascinating as a study of Hitchcock’s story-telling devices. Under Capricorn has been much maligned: notorious for not being Notorious. Instead, think of Rebecca and enjoy.

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Posted in ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, Cecil Parker, COSTUME ROMANCE, DIRECTED BY Alfred Hitchcock, FILMED BY Jack Cardiff, HOLLYWOOD HEYDAY 1930 - 1950, Ingrid Bergman: SCREEN GODDESS, Joseph Cotton, MELODRAMA, Michael Wilding, ROMANTIC DRAMA, Turn of the 19th Century, WOMEN"S WEEPER

 

Son Of Fury

10 Jul

Son Of Fury  Directed by John Cromwell. Costume Romance. The heir to a great English estate vows to take his rightful place presently occupied by a selfish Uncle. 94 mintues Black and White 1942.

* * * * *

In those days, the male stars were more beautiful than the female stars, but the female stars were better actors. Joel Macrea, John Wayne, John Payne, Cary Grant, Henry Fonda, Clark Gable were gorgeous guys, and the most gorgeous of all was Tyrone Power. His looks were black Irish with Garbo-long eyelashes – along the lines of George Clooney, except Power, of course, was better looking. Clooney has one advantage over Power in that Clooney is now alive and Power is not, which means that Power is no longer seen as sexually attractive by those who grew up with him in the 30s, people whose sexual development is simultaneous with his own. It’s what makes a star and keeps a star a star. In Power’s case, he also had talent, but, because of his scripts, it was banked – right into Zanuck’s account, for Power was the biggest star at Fox. Zanuck assigned him role after role the same. You can see the responsibility a superstar of that era had to meet by the dumbing down of their range, while George Sanders and Dudley Digges especially savor the scenery. Diggs really has a good time; playing a mercenary lawyer, he gobbles up the camera like roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. In the scene Power has the want; Digges want is to deflect the want, but just imagine what Digges comes on with in this scene. Sits behind a desk the whole time, and plays, not a particular action or want, but rather a way of life, all-powerful and impressed by nothing. What a perfect choice to make to play the key moment in the scene. And later on, to make his entrance into court and dress himself in court. Also check out George Sanders’ opening moment when he has to oblige a ruthless close-up to tell us that his long-lost nephew has been discovered. His response is conventional; what lies behind it is the genius to have created the energy of a man who enjoys his own greed. And that, not his technique and not his want or intention, is the force that drives the truth of the moment into life. And so we have the great character actors of the movies doing the same thing forever and also in this film, Henry Davenport as the loving gramps, John Carradine (who was a bad actor but an understandable one), and Elsa Lanchester (who is also a bad actor, because self-conscious of her effects, but believable here). And Tyrone Power was just such a type-cast actor. He played the Tyrone Power type, and film after film duplicated the format, including an early childhood, here played by little Roddy MacDowell, completely devoid of sentimentality, firm in his energy, and fascinating to watch in his withheld ruthlessness. Power was a master at mediating the unbelievable lines he was given in these costume shows. He never overplays his hand, and so the lines sound believable. It is not that he believes in them, so much that the decency he summons plays off a certain challenge to carry him through them. He was a romantic actor par excellence, which means that his sexual instrument is not lustful but lyrical. In wooing a lady he is not rapacious but fun and kind and heart struck. Bolder with Frances Farmer as milady and more bowled over by Gene Tierney doing a South Seas hula-hula, but always respectful of the lady. If you can look beyond his mesmerizing beauty, into his eyes you can see how he comes alive and in what ways. The direction by John Cromwell is discrete, the filming by Arthur C. Miller is narratively helpful, unintrusive, and, in the London rather than the South Seas scenes, spectacularly convincing, as are the fight scenes between Sanders and Power, for they are cunningly performed by bewigged stunt extras.  The score by Alfred (too-many-violins) Newman is intrusive, the exact opposite of Power’s presence, and the perfect model of what not to do while performing balderdash.

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Posted in ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, COSTUME ROMANCE, Dudley Digges, Elsa Lanchester, Gene Tierney, George Sanders, Harry Davenport, Roddy MacDowell, Tyrone Power: screen god

 
 
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