D. George Waggner
B&W
We’re back!
Much more than Frankenstein’s monster, the unnamed concierge/manager/overlord of the deeply mysterious Skaneateles Hotel is the role we should best remember Boris Karloff for. It has everything, not only allowing him a glowering physical presence – capable of turning from contempt to sweetness in a heartbeat – but also line after wonderful line of dialogue to be intoned in his glorious graveyard voice. It’s the voice of doom, but also soft as treacle and inviting despite its spookiness. Here we are welcomed with narration, wherein Karloff explains to us that while the world and the universe may change, nothing alters in the sanctuary of the Skaneateles Hotel. This we know is a joke, as we’ve already seen that the ambience, décor and the layout itself is constantly shifting at the Skaneateles Hotel.
In what we would now call a cold opening, the young David Niven is the first to check in, playing a caddish young Englishman with a string of broken hearts behind him. Outside his room he meets the kind of pneumatic, suggestive blonde that the Hays Code was surely supposed to have stamped out, she leads him like a siren back to her room, where the door slams ominously behind them. It might be that they’re having a night of pleasure together, but his scream suggests otherwise.
The meat of the story though is the arrival of another couple, this time the younger and far less charismatic pairing of Allan Jones and Melody Hazel. Obviously these are a duo we’re not going to care about anywhere near as much as Claude Rains and Marian Marsh, but that doesn’t matter – as the film knows its true star is the hotel itself and the ever brooding and ominous presence of Boris Karloff. Going for a stroll before dinner, our young lovebirds become horribly lost and disorientated, marching down seemingly the same corridor again and again. When they try a different turning, they’re first threatened by Bela Lugosi (playing second fiddle to Karloff once again and clearly hating every second of it), before having an elaborate con-trick played on them by Lon Chaney Jr, where they’re nearly separated and have to run for their lives. They end up in a strange and huge ballroom, one which rolls and lilts like a ship and is crammed full of refugees from some far off war (problems in Europe no doubt playing on the filmmakers’ minds). Joining with the refugees, the two have to hope that when Karloff does show up he’ll save them rather than damn them.
The worlds of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and ‘Game of Thrones’ obviously have whole continents to play with and explore. Vast vistas the likes of which we have never seen before. The true genius of the Skaneateles Hotel is that they manage to give us the same sense of scale and size all while filming in a studio and basing the action in one location. Our focus is the hotel, which is at turns a scary, mischievous, deadly, benign and benevolent pile of ever shifting and changing bricks. It, along with its most prominent employee, are the true stars. And what this first sequel proves is that it doesn’t matter if your nominal leads are Zeppo Marx’s replacement and a pretty flapper girl who never made another film, as long as Karloff and the hotel are in place, you can still make a fantastically scary, amazing and edge of the seat film.
Wednesday 28 May 2014
Sunday 25 May 2014
The Hotel at Skaneateles Avenue (1937)
D. George Waggner
B&W
J.R.R Tolkein thought that his books would never make a successful transition to film; similarly if George R.R. Martin had been born forty years earlier, the best either could ever have hoped for in their lifetimes were some English characters actors wandering around Yorkshire, some rubbery dragons and a shit-load of stuff happening off screen. The Skaneateles Avenue stories don’t have the same literary pedigree (being based on a couple of now obscurer than obscure tales in pulp magazines), but that doesn’t alter the fact that they are actual fantasy. Yes it’s fantasy that eschews dragons, swords fights and mysterious rings; but in its ever changing corridors, vast horizons of suddenly open rooms with seemingly infinite variations, the Skaneateles Avenue Hotel offers as much scope for wide vistas and endless stories as anything in Middle Earth or Westeros.
The great Boris Karloff is the key. Here he is cast as the concierge, as the manager, as the supposed solver of problems, as the face which pops up when you least expect it. He is at points the charming, omnipotent overlord of the Skaneateles Avenue Hotel and at others as equally helpless a victim of it as any of his guests. Sometimes he’s the puppeteer gleefully pulling the strings, others just another mannequin being twisted around in knots. But whatever else is happening it’s always his looming face and menacing voice that welcome us, telling us he hopes we have a lovely stay – which reassures us in no way shape or form.
Claude Rains and the now almost forgotten Marian Marsh (as if she genuinely did check into a mysterious hotel never to be seen again) are the husband and wife who arrive wet and desperate for a room on a horrific, stormy night. They are greeted by Karloff at his most obsequious and shown up to their room, but before long they’re lost in a maze of their own desires and fears, changing corridors, shifting floors and doors that seem to open to vast other worlds. Without a doubt the set design on this film, changing as it does from tight and intimate corridors, to crowded ballrooms which seem to stretch on as far as the eye can see, is astounding. Along the way they meet various other lost guests – including Basil Rathbone and Lon Chaney Jr – who may be trying to help or hinder, or perhaps a combination of the two. And every so often Karloff shows up, still seeming so solicitous to their needs but looking less and less trustworthy with every appearance.
Say what you will about Universal Films in the 1930s, but they knew how to slap some celluloid into a projector and say “now, THAT is a horror movie!” ‘The Hotel at Skaneateles Avenue’ represents a bending of the normal format, making it a film not just about thrills and chills, but about fantasy and other worlds. Although not as well known as its Transylvania and Castle Frankenstein stable mates, this trio remains a hugely influential and important series (Doctor Who’s ‘The God Complex’ is clearly a homage). What makes it so interesting and amazing to see with 2014 eyes is how successful these films are at putting this claustrophobic fantasy onto the big screen. Other worlds and vistas – like those created by Tolkein and Martin – would still be far beyond what was possible in 1930s cinema; but here we have fantasy, and fantasy which happens in a world that manages to be both fantastically big and humanly small, created successfully on a cinema screen in a way which will make any genre fan lick their lips with relish.
