Battle Hymn

Rock Hudson

Douglas Sirk is most noted for the melodramas he directed for Universal producer Ross Hunter in the 1950s. However, he yearned for some variety and was particularly interested in filming aircraft, so Battle Hymn, also produced by Hunter, provides him a break from luxe interiors. The 1957 Cinemascope feature, shot in gorgeous Technicolor by frequent collaborator Russell Metty, is loosely based on a best selling memoir by Dean E. Hess. Hess was a Colonel in the Air Force who served in both World War 2 and the Korean conflict. While in Korea, he helped found an orphanage and saved the lives of many young refugees fleeing the war. Initially, Robert Mitchum was to play Hess, but Hess had doubts about Mitchum's character, so the role was given to Sirk and Hunter's standby leading man, Rock Hudson.

The eventual script for Battle Hymn, which has little to do with the actual events, is too pious, cliched, and hackneyed to build into a coherent and tolerable film. There are compensatory pleasures, though. Chief among them is Rock Hudson's performance. Hudson is sensitive enough to underplay his character's resolve and sanctimony. As we open the film, Hess is working as a minister in Ohio. However, he is haunted by his bombing of an orphanage in World War 2 which killed 37 children. He leaves ministry and wife (Martha Hyer in an extremely thankless role) behind as he departs for Korea. Hess is only supposed to instruct South Korean fighter pilots, but by film's end he has taken to the skies to wreak havoc. He finds the time to create an orphanage with an elderly sage and comely Anna Kashfi. Kashfi had the dubious fortune to marry Marlon Brando and only appeared in four films. Battle Hymn suggests she could have been a reliable screen presence. Certainly, she turns up the erotic heat in a film that badly needs it. 

The director stages this tendentious spectacle with equanimity. A belief in God's will is trumpeted as a bulwark against nihilism, but all religions and races are embraced in an egalitarian spirit. Sirk shoots characters in spiritual turmoil from the back, reinforcing a sense of something, trauma say, hidden and repressed. The film acknowledges American war atrocities well before My Lai and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Battle Hymn features Dan Duryea in a rare good guy role, plus Carl Benton Reid, James Edwards, Alan Hale Jr., and an uncredited James Hong.

Napoleon

Joaquin Phoenix

I waited for the inevitable director's cut of Ridley Scott's Napoleon before diving in and had a very mixed reaction. The subject requires a mini-series format of twelve hours at a minimum and this is why I waited to see the whole enchilada. History buffs, like me, would seem to be the best audience for this flick, though the film interjects many ahistorical moments, starting with Napoleon witnessing Marie Antoinette's execution. Scott certainly has proven he has the eye for historical epics and the lavishness of the production is eye-popping. The CGI segments of the battle sequences are less distracting than usual and in the case of the underwater shots of the Battle of Austerlitz, powerful.

However, the film is choppy. There are precious few memorable supporting characters. Fascinating figures like Barras, Fouché, Caulaincourt, Ney, Davous, and Dumas whiz by us as mere name checks. I could differentiate Talleyrand, but only because of the brace on his leg. Edouard Philipponnat as Tsar Alexander and Rupert Everett as Wellington stand out because David Scarpa's script paints them so broadly. Sinéad Cusack as Nappy's mother is given a few choice scenes which paint her as a stage mom, but she soon disappears into the ether. Napoleon's siblings, a motley crew of preening problemistas, are absent save for stolid Lucien.

Vanessa Kirby

Scarpa's script had to leave out a lot, so I'm not saying it was neccesarily a bad thing to leave out Napoleon's family background or his political and diplomatic stances. What we are left with is a film that primarily focuses on spectacle and Napoleon's relationship with wife number one, Josephine. As I've intimated, Scott handles the bloody tumult of battle well, though good luck to those seeking to glean Bonaparte's tactical brilliance. The coronation sequence, which mimics David's painting of the event, captures Napoleon's seizing his crown as a moment of grotesque self-actualization. The Pope was supposed to crown the impudent upstart, but, since this is not conveyed to the audience, this fine cinematic flourish is muffled, Similarly, the impact of the film's portrayal of Napoleon's execution of the Duke of Enghien lacks impact for the audience because the background information provided about the event is so scant.

