by Dean | Apr 20, 2019 | General
Over a hundred years old now, the silent Tarzan of the Apes (1918) is entrancing. It opens as it should: with frightening shots of such African creatures as lions, snakes and crocodiles. Tarzan is not intimidated, which is good. Enemies keep popping up, and this includes Arab slave traders. Gee, I thought only white Americans used to enslave people.
Tarzan offers consistent black-and-white naturalism and is sometimes quite unpleasant, as when Tarzan the boy (Gordon Griffith) discovers the skeletons of his dead parents in a hut. Only an hour-long copy of the film is available. Long ago it was heavily cut by the censors, for part of the naturalism consists of Tarzan as a naked boy, and exposure of his penis had to be severely limited.
by Dean | Apr 17, 2019 | General
Stand-In (1937) is one of the funnier comic flicks of the Thirties. How many of its one-liners were invented by Clarence Budington Kelland, who wrote the novel, and how many came from the movie’s two screenwriter-adapters I don’t know.
What I do know is how smart and penetrating Leslie Howard is in the role of a film company head—and expert in mathematics—who unthinkingly dehumanizes the workers in his financially weakening business. In truth he’s a decent guy, though, and Joan Blondell is charmingly fine as the woman who knows it and who tries to win his love. She’s the stand-in actress for an untalented star, Cheri (Marla Shelton), while Cheri is the unknowing romantic stand-in (of sorts) for Blondell—with respect to Howard.
The story should be neater than it is, but it’s agreeable, just like the cast. Tay Garnett directed tastefully, never insisting on broad comic acting. This film is better than his Love is News (reviewed earlier) because here both slapstick and one-liners are funny, whereas in the latter film virtually only the slapstick is. I managed to see Stand-In on YouTube.
by Dean | Apr 12, 2019 | General
The 1938 Algiers contains themes—the criminal as captive (without being in prison), the destruction of human ties, ultimate loss. But it doesn’t have originality, for the film is an American remake of the French Pepe le Moko, which I’ve never seen. Pepe is a jewel thief hidden away in unfamiliar Algiers and, original or not, his story is indubitably interesting. So is the dialogue, of which there is a lot, but not at the expense of action.
This is Hedy Lamarr‘s first U.S. picture; she’s the woman Pepe falls for (not Sigrid Gurie). Her acting, however, is undistinguished, unlike that of Charles Boyer as the jewel thief. John Cromwell‘s direction can be curious and canny. . . Yep, it’s a remake, but Algiers, filmed in Algiers, is supremely worth seeing.
by Dean | Apr 10, 2019 | General
On Spike Jonze’s Her (2013):
Wherein Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with a computerized operating system with a female voice. . . The near-future technology in this seriocomic film can be fascinating, the best thing about it, but what is not fascinating at all is the way contemporary movies like this seem to be obsessed with sex. Sex is not the subject of Her, so why the obsession?
What makes it worse is that Jonze leaves the impression that he understands very little about relationships between men and women. The one between the Amy Adams character and her husband is pretty wispy, vacuous, as is the one between Phoenix and his soon-to-be ex-wife (Rooney Mara).
What could have been a ringer of a film is a somewhat distasteful and even mildly boring “art” product. Jonze has it in him to make a superior product, better art. Maybe next time.
by Dean | Apr 8, 2019 | General
I saw the Howard Hawks film, Ceiling Zero (1936)—or let me say I saw a particular print of it—on YouTube. It was the best I could do since the pic was never released on DVD.
Director Hawks did even better with airline workers in Zero than he did, years later, with cowboys in Red River. He organizes his scenes of active crews admirably, although this is in truth scriptwriter Frank Wead‘s show, for he adapted his own play.
Aviation technology of the Thirties is (to me) fascinating, and here we get that as well as a surprising amount of aircraft destruction. And death. There is no happy ending. Still, I was happy to be seeing the forgotten Ceiling Zero.
