The Best of Maggie Smith

1934-2024

                            Old people are scary. And I have to face it. I am old and I am scary

1)   Travels With My Aunt                 George Cukor                                    1972

2)   California Suite                            Herbert Ross                                     1978

3)   The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie   Ronald Neame                                 1969

4)   Young Cassidy                              Jack Cardiff                                      1964

5)   The Honey Pot                             Joseph L. Mankiewicz                       1967

6)   The Secret Garden                      Agnieszka Holland                            1993

7)   The Missionary                            Richard Loncraine                             1982

8)   Gosford Park                               Robert Altman                                    2001

9)   Quartet                                         James Ivory                                        1981

10) A Private Function                      Malcolm Mowbray                              1984  

Maggie Smith has been a schoolmistress, chaperone, spinster or dowager too many times to count. Her success in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie gave her a schoolmarm image, but early features such as Young Cassidy, The Honey Pot, and Love and Pain and The Whole Damn Thing all benefitted from her warm sensuality. She was a titan on the stage, ranging from Shakespeare to Noel Coward. Ingmar Bergman directed her in a London production of Hedda Gabler in 1970. The stage was her true home, but the grind of its routine caused her to limit her live appearances this century. Thus, she became, finally, a mass market video star through her performances playing Minerva McGonagall and Violet Crawley. I also adore her film performances in Othello, A Room With A View, Clash of the Titans, The V.I.P.s, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, Sister Act, Richard III, Washington Square, and the 2012 Quartet.

Quick Takes, September 2024

Journey to the West

Dashan Kong's Journey to the West is one of the more engaging directorial debuts of the last few years. A whimsical comedy, the film concerns a ragtag group of UFO enthusiasts who travel to the hinterlands of southwestern China in search of signs of extraterrestrials. Fans of Christopher Guest's quirky mockumentaries will find a similar vibe of gentle satire here.  

Jeff Levy-Hinte's Soul Power, released in 2009 in the United States after decades of legal wrangling, is a concert film documenting the Zaire 74 music festival held near Kinshasa in September of that year. The festival, conceived by Don King, Hugh Masekela, and Stewart Levine, sought to highlight music with African roots and promote black power and economic agency. This festival was designed to be held in tandem with the fight for the heavyweight crown between George Foreman and Muhammed Ali, subsequently known as the "Rumble in the Jingle". The fight was postponed when Foremen's head was gashed while sparring, but the musical show went on and we are lucky it was so well captured cinematically and sonically. The film features a number of important artists at the near peak of their powers: including James Brown, B. B. King, The Spinners, Franco's OK Jazz, the Fania All-Stars featuring Celia Cruz, and Tabu Ley Rochereau. Some of these acts were seen in snippets in When We Were Kings, but Soul Power focuses more on the music than the boxing, though there is also plenty of the charismatic Ali. Featuring the very young and charming Sister Sledge, George Plimpton, Chip Monck, and Manu Dibango.

I enjoyed George Miller's Furiosa more than most, but do feel that the franchise is a little tired. Miller remains the best action director on the planet, but the new locales and characters here seem uninspired. Chris Hemsworth is a jovial addition to the franchise, perhaps too jovial. Tom Burke's Praetorian Jack is a cipher and Bullet City looks like a downscale monster truck venue. Anya Taylor-Joy doesn't have the strength of presence that Theron has, but is adequate. I liked it better than Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.  

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillet's Abigail is a better than average comedy horror flick. The film is more a concoction than some deep personal masterwork, assembled using major chunks of The Ransom of Red Chief and And Then There Were None (which gets a shout out) plus bits of Knives Out and M3gan. However, the script is well structured and the character are imbued with at least two dimensions. The fine ensemble cast chew on some choice lines and give the film a kick, especially Dan Stevens, Melissa Barrera, Kathryn Newton, and Kevin Durand.

Not having been a fan of The Omen or any of its sequels, I came to Arkasha Stevenson's prequel, The First Omen, expecting to bury it, but ended up wanting to faintly praise the flick. I thought the visual doubling of the female characters was effective and that Ms. Stevenson handled her cast, which includes Nell Tiger Free, Maria Caballero, Ralph Ineson, Sônia Braga, Bill Nighy, and Charles Dance, uniformly well. The premise of the film is too idiotic for me to recommend it to the average viewer, but horror aficionados should check it out. The First Omen is certainly superior to Immaculate, the other habited female lead giving birth to a satanic monster flick released this year. 