B&W
J.R.R Tolkein thought that his books would never make a successful transition to film; similarly if George R.R. Martin had been born forty years earlier, the best either could ever have hoped for in their lifetimes were some English characters actors wandering around Yorkshire, some rubbery dragons and a shit-load of stuff happening off screen. The Skaneateles Avenue stories don’t have the same literary pedigree (being based on a couple of now obscurer than obscure tales in pulp magazines), but that doesn’t alter the fact that they are actual fantasy. Yes it’s fantasy that eschews dragons, swords fights and mysterious rings; but in its ever changing corridors, vast horizons of suddenly open rooms with seemingly infinite variations, the Skaneateles Avenue Hotel offers as much scope for wide vistas and endless stories as anything in Middle Earth or Westeros.
The great Boris Karloff is the key. Here he is cast as the concierge, as the manager, as the supposed solver of problems, as the face which pops up when you least expect it. He is at points the charming, omnipotent overlord of the Skaneateles Avenue Hotel and at others as equally helpless a victim of it as any of his guests. Sometimes he’s the puppeteer gleefully pulling the strings, others just another mannequin being twisted around in knots. But whatever else is happening it’s always his looming face and menacing voice that welcome us, telling us he hopes we have a lovely stay – which reassures us in no way shape or form.
Claude Rains and the now almost forgotten Marian Marsh (as if she genuinely did check into a mysterious hotel never to be seen again) are the husband and wife who arrive wet and desperate for a room on a horrific, stormy night. They are greeted by Karloff at his most obsequious and shown up to their room, but before long they’re lost in a maze of their own desires and fears, changing corridors, shifting floors and doors that seem to open to vast other worlds. Without a doubt the set design on this film, changing as it does from tight and intimate corridors, to crowded ballrooms which seem to stretch on as far as the eye can see, is astounding. Along the way they meet various other lost guests – including Basil Rathbone and Lon Chaney Jr – who may be trying to help or hinder, or perhaps a combination of the two. And every so often Karloff shows up, still seeming so solicitous to their needs but looking less and less trustworthy with every appearance.
Say what you will about Universal Films in the 1930s, but they knew how to slap some celluloid into a projector and say “now, THAT is a horror movie!” ‘The Hotel at Skaneateles Avenue’ represents a bending of the normal format, making it a film not just about thrills and chills, but about fantasy and other worlds. Although not as well known as its Transylvania and Castle Frankenstein stable mates, this trio remains a hugely influential and important series (Doctor Who’s ‘The God Complex’ is clearly a homage). What makes it so interesting and amazing to see with 2014 eyes is how successful these films are at putting this claustrophobic fantasy onto the big screen. Other worlds and vistas – like those created by Tolkein and Martin – would still be far beyond what was possible in 1930s cinema; but here we have fantasy, and fantasy which happens in a world that manages to be both fantastically big and humanly small, created successfully on a cinema screen in a way which will make any genre fan lick their lips with relish.
Wednesday 21 May 2014
Clint Eastwood at the BBC (2005)
D. Mark Lawson
B&W and Colour
A fascinating documentary about the strange and very much neglected and forgotten fact that, whilst Clint Eastwood was the world’s biggest film star in the 1970s, he made frequent appearances on Radio 4 light entertainment shows. This may require some context for overseas’ readers: the BBC’s Radio 4 is a cultural institution in the UK; a talk radio station where high-minded drama mixes with sitcoms, panel shows and sketch comedy, as well as documentaries and hard hitting news exposes. I don’t think there’s another station in the world quite like it and us Brits are all rightly proud. Clint obviously liked it too, as between 1968 and 1979 he made forty-two appearances on various Radio 4 shows. Predominantly he showed up on comedy panel shows, but also in sketch shows, sitcoms, panel discussions and headlining the odd drama. All whilst making Dirty Harry films, ‘The Outlaw Josey Welles’, those movies with the orang-utan and generally dropping box-office gold wherever he went. Even in his pomp Clint seems to have taken every opportunity to cosy up with Nicholas Parsons and Clement Freud and show off his verbal dexterity.
(This isn’t the only surprising revelation from this fascinating documentary. I was completely unaware that Woody Allen had a three month stretch in 1967 as Cousin Wally on ‘The Archers’, or that Susan Sarandon once plied her trade reading the shipping forecast).
‘Just a Minute’ is show where panellists show off their erudition and love of words by speaking on a subject they are given for sixty seconds without hesitation, repetition or deviation. It’s a tough game, particularly when other panellists are so keen to challenge for infractions. And it’s bizarrely a show Clint appeared on twenty times in the 1970s. There are archive shots with him sat with Nicholas Parsons, Peter Jones, Derek Nimmo, Clement Freud and Kenneth Williams (and how bizarre and incongruous it is to see Harry Callaghan laughing side by side with Percival Snooper). We hear him discuss subjects that were obviously chosen for him, such as ‘Hollywood’, ‘Cowboys’, ‘Golf’; but occasionally much more challenging, such as ‘Salmon Fishing in Scotland’ and ‘The Best Way to Hail a London Cab’. And through it all he isn’t bad. Okay, he lacks the verbal gymnastics of a Kenneth Williams, or the dry wit of a Clement Freud, but he pushes through with a mix of charm and self-depreciation and the occasional wry aside. ‘Just a Minute’ was clearly his favourite, but he also went through the silliness of ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue’, cameoed in the radio adaptation of ‘Dad’s Army’ (as an American general who really got up Mainwaring’s nose) and starred in that most bizarre thing – a radio adaptation of ‘A Fistful of Dollars’, not a single second of which seems to have survived. How the vast desert landscapes and the lead character’s lack of dialogue were realised on radio is anyone’s guess, but I would quite possibly sacrifice my little finger to find out.
