Category Archives: Movies

November 9, 2024 · 5:15 am

A vicar, a fish and a grandchild: TV and movies

The fourth and final season of VICAR OF DIBLEY wasn’t a season so much as a series of specials over 2004-2007. At the end of the previous season, Gerry (Dawn French) and her friends had staved off plans to drown Dibley under a reservoir. Now it’s four years later: Gerry’s still hunting a significant other, the village is becoming more of a bedroom community for London commuters (though this doesn’t figure into the plot), Alice and Hugo have ten kids and the regular cast are as loonie as ever. The season finalé has Gerry finally getting married and it’s a very funny one to go out on. If you find this streaming (it’s on Britbox) I recommend it highly. “You would owe me the sum of one kiss — with tongues.”

There’s an old line to the effect that comedy is very close to tragedy and A FISH CALLED WANDA (1988) is a good example. The plot has seductive Wanda (Jamie Lee Curtis), animal lover Ken (Michael Palin), and sociopathic philosophy fan Otto (Kevin Kline) embroiled in a diamond robbery scheme with a $20 million payout. Otto and Wanda double-cross their boss (Tom Georgeson) only to discover he’s not hidden the diamonds where they thought. Now what?

The solution? Wanda vamps his attorney, Archie Leach (John Cleese) to learn whatever he knows. That’s the perfect set-up for a film noir in which betrayal piles on betrayal, some of the characters end up dead or in jail and Archie (Archie Leach was Cary Grant’s birth name — Cleese says he was surprised so many people caught the joke) winds up brokenhearted and ruined. Instead it’s a goofball farce where the beats are funny (I even laughed when dogs are supposedly killed and that’s rare), and the dialog hysterical (“The London Underground is not a revolutionary movement!”).

The special features are great. Cleese, who wrote the script, discusses director Charles Crichton and why his use of long shots works so well with farce, as well as the changes to make Wanda/Archie a romance arc. The original ending would have been very noir, clearly setting up that Wanda double-crosses Archie; the screenwriter Robert Towne convinced Cleese a more romantic ending would work better. The same cast later reunited for Fierce Creatures. “You came loping in like Rambo without a jockstrap!”

While reserving the Jerry Lewis and Eddie Murphy versions of The Nutty Professor at the library, I discovered a 2008 animated sequel to the Lewis film, also called THE NUTTY PROFESSOR. Teenage Harold Kelp (Drake Bell) is the grandson to Julius Kelp (Lewis — I assumed it was recycled audio, then I remembered he was alive in 2008), attending his academy for science nerds. An awkward, never-been-kissed kid, he’s convinced he’ll never get to first base with the girl he’s crushing on, then he discovers his grandfather’s formula for unleashing the cooler, better you inside. Despite warnings from some guy named Buddy Love (Lewis again) that it won’t work, he quaffs the formula …

I’ll have more thoughts about this after I watch the original (it was an impulse purchase, so to speak) but I give it points for showing Harold’s alt.self Jack does have good qualities which Harold uses in the climax to save the day. I do wish we’d gotten a follow-up on Julius’ love interest from the original film (“You don’t have to be someone else to get the girl, Harold. Trust me on this.”). “It’s only seven people, that’s not a mob — oh, wait, one of them has a pitchfork.”

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November 7, 2024 · 5:23 am

Being a guy shouldn’t be this hard

(I wrote this before the election so I have no idea how it turned out or anything to say about it. Yet).

The point of writing about Undead Sexist Cliches is that we’ve been fighting the same battles since I was a kid and often longer — that women aren’t slutty if they have premarital sex, that having jobs, even in STEM, aren’t unwomanly (case in point, these two young women) that a woman doesn’t have to be a stay-at-home mom. And contrary to JD Vance, it’s okay if you choose to be a childless cat lady.