The film does boast a fine Josephine in Vanessa Kirby in a role originally meant for Jodie Comer. Kirby captures both the sexual allure and steely resolve of a noblewoman who became a courtesan in order to survive. The film displays how Josephine was better suited to maneuver through the salons of Paris than Napoleon who was very much a Corsican bumpkin when he first emerged as a national figure. The film, if anything, is tilted in sympathy to Josephine. Napoleon is portrayed as a clumsy and abrupt lover who discards his wife when no heir is forthcoming, hardly a romantic ideal. I can certainly buy this point of view, but the film's presentation of Napoleon and Josephine's romance as the primary passion of their lives is hooey. Both partners had many lovers and if I would characterize their relationship as anything, it would be transactional.

The biggest problem in the film's portrayal of the relationship between Napoleon and Josephine is Joaquin Phoenix's age. Phoenix looks the same at the beginning of the film as he does at the end. He cannot be convincing as the callow social climber who depended on the older Josephine's social connections and knowhow. Phoenix is too good an actor not to give us some interesting moments, I especially enjoyed his encounter with a mummy during the Egyptian campaign, but he is too old and too neurotic in approach for the role. Phoenix gives us the immature husband besotted by his more experienced mate, but not the brilliant military tactician or the Machiavellian political leader. Napoleon has its moments, but it is a facsimile of a great film. 

Lumiére d'Eté

Madeleine Renaud and Pierre Brasseur

Jean Grémillon's Lumiére d'Eté (Summer Light), from 1943, is a gripping romantic melodrama and political allegory filmed in Vichy France during the Occupation. The main setting of the film is a remote hotel presided over by Cricri, a woman of a certain age played by Grémillon's frequent collaborator, Madeleine Renaud. Cricri has been set up in her position by her aristocratic lover Patrice (Pierre Brasseur), but Patrice seems bored by Cricri and is stringing her along till he finds a better prospect. Patrice is manipulative and has a fetish for firearms. We eventually learn that he killed his wife in a hunting "accident" in which Cricri was complicit. Into this perverse ménage arrives Michèle (Madeleine Robinson) who has traveled to the country from Paris to have a rendezvous with her artist boyfriend Roland (Pierre Brasseur). Roland does not prove to be heroic like his namesake of yore. An unrepentant drunk, he proves to be more interested in his own self-pity than in Michèle. Patrice invites Roland to stay at his chateau, ostensibly to decorate his walls, but really because he has designs on Michèle. Michèle also draws the attentions of Julien (Georges Marchal), a construction worker at a local dam project. All the characters converge at a masked ball at the chateau, a bravura sequence, which ends in tragedy.

The wartime allegory of Lumiére d'Eté is not hard to parse. The characters try to ignore the explosions that reverberate from the dam construction, much as Vichy France tried to ignore the distant guns of the ongoing conflict. Predation lurks in the background as an eagle menaces lambs. Intimations of sexual predation are also present with mentions of Leda and the swan and Susannah and the elders. Patrice is the arch fascist of the film and it is this portrait of a languid and cruel patrician that rankled authorities enough to suppress the film during the Occupation. The indolence of the Vichy supporting upper class is contrasted with the labor of the working class toiling at the dam site. The drama climaxes with communal action thwarting a singular evil. Michèle and her hunky proletarian lover hike out towards the hinterlands at film's end, presumably to join the Resistance. 

Madeleine Robinson

The script of Lumiére d'Eté, by Jacques Prévert and Pierre Laroche, especially its depiction of sexual and class conflicts. has drawn many comparisons to The Rules of the Game; with justification. Lumiére d'Eté is not in the same league as Renoir's film for reasons besides originality, but precious few films are. Patrice's shooting gallery is a little too similar to Marcel Dalio's mechanical birds, at least metaphorically. I also feel that Grémillon fails to flesh out his supporting characters in stock roles as well as Renoir does. Both Raymond Aimos (Ernest) and Léonce Corne (Tonton) are fine supporting actors, but they can't elevate their characters above a one dimensional level. Grémillon's film does have one attribute that surpasses The Rules of the Game, its exterior scenes. The roughhewn construction site is a vital counterpoint to the refined excesses of Patrice's chateau and Cricri's hotel, ironically monikered The Guardian Angel. 