As I said, it’s an entertaining documentary, but one with a big hole in the middle: there’s no interview with Eastwood himself. Yes, we get Nicholas Parsons, Clement Freud, Tim Brooke-Taylor and a whole bunch of other surviving Radio 4 luminaries, but nothing from the man himself. As such there’s no clue as to why this man who famously hated dialogue decided to expose himself to this dialogue heavy medium again and again, or why he stopped. Instead we get a bunch of still photos and some sound clips which are absolutely tantalising.
B&W and Colour
A fascinating documentary about the strange and very much neglected and forgotten fact that, whilst Clint Eastwood was the world’s biggest film star in the 1970s, he made frequent appearances on Radio 4 light entertainment shows. This may require some context for overseas’ readers: the BBC’s Radio 4 is a cultural institution in the UK; a talk radio station where high-minded drama mixes with sitcoms, panel shows and sketch comedy, as well as documentaries and hard hitting news exposes. I don’t think there’s another station in the world quite like it and us Brits are all rightly proud. Clint obviously liked it too, as between 1968 and 1979 he made forty-two appearances on various Radio 4 shows. Predominantly he showed up on comedy panel shows, but also in sketch shows, sitcoms, panel discussions and headlining the odd drama. All whilst making Dirty Harry films, ‘The Outlaw Josey Welles’, those movies with the orang-utan and generally dropping box-office gold wherever he went. Even in his pomp Clint seems to have taken every opportunity to cosy up with Nicholas Parsons and Clement Freud and show off his verbal dexterity.
(This isn’t the only surprising revelation from this fascinating documentary. I was completely unaware that Woody Allen had a three month stretch in 1967 as Cousin Wally on ‘The Archers’, or that Susan Sarandon once plied her trade reading the shipping forecast).
‘Just a Minute’ is show where panellists show off their erudition and love of words by speaking on a subject they are given for sixty seconds without hesitation, repetition or deviation. It’s a tough game, particularly when other panellists are so keen to challenge for infractions. And it’s bizarrely a show Clint appeared on twenty times in the 1970s. There are archive shots with him sat with Nicholas Parsons, Peter Jones, Derek Nimmo, Clement Freud and Kenneth Williams (and how bizarre and incongruous it is to see Harry Callaghan laughing side by side with Percival Snooper). We hear him discuss subjects that were obviously chosen for him, such as ‘Hollywood’, ‘Cowboys’, ‘Golf’; but occasionally much more challenging, such as ‘Salmon Fishing in Scotland’ and ‘The Best Way to Hail a London Cab’. And through it all he isn’t bad. Okay, he lacks the verbal gymnastics of a Kenneth Williams, or the dry wit of a Clement Freud, but he pushes through with a mix of charm and self-depreciation and the occasional wry aside. ‘Just a Minute’ was clearly his favourite, but he also went through the silliness of ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue’, cameoed in the radio adaptation of ‘Dad’s Army’ (as an American general who really got up Mainwaring’s nose) and starred in that most bizarre thing – a radio adaptation of ‘A Fistful of Dollars’, not a single second of which seems to have survived. How the vast desert landscapes and the lead character’s lack of dialogue were realised on radio is anyone’s guess, but I would quite possibly sacrifice my little finger to find out.
As I said, it’s an entertaining documentary, but one with a big hole in the middle: there’s no interview with Eastwood himself. Yes, we get Nicholas Parsons, Clement Freud, Tim Brooke-Taylor and a whole bunch of other surviving Radio 4 luminaries, but nothing from the man himself. As such there’s no clue as to why this man who famously hated dialogue decided to expose himself to this dialogue heavy medium again and again, or why he stopped. Instead we get a bunch of still photos and some sound clips which are absolutely tantalising.
Sunday 18 May 2014
The Beatles: The Future (1976)
D. Winston O’Boogie/Apollo C. Vermouth
B&W, with flashes of bright and scary psychedelic colour
Here’s an absolutely bizarre and barely seen movie which is exactly the kind of film this blog is duty-bound to bring to wider attention. ‘The Beatles: The Future’ is a surreal faux documentary which looks at what would have happened if The Beatles hadn’t broken up. Constructed using fake talking head clips, fake footage of The Beatles and even really amateurish cartoons, this is a head-spinning montage which revels in love for the 1960s and disappointment in the 1970s. Clearly the filmmakers believed the 1960s was the ushering of a utopia which cruelly never actually happened, and that the 1970s (which when this began filming were only three years old) were struggling to cope with all that failed promise. The Beatles were of course the great symbol of the 1960s and perhaps another group of filmmakers would have used their continuing presence as the salve that the decade needed; another film would have suggested that if The Beatles were still around the 1970s would have been much brighter and better. But that’s not what this movie does. Yes, The Beatles were part of the more hopeful age of the 1960s, but if they’d stayed around for the following decade they’d have been tarnished along with everything else.
The Beatles – none of whom are really played by the same actors from one scene to the next, let alone right away from the movie (so working out who is who is can be a trifle hard) – are instead portrayed as doing all the ridiculous 1970s rock star stuff. This is a movie which comes to slaughter, rather than praise, its idols. The not so fab four preach a Marxian tune of shared belongings, but move to Monaco to stop paying taxes; they talk peace, whilst employing thuggish bodyguards; they festoon themselves in ridiculous kaftans and shawls, demanding attention even as they claim to be “just four ordinary lads from Liverpool” (the accents are atrocious btw); and when they do play a concert, it’s a pompous three hour event in front of the pyramids at sunset which proves disastrous, leading to a stampeded “where eight people and fourteen beautiful camels died tragically”. They also have other more Beatles-centric concerns, with Yoko and Linda very much to the fore so that the band end up releasing albums as ‘The Beatles Collective’; including a four disk number, the side Ringo is in charge of apparently benefiting from actually being some fun.
