The Adventures of Hajji Baba

                     

Don Weis' The Adventures of Hajji Baba is a wide screen Technicolor hoot. When I compare it to such tired, socially responsible crap from 1954 as The Country Girl, I further appreciate Weis' buoyancy and colorful flair. The film is exotic schlock, a formula producer Walter Wanger had followed for 1942's Arabian Nights. The Adventures of Hajji Baba, likewise, did boffo biz. Why? The film has a shopworn plot, little characterization, but boasts more flesh on the screen than any other American film of the 1950s. Fifteen minutes had to be shorn from the American cut before it could be shown in the UK. After Weis establishes the film's milieu in one shot, color coordinated slave girls behind bars, he shows Hajji Baba (John Derek) plying one of his trades, which include Don Juan, barber, masseuse, and swordsman, by giving Claude Akins an oily rubdown. I hope Derek got hazard pay. Weis is able to instantly conjure the camaraderie of a community, notwithstanding the fact that he has a cast of very unlikely Arabs, such as the blue eyed Derek.

Establishing a milieu: the first shot of The Adventure of Hajji Baba

Hajji is tasked with protecting a willful princess (Elaine Stewart, as stiff as knotty pine) during a bewildering number of fracases. They both get tied up and tortured numerous times. Hajji makes time with every featured femme in the flick. Despite this and the countless harems we see, the women in this picture all have spunk and agency. In fact, one of the gals Hajji locks lips with is the leader of a rebellious Amazon gang played by flame haired Amanda Blake; soon to be Miss Kitty on television's Gunsmoke. This flick conveys the cheap thrills of pulp and peplum within an eye popping comic book framework. John Derek, villainized as Bo Derek's Svengali, is not bad. I prefer him to Robert Wagner and Jeffrey Hunter. Weis started out promisingly with such trifles as The Affairs of Dobie Gillis, I Love Melvin, and this picture. By the 1960s, he was hopelessly out of step: Billie and The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini are among the worst pictures of any era. Weis' bread and butter became television work: glimpses of a jaunty survivor can be found in episodes of Kolchak: The Night Stalker and Remington Steele.

 

Another factor that helps make The Adventures of Hajji Baba spritely entertainment is its vigorous score by Dimitri Tiomkin. Tiomkin was coming off the huge success of his score for High Noon and its attendant single, Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin. Some thought Frankie Laine's hit version of the ballad saved that film commercially. Consequentially, a single was derived from the main theme of ...Hajji Baba featuring Nat King Cole on vocals with Nelson Riddle arranging. It was never more than a B side, but Cole's mellifluous voice pops up every five minutes of the film burbling "...Hajji Baba." It is bananas, but fits snugly within a film that is already cuckoo for cocoa puffs. Tiomkin's orchestral score is exciting and exotic without depending on Orientalist tropes.

 

L'Amour et les Forets

Virginie Efira and Melvil Poupaud

Valérie Donzelli's L'Amour et les Forêts (Love and the Forests) is a not quite good film with many elements that I enjoyed. The flick was released in the US in 2024 under the anodyne title Just the Two of Us. Ms. Donzelli and Audrey Diwan adapted the script from Éric Reinhardt's novel. The film chronicles an abusive marriage from the point of view of the mistreated wife, Blanche (Virginie Efira). The story is told in flashback as Blanche recounts the arc of her marriage to Grégoire (Melvil Poupaud) to her divorce lawyer. Blanche and Grégoire enjoy a whirlwind romance though Blanche's twin sister, Rose (Ms. Efira doing double duty), is not sold on the lug. After the happy couple settle down and produce two children, Grégoire reveals his needy and controlling nature. Starved for true affection, Blanche takes a lover which sends hubby over the edge. Grégoire morphs into a furniture smashing monster who spies on his wife and drives her to a suicide attempt. A stay in a mental hospital helps bring Blanche to her senses and she leaves the facility determined to leave her husband. More (mild) terror awaits, of course. 

I liked some of Ms. Donzelli's directorial strategies. We first see Blanche against a fragmented background and scraps of memories, usually concerning happy times with her lover, intersperse her reverie. This seems an apt way to covey that Blanche is trying to piece together the shards of her broken life. However, some techniques don't work. I usually like it when a director color codes a film, but the choice to use red for eros and blue for fear seems too facile to me. The film lacks humor or irony. The only touch that gave me a mordant chuckle was that Blanche and Grégoire secret shared love word is verite. I think the initial rendezvous between Blanche and her lover is bungled. He breaks the ice with her by teaching her archery, surely a prime opportunity to register the thwack of cupid's dart. However, the scene is neither elegant nor erotic. Certainly, as this former archery counselor can attest, no one on the set knew how to properly notch and release an arrow.

For a psychological thriller, L'Amour et les Forêts lacks psychological insight. We learn nothing of Grégoire's background or family. He is a relative cipher and that makes the film a little too formulaic. Now this flaw may stem from the source novel, but it flattens the film's texture. I also felt the Tartuffe reference was too on the nose in trumpeting the theme: two faces have I. Nevertheless, the level of acting in the film is outstanding. Ms. Efira, a major star in Europe but under appreciated stateside, is particularly adept at projecting her character's plight through her soulful eyes. I thought Mr. Poupaud's performance was good at expressing his character's surface charm and desperation, but it lacked volcanic energy during the numerous frenzied rages. The supporting players are uniformly superb, especially Dominique Reymond as Blanche's lawyer, Marie Rivière, and Virginie Ledoyen.

Book Review: Hitchcock & Herrmann by Steven C. Smith

Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann mug for a publicity shot

Steven C. Smith's Hitchcock and Herrmann is a well written and researched survey of the collaboration between the two maestros that lasted from 1955 (The Trouble with Harry) to 1964 (Marnie). The relationship foundered when Hitchcock rejected Hermann's proposed score for Torn Curtain, but it is amazing that the collaboration between these two needy and anxious geniuses lasted as long as it did. Mr. Smith's reliance on first person interviews, not all his own, prevents the book from suffering from the phantasms of some of the volumes about Hitchcock. Smith's main bailiwick is music, he is the author of esteemed biographies of both Herrmann and Max Steiner, so the tome should have been titled Herrmann and Hitchcock. However it is titled, the book is welcome because there is an oceanic amount of scholarship on Hitchcock, but only a trickle about Herrmann. Instead of rehashing his biography about Herrmann, Smith enlists a bevy of music lovers, ranging from conductor/composer William Stromberg to New Yorker music critic Alex Ross, to analyze and assess Hermann's scores. The book is learned, but not in an ostentatious way. You do not need a background in music theory to appreciate the book.

That said, I wish it had a discography. Herrmann produced an amazing array of music and guidance is needed. Besides the scores for his Hitchcock films, I recommend the scores to Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Devil and Daniel Webster (which shows off his debt to Charles Ives), Jane Eyre, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, The Day the Earth Stood Still, On Dangerous Ground, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Cape Fear, Jason and the Argonauts, The Bride Wore Black, Sisters, Taxi Driver, and, my personal favorite, Fahrenheit 451. Some of these are hard to track down, but all are worth listening to on their own. Smith touches on the full breadth of Herrmann's career, from music for radio and television shows to classical cantatas, so I am sure there is much more to explore.