The three males leads of the film are fine, though Pierre Brasseur is prone to burlesque in his many drunk scenes, but this film belongs to its leading ladies. Madeleine Robinson's Michèle is fertile innocence juxtaposed with the barren experience of Madeleine Renaud's Cricri. Michèle has an array of suitors while Cricri is bereft. Both performances are beautiful and touching. Robinson is given one of the most radiant entrances (see above) in cinema as she walks up towards The Guardian Angel surrounded by a gorgeous vista. A creature of nature in its realm, to which she returns at film's end. Cricri, like the pets in the film (birds and crickets), is a creature in a cage entirely dependent on the largesse of her owner. Happily, Renaud would receive a much less masochistic role in her next role for Grémillon, the aviatrix in Le ciel est à vous. All in all, Lumiére d'Eté is a first rate picture, worthy of more exposure.

Palm Springs

Cristin Milioti and Andy Samberg

Max Barbakow's Palm Springs, from 2020, is a time loop comedy that boasts both hilarity and depth. A perverse riff on Groundhog Day, Palm Springs has Andy Samberg reliving the same desert resort wedding day in perpetuity. He seizes the opportunity to drink excessively and seduce who he can within the wedding party. Unlike Groundhog Day, Samberg is joined in the loop by a nemesis (J.K. Simmons) and a romantic interest (Cristin Milioti). Andy Siara's witty script uses an outlandish premise, as in classic screwball comedies, to poke fun at American mores. Despite a major flaw, Palm Springs is one of the better American comedies of this century.

Unfortunately, that flaw is Mr. Samberg. I feel bad for kicking a man when he is down. After the results of the recent election, it looks like he will lose his gig on Saturday Night Live playing Doug Emhoff. Palm Springs shows that the parodies and skits of SNL and The Lonely Island are a better home for his talents than playing a romantic lead, even in a goofy comedy. Bill Murray's performance in Groundhog Day lets the audience in on the joke. He allows them to see he is playing a naughty brat who must be reformed before experiencing mature love. All we get from Samberg, whether he is clutching a beer or Ms. Milioti, is a smug smirk. Whenever charm and grace are needed, as when Samberg maneuvers through the reception throng to catch Ms. Milioti's eye, Samberg falls woefully short. Since this film is Samberg's and Siara's baby, nurtured since their AFI days, I feel doubly bad about pointing out the obvious. 

Ms. Milioti, however, is superb in a modern take on a screwball heroine that makes us laugh and empathize with her character's plight. Her character is more morally ambivalent than the screwball heroines of past, but Ms. Milioti, as she has shown on The Penguin, is adept at bringing steel and ice to a character. Hulu has kept a tight wrap around Palm Springs since its truncated theatrical run, there seems to be no DVD or Blu-ray release in the US, but it seems that Hollywood is catching onto Ms. Milioti's varied talents. 

One of the possible reasons for the lack of a disc release for Palm Springs, its music licensing, is a strength of the film. The song selections, which range from Hawaiian tunes to Patrick Cowley, comments on the action in a more interesting fashion than in most pop films of this ilk. Some of the tunes reinforce a mood, Gram Parsons' In My Hour of Darkness plays at the bar when Samberg, at his lowest ebb, drowns his sorrows. John Cale's Barracuda, ostensibly upbeat, plays up the sexual and social one-upmanship surrounding the film's wedding and reception. Most interesting of all is the use of Gene Clark's No Other while Samberg reminisces about how he and J.K. Simmons once went on a bender, snorting up half of Bolivia. The song and attendant album are permeated by cocaine's highs and lows. The song's lyrics, like Palm Springs, grapple with the push and pull of sexual fidelity.

Simmons is always a valuable asset to a film, but Palm Springs brings together a host of scene stealers: including Meredith Hagner, Tyler Hoechlin, June Squibb, and Peter Gallagher. Barbakow keeps things at an antic pace without getting out of control. I think the film was poorly marketed, Palm Desert or Joshua Tree have been better titles for the film. Palm Springs as a title smacks more of Sinatra than the aliens and magic mushrooms that figure in the film itself. Nevertheless, this is a picture that will only gain in esteem in the future.

