The Promised Land

Nikolaj Arcel's The Promised Land is a sturdily dependable, if unexciting, historical epic. The film concerns one Ludvig Kalen who we meet in 1755 in a dingy Danish flophouse for veterans. Kalen, played by Arcel's frequent collaborator Mads Mikkelsen has just served twenty years in the Prussian army under Frederick the Great, finishing his service as a Captain and earning himself a small pension. We eventually learn he is the bastard son of a nobleman and was sent abroad into military service to be got rid of. Kalen has a scheme to farm the Jutland heath, a large barren part of the Danish Kingdom that has resisted efforts at cultivation. With meagre support from the government, Kalen and a motley band of outsiders scorch the moss off the heath and try to plant a crop. However, they earn the enmity of a cruel local landowner (played by Simon Bennebjerg in mad King Ludwig mode) who wants to claim the land for himself.

The film is handsome, well mounted, and well acted, if somewhat predictable. If you've seen Arcel's A Royal Affair, also with Mikkelsen, you will know what to expect from the get go. Arcel and Anders Thomas Jensen, another frequent collaborator of Mikklesen's, adapted their script from Ida Jessen's novel. If I prefer the films Jensen directs to those of Arcel, it is because they have more vivacity and humor. Too much of both A Royal Affair and The Promised Land consists of stolid historical tableaux. Even the cartoon villainy is too pat. A Promised Land does have a little humor, at the expense of Kalen's discomfort with high society and the fairer sex, but not enough to leaven its deterministic class critique.

The Promised Land went by another title in Danish: Bastarden which better summarizes the film's positing of Kalen as an outsider who can never fully integrate into Danish society. A theme the picture somewhat ham handedly underlines by the presence of Romani migrants. Whatever petty issues I have with this flick, I eagerly await any picture with Mikkelsen as one of the leads. Not even the children and animals in The Promised Land can steal a scene from him. He is one of the premier leading men of our era.

Burning Paradise

Willie Chi and Carman Lee

Ringo Lam's Burning Paradise, from 1994, is a vibrantly puerile wuxia flick, the only one Lam ever attempted. The material is a hunk o' heroic mythos, good versus evil. The film's source, a novel entitled The Tale of an Extraordinary Swordsman, has been made into a film numerous times with the title usually referencing the tale's seat of villainy, the Red Lotus Temple. In the early 18th Century, Shaolin monks are imprisoned at the temple after rebelling against an unjust regime. The temple is a gruesome prison with booby traps and torture devices ruled by a mad elder named Kung. The hero, a novice monk played by Willie Chi, and heroine (Carman Lee), a whore with a hard heart of gold, are joined together because both are being sought by Imperial forces. In the thrilling prologue, Lam unleashes a frenzy of swooping cameras and choreographed mayhem. The gore is plentiful, but cartoonish like in Sam Raimi's films. I don't think I've ever seen a film in which a horse is decapitated.

This is the type of movie Spielberg sought to make with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, but lacked the chutzpah and malevolence. Whereas ...Doom was aimed at nine year olds, Lam and producer Tsui Hark go for thirteen year olds with Burning Paradise. The film's humor is juvenile and the two leads wan, but the last two thirds of the film belong to Kung and his fiendish temple/prison. Kung seems to have dropped his Buddhist philosophy for a more do what thou wilt stance. As deliciously over-played by Wong Kam Kong, Kung, whether smoking his water pipe, cackling in a creepy manner or killing a concubine to add blood and a little je ne sais quoi to one of his paintings, Kung is the larger than life villain needed to preside over this temple from hell. Imprisonment is perhaps the central theme in Lam's work and he gives the film a palpable sense of confinement and release. The film is streaming on Apple TV+, but martial arts fans should do themselves a favor and purchase the snappy looking Blu-Ray put out by Vinegar Syndrome.