Damian McCarthy's Caveat is a promising Irish film within the sick house horror subgenre best exemplified by Poe in The Tell-Tale Heart, The Black Cat, and The Fall of the House of Usher. Past sins are buried, sometimes literally, in decaying abodes. Caveat never entertains plausibility what with its characters both in harness and brandishing crossbows, yet is a model of low budget craft. The tactile funk of the film lingers long after its ridiculous machinations. It bodes well for the director's just released feature, Oddity. 

Gregg Araki's Smiley Face, from 2007, is a slightly better than average stoner comedy, damning praise I know, starring Anna Faris. Dylan Haggerty's script is more thoughtful than most in this genre, even offering the viewer a chance to see a copy of the Communist Manifesto wind up in the dustbin of history. Araki's snappy editing and eye popping colors keep this picaresque view of Los Angeles from ever getting bogged down. The talented cast includes John Krasinski, Jane Lynch, John Cho, Danny Trejo, Marion Ross, Roscoe Lee Browne, and, um, Danny Masterson. 

H. M. Pulham, Esq.

Robert Young and Hedy Lamarr

King Vidor's H. M. Pulham Esq., from 1941, is a good, if not especially memorable condensation of John P. Marquand's novel. The book, much like Marquand's 1938 Pulitzer Prize winner The Late George Apley, uses the framework of one man's life to satirize WASP conformity and repression. Robert Young plays the title character, a Harvard educated New England brahmin whose upcoming college reunion jolts him into a reappraisal of his life. Using a flashback structure, the film shows how Pulham flirted with an independent life (and Hedy Lamarr) before taking over the family business and settling down with a suitable mate (Ruth Hussey) from his own tribe. Vidor's peculiar populism never quite jibes with Marquand's acerbic tone. The flick feels like curdled Capra.

Pulham...comes from an era in which the major studios were adapting best sellers into prestige productions: The Good Earth. The Grapes of Wrath, Goodbye Mr. Chips, How Green Was My Valley, etc. Indeed, both Young and Hussey had appeared the year before in Vidor's film of Kenneth Roberts' Northwest Passage. That vigorous film had lost money because of cost overruns. In response, it looks like to me, MGM skimped on the production values of Pulham... despite the best efforts of art director Cedric Gibbons to give the film a luxe feel. The film also failed to clear a profit, helping seal Robert Young's fate as an also ran in the leading man sweepstakes of the era. Young lacked the passionate intensity needed to be a great lover of the screen. Reviewers of the day, like Bosley Crowther, criticized Young for a dull performance, but he was just being true to Marquand's orthodox character. Young's genial persona ended up fitting better on the television screen where for decades he embodied kindly paternalism on Father Knows Best and Marcus Welby, M.D..

Van Heflin, Robert Young and Hedy Lamarr

Ms. Lamarr gives one of her most winning and audience friendly performances of her career in the film. She often cited this as her favorite performance, not surprisingly since the character, a working girl who values her independence, closely resembled Lamarr's own nature. The supporting cast of Pulham... under Vidor's sympathetic direction, well chosen and solid pros all, help lift the film above the routine. They include the always welcome Charles Coburn, Van Heflin, Fay Holden, Bonita Granville, and Leif Erickson.      

Two Girls on the Street

Mária Tasnádi Fekete on violin

Andre De Toth's Two Girls on the Street, from 1939, is a modernist melodrama done with verve and skill. This story of two rural gals, one to the manor born, the other of peasant stock, trying to make it in Budapest is, overall, boisterous fun; especially if one doesn't take its plot points too seriously. We first meet Gyöngyi (Mária Tasnádi Fekete) at fancy engagement dinner where she seems none too pleased. It transpires that she has been impregnated by the groom to be and is upset that she is to be discarded by the cad. She stalks off to Budapest, has an abortion, and winds up supporting herself by playing in an all girl (with one she-male) orchestra. One night on the street, she meets Vica (Bella Bordy) who has just fended off a sexual assault by an architect in a building she was trying to squat in. Gyöngyi takes her under her wing and vows to protect her.