The same applies to male stereotypes — THE MASK YOU LIVE IN (2015) and its critique of American manhood could have come out in the 1970s just as easily as the issues are the same. To wit, that manhood is something guys (don’t be weak, never cry in public, bros before ho’s) constantly have to prove and can never be secure in, so that even success is constricting. Depressing though it has plenty of discussion of solutions (A coach can make an incredible difference in boys’ lives.”). “‘Be a man’ — that’s one of the most destructive phrases in our society, I believe.”

Writer Ruth Whippman says even reframing masculinity toward positive qualities and away from toxic ones can turn out badly because it still implies masculinity is mandatory: “If we have to attach the label “masculine” to a behavior before it can have value to men, then we are subtly communicating that embracing anything associated with women is a demotion, even an indignity. “Positive masculinity” is not about de-gendering universal human qualities, and certainly not about encouraging boys to believe that they could have something to learn from women or female cultural norms. It’s more an attempt to scrub away the humiliating stain of womanhood from any trait or behavior before letting boys anywhere near it.”

If you’re a man in a conservative church, Ryan George writes, supporting women victimized by predators is hard too: “Few Christian men want to go on record with their opinions. Few of the men in my parachurch Bible study seem comfortable with my passion for the topic, despite the number of them who have daughters, nieces, and granddaughters. I get it. It puts church-going men in an awkward position.” George, whose father was a predator, has a good post on the excuses men give for ignoring the crimes and also supporting the convicted rapist leading the Republican ticket.

To leave on an unintentionally funny note, serial adulterer Newt Gingrich scoffs that “I’m gonna look for what manliness looks like, to George Clooney? A Hollywood jackass spoiled elitist? No thank you. He’s no John Wayne.” [Let us pause and note that John Wayne was a professional actor just like Clooney, not a Western or war hero] Because a guy who’s never accomplished anything but being a loudmouth jackass of a politician is a symbol of manliness? And while Wayne could play flawed characters (e.g., Sands of Iwo Jima), I don’t recall the John Wayne character including “gave my wife divorce papers while she was in the hospital.”

For more on the stupidity of gender essentialism, check out Undead Sexist Cliches, available for ebook or in paperback.

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November 6, 2024 · 5:04 am

Did Jekyll or Hyde win the White House — wait, that’s not my topic

Rewatching THE TWO FACES OF DR. JEKYLL (1960) I find it has more good points than I remembered. As Hyde, star Paul Massie is stiff and awkward enough to fit the concept of Hyde a normal looking man who makes everyone uncomfortable, though I suspect it’s Massie being a stiff actor rather than design. And the ending inverts the usual set up by having Hyde terrified Jekyll is going to take control of their body from him.

None of that, however, makes it work better than the last time I watched it. The concept is that Jekyll’s obsessively working on his mad-science research and neglecting his wife Kitty (Dawn Addams), who’s found refuge in the arms of Jekyll’s buddy Paul (Christopher Lee) who has no qualms asking Jekyll to cover his debts, then jumping Mrs. Jekyll. When, as Hyde, Jekyll learns the truth, he sets out to get his own wife as his mistress but things don’t go as planned …

While the idea of Hyde lusting for Jekyll’s woman goes back to the Victorian stage, Kitty’s faithlessness and Hyde’s desire to win her rather than rape her could have made this interesting, a triangle in which two points are the same person. Unfortunately that would require much more development of the Jekylls than we get. Dawn Addams’s Kitty is flat and we never learn whether she once loved her husband or was always going to stray on him. Nor do we learn what Jekyll’s feelings are beyond possessive, though I do like that he’s incapable of figuring Kitty out in either persona (“You overestimate my freedom from convention Mr. Hyde.”). Like The Ugly Duckling, Hammer flopped with this treatment of Stevenson. ”I don’t have your highly laudable respect for life, Jekyll.”

ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE (1958) was a typical flop by low-budget filmmaker Bert I. Gordon, though lord knows he’s done worth. A woman working for lonely puppeteer John Hoyt discovers he’s creating his own found family by shrinking people (including her and boyfriend John Agar) and keeping them in bottles to uncork for special events. Hoyt gives an above-average performance for a Gordon film though Agar as the hero is stiff as he always is. This got my attention because Hoyt stages a Jekyll and Hyde puppet show at one point, though not significant enough to justify inclusion in my book. “You don’t want to meet your fiancee wearing nothing but a napkin do you?”