Carman Lee and Wong Kam Kong

     

Book Review: Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions by Ed Zwick

Tom Cruise and Ed Zwick

Ed Zwick's Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Forty Something Years in Hollywood is an engaging if lightweight memoir by the writer-director-producer. Zwick rose to fame initially, along with his artistic partner Marshall Herskovitz, as one of the showrunners for the television program thirtysomething which ran from 1987 to 1990. I found the show inane and solipsistic, but Zwick's reminiscences immediately won me over by acknowledging his own characters' "whining" and "self-absorbed" behavior. This memoir has a gently self-deprecating tome that wears well. When Zwick has scores to settle, say with Matthew Broderick, Julia Roberts or Harvey Weinstein, he does so without resorting to pettiness or meanness. He offers some dish, often in blind items, but never seems cruel. He offers glimpses of his stable family life, but is willing to take the fall as a man who may have sacrificed quality time with his loved ones for a career in television and film.

I find Zwick to be a midlevel talent with an almost equal share of good and bad in his filmography. On the plus side, I enjoyed My So-Called Life, Glory, and Blood Diamond, and, to a lesser extent, Legends of the Fall. Not much else, but this book reveals his gifts as a raconteur. He offers priceless anecdotes about a wide range of figures: from Nina Foch to Sydney Pollack to Merrick Garland to Denzel Washington. I've read a lot of Hollywood memoirs that are more grandiose and salacious, but the pleasant tone of this book reflects well on its author.            

Chess of the Wind

 

Mohammad Reza Aslani's Chess of the Wind is a singular and long suppressed Iranian masterpiece that was originally, if briefly, released in 1976. The film's perverse tone and the large number of women in key production roles during its making led to its being banned after the Iranian revolution of 1979. The film was long thought lost until Aslani's son found a copy of it in a Tehran antique shop in 2014. The restored film was released in 2020 to universal acclaim. 

The picture is set almost entirely within the walls of a sprawling Tehran estate. Inside we meet a dysfunctional clan at odds with each other within a hot house atmosphere. The matriarch of the clan has died leaving her wheelchair bound daughter, Aghdas (Fakhri Khorvash), bitter because she is totally under the control of her boorish stepfather, Hadjii Amoo (Mohamad Ali Keshavarz). Two brothers, Ramezan (Akbar Zanjanpour) and Shaban (Shahram Golchin), are daily visitors to the mansion. Both are attempting to court different ladies in the house, Ramezan is trying to win Aghdas while Shaban is interested in Aghdas' maid, Kanizak (Shohreh Aghdashloo). However, Aghdas recoils at Ramezan's touch and seems more romantically inclined towards Kanizak. The atmosphere in the manse grow more oppressive until they culminate in what we think is Hadji's murder. This act does not eliminate the tensions, but exacerbates them until the characters all resemble coiled snakes ready to strike. The players are up to the challenge, even the ones doing bits.

The only respites from the interior tensions are exterior shots of chorus like washer women doing laundry in the estate's fountain, all the time commenting sardonically on the main characters inside. This is linked to one of Aslani's main themes: the tensions between traditional and Western influences in Iran. When a doctor attends to Aghdas, he waves away the incense brought by a servant as if it were an affront to his rationalism. Aghdas is the most Western of the main characters, both in her garb and her yearning for liberation. She is first seen smashing traditional Iranian glassware with a ball and chain, eager to strike out against the traditionalist strictures that bind her. Hadji Amoo is the most traditional, quite happily ensconced in his patriarchal role. It is not accidental that when the kibosh is put to Hadji, he is engaged in his salat prayers towards Mecca. The mansion itself is a mix of Western and Eastern decor. The film's soundtrack is also bifurcated between traditional Persian music and an excellent Western style atonal score composed by Sheida Gharachedaghi that is effectively unsettling. 