The first half of this film is a rowdy marvel with astonishing documentary footage of Budapest, but the film grows increasingly schizoid as it develops. Vica entreats Gyöngyi's well-off Papa to give his girl a generous stipend and the two move into swankier digs. They even have a white phone! Gyöngyi assumes the role of paterfamilias in their menage, vowing to protect the more innocent Vica and find her a suitable suitor. Vica manages to attract the romantic attentions of the architect who tried to rape her. He doesn't recognize Vica because Gyöngyi has played Pygmalion and given Vica an upscale makeover. Instead of being horrified, Vica is flattered by his attentions. When the architect finally discovers her identity, he thinks the situation is cute. Eeuw! Gyöngyi ramps up the ick factor by romancing the architect herself. She says it is to protect Vica, but De Toth view her motivations ambivalently. Convinced that Gyöngyi has alienated the affections of her man, Vica tries to end it all by jumping off a bridge into the Danube. She fails to off herself and love emerges triumphant or something. 

After verging on masterpiece status in its first half, Two Girls on the Street flirts with kitsch as it nears its denouement. Gyöngyi yearns to be a concert violinist and so we get to see her sawing away in her apartment in the film's attempt to piggybank off the success of the original Intermezzo. Two Girls... climaxes with a montage of Gyöngyi playing the concert halls of Europe superimposed with glimpses of Vica and her architect on their grand tour honeymoon. The film's last scene has Vica taking her new husband his lunch at his worksite. A happy ending celebrating upward mobility, I suppose. What makes it peculiar is that through most of the picture, the film's perspective skews left. Most of its characters are capitalistic parasites or exploited proletariats. The only honorable male we meet is a beggar named Filc who could be taken as a distant cousin of Boudu. When a women riles Filc, he calls her a kulak.

Two Girls on the Street's eighty or so minutes are jam packed with character vignettes, asides, and bric a brac. We see two musical numbers, meet a seedy procurer and a door to door lingerie saleswoman. The technical qualities of the film rival those of the film industries of America, France, and Japan at that time. The editing of the film is brisk and tight, giving the film a propulsive energy its events don't always merit. The cinematography by Károly Vass (The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, Olympia) is outstanding whether showing workers reading posted want ads in a neorealist style or couples dancing at a luxe nightclub in an more elegant fashion. 

De Toth, billed as Tóth Endre here, adapted a play for the film's scenario. He has described his Hungarian films as "rubbish", so it may be assumed he regarded this project as just a job. If so, he did not shirk from his duty and it was good training for a career making B genre films in Hollywood. He may not have believed in the dubious twists of this film's plot, but he never undersells the film onscreen. The flick brims with directorial energy and imaginative usage of multiple exposure shots, whip pans, wipes, and soft focus. He elicits heartfelt and accomplished performances from his cast, particularly Ms. Fekete. Two Girls on the Street may be an incoherent text, but it is a very memorable film. 

     

The Devil to Pay

Ronald Colman and Loretta Young

George Fitzmaurice's The Devil to Pay, from 1930, is a fun pre-Code romantic drama with lots of droll comedy. Ronald Colman plays Willie Hale, a prodigal son of an English aristocrat. Hale is a suave bounder with a common touch, a perfect fit for Colman who had worked with Fitzmaurice earlier on the hit Raffles. We first meet Hale in Kenya where he is charmingly auctioning off his possessions in order to buy a ticket back to Blighty. There, his father, an excellent Frederick Kerr, makes at token stab at remonstrating his feckless issue, but ends up indulging him. His sister introduces him to Dorothy Hope, played by the seventeen year old Loretta Young, already a seasoned film veteran, who is engaged to a shifty white Russian. However, Dorothy becomes so smitten with Hale that she dumps her Russian and is affianced to Hale with twenty four hours. 