Switching to other media, I caught a brief BENNY HILL SHOW skit in which superheroic Wonder Gran takes on Dr. Jackal and Mr. Hide (both Hill), a rather werewolf-like take on the character; given the usual nudge-nudge wink-wink of Hill’s shows, it’s surprising the villain is just a crook (Jackal shows more lechery).

I also caught a late 1941 JACK BENNY SHOW in which Jack plays both Jekyll and Hyde; while nothing in it provokes deep insight, it’s certainly funny, including that everyone around Jekyll knows he’s two people. The follow up, Dr. Hyde and Mr. Jekyll, reverses things by having Jell-O (the sponsor) turn the grumpy Hyde into sunny Mr. Jekyll. It’s also very obvious there’s more visual humor pitched at the studio audience than I’d expect in radio. “This is Mr. Hyde’s office — no he isn’t in, and if he was, heaven help you!”

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November 2, 2024 · 5:15 am

Let’s remember Abbot and Costello, shall we?

To get a copy of Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and My. Hyde I had to order a set of Abbott and Costello DVDs. This past week, I watched the rest of the set, starting with ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE KEYSTONE KOPS (1955). The story has the boys as wannabe actors in the early 1920s, scammed out of five grand by a con man (Fred Clark). He flees to Hollywood with his lover (Lynn Bari) and reinvents himself as a European director; penniless, they travel across country in pursuit, catch up to him and end up as stuntmen on his new film. Hilary ensues — no, it really does, this is a good one. Though much more of the humor focuses on the cross-country trip than the Keystone Kops, a knockabout slapstick troop wildly popular in that era; director Charles Lamont had cut his teeth working on their shorts, however, and wanted to pay tribute. By a happy coincidence the shorts started airing in syndication, which refamiliarized people with the Kops and made the movie that much more profitable. “I was wrestling with my conscience — and I won.”

The comedy duo returned to their “Meet” movies with ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE MUMMY (1955) in which, through the usual dumb luck, they acquire a sacred amulet showing the way to a lost Egyptian treasure. That makes them of interest to mercenary Marie Windsor and a mummy-worshipping cult led by Richard Deacon (later Mel on Dick Van Dyke) and Michael Ansara. The mummy is almost an afterthought but this is a funny one, though also the end of their profitable partnership with Universal (they wanted more money to reup with a new contract; the studio balked). “How can my shovel be your pick?”

By the 1960s, comedy compilations of the great silent comics had introduced a new generation to Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton. Universal got in on the game with THE WORLD OF ABBOTT AND COSTELLO (1965), a compilation of some of their greatest hits (including Who’s on First and the Susquehanna Hat Company from In Society) framed rather awkwardly as a biopic. Enjoyable, though i wasn’t quite in the mood to appreciate it. “Okay, loan me $40 now and give me the other ten when you have it.”

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET JERRY SEINFELD (1994) is another Greatest Moments compilation hosted by guess-who. While I find Seinfeld as uninteresting as I always did, this does a better job of giving their actual career and the joys of working in live TV (“After years before the camera they were finally back where they wanted to be, before a live audience.”). And I do like Seinfeld’s point that the duo’s performances are a time capsule showing what burlesque comedy was like. “The Japanese high command screened Abbott and Costello routines for their troops, telling them they were typical American GIS.”

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE MONSTERS (2000) is a Universal Behind the Scenes special feature for this DVD set, with David Skal and a co-author of Abbott and Costello in Hollywood giving behind the scenes details on Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and an overview of the duo’s career. The best of these three documentaries.

As A&C started in burlesque, I checked out BEHIND THE BURLY Q (2010) in which striptease artists, burlesque comedians and their kids (plus the inevitable talking heads) recount the development of burlesque (“The shows were vaudeville with boobies.”), the great dancers, backstage feuds, growing up backstage (Alan Alda, whose father started out as a burlesque straight man), personal anecdotes (Blaze Starr turned down bedding JFK in favor of Earl Long) and the genre’s slow withering in the face of competition from porn and television, plus the lack of a Next Generation of comics. Very good. “There was always a little boy, nine years old, with a water pistol.”