The almost Gothic atmosphere of Chess of the Wind with its grotesque psychological portraits would be hard to take if not for Aslani's directorial restraint and pictorial gifts. Trained as a painter, Aslani's camera largely stands removed from his characters, framing them within a larger cultural context. The film always remains strikingly beautiful, particularly with its use of natural light, even when the characters' motivations are base and ugly. The discordant nature of the film reminded me of Bunuel, James M. Cain,  Dostoyevsky, and Tennessee Williams, but Aslani's work stands on its own in giving us a sense of a culture on the verge of collapse. Chess of the Wind seems to be set in the 1920s, though no particular time frame is established. This works to the film's advantage, as we are as unmoored as the characters themselves. Aslani's career never quite recovered from the Iranian revolution and he retreated into documentary work, but Chess of the World guarantees him a spot in 20th century film history.

A Hole in the Head

Frank Sinatra and Edward G. Robinson

A Hole in the Head is a hectoring and scattershot widescreen concoction, the curate's egg of Frank Capra's filmography. This 1959 flick was written by Arnold Schulman based on his recent play. The major change in the transfer of the material to the screen was changing the main character's background from Jewish to Italian to fit leading man Frank Sinatra. Sinatra plays an operator from New York, the broke owner of a second rate hotel with a fondness for females and the track. The role is a good fit for Sinatra's limited, but real acting talent and casual approach. As Sinatra's brother, Edward G. Robinson is misused. The character is a straight and narrow shop owner who disdains his brother's swinging lifestyle. Robinson could play a virtuous character, The Whole Town's Talking is a good example, but he is too interesting an actor to play a staid killjoy. He and Sinatra are not believable siblings.

The teaming of Robinson and the always welcome Thelma Ritter as a husband and wife doing a tiresome Bickersons routine causes the film to clunk rather than chime with comic harmony. The two want Sinatra to cast off his lowdown ways and find a respectable woman for a wife, especially because he is taking care of a latency aged son intolerably played by Eddie Hodges. The father son scenes are hard to sit through, especially Hodges and Sinatra warbling the mega-hit "High Hopes". Sinatra has better chemistry with Carolyn Jones who plays his main squeeze, a free spirit beatnik type who both surfs and plays the bongos. When Jones leaves Sinatra and the film at midpoint, the picture loses what little spark it had. 

Carolyn Jones

Robinson and Ritter set up Sinatra with a comely and bland widow played by the comely and bland Eleanor Parker. Donna Reed had been cast, but the shoot impinged on the shooting schedule for her hit television. Reed gave ambiguous notes to both good and bad girl roles. Parker adds little. The foisting of respectable woman upon Sinatra's heel caused Andrew Sarris to call this Capra's "new look in conformity" after an eight year absence from the silver screen. Parker's red hair matches that of Sinatra's son and late wife, signaling to the audience that she is the obvious mother substitute in waiting. 

Besides the usual hokum, the most glaring fault is the film is Capra's struggles with color (Deluxe) and the wide screen (Cinemascope). Except for a scene at the Fontainebleau pool, there is little Miami flavor to the film. A lot of the flick was shot in SoCal and the rear projection used is garish. The camera tracks around the lobby of Sinatra's hotel to antic rather than comic effect. Capra's set-ups are the same as if he were shooting a film in the favored aspect ratio of the 1930s: 1.37:1. There is always a lot of dead and negative space in the film that is not used to meaningful effect.

Keenan Wynn shows up late in the film as a Runyonesque big shot. He fits in well with both Capra and Sinatra. I enjoyed brief bits from James Komack (later producer of Chico and the Man and Welcome Back Kotter), Dub Taylor, and Ruby Dandridge, mother of Dorothy and an interesting figure in her own right. However, on the whole, I found A Hole in the Head to be a stale and tiresome affair. Pocketful of Miracles, Capra's next and last film, is a much more pleasing example of the director in his dotage.