Actually for a musical film there’s little in the way of music. Obviously they couldn’t afford the rights to actual Beatles songs and your jobbing songsmith can’t just knock out a genuine Lennon/McCartney. So what we have here is ramshackle affair with little music and from scene to scene difficulty in telling which Beatle is which, but if you’re a Beatles fan and want to watch something which is occasionally witty and clever and pointed about the failures of heroes, then this is a bit of a slog but well worth tracking down.
My favourite scene? In 1973 when The Beatles are getting truly bad coverage, a press conference is called. John Lennon tears up poster-size covers of the NME, Melody Maker, Rolling Stone and others – all of whom have had the temerity to criticise the band – but for each one torn up The Beatles take off an item of clothing. It ends with four chubby and hairy Beatles impersonators in a line, wearing only Y-fronts and socks, doing the kind of stamping dance which one imagines inspired Madness. I don’t know what it all means, but in it’s clearly fucking mad way, it captures the whole shabby vagabond spirit of the film.
B&W, with flashes of bright and scary psychedelic colour
Here’s an absolutely bizarre and barely seen movie which is exactly the kind of film this blog is duty-bound to bring to wider attention. ‘The Beatles: The Future’ is a surreal faux documentary which looks at what would have happened if The Beatles hadn’t broken up. Constructed using fake talking head clips, fake footage of The Beatles and even really amateurish cartoons, this is a head-spinning montage which revels in love for the 1960s and disappointment in the 1970s. Clearly the filmmakers believed the 1960s was the ushering of a utopia which cruelly never actually happened, and that the 1970s (which when this began filming were only three years old) were struggling to cope with all that failed promise. The Beatles were of course the great symbol of the 1960s and perhaps another group of filmmakers would have used their continuing presence as the salve that the decade needed; another film would have suggested that if The Beatles were still around the 1970s would have been much brighter and better. But that’s not what this movie does. Yes, The Beatles were part of the more hopeful age of the 1960s, but if they’d stayed around for the following decade they’d have been tarnished along with everything else.
The Beatles – none of whom are really played by the same actors from one scene to the next, let alone right away from the movie (so working out who is who is can be a trifle hard) – are instead portrayed as doing all the ridiculous 1970s rock star stuff. This is a movie which comes to slaughter, rather than praise, its idols. The not so fab four preach a Marxian tune of shared belongings, but move to Monaco to stop paying taxes; they talk peace, whilst employing thuggish bodyguards; they festoon themselves in ridiculous kaftans and shawls, demanding attention even as they claim to be “just four ordinary lads from Liverpool” (the accents are atrocious btw); and when they do play a concert, it’s a pompous three hour event in front of the pyramids at sunset which proves disastrous, leading to a stampeded “where eight people and fourteen beautiful camels died tragically”. They also have other more Beatles-centric concerns, with Yoko and Linda very much to the fore so that the band end up releasing albums as ‘The Beatles Collective’; including a four disk number, the side Ringo is in charge of apparently benefiting from actually being some fun.
Actually for a musical film there’s little in the way of music. Obviously they couldn’t afford the rights to actual Beatles songs and your jobbing songsmith can’t just knock out a genuine Lennon/McCartney. So what we have here is ramshackle affair with little music and from scene to scene difficulty in telling which Beatle is which, but if you’re a Beatles fan and want to watch something which is occasionally witty and clever and pointed about the failures of heroes, then this is a bit of a slog but well worth tracking down.
My favourite scene? In 1973 when The Beatles are getting truly bad coverage, a press conference is called. John Lennon tears up poster-size covers of the NME, Melody Maker, Rolling Stone and others – all of whom have had the temerity to criticise the band – but for each one torn up The Beatles take off an item of clothing. It ends with four chubby and hairy Beatles impersonators in a line, wearing only Y-fronts and socks, doing the kind of stamping dance which one imagines inspired Madness. I don’t know what it all means, but in it’s clearly fucking mad way, it captures the whole shabby vagabond spirit of the film.
Wednesday 14 May 2014
The Man from Budapest (1946)
D. Raoul Walsh
B&W
Ah, it must have been great to have an actor like Peter Lorre hanging around the studio. He could make any bog-standard scene 500% better, while if you gave him something really good he’d turn it into black & white gold. I guess Steve Buscemi would be the modern equivalent. Both are weedy tough guys, both are always better than their material and both occasionally had the chance to be a leading man. In Buscemi’s case television has moved on far enough that he can find himself the star of a lavish drama, while Lorre got ‘The Man from Budapest’. This is a remarkable movie: here’s Peter Lorre in the Bogart role: the ethically dubious detective, with love scenes, smacking down the villains, and being brilliant in the most unsettling way.
Lorre is Lazlo Tec, a famous Hungarian detective (this is a world where policeman in Eastern Europe can build up reputations which stretch across continents – just go with it). On a trip to Manhattan, Lazlo literally has murder drop into his lap in the form of the young Angela Lansbury. Even on holiday Lazlo is too much of a professional to let criminals get away, so he helps nice but dim NY police detective, George Reeves, solve the crime. Along the way he spars with bad girl gone good but maybe going bad again, Lana Turner; roughs up gangster Edward G. Robinson (himself born in Romania, but here playing very American) before revealing the killer at a big fireworks event in a truly bizarre scene where all the dialogue is interspersed by pops and bangs and the other characters look to be peering around Lorre to watch the thrills.
But by that point in the film we’ve got used to the bizarre, as all the way through we’ve had Lorre’s truly shifty and untrustworthy performance. The kind of performance no one usually gives as a hero, but which makes this film truly interesting. No doubt this was written for a Robert Montgomery or a Dana Andrews. That would have been a straightforward film, a run of the mill film, a boring film – this one though is fascinating.