As for the rest of the film, I remember how my father summed up, phallocentricly, the plots of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas to me when I was a child: boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. The reason I bring up operettas is that was the background of the primary screenwriter of the film, Frederick Lonsdale, who authored the librettos for such forgotten bon-bons as King of Cadonia, The Balkan Princess, and The Maid of the Mountains. He had shifted in the 1920s to penning drawing room comedies, the most famous being On Approval, and this is the genre that The Devil to Pay resides in. Happily, director Fitzmaurice presents the action fluidly and elegantly. This is yet another early talkie that punctures the myth of that era being dominated by static and clunky fare. The film is filled with pans and dollies that are both elegant and dynamic. My favorite is a dolly shot of a passel of lonely dogs imprisoned in the display window of a pet shop. Our hero can't help but go ahead and purchase one of the incarcerated canines, even though he is down to his last pound. The dolly sets up the scene perfectly, one in which Hale's bona fides as a good egg is made plain to the audience. Colman's rapport with his new pet shows off his continental charm to good effect. 

The sets and costumes are first rate and Fitzmaurice does a good job of conjuring up Britannia upon the sound stages of Santa Monica Boulevard. Even when interior stages are used for exterior sequences, as in the carnival sequence on the fringes of the Derby, enough pixie dust is strewn about to create magical moments. Despite a decided age difference, Colman and Young generate pleasant chemistry. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen Ms. Young look more ravishing. The only negative note I would strike is I think the film under utilizes Myrna Loy. Playing Ms. Young's rival, a showgirl who is having a fling with Hale before he meets Dorothy and then is discarded, Loy is stuck with a hideous blonde bob and little to do; though she does get one nifty risqué moment (see below). All in all, I think William K. Everson summed up the film best as a "charming piece of froth."

Emitai

Ousmane Sembène's Emitaï premiered in 1971 though a French boycott honored in much of Western Africa prevented any wide release for the film. The film, set during the Second World War, unsparingly portrays the French as genocidal colonialists who endeavor to strip mine Senegal of its men and bounty. A nineteen minute near wordless pre-credit sequence show the French commanders and their lackeys violently impressing young men into service. The Diola rural village they hail from is the site of the action for the rest of the film. The French and their troops return a year or so later demanding to receive a "tax" in the form of rice. The male elders consult their Gods and dither, the women hide the rice and are forced to sit in the sun by their oppressors until they break and reveal the hiding place. Despite the villagers willingness to compromise ("better to be a living lamb then a dead lion"), a massacre ensues.

Emitaï is the weakest of Sembène's films from the 1970s because its last act is relentlessly static. The film just sits there regarding the women in the sun, highlighting Sembène's weakest point, his didacticism, rather than playing off it. I did laugh when he cut from a shot of the French officers to a shot of pigs running, the pigs following the swine, as it were. Eisenstein would have been proud, as, I'm sure were Sembène's former teachers at the Gorky Film Studios. The film is so encased in the dialectics of class struggle that he chooses to make no distinction between the Vichy government and the Free French. When the soldiers paste up posters of De Gaulle to replace those of Petain the message is "meet the new boss/same as the old boss."

Sembène's Marxism tends to flatten the villagers into a mute suffering mass standing politely in all too perfect circles. An exception is the village chief, Djimeko, played in a blaze of one off fury by Andongo Diabon. Djimeko is wounded in a skirmish, as his life hangs in the balance, he beseeches his Gods, including the titular Emitaï, for guidance. They question his fealty to them and deem he must die. The red-tinted sequence in which Djimeko questions and berates his deities is among the most extraordinary of Sembène's career. It best illustrates the different belief systems that lies at the heart of the film's conflict. Unfortunately, once Djimeko departs this veil, the film, despite its visual splendor, flags. 

The Good Guys and the Bad Guys

 

Robert Mitchum and George Kennedy

Burt Kennedy's The Good Guys and the Bad Guys is a comic Western misfire from 1969. Director Kennedy never gives the script, which had at least four contributors to it, a consistent tone. The film lurches from satire to a more traditional tale of outlaws versus lawmen without finding a sure footing in either approach. The film begins as a more traditional oater with Mitchum riding through New Mexico as Glenn Yarbrough (my second least favorite singer of the 1960s behind Bobby Goldsboro) warbles a ballad saluting the heroism of the aging Sheriff. The song is the type of number associated with Frankie Laine (in pictures like 3:10 to Yuma) that Mel Brooks and Laine himself would parody a few years later in Blazing Saddles. Yarbrough's contributions continue throughout the film, highlighting themes that have already been hammered home by the scenario.