Whiplash

JK Simmons and Miles Teller in Whiplash

Damien Chazelle's Whiplash is a bracing study of the torment a music teacher inflicts upon a student drummer with a good performance by Miles Teller and a great one by JK Simmons. Simmons injects the right notes of self drama, compassion, and hauteur to make his monster all too human. This helps smooth the formulaic and histrionic nature of the script. Subplots concerning Teller's father and girlfriend would have seemed old hat when John Garfield made his debut. Chazelle reins in the hysteria of the central conflict by reveling in his characters' love of jazz. The film's musical sequences are cut to the rhythms of the performances with affection and verve. This bodes well for Chazelle's upcoming musical, but Whiplash is both celebratory and manipulative. (11/20/16)

David and Bathsheba

Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward

Henry King's David and Bathsheba, from 1951, is an above average biblical epic. King and screenwriter Philip Dunne (How Green Was My Valley, Forever Amber) turn this saga from the second Book of Samuel into an entertaining date night flick which did well at the box office and earned grudging critical respect; even André Bazin liked it. The lead duo, Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward, were at the height of their youthful vitality and popularity. This was Peck's third film with King and he seems more at ease with King than with any other director. They would ultimately collaborate on six films together for 20th Century Fox. Peck is always a bit stiff, but his rectitude fits this kingly role.

Hayward helps loosen up Peck the same way Virginia Mayo does in Horatio Hornblower. The vermillion haired beauty from Brooklyn looks great in Technicolor, but has little to do but tryst with Peck. The two were big sex symbols at the time, though it always has been difficult for me to imagine the rigid Peck as such. Given the emphasis on David's pride and lust in the film, Peck's David is reminiscent of his Lewt McCanles in Duel in the Sun. What with Peck and Hayward rolling around the sands of Arizona, this is truly Lust in the Dust 2.

I've been going through a Henry King phase and feel he is a tad neglected. His stolid style is a good fit for the reverent religious themes found in The Song of Bernadette, Prince of Foxes, and this film. The sequence of a young shepherd interrupting the canoodling of the two lovebirds conveys admirably how their entanglement has led David astray from tending to his flock. Leon Shamroy's (Leave Her to Heaven, Planet of the Apes) cinematography is subtler and more inventive than most Technicolor work of this era. Compare the pastel palette of this film to the splashier one in King's Captain from Castile. Shamroy's use of muted desert tones reminded me of  William Holman Hunt's paintings of the Holy Land, especially The Scapegoat. 

King's films are not the mindless spectacles they seem on the surface. Watching Prince of Foxes for the first time since my childhood, a movie that should have been filmed in Technicolor, I was struck by its allegorical portrait of fascism, embodied by a black shirted Orson Welles as Cesare Borgia. King and Dunne frame the story of David and Bathsheba as a critique of moral absolutism and religious zealotry personified here by Raymond Massey's Nathan, pitched somewhere between Massey's Abe Lincoln and his John Brown. King's sympathy remains with the lovers despite their legacy of sin. Let ye without sin cast the first stone instead of an eye for an eye.

David and Bathsheba is far weirder than one would expect. We see an adulteress, not an adulterer natch, get stoned to death and David's polygamy is flaunted instead of skirted. I guess you got some leeway with the Production Code if you based your film on holy writ. Dunne inserts flashbacks of David's youthful exploits somewhat bizarrely into the final reel. I think it would have made a better prologue. Jayne Meadows plays David's first wife and Gwen Verdon appears in a dance sequence. Francis X. Bushman, Messala in the silent Ben Hur, appears as King Saul. Alfred Newman's score is one of his finest. All in all, David and Bathsheba is a pretty good Bible flick, much better than crap like The Egyptian, The Robe, The Silver Chalice, and even the 1959 Ben Hur. 

Red Psalm

                       
Miklós Jancsó's Red Psalm, from 1972, is an agricultural collective musical that is a strange mix of agitprop, Busby Berkely, and folk culture. As was his want, Jancsó employs long takes and a tracking camera to record three moving grounds (fore, mid and back) of music and dance. What plot there is unspecific and allegorical: socialist minded peasants seek fair treatment from there landlord, but are brutally put down by imperial forces. The uniforms and weapons of the Austro-Hungarian army suggest that the events depicted are at the end of the 19th Century, but Jancsó wants to celebrate the worker solidarity that had been a factor in Hungarian politics since 1848. The Hungarian title of the film, And the People Shall Ask, is a quote from Sädor Petófi, a national hero for his poetry and involvement in the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. Petófi celebrated the plains of his homeland in his poems and Jancsó follows suit here and in his subsequent theatrical film, Electra, My Love. 