There’s something so wrong about having Lorre as a hero. Every line he utters sounds like a lie, every assertion a misdirection, every accusation a fabrication to hide his own sins. There’s that snivelling voice, that weedy demeanour, those big wet eyes not designed for your straightforward detective. When he smiles at a suspect, one imagines he does so because he knows he’ll be murdering the suspect’s parents later. But what makes it truly great is that the script all the way through treats him as if he is of the highest repute, admired and loved by all, even though that doesn’t really work on the screen. Lana Turner’s character – for instance – falls for him hard, but Lana Turner the actress can’t quite pull off the burning desire for Peter Lorre she needs and so the love scenes feel like he’s paying her to be there.
All of this adds up to a really weird film which almost brings a big old unreliable narrator to the cinema. We’re told Lorre is a hero and he seems to behave decently and to solve the crime at the end. But what if he isn’t and he doesn’t? After all, Lansbury drops into his lap just after he’s been away from his seat to find a waiter. What if, rather than finding the waiter he was killing her for some unknown reason? Then when the police arrive he lays out his credentials (and he may be the real Lazlo Tec, or he might not – who would really know?) and leads the dim NY City police detective on a merry dance. He charges over NY blaming others for his crime, committing more in the cover up (or just for the hell of it), before finally landing on some dumb sap to take the heat for it all. Then at the end he heads back to Hungary with his new paid for floozy escort.
Pick your own version of what the hell is going on, but acknowledge that this is wonderfully subversive film which makes you doff your cap once again to the genius of Peter Lorre.
B&W
Ah, it must have been great to have an actor like Peter Lorre hanging around the studio. He could make any bog-standard scene 500% better, while if you gave him something really good he’d turn it into black & white gold. I guess Steve Buscemi would be the modern equivalent. Both are weedy tough guys, both are always better than their material and both occasionally had the chance to be a leading man. In Buscemi’s case television has moved on far enough that he can find himself the star of a lavish drama, while Lorre got ‘The Man from Budapest’. This is a remarkable movie: here’s Peter Lorre in the Bogart role: the ethically dubious detective, with love scenes, smacking down the villains, and being brilliant in the most unsettling way.
Lorre is Lazlo Tec, a famous Hungarian detective (this is a world where policeman in Eastern Europe can build up reputations which stretch across continents – just go with it). On a trip to Manhattan, Lazlo literally has murder drop into his lap in the form of the young Angela Lansbury. Even on holiday Lazlo is too much of a professional to let criminals get away, so he helps nice but dim NY police detective, George Reeves, solve the crime. Along the way he spars with bad girl gone good but maybe going bad again, Lana Turner; roughs up gangster Edward G. Robinson (himself born in Romania, but here playing very American) before revealing the killer at a big fireworks event in a truly bizarre scene where all the dialogue is interspersed by pops and bangs and the other characters look to be peering around Lorre to watch the thrills.
But by that point in the film we’ve got used to the bizarre, as all the way through we’ve had Lorre’s truly shifty and untrustworthy performance. The kind of performance no one usually gives as a hero, but which makes this film truly interesting. No doubt this was written for a Robert Montgomery or a Dana Andrews. That would have been a straightforward film, a run of the mill film, a boring film – this one though is fascinating.
There’s something so wrong about having Lorre as a hero. Every line he utters sounds like a lie, every assertion a misdirection, every accusation a fabrication to hide his own sins. There’s that snivelling voice, that weedy demeanour, those big wet eyes not designed for your straightforward detective. When he smiles at a suspect, one imagines he does so because he knows he’ll be murdering the suspect’s parents later. But what makes it truly great is that the script all the way through treats him as if he is of the highest repute, admired and loved by all, even though that doesn’t really work on the screen. Lana Turner’s character – for instance – falls for him hard, but Lana Turner the actress can’t quite pull off the burning desire for Peter Lorre she needs and so the love scenes feel like he’s paying her to be there.
All of this adds up to a really weird film which almost brings a big old unreliable narrator to the cinema. We’re told Lorre is a hero and he seems to behave decently and to solve the crime at the end. But what if he isn’t and he doesn’t? After all, Lansbury drops into his lap just after he’s been away from his seat to find a waiter. What if, rather than finding the waiter he was killing her for some unknown reason? Then when the police arrive he lays out his credentials (and he may be the real Lazlo Tec, or he might not – who would really know?) and leads the dim NY City police detective on a merry dance. He charges over NY blaming others for his crime, committing more in the cover up (or just for the hell of it), before finally landing on some dumb sap to take the heat for it all. Then at the end he heads back to Hungary with his new paid for floozy escort.
Pick your own version of what the hell is going on, but acknowledge that this is wonderfully subversive film which makes you doff your cap once again to the genius of Peter Lorre.
Sunday 11 May 2014
Mrs Davenport (1949)
D. Curtis Bernhardt
B&W
A great big melodramatic musical of the kind nobody makes anymore, or made that often even in the 1940s. A musical which isn’t about dancing in front of exotic sights, or sexy and exciting show folks singing warmly to each other; but instead ordinary people in a big house facing crises in their relationships. Even small stories can be made big if you give them the right attention, and this is a small story made epic and spectacular. It centres on a bored housewife, Olivia De Havilland, who is fed up of her travelling businessman husband, George Sanders, and so flirting with waif-like hunk up the street, Farley Granger. When Granger breaks his leg she seizes her chance for perhaps something more and moves him in with her to recuperate. But, maybe sensing something wrong, Sanders decides to take a sabbatical from work to return to the house full time and become a doting husband. The scene is set for high passion, jealousy, arguments, tears, swoons and finally revelation after revelation of crippling childhood secrets. It’s the stuff of high musical drama, of emotive songs in an over-wrought style. Except if you put ‘Mrs Davenport’ on with a view to tapping your feet along to some soaring tunes, then I should apologise now, as this isn’t actually a musical at all.