Mitchum's Sheriff hears of an outlaw gang headed by an old nemesis named Big John McKay (George Kennedy) who plan to rob the local town's bank. The town's name, Progress, underlines that this is a changing times Western set after 1900. An impressive array of antique cars overly crowd the streets of the town on the Warners lot. When the Sheriff tells the corrupt Mayor, a Nixonian Martin Balsam, of the impending robbery, the Mayor does not seem overly concerned and, before Mitchum's character can raise a posse, eases the Sheriff into retirement. The Sheriff won't go quietly and tries to head off the outlaws. He finds that McKay has also been bumped out of a leadership role, usurped by the younger and more repellent Waco played by David Carradine, underused here but giving the most striking and best performance in the film. McKay and the Sheriff unite forces to thwart the robbers. The film climaxes with a chase sequence featuring a runaway train full of loot that aims to capture the antic fun of The Great Race, but is instead reminiscent of the leaden farce of The Hallelujah Trail.

A good indication of the paucity of The Good Guys and the Bad Guys is the one dimensional nature of its female roles. Lois Nettleton's virtuous boarding house keeper who is sweet on Mitchum is the type of stand by your man role that wallows in cliche. Even worse is Tina Louise's role as the southern accented town tart who is knocking boots with the mayor. Louise and Balsam's farcical trysting is an embarrassment to all concerned, especially the audience. Some film veterans leave the film with their dignity intact: John Carradine, Marie Windsor, John Davis Chandler, and Kathleen Freeman playing, as usual, a small minded scold. An uncredited Buddy Hackett appears in one scene early on and then disappears for the rest of the film. Danny Borzage, brother of Frank and an on set fixture of John Ford's films, cameos by playing his accordion in a saloon. 

La Chimera

Carol Duarte and Josh O'Connor

No film has given me as much pleasure this year than Alice Rohrwacher's La Chimera, her fourth feature. It is her richest, most assured work yet and one in which the buried past is very much alive. Josh O'Connor plays Arthur, a scruffy archaeologist who we meet just after he has been released from prison for illegally excavating Etruscan artifacts. Arthur has been traumatized by the loss of his lady love, Benjamina, who haunts his dreams and memories. He visits Flora (Isabella Rossellini), Benjamina's mother, living in a beautiful, but decaying villa and is greeted like a prodigal son. His old gang wants to entice him back to his former criminal life, but he initially rejects them. He attracts the romantic attentions of Flora's servant, Italia (Carol Duarte), who harbors at least two secrets of her own.

Italia is locked into a sickly master-slave relationship with Flora. Flora is ostensibly giving Italia vocal lessons, but Italia has little vocal talent and is much put upon. Arthur finally yields to his old gangs' entreaties and we discover his secret gift, divination. Soon the gang are once again hauling bags of ancient pottery, baubles, and statues to Spartaco, a mysterious fence who uses a veterinary hospital as cover. Things end badly for Arthur who is more in thrall to his memories and dreams than practical reality. Arthur displays, as Neil Young once sang, that it is easy to get buried in the past. Rohrwacher closes the book on her protagonist with an ending that bears comparison to Poe's The Cask of Amontillado in its entwinement of theme with narrative structure.

Josh O'Connor and Alba Rohrwacher

What strikes me most in retrospect is how light on its feet La Chimera is. It has a much denser plot than I have let on, a large cast, and many weighty themes, but seems as delicious and airy as a properly made souffle. Rohrwacher is graced with an affectionate sense of humor that is more observational and impressionistic than focused on yucks. Her ability to get relaxed and ingratiating performances from both seasoned pros and amateurs is impressive. She has been typed as a practitioner of magical realism, but that pigeon hole reduces the scope of her films. There is plenty of local color and the magic of the everyday in La Chimera, particularly the epiphany parade, but much else. On one level, the film could be read as a critique of capitalism with the gang, constantly being surveilled, viewed as a collective of marginalized misfits reduced to scavenging.