Red Psalm is not for those who favor plot driven films. Red Psalm and Electra, My Love with their minimal dialogue resemble woven tapestries instead of traditional narrative films, somewhat akin to the work of Sergei Parajanov. Red Psalm, though, is much more in line with socialist worker solidarity than the work of the more mysterious Parajanov. The film aims to win over coverts to the communist cause with music in many languages, sloganeering, folk dances, and copious amounts of female nudity. The latter is not displayed in a prurient fashion, but is used to juxtapose the life affirming spirit of the socialist youth versus the death bringing forces of fascistic repression. Indeed, the spectacle of Red Psalm often resembles that of a fertility rite with the high tide of socialist rebellion represented by a maypole. 

If I prefer the very similar Elektra, My Love to Red Psalm, it is because Red Psalm seems more entrenched in state ideological orthodoxy than the later film which contains veiled criticism of Hungarian strongman János Kádár. Red Psalm hews a little to closely to the party line and even contains an exultant church burning which would not be out of place in an early Soviet silent. Still, all of Jancsó's films are underseen in this country and I would urge all film lovers to give his work a chance. Kino Lorber has released six of Jancsó's greatest films on disc and streamers can find Red Psalm and other Jancsó films on Kanopy.

Blonde Crazy

James Cagney and Joan Blondell

Roy Del Ruth's Blonde Crazy, from 1931, is a routine Warner Brothers feature of the pre-Code period enlivened by its stars, Jimmy Cagney and Joan Blondell. Cagney plays a bellhop in a small town Midwest hotel who flips when he spies Blondell and connives to get her a job as a chambermaid. Cagney's bellhop is a grifter, selling hootch to the hotel's guests on the side and soon enlists Blondell in his schemes. They manage to fleece Guy Kibbee of some $5000 before heading east in search of bigger fish. There, they are themselves swindled by Louis Calhern and his band of brigands, but soon turn the tables. Blondell falls for the more respectable Ray Milland, but he turns out to be even more of a heel than Cagney is and true love emerges triumphant.

With the exception of a wonderful crane shot of Blondell visiting Cagney in jail, Del Ruth's direction is dull. A lot of run of the mill two shots and close-ups. He does leave a lot of room for the antics and double takes of his star twosome: what one would expect from a former gag writer for Mack Sennett.

Blondell and Cagney had appeared together on Broadway in Penny Arcade. Warner Brothers scooped them up for the film version (the movie debut for the both of them) which they retitled Sinners' Holiday. The twosome would make seven movies with each other though they were not always paired together romantically onscreen. Blondell never achieved major stardom, but she was a much better actress than most of the leading ladies of the era. She is always feisty and adept at dialogue. She shares Cagney's razzmatazz and physical dexterity. In Blonde Crazy, she even matches him blow for blow. Cagney is a force of nature whether ogling dames, smashing up a room or doing a tough guy routine. As his character puts it, "the age of chivalry is past, this is the age of chiselry." The anonymous Time magazine critic summed up his appeal in the 1930s thusly: "He can't even put a telephone receiver back on the hook without giving the action some spark of life."

Blondell, Charles Lane and Cagney

Sparks of life are also given to the cast by the already mentioned supporting players. In addition, Noel Francis and Polly Walters give the film some sass as ladies of disrepute. Uncredited players who give us memorable vignettes include Otto Lederer as a pawnbroker and Charles Lane as a persnickety desk clerk. The bathtub publicity photo above does not really reflect how that particular scene plays out. Cagney never goes into the bathroom, but stands wolfishly at the door. Still, Warner Brothers knew how to market its more raffish entertainments. There were plenty of publicity shots of Blondell in the tub, solo or not.