Why am I being mischievous? Why am I lying? Well, because if ever a film looks like it’s crying out to be a musical it’s ‘Mrs Davenport’. So many times throughout the film an emotional crescendo is reached, the score starts to swell, and one thinks this is it: we’re going to have a big heartfelt number. But frustratingly it never actually happens. Yet still the film, in its ever so earnest melodramatic pomp, keeps leading us to believe that a musical is going to break out. The last time I watched this movie, a friend of mine and I played a drinking game wherein you had to swig at every point you thought a song was going to happen. We both ended up so, so pissed. At first I thought it was the self-serious score leading the audience to feel like this, but actually the whole thing is staged as if it really is a musical. At the end of every argument, revelation, tearful reconciliation, the camera lingers that little bit too long on our leads’ faces with the result that you expect something else to happen. When it then cuts away to the next talky scene, it’s like something has been chopped out. As if some bitter projectionist who can’t hold a tune has made this film his own personal plaything.
De Havilland, as always, is lovely and radiant and wonderful (I will never hear a word said against Olivia De Havilland); Sanders knows how to deliver snide remarks and present a wounded yet carefree façade like no other actor; while Granger looks the part of sensitive young soul, even if – as always – he looks ridiculously gauche on camera. But for a simple human drama, set in a ramshackle old house, it’s incredibly bombastic and in love with its own seriousness and importance in a way it doesn’t need to be. I don’t know if Tennessee Williams ever saw ‘Mrs Davenport’, but even he’d have thought that the characters just need to shut the fuck up and get over themselves. However if Warner Bros had taken the time to throw in something an audience could sing, well perhaps Mrs Davenport would have lived longer in the cultural memory as the great, spectacular, camp classic it is crying out to be.
B&W
A great big melodramatic musical of the kind nobody makes anymore, or made that often even in the 1940s. A musical which isn’t about dancing in front of exotic sights, or sexy and exciting show folks singing warmly to each other; but instead ordinary people in a big house facing crises in their relationships. Even small stories can be made big if you give them the right attention, and this is a small story made epic and spectacular. It centres on a bored housewife, Olivia De Havilland, who is fed up of her travelling businessman husband, George Sanders, and so flirting with waif-like hunk up the street, Farley Granger. When Granger breaks his leg she seizes her chance for perhaps something more and moves him in with her to recuperate. But, maybe sensing something wrong, Sanders decides to take a sabbatical from work to return to the house full time and become a doting husband. The scene is set for high passion, jealousy, arguments, tears, swoons and finally revelation after revelation of crippling childhood secrets. It’s the stuff of high musical drama, of emotive songs in an over-wrought style. Except if you put ‘Mrs Davenport’ on with a view to tapping your feet along to some soaring tunes, then I should apologise now, as this isn’t actually a musical at all.
Why am I being mischievous? Why am I lying? Well, because if ever a film looks like it’s crying out to be a musical it’s ‘Mrs Davenport’. So many times throughout the film an emotional crescendo is reached, the score starts to swell, and one thinks this is it: we’re going to have a big heartfelt number. But frustratingly it never actually happens. Yet still the film, in its ever so earnest melodramatic pomp, keeps leading us to believe that a musical is going to break out. The last time I watched this movie, a friend of mine and I played a drinking game wherein you had to swig at every point you thought a song was going to happen. We both ended up so, so pissed. At first I thought it was the self-serious score leading the audience to feel like this, but actually the whole thing is staged as if it really is a musical. At the end of every argument, revelation, tearful reconciliation, the camera lingers that little bit too long on our leads’ faces with the result that you expect something else to happen. When it then cuts away to the next talky scene, it’s like something has been chopped out. As if some bitter projectionist who can’t hold a tune has made this film his own personal plaything.
De Havilland, as always, is lovely and radiant and wonderful (I will never hear a word said against Olivia De Havilland); Sanders knows how to deliver snide remarks and present a wounded yet carefree façade like no other actor; while Granger looks the part of sensitive young soul, even if – as always – he looks ridiculously gauche on camera. But for a simple human drama, set in a ramshackle old house, it’s incredibly bombastic and in love with its own seriousness and importance in a way it doesn’t need to be. I don’t know if Tennessee Williams ever saw ‘Mrs Davenport’, but even he’d have thought that the characters just need to shut the fuck up and get over themselves. However if Warner Bros had taken the time to throw in something an audience could sing, well perhaps Mrs Davenport would have lived longer in the cultural memory as the great, spectacular, camp classic it is crying out to be.
Wednesday 7 May 2014
The (Mis)Adventures of Kitty Spectacular (1966)
D. Ken Annakin
Colour
I like to think that Honor Blackman had more money shovelled in her direction than she’d ever seen before to get her to appear in this fluffy and unsatisfying Euro-meringue. A high-farce, broad James Bond spoof where she trades completely off her most famous cinema character seemingly without a hint of shame. Does that name in the title strike a chord with you? Does it look eerily familiar? Of course it does. It’s almost as if the producers couldn’t acquire the rights for the name of ‘Pussy Galore’ and so did the next best thing and just took a cat euphemism and a superlative and Bond’s your uncle. So of course it was a coup to get the actual Pussy Galore to play this completely new character. Actually in the first instance it would never have worked unless they had Honor Blackman smiling on the bright colour poster to let people know that, okay, they weren’t quite seeing a spin-off of ‘Goldfinger’, but they were seeing the next best thing.