Easy to Love

Mary Astor, Genevieve Tobin and Adolphe Menjou 

William Keighley's Easy to Love, released in early 1934, is a slim but enjoyable bedroom comedy made for Warner Brothers. Derived from Thompson Buchanan's mildly successful play As Good as New, Easy to Love is boiled down to essentials, running just over an hour. There is no attempt to open up the play, even a shot of Adolphe Menjou gazing at the moon is filmed on a soundstage. Keighley, who was just one of many talents brought west from Broadway after the advent of the talkies, is a pretty good match for the material in what was his first film as sole director. He does not have the sauciness or the visual invention of a Lubitsch, but he has the timing and rapport with actors of an old pro. Easy to Love is the umpteenth iteration of the continental boudoir farce. Thank the Lord it was made Pre-Code. Keighley's refinement meshes better with the material than some later films he was assigned by Warner Brothers like Each Dawn I Die

Lobby card for the black and white Easy to Love

The film stars Genevieve Tobin, usually a supporting player in this era, as a rich wife with a straying husband. Hubby is played by Menjou who fits the role perfectly. He is dallying with his wife's best friend (Mary Astor) who is stringing along Edward Everett Horton. In turn, Horton is besotted with Tobin. Of course, after Tobin pretends to be making time with Horton, she provokes Menjou' jealousy which leads to the inevitable conclusion that upholds wedded bliss and the double standard. The ensemble playing of the romantic quartet

is exemplary and there are nice supporting turns by Guy Kibbee and Hugh Herbert. Orry-Kelly's outfits are a plus. I don't like Ms. Tobin's outfit in the top photo, but swooned over Ms. Astor in a halter top. I did not care for the subplot of Tobin's daughter and her beau, but Easy to Love is enjoyable fluff that is easy to like. Easy to Love and One Hour With You are the best showcases for Ms. Tobin's talents. She married Keighley in 1938 and, soon after quit show biz. 

Revenge

Matilda Lutz

Coralie Fargeat's Revenge, her first feature film from 2017, is a gory and effective action thriller. Matilda Lutz portrays Jen, a mistress of a wealthy French man, who has a rendezvous with her lover at an isolated estate in a Moroccan game reserve. Jen's lover is meeting up with two buddies to go hunting, but things do not go as planned. Jen is raped and abused by the three men and, after a fall from a cliff, is left for dead. However, she is very much alive and bent on, yes, revenge. The film eschews plausibility and the characterizations verge on the one dimensional, but Revenge is a tautly constructed film with palpable energy. Fargeat's technical gifts are very much in evidence. Her framing of the action is always interesting and her use of sound, whether it is Mozart, techno or silence, effective.

Fans of Fargeat's second feature, The Substance, will find that her debut has much in common with her sophomore feature. Guillaume Bouchède gulping down of a candy bar as he watches Jen being raped is of a piece with Dennis Quaid's loud mastication of prawns in The Substance. Both films portray men as greedy animals focused wholly on their personal consumption. Predators circling each other's trail. Body horror is a major element in her two features. All four characters in Revenge endure excruciating physical ordeals and Fargeat's camera never flinches. Those looking for nuance and humanist uplift should pass Revenge by, but hardened action fans will enjoy the ferocious carnage. Each of her feature films display Fargeat's talent and craftmanship. It remains to be seen whether her reductive view of humanity will gain depth in time. 

Wrong Move

Rüdiger Vogler and Hanna Schygulla

Wim Wenders' Wrong Move, from 1975, was the second of three road movies Wenders made during the 70s starring Rüdiger Vogler. It was Wenders first color feature and part of his longtime collaboration with the writer Peter Handke. Handke based the film on Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, a seminal bildungsroman, but Handke just uses Goethe's premise as a springboard for a young man's journey from through West Germany. The film opens with aerial shot of Mr. Meister's home town of Boppard. Various modes of conveyance are used in the picture by the characters and serve as motifs for the director: trains, subways, ferries, bikes, autos. The film's most typical shot is a dolly of two characters walking and talking, through squares, streets, hill, and dale. The late great Robby Müller's plein air cinematography gives the characters room to breathe and spout philosophical reveries. It has an unfussy elegance to it that helps put over the empathy with which Wenders regards his characters.