      

Perfect Days

Kōji Yakusho

Wim Wenders' Perfect Days is his most successful fictional film since Wings of Desire. I interjected the word fictional because Wenders, regardless of the ups and downs of his career as a commercial filmmaker, has always kept his hand in the game as a documentary filmmaker and that aspect of his craft is integral to Perfect Days. The film, which chronicles a week or so in the life of a Tokyo toilet cleaner, boasts extraordinary documentary sequences of life in a modern city. Footage that will only grow in stature and impact as time moves on. Wenders shoots the film, on the whole, as a poetic documentary with nary a crane or tracking shot in evidence. Working with a skeleton crew and within a tight sixteen day shooting freed up Wenders, whose work in commercial films of the past three decades has been overloaded, to offer a compelling portrait of a man unburdened by the accouterments of modern life.

Wenders' protagonist, Hirayama, lives simply and solitarily in a run down area of Tokyo. He is devoted to his job and its routine and is meticulous whether cleaning public restrooms or his own flat. He also sticks to a routine on his off hours, always dining at the same unglamorous noodle shop and frequenting the same izakaya. Hirayama does have hobbies and interests. He is a devoted reader, amateur photographer, and has a collection of music cassettes that closely resembles Wenders' taste in 1970s rock and soul. His ascetic lifestyle is balanced by the charm and coziness of Kōji Yakusho's luminous performance. Yakusho ( Shall We Dance?, 13 Assassins, Warm Water Under a Red Bridge) has perhaps the warmest and most expressive face in cinema since the death of Marcello Mastroianni. He adroitly humanizes a figure that could have come off as a bloodless archetype. Hirayama, like Camus' Sisyphus, finds joy in a burden he accepts. By making the best of his humble lot, he is truly unfettered and alive. He savors the passing parade of life and is fascinated by the play of light upon the trees, what the Japanese call komorebi.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that this film is Wenders second tribute to the Japanese master Yasujirō Ozu, the first being 1985's Tokyo-Ga. Perfect Days has the Zen stillness of an Ozu film. The very specific images tells the story. The first ten minutes of the film has no dialogue. The audience has to focus on ambient sound and vision: traffic, the wind rustling through the trees, the sound of a street sweeper's broom, a sigh. Hirayama himself doesn't speak until an hour into the film. Wenders leavens this every grain of sand effect by providing comic relief with the presence of Hirayama's young co-worker, Takashi (Tokio Emoto). Takashi is a complete contrast to Hirayama, feckless instead of responsible, voluble instead of taciturn. Takashi is the type of person who says very little even though he is constantly talking. Takashi tries to enlist Hirayama in winning over a prospective girlfriend, Aya (Aoi Yamada), but she is out of his league and seems more interested in Hirayama's music collection than Takashi.

Yakusho and Arisa Nakano

Wenders disrupts Hirayama's routine during the second half of the film. An unexpected visit by his niece (Arisa Nakano) hints that Hirayama has been fleeing some deep seated family trauma that Wenders wisely does not overly explore. An interlude with a man facing his own mortality seems to me a too pat way to address Hirayama's shadow self. I also did not care for the ending: Hirayama tearing up listening to Nina Simone's "Feeling Good" as he drives his van to work. The scene is a nice showpiece for Yakusho, but seems to me an unnecessary exclamation point to a film that has already been an exercise in transcendent style. We have reached transcendence overkill by this point.

I don't want to leave this fine film on a down note, though. It started out as a promotional project for the Tokyo Toilet Project before morphing into a film that is very much a product of its maker. The public restrooms resulted from of a sense of social responsibility, a desire to work for the common good, that Hirayama embodies. The toilets, designed by modernist architects to help spiff up Tokyo for the 2020 Olympics, look great and there is not even a hint of effluvia in the film. This is because Wenders, who has always been fond of injecting bits of fantasy into his scenarios, is not strictly adhering to minimalistic realism in this film. He injects bits of black and white footage, mostly images of komorebi and snatches of Hirayama's day, to conjure his protagonist's unconscious state as he drifts off to sleep. Suggesting that the perfect days of the title are in the mind's eye of the beholder.

