House of Strangers (1949), Joseph L Mankiewicz.

Joe Monetti (R, Luther Adler) asks Max Monetti (Richard Conte) if he can remind their father to follow through on that raise he promised.

House of Strangers is an ambitious and mostly successful family saga of  four first-generation Italian-American brothers and the expectations of their domineering Old World father.  Edward G Robinson plays the patriarch Gino Moretti, a banker who has grown rich providing loans to Mulberry Street immigrants.  Three of the four brothers migrate into the family business but Max Monetti (Richard Conte) has struck out on his own and practices law.  Luther Adler is a very natural performer as Joe Monetti, the eldest brother.  Although Joe is cowed by his father, he follows closely in his footsteps.  His self-perception as a dutiful, pious son leads him to resent his father's preference for Max who stays aloof and remains free from family obligations.  When Gino Moretti finds his business endangered by a legal scandal, the family begins to fracture, the underlying bitterness between the brothers threatening to destroy all relationships.  Another somewhat disconnected subplot involves the romance between Max Monetti and Irene Bennett, played by Susan Hayward.  The two are well-paired: both are sophisticated and charismatic and their brittle dialogue is very noir.  However, Hayward remains irrelevant to the Shakespearean plot.

Unfortunately, Robinson just about torpedoes the whole movie with his cringeworthy "Chef Boyardee" accent.  His performance is believable and even sympathetic in spots (I would argue Luther Adler is the film's true antagonist, not Robinson).  I was surprised that by 1949, it was still fine to play the ethnic role so broadly in a serious drama (Robinson was doing much the same thing as Portuguese fisherman Mike Mascarenhas way back in 1932, almost twenty years earlier).  But the cruder aspects of the characterization of both the mother and father in this Italian family didn't strike contemporary viewers as offbeat.  A New York Times review from 1949 describes the household as "a sizzling and picturesque exposure of a segment of nouveau-riche life within the Italian-American population" (Bosley Crowthers, July 2, 1949).  The vulgarity on display was to Crowthers apt and appropriate to the story - maybe comparable to a Paulie Walnuts type caricature pulled just little more out of shape?  I particularly enjoyed it when Joe Monetti's wife complains she doesn't like spaghetti, and Robinson mocks her. "Oh, it makes-a your stomach seeeeck, does it?" he says disgustedly.  

Now that's a plate of spaghetti!  Joe Monetti (Luther Adler) and his mangia-cake wife Elaine (Diana Douglas) look on.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), Richard Fleischer.

What are you implying?  I'm just whittling my harpoon over here.

I love Kirk Douglas.  He's so goddamn enthusiastic!  It's as if he savours every breath he takes, and I doubt it was just the ham acting -- he always strikes me as a guy who grabbed what he could lay his hands on and enjoyed every minute of it.  Now let's picture 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea without Kirk Douglas.  Pretty lame, huh?  Discounting a seal named Esmerelda and two prostitutes that appear briefly in the first scene, we have an entirely male cast (all the shots on the first ship look like gay Victorian erotica, what with all the bearded sailors).   Captain Nemo (James Mason looking, as someone commented to me, "like a shorn Wayne Coyne,") is a misanthropic submarine despot and Peter Lorre just looks depressed.  Was 20,000 Leagues a proto-tent pole summer flick? It's a little boy escapist fantasy and is kitted out with super gadgets and explosions.  I am curious about the technical aspects and whether they furthered the artform at all, what with all the models, wide shots and undersea filming.  But when those end credits rolled, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of despair and my ass was seeing stars.  

Counsellor-at-Law (1933), William Wyler.

 

Secretary walks by...

It's booty appreciation time!