Happily, La Chimera is not one thing or another but contains multitudes. The films use of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo hips us to a mythological aspect, Arthur as Orpheus and Benjamina as Eurydice. Benjamina plucks a thread like Ariadne and another (King) Arthur was also entranced by chimerical visions. In addition, the film can also be viewed as a meditation on the eternal modes of expression utilized by our species, be it language, sign language, theater, crafts, sculpture or music. All contain wisdom of the past that is conveyed into the future through formalistic vessels. Valentino Santagati drops into the film from time to time singing a Ballad of Arthur. He functions like a comic chorus much as Jonathan Richmond did in There's Something About Mary. It is touches like this that keep La Chimera from ever seeming top heavy. It is a stone cold masterpiece, though. 

     

The Bat Whispers

Chester Morris eyes Una Merkel in The Bat Whispers

Roland West's The Bat Whispers, from 1931, is a superior mystery thriller. Derived from a novel and play that were also the basis for West's silent film The Bat in 1926, The Bat Whispers centers on an old mansion, an old dark house if you will, where a motley cast of characters search for a hidden room that contains a bag of stolen loot. The film contains elements snatched from German Expressionism, Les Vampires, drawing room mysteries, and dime novels into bracing escapist fare. Like Fritz Lang's films of this transitional era, the keynote theme is the omnipresence of surveillance.

The Bat Whispers' bravura camera work belies the myth of the static camera in the early sound era whether swooping down a skyscraper or navigating the estate where the vast majority of the action of the film occurs. The vivid camera work gooses the film above its hoary premise. I also appreciated West's judicious rationing of close-ups. He eschews them for most of the film, heightening the intensity of their use in the final reel. The film has an amusing coda in which one of the leads asks the audience not to play the spoiler and divulge the film's villain. The Bat Whispers features Chester Morris, Una Merkel, Grayce Hampton and Spencer Charters.

?

Morris, a veteran stage and silent film actor, had made his sound film debut in West's Alibi in 1929 which proved to be a great success for both men. Morris even nabbed an Academy Award nomination for his work in the film. Morris appeared in West's next and last film, Corsair, with West's lover, the ill-fated Thelma Todd. After Corsair, West seems to have abandoned his film career to run an LA eatery with Ms. Todd. There were rumors that the restaurant was a mob front both prior to and after Ms. Todd's mysterious death in 1935, but I don't want to enter the quagmire surrounding the case. West's departure from the film biz, whatever the cause, robbed the industry of an interesting directorial stylist.

The Devil and Miss Jones

Jean Arthur, Charles Coburn, and Spring Byington

Sam Wood's The Devil and Miss Jones, from 1941, is a barely adequate workplace comedy released by RKO pictures. The film was an independent production helmed by screenwriter Norman Krasna and producer Frank Ross, who was leading lady Jean Arthur's husband at the time. That said, the film is more of a vehicle for Charles Coburn who plays a New York based plutocrat. Coburn's character is chagrined to open his morning paper and find that he has been hung in effigy by the employees of a department store he owns. He decides to work undercover at the store in order to ferret out the labor agitators who have besmirched him. Of course, once he has to undergone the indignities of retail employment, particularly the petty humiliations dished out by shoe department manager Edmund Gwenn, Coburn begins to have a change of heart. He is befriended by Ms. Arthur's clerk and draws the romantic interest of Spring Byington. He even begins to admire Robert Cummings' labor organizer who is Ms. Arthur's steady. The film climaxes with a spasm of collective action that results in better working conditions and a resolution of the romantic pairings.

The film's class based grievances, a staple of Hollywood films in the 1930s, would soon be cast away as the film industry strove to present a united national front for wartime. It is ironic that this somewhat leftist film boasts Sam Wood as director since Wood would go on to be one of Hollywood's principle red baiters before his death in 1949. Regardless of politics, I find Wood's alternately leaden and bizarre direction to be the chief flaw of the film. The comic interplays and reactions always seem a beat behind. He overuses close-ups so much that the heads of his players resemble untethered Macy's Thanksgiving day parade balloons. This would be fine if Wood was satirizing fat cats like George Grosz or Sergei Eisenstein, but a strong directorial point of view is not to be found in a Sam Wood film. William Cameron Menzies sets, which seems to share elements found in RKO's Citizen Kane, are not fully utilized and the rear projection shots are shoddily integrated. 