This is one of a number of films that sprang up in the late 1960s to take advantage of James Bond’s popularity. The most famous is, of course, ‘Casino Royale’, the cultural memory of which has not at all been extinguished by the Daniel Craig version, we all still revel in David Niven/Peter Sellers/Woody Allen’s glory and the jaunty Burt Bacharach theme. However, the film this bears closest resemblance to is ‘OK Connery’, the bizarre spoof where Neil Connery plays a spy along with half of the Bond movies regular cast. I say that as showing up as the antagonist here, albeit in a small role, as a humourless and possibly frigid British spy is the one and only Neil Connery. When the British secret service gets the nod that Kitty Spectacular and her troupe of slim, attractive, sexually provocative female pilots are planning to rob the bank in Monte Carlo, they try to stop her. It’s up to Kitty to stay one step ahead and win the day with a saucy wiggle and a feline smile.
(Just as an aside, what must it have been like to be Neil Connery? You have such a resemblance to your famous big brother, but none of the excessive Y chromosome manliness which actually makes the Connery name work. I’m going to guess that the 1960s, although he clearly took advantage of Sean’s success, was a bit of a depressing time for young Neil.)
Much like ‘Agent Marie Lautrec’, this is bizarre, silly and all realised in bright Technicolor. Although here the film seems a lot more self-conscious, as if straining constantly for a higher level of ridiculousness that it has neither the wit nor intelligence to achieve. There are schoolboy assassins, a submarine shaped like a hot-dog, robot duplicates of the world’s leaders and the whole thing ends with the British government planning to stop Kitty Spectacular and her gal-pals by dropping large circus tents onto their planes – which is exactly the kind of scheme some tripping film executives might conceive, but you can’t believe it would really pass muster with the more stuffy mandarins in Whitehall.
I wrote last time about the lesbianism in that film maybe being a French thing, but here it shows up again. Predictably, much like Pussy Galore, Kitty Spectacular has an eye for the ladies. There she is admiring the tight jodhpurs of the girls and telling her favourites that she’ll miss them in a most fulsome way. We even have her waking up next to the young Felicity Kendall (although here the film is oddly coy and suggests they just cuddled). James Bond is obviously a male fantasy, but so are these ladies. It might look from the outside like these female led films are the stuff of feminism (without a doubt this would pass The Bechdel Test), but in reality they’re about tight and skimpy outfits, lipstick lesbianism and allowing boys to be boys. They might look like feminism, but they’ve as much interest in inspiring young women as Maxim Magazine.
Don’t be smug though, if you’ve ever seen either of McG’s ‘Charlie’s Angels’ movies, you’ll know we haven’t moved on that far.
Colour
I like to think that Honor Blackman had more money shovelled in her direction than she’d ever seen before to get her to appear in this fluffy and unsatisfying Euro-meringue. A high-farce, broad James Bond spoof where she trades completely off her most famous cinema character seemingly without a hint of shame. Does that name in the title strike a chord with you? Does it look eerily familiar? Of course it does. It’s almost as if the producers couldn’t acquire the rights for the name of ‘Pussy Galore’ and so did the next best thing and just took a cat euphemism and a superlative and Bond’s your uncle. So of course it was a coup to get the actual Pussy Galore to play this completely new character. Actually in the first instance it would never have worked unless they had Honor Blackman smiling on the bright colour poster to let people know that, okay, they weren’t quite seeing a spin-off of ‘Goldfinger’, but they were seeing the next best thing.
This is one of a number of films that sprang up in the late 1960s to take advantage of James Bond’s popularity. The most famous is, of course, ‘Casino Royale’, the cultural memory of which has not at all been extinguished by the Daniel Craig version, we all still revel in David Niven/Peter Sellers/Woody Allen’s glory and the jaunty Burt Bacharach theme. However, the film this bears closest resemblance to is ‘OK Connery’, the bizarre spoof where Neil Connery plays a spy along with half of the Bond movies regular cast. I say that as showing up as the antagonist here, albeit in a small role, as a humourless and possibly frigid British spy is the one and only Neil Connery. When the British secret service gets the nod that Kitty Spectacular and her troupe of slim, attractive, sexually provocative female pilots are planning to rob the bank in Monte Carlo, they try to stop her. It’s up to Kitty to stay one step ahead and win the day with a saucy wiggle and a feline smile.
(Just as an aside, what must it have been like to be Neil Connery? You have such a resemblance to your famous big brother, but none of the excessive Y chromosome manliness which actually makes the Connery name work. I’m going to guess that the 1960s, although he clearly took advantage of Sean’s success, was a bit of a depressing time for young Neil.)
Much like ‘Agent Marie Lautrec’, this is bizarre, silly and all realised in bright Technicolor. Although here the film seems a lot more self-conscious, as if straining constantly for a higher level of ridiculousness that it has neither the wit nor intelligence to achieve. There are schoolboy assassins, a submarine shaped like a hot-dog, robot duplicates of the world’s leaders and the whole thing ends with the British government planning to stop Kitty Spectacular and her gal-pals by dropping large circus tents onto their planes – which is exactly the kind of scheme some tripping film executives might conceive, but you can’t believe it would really pass muster with the more stuffy mandarins in Whitehall.
I wrote last time about the lesbianism in that film maybe being a French thing, but here it shows up again. Predictably, much like Pussy Galore, Kitty Spectacular has an eye for the ladies. There she is admiring the tight jodhpurs of the girls and telling her favourites that she’ll miss them in a most fulsome way. We even have her waking up next to the young Felicity Kendall (although here the film is oddly coy and suggests they just cuddled). James Bond is obviously a male fantasy, but so are these ladies. It might look from the outside like these female led films are the stuff of feminism (without a doubt this would pass The Bechdel Test), but in reality they’re about tight and skimpy outfits, lipstick lesbianism and allowing boys to be boys. They might look like feminism, but they’ve as much interest in inspiring young women as Maxim Magazine.