John Barrymore is a lawyer who, having arrived in New York "by steerage" many years before, has a soft heart for penniless immigrant clients but charges the Mayflower sons and daughters a little more to get them out of their scrapes.  Counsellor-at-Law is a fascinating film that makes explicit statements about the clash between the well-heeled WASPS and those still climbing the ladder to prosperity.  Issues like ethnicity and money are pretty much laid on the table as is, there's more than a little sexual innuendo.  Barrymore even slams a door to muffle a cuss word.  How fun!  True or not, these less censored films make us feel closer to the time and place they came from.  Sure, I know it's all scripted (and based on a successful stage play) but it's just refreshing to witness an honest reaction (and to wonder if the receptionist is knocked up)!  A contemporary review of the screen version pointed out that some bits were cut in order to be suitable for moviegoers, but that "where this occurs, Mr [Elmer] Rice [the screenwriter and original playwright] and the director, William Wyler, leave nothing in doubt."  Guess I'll have to dig the script up to verify all my hunches!

Barrymore is enjoyable and surprisingly restrained as the man whose life becomes unravelled when he is threatened with being disbarred from legal practice.  Retaining a stage-like feel, all the action is limited to the glittering Art Deco waiting room and offices of the Simon and Tedesco firm, which is filled with a handful of delightful female characters.  Bebe Daniels is Barrymore's saintly secretary who quietly pines for him while gritting her teeth at the sight of his obnoxious wife (Dora Kenyon).  Isabel Jewell is the squawking receptionist who eats tongue sandwich for lunch.  Paul Muni had played the lead role successful on stage and later reprised the role for radio in 1935.  I'm still waiting for the delivery of the Muni biography I just ordered, so I don't know yet why he didn't also appear in the movie.   

Bebe Daniels the ever devoted secretary "Rexy", patiently waits for Mrs Simon (played by Dora Kenyon) to finish her telephone conversation before she can begin typing again.

Il Divo (2008), Paolo Sorrentino.

Toni Servillo as Giulio Andreotti

2008 was a great year for Italian film. Matteo Garrone released the beautiful and disturbing Gomorrah which attacked the squalid, mafia-run suburban ghettos of Naples.  Paolo Sorrentino released Il Divo, a study of Italy's long time Premier Giulio Andreotti and his inability to separate power from evil.  Even cooler, Andreotti was still around - Garrone did all this while the old fart was still alive!  I was hoping for a Silvio Berlusconi cameo, but no dice.

Il Divo is gorgeous, draped in rich colours.  It's visually clever.  Toni Servillo plays Andreotti almost puppet-like:  hunched, with flattened ears and a mask-like face, he shuffles slowly, talks slowly and never makes eye contact.  How can this guy be the biggest badass in Italy!  The setting is the early 1990s, during Andreotti's trial for mafia connections and the murder of journalist Mino Pecorelli.  Andreotti's dubious contacts (with the mafia, the Vatican, the "Propaganda Due" or "P2" pseudo-Masonic secret lodge) accrete, attracting unwanted publicity and leaving Andreotti with cripping headaches.  The disturbing feeling I was left with after watching this film, was that perhaps power and evil are inseparable.  I couldn't help but ask myself, how does one rule Italy without consorting with the Mafia?  At home in unexciting Canada - can we be so naive as to believe politicians can remain in power for years and be innocent (if not of murder, of other lesser transgressions)?  During the last election, it was revealed that our (now newly re-elected) Prime Minister Stephen Harper's chief policy analyst Bruce Carson had a lengthy rap sheet for fraud convictions and was involved in various shady financial projects.  Carson was known as "the Fixer" or "the Mechanic."  Middle-aged Carson's 22-year old "fiancee" (previously an escort) benefited financially from some of Carson's businesses.  Nevertheless, hey, we elected them all back into power, this time with a majority.  But I digress...

While I'm not current on Italian politics, this film is masterful enough to reach beyond the topical and had me engrossed.  Please Garrone:  go after Berlusconi now!  He must be close to the end of his farcical career and ready for the same treatment! 

Member of the Andreotti faction of the Christian Democrats:  "The Shark"/ "Lo squalo"

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973), Peter Yates.

Shady deals in grocery store parking lots

Eddie's friends are kind of losers.  Eddie (Robert Mitchum) is an aging crook, wheeling and dealing to get out of a charge of being caught with stolen goods.  He loses whatever remaining dignity he has with each agreement. This film crawls but is broken up by bursts of action.  Sit back and enjoy the the ambiance: mundane and garish Boston, in 1973. You'll think you're in a Stephen Shore photograph.  

