Like some of my past visits to South Carolina’s Mensa gathering, when I was chilling in the hotel room I spent some of the time watching random films on Turner Classic Movies. It’s the one cable service I truly miss from giving up cable. As usual, I didn’t get to watch all of anything (I’d anticipated otherwise) and not as much as two years ago.
GOODBYE MR. CHIPS (1969) is based on the novel by James Hilton (probably better remembered for Lost Horizon) following the life of a boys’ school teacher from his rookie days through becoming an aging icon. For whatever reason, this one was made as a musical, whether to distinguish it from the Robert Donat 1939 version or because (as discussed in the excellent book Pictures at a Revolution) the success of Mary Poppins and Sound of Music had convinced the studios that big-budget musicals were fashionable again. That conviction led to a lot of musical flops of which this is one: Peter O’Toole is good as the teacher, pop singer Petula Clarke is much less effective as the stage star who becomes his wife and the songs, at least those I caught, are forgettable. “Take it back and buy something appropriate to a schoolteacher’s salary.”
THE SCARLET COAT (1955) stars Cornell Wilde as a Revolutionary War spy mingling with loyalists in the hopes of identifying a suspected traitor in the American ranks only to discover to his dismay it’s the least likely suspect imaginable (“General Arnold’s name is second only to Washington’s!”). With George Sanders as a sneering spymaster and Anne Francis as a cynical loyalist. “I won’t join your company of gallant fools.”
Howard Hawks’ RED LINE 7000 (1965) is nowhere near as cool as that poster makes it look. In fact it’s not cool at all. In fact, as Films of Howard Hawks says, it’s Hawks’ worst film.
The story concerns the various drivers working for a stock car team — a young James Caan is the biggest name — the women who want them and the problems that keep getting in the way of true love (plus there’s some racing). One woman is convinced her love is a jinx killing the drivers who fall for her. An ambitious stock car driver finds romance with the owner’s sister but he wants more of everything, including women. A French flirt with too many men in her past worries that she’s never known love. Caan falls for said flirt but he wants to marry a good girl and doesn’t think she qualifies.
This is all serviceable material but the movie just goes through the motions. As Donald Willis puts it in Films, it feels like they randomly match up boys, girls and problems, then reshuffle them to make it all come out right; the owner’s sister finds true love but I don’t remember her HEA boyfriend ever talking to her. The characters are forgettable, the acting is meh — you wouldn’t think Caan had a big career ahead of him — and the movie throws in a musical number “Wildcat Jones” which has no need to be there, or anywhere else. “I read in a book that if love makes sense, it isn’t love.”
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