Wild in the Streets

Christopher Jones

A garish kaleidoscope of a movie, Barry Shear's Wild in the Streets is more a bizarre artifact of the 1960s than good cinema. This would be 1968 comedy posits Christopher Jones as Max Frost, a rock star whose rise in popularity enables him to become the virtual dictator of the United States. He sends everyone over thirty five to concentration camps where they are dosed daily with LSD. Groovy. Of course, if your mother happened to be an abusive Shelley Winters, at her most grotesque and self indulgent here, the end result might have been the same.

Christopher Jones and Diana Varsi

It must be said that, despite the plethora of name talent, this is just another AIP quicky trying to cash in on the then topical "generation gap". Director Shear throws a lot of trickery at us, multi-screens, freeze frames, colored filters, faux cinema verite, and lots of television parodies, but the film seems like series of skits thrown together. The satire is feeble whether it is directed at youth or seniors. The film received an Oscar nomination for best editing, but that just goes to show that the Academy often mistakes quantity for quality. Shear, who mostly worked on television and directed at least one interesting exploitation flick (Across 110th Street), seems to be trying too hard to pump up thin material.

Richard Pryor

The songs that Christopher Jones and his band mime to were written by Brill Building veterans Cynthia Weill and Barry Mann. They offer up a reasonable simulacrum of the rock hits of 1966. There is a Bo Diddly rip, something every garage band of that era attempted, and a pretty good Yardbirds pastiche entitled "Shape of Things to Come" which rode to #22 on the pop charts. The well crafted tunes are little too tame and seem just behind the curve. The tell is the presence of Mike Curb as the soundtrack's producer. A noted schlockmeister, Curb was not down with the hippie youth. So, instead of something edgy we get bubblegum.

The band is made up of Hollywood flotsam. Rising comic Richard Pryor plays the drums and Joey Bishop's son, Larry, plays a musician with a prosthetic hook. A nod to Moulty who drummed for the Barbarians after losing his hand.

Diana Varsi

The only reason to watch this film is if you want to indulge in 60s nostalgia, suffer from senile dementia or if you are too tired to change the channel. The supporting cast and cameos are strange if not rich: Hal Holbrook, Diana Varsi, Millie Perkins, Ed Begley Sr., Melvin Belli, Dick Clark, Pamela Mason, Army Archerd, Walter Winchell, Barry Williams (Greg on The Brady Bunch), and Kevin Coughlin. This is the best vehicle for the troubled (and pernicious, perhaps) Christopher Jones and his James Dean like charisma. A year spent filming Ryan's Daughter while jousting with David Lean ( Jones' voice was eventually dubbed over) soured him on the movie biz. Robert Mitchum, badly miscast in the film, compared working with Lean to building the Taj Mahal with matchsticks. If you enjoy the flip, campy humor of the Batman TV show of this era, you might like Wild in the Streets, but I don't think either has dated well.

Shelley Winters meets the band

Longlegs

Maika Monroe

Oz (or Osgood) Perkins has garnered respectable critical kudos and the highest American gross ever for Neon pictures with his serial killer saga Longlegs. I was non-plussed. As I've written before, Perkins has a gift for evoking dread from the negative space of his settings be they roaring furnaces, bulletin boards or kitchen walls. As for plot and multi-dimensional characters, I am still waiting. A winning actor, Perkins can command top talent now that he has risen up the Hollywood food chain as a director: Maika Monroe, Nicolas Cage, Alicia Witt, Blair Underwood, and Kiernan Shipka do what they can to enliven the morbid spectacle that is Longlegs, but to no avail.

