by Dean | Jul 5, 2019 | General
I return now to episodes of Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone, in proper black and white.
From Season 3, we have “It’s a Good Life,” which Serling adapted from a short story. It presents us with an Ohio town where a six-year-old boy (Bill Mumy) possesses hair-raising supernatural powers. He is a malign “god”: for inhabitants under a malign god, life is not worth living. The townspeople are continually obsequious to the boy, nervous over his every whim. It is too much for some folks to even take in.
The piece is as dark as so many short stories have been. Rather less dark but still eerie is Serling’s “Mirror Image,” from TZ‘s dandy first season. It is the show’s great doppelganger episode, offering Vera Miles as a woman at a bus depot whose “twin” has been appearing before other people there. Why hasn’t Miles seen this doppelganger? Because it (no, she) is choosing to be elusive. Either she is up to something or she likes to play pranks. Entertainingly peculiar, “Mirror Image” is painstakingly directed by John Brahm.
by Dean | Jul 3, 2019 | General
There was never any point in calling the Ibsen play, A Doll House, a feminist work; it is neither feminist nor anti-feminist. But we can be confident in calling the Gillian Armstrong film, The Last Days of Chez Nous (1992), a feminist work. Though nearly as complex as A Doll House, this is precisely what it is; and it’s artistically sound.
An Australian film written by Helen Garner, it deals with a feminist writer, Beth, married (because of pregnancy) to a Frenchman, J.P. (Bruno Ganz). Both Beth and J.P. were once opposed to marriage in principle, and Beth tells a friend, “I had to buy my own wedding ring.” We feel safe in assuming, though, that J.P. is not the kind of man disposed to buy a wedding ring. Although charming, he is frequently selfish as well as needling and unreasonable. Some of what he says about Beth is probably true (he comments, “You were proud, I made you humble”—but at such a cost to Beth!); still, the woman is betrayed by both J.P. and Beth’s sister Vicki (Kerry Fox). And Beth is basically admirable. Lisa Harrow plays her magnificently, supplying the woman’s maturity, bemusement, vulnerability, outrage. But then all the actors are stellar.
Garner writes good dialogue and creates surprising and unusual details. There is limited narration. Gillian Armstrong—and editor Nicholas Beauman—are responsible for a fluid cinematic undertaking. During a walk with J.P., Beth rapidly shifts from good spirits to fury as the camera moves in for a tight shot of the couple, then reveals them at a bit of a distance. They silently walk back to their home, and it almost seems like a trudging—to trouble. The last days of chez nous. It is a formidable scene in a fine motion picture.
by Dean | Jun 27, 2019 | General
The 1954 Naked Alibi centers on some shabby police work which turns out not to be so shabby. Chief Joe Conroy (Sterling Hayden) strongly believes that Gene Barry‘s Al is the murderer of three police officers. However, Al is a family man who—no, wait. In truth Al is a neurotic louse, cheating on his wife with urban Marianna (Gloria Grahame). But does this make him a murderer?
Director Jerry Hopper‘s potboiler is a fierce ferret of a movie, adapted from a story called “Cry Copper.” It leaps from reasonable, anti-injustice compassion to a pro-justice bubbling swirl. There is scary agitation from Barry. Grahame, in yet another film noir, is mesmerizing because of her demotic beauty and voice, not her acting.
by Dean | Jun 25, 2019 | General
If you have Netflix, you might want to check out episodes of the old Twilight Zone series, by Rod Serling, from the first four seasons. Many disappointments crop up, yes, but many virtues are there too.
Among the disappointments, in the Serling-written “Nightmare as a Child,” for a woman (Janice Rule) to conjure herself as a little girl, the child she used to be, in order to revive unsettling memories is too blatant an invention. Serling does better in “The Hitch-Hiker,” in which Nan (Inger Stevens), driving cross-country, espies the same male hitchhiker everywhere she goes, and is terrified. The story quickly suggests the subject of the violence of strangers against women (is there foul play in the offing?), but this is not what occurs. Rather it is something more metaphysical. The episode is neatly, grippingly directed by Alvin Ganzer.
As lovely as Rule and Stevens, Ann Francis stars in ‘The After Hours.” Here, she is Marsha, a woman who seems normal but assuredly is not. She buys at a department store a golden thimble she finds she must return, only to be told that the floor she bought it on does not exist. Ah, but it does exist. It could well represent the Other, the Incomprehensible, in cosmic and human experience. Somehow Marsha herself represents this too. The episode (like the other two, featured in the first season) is more sapidly weird than arch, with grounded acting by Francis and mildly chilling acting by a couple of others.
To be continued
by Dean | Jun 23, 2019 | General
There are no moral—or therapeutic—messages in the 25-minute silent flick, Coney Island (1917). Just hilarity.
Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, starring here, also directed and did so with a proper sense of scope and an appreciation of space. “Fatty,” on the beach, slips away from the wife who treats him like a child and begins to enjoy the delights of Coney Island. The main delight he enjoys is the company of the pretty girl (Alice Mann) courted by Buster Keaton and later by goofy-looking Jimmy Bryant. Keaton has two rivals now, and unyielding anger flows nearly to the flick’s finish. One likable sight gag follows another. There is a perfect economy to the whole thing, and the performers, positively including the women, are superb.
by Dean | Jun 20, 2019 | General
In the George Sidney film musical, The Harvey Girls (1946), Judy Garland still has her looks, her good singing voice, her good speaking voice, her serviceable acting; but does not dominate the whole of the movie. There is stark ensemble work, with numerous bits of singing during the spectacular “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe” number (the catchiest piece) and in the segment where the female trio, Garland included, sing the pretty song, “It’s a Great Big World.”
Cyd Charisse is in this trio but doesn’t make a splash. A dancer not a singer, her crooning is dubbed and—well, she dances very little in the entire movie. But Ray Bolger, as a quasi-blacksmith in this Old West musical, tap dances extensively and deliciously. The Harvey Girls could use more charm and grace in a couple of its routines; this includes “Swing Your Partner Round and Round.” The pic is no masterpiece, but it’s not exactly minor either. My hat is off to songwriters Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer. Also, not only Garland but Virginia O’Brien (Alma), too, offers some solid solo vocals.