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October 30, 2024 · 5:31 am

Jekyll and Hyde get animated, and Stooged

First some cartoons—PRIZE PEST (1951) has Daffy Duck becoming an obnoxious guest at Porky Pig’s house, then avoiding eviction by faking “the Jekyll and Hyde routine” to persuade Porky not to upset him—said routine involving a wig of wild hair and fangs. A “name only” cartoon. “Have you got a convertible coop? Because I’m a convertible duck!”

HARE REMOVER (1954) is another No for the book — Elmer Fudd’s trying to create a drug that will turn a man into a fiend, and when a bear wanders into his lab, Bugs assumes it’s a transformed Fudd (Elmer makes the same mistake). Not Jekyll and Hyde at all.

DR. JERKYL’S HIDE (1955) definitely qualifies: a British Brute Dog and his bouncy sidekick chase Sylvester the cat into Dr. Jerkyl’s laboratory where the cat quaffs a fizzy drink for refreshment … as the effect on Sylvester come and go, the Brute becomes astonished when his sidekick handles the monster so easily. Another one I’ve seen before. “Alfie’s my hero, because he’s so big and strong.”

Watching multiple Looney Tunes takes on Jekyll and Hyde made me appreciate randomly flipping from Wimp to Monster is a staple comic shtick. In HYDE AND HARE (1955), kindly Dr. Jekyll invites Bugs into house but can’t resist his addiction to his favorite drink … and so we have Bugs running from Hyde (green skin, muscles, red eyes) while trying to protect Jekyll whenever Hyde turns back. “It’s funny you should call me a doctor because you know, I am one.”

HYDE AND GO TWEET (1960) has Sylvester napping outside Dr. Jekyll’s office when Tweety flies down and in the subsequent chase, hides inside a bottle of Hyde Potion. At this point, the comic effect of the switching is largely used up, a perennial problem with watching films for my books.

HYDE AND SNEAK (1962) is my first encounter with Inspector Willoughby, a supporting character in various Walter Lantz cartoons such as Woody Woodpecker but also starring in his own ‘toons. In this installment he’s hunting sexy criminal Vampira Hyde (presumably modeled on Vampira, the TV movie host, but she looks like Natasha Fatale) but keeps running afoul of her ability to turn into an innocuous little old lady. Forgettable. “Now to set the trap for Vampira Hyde.”

DR. DEVIL AND MR. HARE (1964) sounds like it’d be Jekyll and Hyde but no — it has Bugs thwarting the Tasmanian Devil by variously posing as a maternity nurse, a surgeon and a psychiatrist before building a Frankenstein creature that beats up both antagonists.

SPOOKS (1953) is a Three Stooges short (the Shemp/Moe/Larry era) with a Dr. Jekyll but he’s a generic mad scientist plotting to trade a girl’s brain with a gorilla’s. As I’m not a Three Stooges fan, the only thing of note was that it was very obviously shot in 3D — but it definitely qualifies. “Don’t be ridiculous — haunted houses have bats!”


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October 26, 2024 · 5:29 am

A womanizer, a hero, a doomsday bomb: movies viewed

Francois Truffaut opens THE MAN WHO LOVED WOMEN (1977) with that eponymous figure’s (Charles Denner) funeral, attended entirely by women. We then bounce around in time as Bertrand pursues, admires, ogles or flirts endlessly, the only consistency being that he won’t commit (which he blames on losing Great Love Leslie Caron) — though a lot of the women are fine with that. I found this one a charming comedy even though it’s extremely stalkery, like the elaborate strategy he uses to find Nathalie Baye in the opening segment. “Women’s legs are compasses that circle the globe and give it balance and harmony.”