The film strikes me, on one level, as a The Silence of the Lambs retread with Ms. Monroe as a more intuitive and tentative FBI Agent and Cage as your basic satanic killer clown, the self-proclaimed Longlegs. Unfortunately, neither Longlegs nor Agent Harker (!) are as memorable as Clarice or Hannibal Lecter or even Buffalo Bill. Giving Mr. Perkins a benefit of doubt, I think he is trying to express his feeling towards a legacy of family secrets and trauma. However, the characters he creates are stick figures, most crucially the mother of Agent Harker (played by Ms. Witt) and keeper of family secrets. Mrs. Harker is your run of the mill nutty Christian fundamentalist constantly telling her daughter to say her prayers, Sigh. It is telling that the only film of Mr. Perkins that I would recommend is the least original, Gretel and Hansel. 

 

                                                              

They Call It Sin

Loretta Young and Una Merkel

Thornton Freeland's They Call It Sin is a routine Warner-First National programmer from the pre-Code year of 1932. The film was a vehicle for Loretta Young after the removal of a recalcitrant Bette Davis. Young was probably the better casting choice as an innocent small town Kansan with a gift for music. The pleasant and lightweight David Manners plays a New Yorker visiting Kansas on a business trip. He locks eyes with Young in church when she is playing organ for the Sunday service. Sparks fly and soon they are sharing a rowboat in the Warner's lagoon.

The first third of the picture is replete with jabs at rural America which is portrayed as small-minded, staid, and stifling. Young's parents are caricatures in the spirit of American Gothic. On the day Manners is due to leave for New York, Young throws caution to the wind and rides around in his jalopy till midnight. Her mother spies them necking, tells Young to hit the road and chooses that moment to also tell her that she is adopted, the illegitimate daughter of a traveling showgirl. Young is unruffled by this, musing that this is why she felt she never fit in. So, she catches the next train to Gotham, chasing her showbiz dreams and Manners.

However, as soon as she is ushered into Manners' penthouse by his Japanese butler (a stereotype named Moto), she finds that he is engaged to the virtuous, but colorless Enid (Helen Vinson). A doctor friend (George Brent) of Manners shows an interest in her as does a Broadway impresario played by Louis Calhern. Spurred on by her newfound chum and roomie, Dixie Dare (Una Merkel), Young wangles a job with Calhern as a rehearsal accompanist; though Calhern has other things in mind for her. Young plays along, up to a point, but the film makes it clear that she won't give herself to him. The backstage and New York high life scenes are fun, but the last third of the film succumbs to melodramatic contrivance.    

Freeland is not much remembered today, but his filmography includes Whoopee!, Flying Down to Rio, and the original Brewster's Millions. He had a nice touch with musical comedy and romance. When Calhern first sizes up Ms. Young, Freeland gives us his perspective, a wolf's eye gaze up and down her corpus. Unfortunately, the melodramatic moments towards the end of the film are unconvincing. A character's fatal fall from a Manhattan balcony is clumsily directed and a subsequent operation scene is especially ludicrous.

George Brent and Ms. Young are fine, but nothing more. I admire Young's apple cheeked beauty, but have never been really moved by one of her performances with the exception of her efforts in Frank Borzage's sublime A Man's Castle. The more interesting bits in They Call It Sin are on the film's periphery. Calhern, who seems to be suppressing a "I can't believe I'm getting this well paid for such twaddle" face, brings added depth to a stock role. He knows his Lothario bit is getting old, but the show must go on and the casting couch beckons. Uncredited Roscoe Karns and Marion Bryan have fun moments as, respectively, a rehearsal director and a soda jerk. Bryan was Buster Keaton's leading lady in Steamboat Bill Jr., but found roles hard to come by during the sound era. It was Hollywood's loss.

They Call It Sin gets a bracing kick in the pants every time Una Merkel appears. Whether spying on Young bussing a suitor, doing cartwheels (admittedly via a stunt double), drunkenly warbling "Coming Thro' the Rye" or searching for her stockings clad only in her undergarments, Merkel provides the shot of moxie the flick needs. What a ginchy dame!