5th Street and Broadway, Eureka California, Stephen Shore (1974).

A Child of the Century (1954), Ben Hecht.

"I intend to write an autobiography of my mind," is how Hecht begins his massive, 600+ page autobiography.  As though stunned by this concept, and hoping to avoid the readers' expectations of an autobiographer to "be a chronologically-minded fellow, to get himself born, baptized and surrounded by relatives in orderly sequence," Hecht immediately spins off in all directions, devoting small chunks of writing to such thoughts about the inspirational qualities of the Pacific Ocean and whether there is a God.

I had sought out this book because Hecht is the writer of so many wonderful films, starting with the first gangster film Underworld and ending with His Girl Friday.  Hecht is true to his word; this is not a book pitched to movie lovers.  Despite his long involvement writing for movies, he leaves the discussion of his scriptwriting career to the penultimate section of the book, and starts it by declaring that "the movies are one of the bad habits that corrupted our century."  The clash between Hollywood's hyper sexualized society and hypocritically moralistic strictures for its films were repugnant to Hecht.  His close friend Herman Mankiewicz, who got him into Hollywood in the first place, summarized the Production Code for him this way: "in a novel a hero can lay ten girls and marry a virgin for a finish.  In a movie this is not allowed...the villain can lay anybody he wants, have as much fun as he wants cheating and stealing, getting rich and whipping the servants.  But you have to shoot him in the end."  After a moment of contemplation, Hecht decided: "The thing to do was to skip the heroes and heroines, to write a movie containing only villains and bawds.  I would not have to tell any lies."

His remarkable career began as a sixteen year old gofer for the Chicago Daily News;  next desk over was  Carl Sandburg.  It seems that as well as hiring contemplative lefty poets, early journalism practices included just making stories up, like the one about runaway streetcars (which appeared on the front page)!  When the complaints rolled in, Hecht's superior simply huffed back at the streetcar people: "Your organization, sir, is already in sufficiently bad odor with its grafted franchises and boodle politics.  I advise you not to add to your crimes that of libel against the press.  And in conclusion I can tell you, I would rather take the word of any of my reporters than the sworn testimony of all the millionaires of Chicago."  Hecht's newspaper days were a strange education for a wild teenager.  Hecht migrated to New York and eventually to Hollywood.  Never a particularly religious man, Hecht later became a strong Zionist later in life and devoted much of his time promoting postwar Jewish interests.  While I found the book weighed down by dross here and there (he tends to rely on aphorisms and make pronouncements), Hecht certainly can write and A Child of the Century is a vivid portrayal of life in the very exciting first half the twentieth century.  I was glad he loved John Barrymore so much; Twentieth Century fit the world-weary boozehound perfectly.  

Corregidor (1943), William Nigh.

Look, honey!  We're in the "Philippines"!

Corregidor is an ambitious production from poverty row studio PRC, telling the story of the attack of the strategic American post also known as "The Rock" by the Japanese in 1941.  A lively cast keeps this one going, even though the sets are threadbare (they are passable for dimly lit trench scenes, but make scenic views look sad and hokey).  Elissa Landi's beautiful smile buoys a small romantic subplot: does she love the man she just married (the always dignified Otto Kruger) or her old boyfriend, known only as "Dr Michael" (played without much magnetism by Donald Woods)?  (I would have stuck with Kruger).  A physician who has abandoned her career, she surprises one of her love interests by trekking thousands of miles from the US and surprising him with a proposal of marriage.  The story, partially written by Edward G Ulmer, focuses on the hastily assembled, poorly equipped medical team that attends to those wounded by the surprise attack.  The script throws everything at us, and isn't shy about the ugly truths of war. Corregidor is an interesting attempt to tell a current-events story and while it's no Bataan, I'll damn it with faint praise:  it's not a complete stinker!

"You have her, she likes you best, Dr. Michael."  "No, no, I insist, old man."

When Strangers Marry / Betrayed (1941) William Castle.