Alvin York was a man who had one of those stranger-than-fiction lives: backwoods Tennessee hellraiser turned pacifist churchgoer, decided after much soul-searching not to claim Conscientious Objector status in WW I, then went on to capture more than 100 German prisoners in one battle. In 1941, with a new war on the horizon, he agreed to let Warner Brothers make the biopic SERGEANT YORK, which despite being set in WW I is very much about Why We Need To Fight in WW II.

Howard Hawks directs the story which spends most of its time on York (Gary Cooper) in Tennessee, which means lots of familiar film stereotypes about the simple, plainspun mountain folk (particullarly post-war when York is awestruck by his exposure to civilization). It’s an odd entry in Hawks’ canon: none of the grim fatality of The Dawn Patrol, nor the tough professionalism of many of his male heroes. Though that said, York’s matter-of-fact practical approach to capturing the Germans isn’t that far off. JW Williamson’s Hillbillyland does a good job situating the film in mountain-folk tropes (the nice guy who won’t fight until he has to, for example), dismissing stories about the movie (no, he says, York did not demand Gary Cooper play him) and pointing out York was considerably less the naive simpleton than he’s portrayed. Walter Brennan plays York’s wise old preacher. “It appears that a fella’s got to have his roots planted in something besides himself.”

TYG and my date movie last weekend was THE MOUSE THAT ROARED (1959), an adaptation of Leonard Wibberly’s novel about how Grand Fenwick, the world’s smallest country, declared war on the United States with an eye to how generously America would invest in them after the war. Only thanks to a quirk of fate and the world’s most powerful nuclear bomb, they won …

Peter Sellers plays Tully, the somewhat clueless protagonist, as well as the scheming Prime Minister and the reigning duchess of Grand Fenwick, aided and abetted by Leo McKern (another scheming politician), First Doctor William Hartnell (Tully’s no-nonsense sidekick) and Jean Seberg as a scientist’s beautiful daughter. This is fluff, but it’s fluff I’m fond of. “It’s shameful that Grand Fenwick sent us a declaration of war and it took the FBI to find it!”

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October 23, 2024 · 5:15 am

Jekyll and Hyde do comedy!

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1953) was Boris Karloff’s only turn as Jekyll (Hyde was played by his stuntman). It was one of seven movies Abbott and Costello released in 1953, four of them rereleases, due to the smash success of their TV show. Unfortunately, much as I love their comedy, this is one of their weaker ones.

Tubby and Slim (Lou Costello, Bud Abbott) are American cops training at Scotland Yard. “The Monster” is a serial killer striking apparently at random, looking a lot like Hyde from the 1932 Fredric March version (though a bit more werewolf-ish). As the inept Yanks aren’t impressing anyone, they figure capturing the Monster will turn things around. No way that could go wrong, right?

The Monster, of course, is Dr. Jekyll. He tells the police at one point that he’s working on a drug to nullify humanity’s propensity for violence. He’s also using the drug to turn into the Monster; the murder we see at the start of the movie was a fellow scientist who scoffed at Jekyll’s theories. We never really learn how this happened — unlike most movies, he’s already transformed when the series starts. Is he lying to the cops? Did he test on himself and become addicted to killing his enemies? We never really learn. We do see that he has some regular mad-science weirdness going on: he has a rabbit in his lab he’s endowed with the bark and aggression of an angry dog.

Further complicating things, Jekyll’s in love with his ward Vicky (Helen Westcott) and she’s fallen in love with reporter Bruce Adams (Craig Stevens). Vicky’s a suffragette which the movie mines for a lot of dated comedy; she’s also a can-can dancer in a music hall which makes the Good Girl the equivalent of the Bad Girl in earlier adaptations. The end result is forgettable — though I’ll note that this and Horrors of the Black Museum are the first adaptations to use injections rather than a drinkable drug. “Is it true you’ve been experimenting with weird drugs that change humans into animals?”

Hammer Studios isn’t associated with comedy but they did several mostly adapted from TV Britcoms. One of them, 1957’s I Only Arsked — based on the military sitcom The Army Game — showcased Bernard Bresslaw as a gormless private, did very well and inspired Hammer to do a follow-up comedy film for him. By some alchemy that became the Jekyll and Hyde version THE UGLY DUCKLING (1959).