Don’t be smug though, if you’ve ever seen either of McG’s ‘Charlie’s Angels’ movies, you’ll know we haven’t moved on that far.
Sunday 4 May 2014
Agent Marie Lautrec (1964)
D. André Hunebelle
Colour
I’ve read in other guides that this is a French James Bond imitation/spoof, but surely it has as much to do with OSS 117 as it does with 007. We might not want to admit it in our smug Anglo-Saxon way, but Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath actually precedes James Bond in both books and films – so maybe we should salute the French for their own originality in this regard. Although given the popularity of the two franchises, let’s make it a small salute. I can see though why the James Bond element is concentrated on more than anything else; as in this zany, Technicolor, bright, loud, flashy and explosive film, we have not only the over the top quality of 1960s Bond spoofs, but also how untethered from reality and ridiculous James Bond would himself become.
Brigitte Bardot, here the sex symbol to end all sex symbols, is our title character: the stunning, super, secret-agent Marie Lautrec. We know how brilliant she is as everybody in the (unnamed) French secret service keeps telling us. However from watching the film, it seems that her main talent is wearing lots of ridiculously tight and skimpy outfits. There she is doing some espionage work while dressed as a French maid (or maybe in the context of this film, just a maid), a Catholic school girl, in a ridiculously low-cut top and tight shorts as a cow-girl, and even for a brief scene as the kind of dominatrix who would give Emma Peel a run for her money. Beyond taking the odd covert picture or listening in to other people’s conversations, there’s little in the way of espionage involved. But hey, ‘Diamonds are Forever’ or ‘Moonraker’ weren’t likely to be shown as MI6 training films either.
The plot is similarly full of Bond spoof ludicrousness, involving as it does flies with cameras on their backs, de-thawed hibernating Nazis who just can’t get their feet warm, robotic dragons piloted by midgets and an attempt to crash the moon into North America. It’s all stupendously and utterly bonkers. This is a movie which would look at the concept of a mad, bald super villain living in a hollowed out volcano and decide it wanted to steer away from such social realism. But then ‘Agent Marie Lautrec’ doesn’t want you to concentrate on the plot, it exists for loud colours, cackling villains and Brigitte Bardot pouting and playing with her hair while dressed in very little.
But elsewhere in the movie we have the odd contrast of the lovely French chanteuse, Francoise Hardy, as a colleague of Bardot’s and a possible double agent. In the restraint of her performance, in how demure her outfits are in comparison with the star, we have a glimpse of a whole other film.
Whereas Bardot is predicting Bond at its most unrestrained, Hardy seems to want to play a part in a particularly dour John Le Carre adaptation. Her more reigned in performance slows the film down and the scenes between her and Bardot are absolutely beautiful. Yes, its style clashing with brassiness, but it’s also that rare moment when the film allows itself to breathe, giving us something actually tense and interesting. Predictably these scenes also have a distinct lesbian edge, which at the time I thought it might just be the French being the French, although as we’ll see in the next film – it was a trait 1960s female-led adventure films seemed really eager to explore.
Colour
I’ve read in other guides that this is a French James Bond imitation/spoof, but surely it has as much to do with OSS 117 as it does with 007. We might not want to admit it in our smug Anglo-Saxon way, but Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath actually precedes James Bond in both books and films – so maybe we should salute the French for their own originality in this regard. Although given the popularity of the two franchises, let’s make it a small salute. I can see though why the James Bond element is concentrated on more than anything else; as in this zany, Technicolor, bright, loud, flashy and explosive film, we have not only the over the top quality of 1960s Bond spoofs, but also how untethered from reality and ridiculous James Bond would himself become.
Brigitte Bardot, here the sex symbol to end all sex symbols, is our title character: the stunning, super, secret-agent Marie Lautrec. We know how brilliant she is as everybody in the (unnamed) French secret service keeps telling us. However from watching the film, it seems that her main talent is wearing lots of ridiculously tight and skimpy outfits. There she is doing some espionage work while dressed as a French maid (or maybe in the context of this film, just a maid), a Catholic school girl, in a ridiculously low-cut top and tight shorts as a cow-girl, and even for a brief scene as the kind of dominatrix who would give Emma Peel a run for her money. Beyond taking the odd covert picture or listening in to other people’s conversations, there’s little in the way of espionage involved. But hey, ‘Diamonds are Forever’ or ‘Moonraker’ weren’t likely to be shown as MI6 training films either.
The plot is similarly full of Bond spoof ludicrousness, involving as it does flies with cameras on their backs, de-thawed hibernating Nazis who just can’t get their feet warm, robotic dragons piloted by midgets and an attempt to crash the moon into North America. It’s all stupendously and utterly bonkers. This is a movie which would look at the concept of a mad, bald super villain living in a hollowed out volcano and decide it wanted to steer away from such social realism. But then ‘Agent Marie Lautrec’ doesn’t want you to concentrate on the plot, it exists for loud colours, cackling villains and Brigitte Bardot pouting and playing with her hair while dressed in very little.
But elsewhere in the movie we have the odd contrast of the lovely French chanteuse, Francoise Hardy, as a colleague of Bardot’s and a possible double agent. In the restraint of her performance, in how demure her outfits are in comparison with the star, we have a glimpse of a whole other film.
Whereas Bardot is predicting Bond at its most unrestrained, Hardy seems to want to play a part in a particularly dour John Le Carre adaptation. Her more reigned in performance slows the film down and the scenes between her and Bardot are absolutely beautiful. Yes, its style clashing with brassiness, but it’s also that rare moment when the film allows itself to breathe, giving us something actually tense and interesting. Predictably these scenes also have a distinct lesbian edge, which at the time I thought it might just be the French being the French, although as we’ll see in the next film – it was a trait 1960s female-led adventure films seemed really eager to explore.
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