Taking a schvitz at the Hotel Seymour

When Strangers Marry is one of those standout poverty row productions worth catching.  It marks Robert Mitchum's breakaway from background roles in B-westerns.  Here, he's one of the leading players. The film is visually engaging and covers a lot of ground in only 67 minutes.  Light and space are well taken advantage of, efficiently communicating emotional tone and propelling the action.  It struck me that some of the creative tricks seen in this film may have come from Hitchcock's bag:  cinematographer Ira H Morgan uses scene transitions reminiscent of those that gave Rope (a later film, 1948) its uninterrupted, theatrical flow.  And we see the same device in this movie that was used in The 39 Steps (1935) where a panicked housemaid's scream melds into the sound of a train whistle.    

Kim Hunter plays a naive young woman from small-town Ohio who has married a traveling salesman (Dean Jagger) she barely knows.  When he does not appear as expected at a hotel rendezvous in New York, she turns to old buddy Robert Mitchum to track his whereabouts.  Hunter's character is very similar to the one she played the year before in Val Lewton's The Seventh Victim:  a fresh-faced innocent who quickly adapts to strange and serious circumstances.  

One remarkable scene has Hunter and Jagger abruptly dropped off in Harlem, where they try not to attract the attention of the law!  I can't point to any other films of this time with an entire scene full of African Americans (excluding films expressly made for and by the community, like the films of Herb Jeffries).  And my first reaction was how modern the scene looks and sounds, despite the ultra-40s jazz music and dancing.  It's a full room of folks socializing, with the NYPD guys on motorbikes out front chatting about the big fight that was just won by a local champ.  And just look at this guy (below)!  He's not even credited but I have the feeling Mitchum was lucky not to be in this scene, because there might have been way too much hepcat vibe for one room to contain! Once Hunter and Jagger sneak off, we're firmly back in the past again, following their adventures in a wholly caucasian America. 

Dancing in a Harlem club

 Cops chatting about the big fight while our white bread couple sneaks past

When Strangers Marry is in some ways just another 40s crime themed B-noir, likely more famous today because of Mitchum's presence.  As a whole package though, this one remains fun.  William Castle called it the best movie he ever made.  

Hollywood Babylon II (1984), Kenneth Anger.

Deeply enjoyed thinking about Hollywood Babylon II.  Lavishly illustrated with very revealing photos, it brazenly trumpets, like it's sitting there on the tabloid rack daring you to pick up a copy.  If you're willing to, you'll get more than Star Jones' butt cellulite -- Hollywood Babylon II includes graphic photos of the bisected corpse of the Black Dahlia scattered on the grass of an empty lot, as well as explicit pics of Joan Crawford.  I love you, Kenneth Anger, for throwing it back at me.  

I'm new to Anger, but fascinated.  Known for his own body of "underground" art films, Anger personifies the personal connections we make with movie stars.   "I firmly intended to approach my idols as their equal," he says, in a documentary based on the Hollywood Babylon book series. "After all, I too had once acted in a Hollywood movie.  I was on the fringe of the movie industry and I appeared as a child in A Midsummer Night's Dream.  I can still smell the soundstage because it was lit by very hot lights and everything reeked of shellac, because everything was sprayed by Hal Mohr so all the trees would glisten.  And it's a rather intoxicating smell and it was a rather wonderful thing for a four year old kid to work in because for a four year old, it was gigantic."  For the record, there's people out there that simply don't believe that was him in A Midsummer Night's Dream.  I don't think I buy everything in Hollywood Babylon II, despite all the photographs, yet I believe in classic movies: they produce a fabulous past in the same way I am promised a fabulous afterlife by religion. "My grandmother had given me her habit of using that genteel euphemism ["passed on"], and I didn't know any better," Anger writes.  "For a long time, like Grandmother, I didn't believe in death.  It was just a transition, a special-effect lap dissolve, and I really believed that when it would be my turn later on, I'd finally get to meet Mabel Normand, Barbara LaMarr and Rodolfo Valentino."  

George Raft, Marlene Dietrich and Edward G Robinson. Manpower publicity still, 1941.

I'll admit it.  I'm the only girl who has ever searched for Edward G Robinson on nerdboyfriend.com.  He's not there.