As clueless dork Edward Jeckle (their spelling), Bresslaw is a complete embarrassment to his siblings, who have hopes of someday rising in society; bad enough they’re stuck with those awful stories about their ancestor but Edward’s a complete joke to everyone. Then he discovers a copy of Dr. Jekyll’s formula, guaranteed to turn a timid man into a confident tiger. Taking it creates “Teddy” Hyde (a reference to the Teddy Boys, flashily dressed punks of the era), a coolly confident but completely amoral character. So amoral that when he discovers the manager of the local Palais (dance halls, really a big deal back in that era — though in the 1960s, night clubs and discos would squeeze them out) is plotting a jewelry heist he deals himself in.

When his brother (Jon Pertwee) and potential girlfriend (Jean Muir) discover this, they’re horrified and Edward winds up having to undo the robbery by restoring the gems (in a nice twist, the girlfriend points out that whatever he can do as Teddy, he can do as himself). The end result relies heavily on Bresslaw’s appeal as a leading man and he doesn’t have much. Nor does the film really explore how it feels to go from zero to antihero or do much at all with Teddy beyond what the plot retires. I’ll be interested to compare this to The Nutty Professor which has similar elements. “You couldn’t just go out and strangle a blonde like our great-great-grandfather, could you?”

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October 19, 2024 · 5:04 am

An exorcism, a bikini shop and an unsuspecting wife: movies

If memory serves, I originally caught THE EXORCIST (1973) in the early 1980s which was the foerst possible time. I’d seen it parodied, talked about and knocked off over the previous decade so even though I’d never seen it before, I was quite familiar with it (much the way even people who’ve never read Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde know the basics of the story). It felt old hat.

TYG, however, is a huge fan, so when the Carolina Theatre showed it last weekend, I took her to it for our date. I’m glad I did because know I can appreciate it much better.

I imagine you already know the story: Chris McNeil (Ellen Burstyn) is a single mom whose daughter, Regan (Linda Blair) starts acting irrationally — peeing on the carpet in public, cussing (raw even by modern standards) and somehow making her bed vibrate and jump up and down when she sits on it. When medical research finds nothing wrong, Chris slowly embraces the supernatural solution. Her daughter’s possessed — can she find an exorcist to help?

What’s striking about the movie (and may have hurt it when I first watch it) is how leisurely it is. The first 40 minutes or so have Chris coping with everyday life; Father Damien (Jason Miller), a burned-out priest coping with his loss of faith and his mother’s deteriorating health; and shots of Father Lankester (Max von Sydow) at a dig in the Middle East where something strange is happening. No attempt to explain how it all ties together. Focusing on Damien’s and Chris’s personal arcs. It’s good but I think it’s very much a product of it’s time — I’m not sure anyone would make a horror movie that way today. And the Father Lankaster scenes, while eerie, don’t fit in with the rest of the movie; I had to turn to TYG, who’s read the book, to explain them.

It’s also of it’s time in that exorcism is treated as something exotic, strange and rare. In future horror movies it would become as common as stakes in a vampire film — that’s what happens when a film tries something new and succeeds. The film deserves it’s rep; however I recommend this article pointing out how the Catholic Church of horror cinema diverges from the abuses the church committed in real life (which might make The Devil’s Doorway a good double-feature with The Exorcist). “I’m the Devil. Now kindly undo these straps.”

MALIBU BIKINI SHOP (1986) was another TYG date pick, having been a VHS favorite of her and her brother in their teen years. It’s the kind of sex comedy familiar to anyone watching movies on cable or movies in that era: lots of T&A, some male misbehavior (the changing rooms at the eponymous store have two-way mirrors) and some romance — finding true love is better than hedonism though hedonism is better than being a stodgy straight arrow like Alan (Michael David Wright).