Arthur and Coburn are two of the more unusual and pleasing stars of this era. Coburn's meteoric rise after returning to Hollywood in 1937 following the death of his first wife is an amazing story. He kept replaying the same curmudgeonly benefactor until his death in 1961. Arthur is my favorite Hollywood actress of this golden era, but is playing second fiddle to Coburn in The Devil and Miss Jones. She has a neat bit pondering what shoe to use in order to bonk Coburn unconscious, but has zero chemistry with Bob Cummings. Coburn and Byington's chemistry, in contrast, is warm.  I'm not a big fan of Cummings, then a fast rising leading man, but will admit his youthful energy channels well into the role of a rabble rouser. William Demarest and S. Z. Sakall are both underutilized. A better vehicle for the talents of Ms. Arthur and Mr. Coburn is George Stevens' The More the Merrier from 1943. 

     

The Baby Carriage

Inger Taube

Bo Widerberg's The Baby Carriage, from 1963, is a playful and impressive debut from a director who I'm not sure ever equaled it. The film follows the romantic misadventures of an eighteen year old working girl, Britt (Inger Taube), in Malmö. Britt is bored with her job in a sweat shop and, still living at home with her parents, feels stultified by her domestic situation. She flirts with the drunken Björn (played by Widerberg regular Thommy Berggren), but he is too feckless to keep their planned date. She falls in with a vocalist, Robban (Lars Passgard), whose band plays an excruciating mixture of Chubby Checker and Acker Bilk, and after an evening steaming up the windows of his jalopy, finds herself pregnant. Robban, not ready to be a parent, ghosts Britt, but her condition forces herself to regain focus and become more resourceful. She finds a better job and her own flat.

By chance, she reunites with Björn who wants to court her. He is from a more upper crust background and is eager to tutor Britt to become more culturally aware. She is eager to learn and rise above her class origins. She signals this by filching a chandelier from her parents' flat, a symbol of her strivings. Björn caps his Pygmalion act by gifting Britt a stylish new pair of glasses that she direly needs. However, Björn has serious mommy issues. A revisiting of the primal scene makes apparent the psychosis that lurks in Björn. He responds by lashing out at Britt and then disappears from her life. After her daughter's birth, Britt resolutely adjusts to her trying new life. Robban reappears, eager to see his daughter and restart with Britt. She allows him a tryst, but makes it plain that any future relationship will be occasional and on her on terms. The film ends with Britt pushing the titular pram as reflections of light bathe her face. She has been bloodied by experience, but is heroically unbowed.

Widerberg had been a critic before entering film work and The Baby Carriage has often been described as being influenced by the French New Wave. Surely Widerberg gained impetus by seeing former French critics put there efforts on the screen with shoestring budgets. He thought most Swedish productions were bloated and bragged, at the time, that The Baby Carriage only cost a quarter of the average Swedish film. However, the film reminds me more of the kitchen sink realism of the new English films of that era. A number of those English directors, reacting against the posh legacy of English heritage films, also started as critics: such as Lindsay Anderson and Karel Reisz. If anything Widerberg and Inger Taube succeed in giving their heroine more agency than the working class protagonist of such Brit films as Georgy Girl, A Taste of Honey or The Leather Boys.

Thommy Berggren

Björn's flip out over his mommy issues is the weakest aspect of the film. Despite Widerberg giving us a few clues that all is not well with his psyche, his breakdown seems more a plot device than a natural development of a character. Thommy Berggren, however, is marvelous, giving the audience enough glimpses of Björn's charm to show us what Britt sees in him. He would go on to be a frequent collaborator with Widerberg, starring in Widerberg's biggest hit, Elvira Madigan. In Widerberg's next film after The Baby Carriage, Raven's End, he would play Widerberg's alter ego in a You Can't Go Home Again type look at Widerberg's youthful background. Ms. Taube is especially memorable in The Baby Carriage, the right mixture of tender and tough, and would appear in Widerberg's 1965 film, Love 65. I also enjoyed Lars Passgard as Robban, he is best known as the yearning adolescent in Bergman's Through A Glass Darkly. The director's daughter Nina makes a memorable debut as the child of Britt's neighbor in this film. She would go on to make a host of vivid impressions in Widerberg films like Raven's End, Love 65, and Elvira Madigan. 