Alan’s a business major engaged to Jane (Debra Blee), an unattractive, over-eating whiner; Alan wants to make it on his own, Jane sees no reason not to get him a job with her rich father’s company, have daddy give them a house and so on.

Then Alan and his free-spirited, party animal brother Todd (Bruce Greenwood) learn their aunt has just died in a drunken jet-ski accident and they’ve inherited her swimwear shop in Malibu. Alan wants to sell the shop and get back to his life; Todd sees a new life. Can they come to agreement? Will meeting sexie salesclerk Ronnie (Barbara Horan) help Alan decide?

It’s a sexist film (you can probably tell) and doesn’t balance its handling of Alan and Todd; Alan learns to loosen up but it seems like Todd needs to grow up, and he never does. All that said, it’s a pleasant enough comedy, though a lot of the pleasure is the amount of eye candy on screen. “And here I thought you were a brain surgeon!”

CHARADE (1963) completely captivated me the first time I saw it but has never worked as well since — director Stanley Donen never quite gets the rom-com/thriller balance right the way Hitchcock did with North by Northwest. However it does work—the script is good, the cast is amazing.

The film opens with a train approaching, then a man falls off dead (on the commentary track, Donen discusses the shooting on location and waiting for the train to capture on film). His wife Regina (Audrey Hepburn) is upset, but not terribly as their marriage was on the rocks. She’s a lot more upset when three psychos (Ned Glass, George Kennedy, James Coburn) show up demanding something he stole which they’re convinced she has. A CIA official (Walter Matthau) explains the quartet hijacked a load of gold the Allies sent to the French resistance in WW II; Regina’s husband escaped with it while the other three were captured by Nazis and spent time in a POW camp. They’re very determined to get their share and think she has it. As Reggie tries to figure it out, can handsome Peter Joshua (Cary Grant) help? Or does he have his own agenda? Light and charming, this is definitely worth the time (the commentary with Donen and scriptwriter Peter Stone is good too). “That is not exactly the term I would have chosen but it does sort of capture the spirit of the thing.”

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October 12, 2024 · 5:15 am

Silent films, a biographer and a dystopia: movies

About a month back I bought THE PARAMOUNT STORY, which goes year by year through that studio’s movies like The RKO Story which I bought several years back. As Paramount’s silents are public domain, I checked out a few that looked interesting on YouTube

MISS LULU BETT (1920) stars Lois Wilson in the eponymous role of a spinster working for her in-laws as a kitchen drudge, marrying in haste and repenting at leisure before finally finding the strength to stand up for herself. Soapish but engaging, and Wilson is sparkling. Directed by Cecil B. Demille’s brother William C. “You’re the first person who ever noticed I wasn’t there.”

Watching FORBIDDEN PARADISE (1924) was an odd experience as the best copy of this early Ernst Lubitsch picture I could find seems to be missing about 25 minutes. Then again, I may be misinterpreting things because all the title cards were written in a foreign language so I’ve only a minimal idea of what was happening.

I know from THE PARAMOUNT STORY this involves royal Pola Negri bestowing her favor handsome soldier Rod La Roque, only to have him join the revolution when he learns he’s far from the only one she favors — can Negri’s canny chancellor Adolph Menjou save the day? Negri’s someone I’ve heard of but never seen before; she definitely has screen presence but obviously that didn’t help when watching this. For all they talk about how silents didn’t need dialog, they definitely need title cards!

I’m much more familiar with Gloria Swanson’s legend than Negri, though I’ve not seen her in anything I can recall except Sunset Boulevard. STAR STRUCK (1925) stars the sexy glamor queen in an atypical comic and down-to-Earth role, a waitress crushing on the restaurant’s actress-crazy cook; would taking an acting class by the mail enable her to win his heart? Swanson’s charming and this has a certain appeal but not quite enough — and by today’s standards, the guy she wants comes off a bit of a jerk. “Standing before the mirror, register the expression of ‘Contented Wife.’”

THE CITY OF YOUR FINAL DESTINATION (2010) is a Merchant Ivory film in which an Iranian-English professor travels to Venezuela in hopes of convincing the executors of a Great Dead Author (gay Brother Antony Hopkins, widow Laura Linney, mistress Charlotte Gainsborough) to greenlight his proposed biography of the man. The individual scenes are well done, the cast is great, but the whole is less than the sum of its parts — this is too low key to work for me. “I’ve already made my decision — and it’s not hasty.”

UGLIES (2024) adapts the Scott Westerfeld Y/A about a young girl living in a gloriously utopian future where at sixteen everyone gets turned from an ordinary schmuck into a Pretty, freeing you to look fabulous and have fun forever and ever. Only gee, isn’t it odd how her BFF, having taken the treatment first, is now so different and uncaring towards her? Reminiscent of both Twilight Zone: Number 12 Looks Just Like You (Westerfeld says it wasn’t an influence though he sees the similarity) and Logan’s Run (another dystopia full of shallow, beautiful people) this doesn’t live up to my memory of the book. Part of the problem is that the protagonist is so vibrant, I don’t get the feel Ugly life is as miserable as it’s supposed to be. I’m also amused that going back to nature and forming a commune remains the solution to high-tech dystopia (it’s an idea with a looooong history). “Free will is a cancer.”

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October 9, 2024 · 5:18 am

Good girl? Bad girl? Fallen girl? Ivy in Jekyll and Hyde

The Victorian stage adaptations of Jekyll and Hyde livened it up by making middle-aged Jekyll a younger, more attractive man, and giving him a fiancee. This carried over into the movies though I’m confident they’d have given him some sort of love interest — it’s what movies do.

The silent films took the next step of giving Hyde a love, or at least a lust interest. In the 1920 Jekyll and Hyde, it’s Barrymore’s lust for the dancer Gina (Nita Naldi) that drives him to become Hyde. That way he can sin without compromising his stainless soul, right? Right?

Wrong. But you knew that.

Gina doesn’t play a large role. Ivy, in the 1932 Fredric March version and the 1941 Spencer Tracy remake, is much more prominent a character, played respectively by Miriam Hopkins and Ingrid Bergman. In both films when Jekyll’s true love is out of his reach, it’s lust for Ivy that inspires him to turn into Hyde.

Ivy is coded as a Bad Girl, the Whore to the fiancee’s Madonna. I’ve seen several descriptions of the film that assume she is a literal sex worker. Despite the fact she ends up Jekyll’s mistress, supported by him, I think that’s debatable.

When Hopkins’ Ivy meets March’s Jekyll, her interest is sex, not cash; March was a handsome leading man and she likes what she sees. When she meets Hyde later, he lets her know he can buy her nice things provided she’s nice to him but he’s a creepy bully and she’s not into it (plus he looks like a literal man-ape). When Hyde makes it clear she doesn’t have a choice (as I posted recently, he’s abusive from the start), she agrees, sealing her doom (as I’ve said before, death is the price for being a bad girl on screen).

The same dynamic happens in the Tracy film, though Bergman’s Ivy comes off more fun-loving and innocent than Hopkins’ Ivy. The production code was a lot tougher on sex in films by 1941 and MGM considered itself a class act; even Ivy’s workplace is cleaner and lighter than in the 1932. Perhaps MGM’s desire to keep Ivy quasi-respectable is why she doesn’t give in to Hyde’s coercion: he pays the manager to fire her, thereby leaving her desperate for a source of support.

It’s true that Ivy in both films becomes Hyde’s mistress. That doesn’t mean she’s selling her body on a regular basis. As City of Eros says, the 19th century lines on prostitution were blurry. For some women it was a day job, for others it was something they turned to occasionally, as a way to pay the rent. Ivy could have been either (though I don’t see her as a full-timer) or it could have been Hyde becoming her lover was the first time she’d traded on sex. Being a kept woman would, for a lot of people, have been a different thing.

Don’t get me wrong, if Ivy was a full-time sex worker she still wouldn’t deserve the abuse and ultimately the murder she suffers. The goal isn’t to judge, it’s simply to analyze.

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