The most impressive aspect of The Baby Carriage is Jan Troell's black and white cinematography. The darks are deep enough to capture the grotty texture of the stairwells and flats in the film. The lights bright enough to highlight the incandescent dreams that Britt still harbors at film's end. Troell would follow Widerberg in the director's chair, but he would usually retain himself as cinematographer of those films. I also enjoyed Jan Johansson's jazz score which matches the rhythmic friskiness of The Baby Carriage. He did scores for such disparate film as Mai Zetterling's Night Games, Bergman's The Touch, and Pippi in the South Seas.

Monkey Man

Dev Patel

Dev Patel's Monkey Man is a satisfactory action flick that has difficulty juggling its other elements. Patel, who cowrote the scenario, plays "Kid" a resident of Mumbai who ekes out a living as a masked combatant at a fight club. Through flashbacks, we learn that Kid's mother has been killed by a corrupt police chief named Rana Singh. Kid's primary motivation in the film is to avenge his mother and he endeavors to join an organized crime gang in order to help do so. He assaults Singh at a high end brothel, but fails to kill him and ends up recovering from his own wounds at a Hijra temple. The guru of the temple guides him through a hallucinogenic dream quest to help him deal with his trauma. Kid then gets in shape Rocky style before finally getting his revenge.

For a film by a first time director, Monkey Man displays more than competent technique. The first hour of the film flies by with well constructed action sequences. The portrait of Mumbai's underworld is pungent and alive. Though this is not a film with many three dimensional characterizations, Pitobash and Ashwini Kalsekar offer memorable portraits of shady characters. However, the film loses momentum in its second half. There are too many flashbacks of Kid's happy days with his mother before her ultimate demise. Its nice that Patel is down with the trans community, but the sequences at the Hijra temple dawdle and Kid's vision quest is pretty silly. Patel tries to link Kid's tale with the legends of Hanuman his mother told him, but I'm not sure the plot of Monkey Man  really synchs up with the mythical figures of the Ramayana. Another thing that doesn't really jibe is Patel's attempt to link the bad guys in the film with the right wing nationalism of Prime Minister Modi. These extraneous elements drag down Monkey Man, but Patel displays enough skill as a director for me to look forward to his next effort. 

Hell or High Water

Ben Foster and Chris Pine

David Mackenzie's Hell or High Water is a hard bitten B that transcends its genre limitations and a somewhat self conscious script to provide thoughtful entertainment. Mackenzie stages the numerous bank robberies by a pair of aggrieved brothers with a snappy, brisk style. He parallels their flight from capture with the investigation of their crimes by two older cops, the travels of both twosomes visually rhymed by horizontal tracking shots. The backdrop is post-recession West Texas, a burnt, bleak patch of land pockmarked by ghost towns. Giles Nuttgens' cinematography emphasizes the rust and brown palette of roadside Texas, heightening the overall aura of American decay.

Against this bleak backdrop, Mackenzie brings the film to life with moving turns from his players, rarely succumbing to cliché. Chris Pine has been in a host of movies ranging from unwatchable crap like Into the Woods to watchable crap like Star Trek to underseen sleepers like Bottle Shock and he has always brought sharp acting and a sense of fun. Well, there is not much fun to be had here, but this serious outing has deservedly brought him acclaim. Ben Foster has made a career out of sleazeballs and losers and the role of the black sheep brother fits him like a glove. Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham are outstanding as the cops. I think Bridges' performance has hogged the accolades because he has the showiest role in a film which culminates in a nifty face-off between him and Pine.

What prevents the film from achieving greatness is an over-reliance on ponderous speechifying to signal financial corruption and racism. A few racist jibes from Bridges would suffice, but we get a constant stream. The script suffers from both overkill and overdetermination. There is some welcome humor in the film, but little liveliness. Still, I am carping. When I think of outright turkeys like Crash and Dr Doolittle getting Best Picture nominations, the kudos bestowed on this film seem deserved. (2/12/17)