We first encounter Wenders' Wilhelm Meister regarding the town square of Boppard from his window. He is dressed in bourgeoise fashion and lolls about his room listening to the Troggs in a mood of sullen despair. He breaks his windows and his complacency in an angry fit and draws blood, in the film's first too obvious instance of the use of blood as a symbol of German collective guilt. Mama has had enough and though she says she loves Wilhelm's "unrest and discontent" (Thanks Mom!), she says he must leave home in order to gain the experience he needs to fulfill his dream of becoming a writer. Wilhelm bids a curt and unromantic adieu to his girlfriend. Significantly, she, like the other two women who become enamored with the diffident Wilhelm through the course of the film, is in a guise and not playing her "real" self. Wenders gives the great Lisa Kreuzer a magnificent entrance, doffing her wig and exposing her true self to her feckless lover before Wilhelm departs on his peripatetic journey. Then she is lost to us and Wilhelm.

Wenders throws at his audience, a la Godard, a host of cultural nods during the course of his hero's sentimental education: Flaubert, Faulkner, The Kinks, Bob Dylan, Straub-Huillet, Schiller, Beethoven, Eichendorff. However, these allusions are discarded as, over the course of the film, Wilhelm travels with a band of misfits who are attracted to his unassuming charisma. They all have their stories and their dreams, which they recount, but it is their unvarnished humanity which ultimately shakes Wilhelm out of his solipsism, a little. In this, Wenders is greatly helped by his most professionally lauded and accomplished cast thus far. Vogler was already an axiom of Wenders' cinema and, expectedly, fits snugly. Hanna Schygulla, taking a break from the S and M fables of Fassbinder, is at her most beautiful and touching. Though I admit there is more than a bit of masochism in her character, an actress who falls for the remote Wilhelm. Hans Christian Blech, Peter Kern, and Ivan Desny all offer memorable vignettes as varyingly toxic examples of German masculinity. All of the actors help make Handke's high falutin rhetoric remain anchored instead of floating off into the clouds.

Vogler and Nastassja Kinski

Nastassja Kinski, making her film debut, is another kettle of fish entirely. Kinski plays a Lolitaesque mute, part of a transient grifting duo. She thinks Wilhelm is the cat's pajamas and nuzzles up to him whenever she can. Kinski has an abortive nude romantic scene with Vogler (she was twelve or so) and while some may tut-tut, I found Wenders ambivalence towards adolescent sexuality refreshing and not exploitive. Certainly, Kinski's lack of dialogue helps makes this one of her most convincing performances.

All in all, the cockeyed dourness of Wrong Moves makes me see why it is the most obscure of Wenders' road trilogy. The coming to account of a character with his Nazi past struck me more as a sign of artistic pretension than insight, but, on the whole, the people we meet in Wrong Move, are interesting and evocative. It is the tender regard that Wenders treats even his blackest characters that redeems the sometimes feckless journey of this film. 

Rapito

Paolo Pierobon as Pope Pius IX

Marco Bellocchio's Rapito (Kidnapped) is, by my count, the Italian director's 37th feature film since he debuted with the terrific Fists in the Pocket in 1965. Subtitled The Abduction of Edgardo Mortara, Rapito tells the true life story of a six year old Jewish boy in Bologna who was snatched by Papal authorities in 1851, taken to Rome, converted to Catholicism and eventually became a priest. This caused an international furor chronicled in Daniele Scalise's The Mortara Case, the basis of the film's script and a book not yet available in English. The film juxtaposes the rites and rituals of both religions shifting between Edgardo's Catholic education and his beside themselves parents and their household in Bologna.

Rapito's story is so wrenching that the film needs little directorial embellishment. Despite a few critics accusing the director of melodramatic overstatement, I think Bellocchio shows great restraint, often filming the proceedings at a classical remove. Close-ups are largely reserved for Edgardo, Edgardo's distraught parents or the film's main villains. Bellocchio is fully on the side of the Mortara family, but his portrait of the clergy has some balance with a few notable exceptions. These include Father Feletti, a zealous Inquisition official who is the architect of Edgardo's forced conversion, and Pope Pius IX. The arc of the film focuses as much on Pius as it does on Edgardo who, when he reaches maturity, is rapt in his adoration of his pontiff. Edgardo's brain washing is conveyed by Bellocchio through the repetitive and rote nature of his Catholic education. Bellocchio presents his protagonist's religious instruction as an indoctrination by a cult.

Paolo Pierobon has the film's juiciest role as the vain and power mad Pius, drunk with his own papal infallibility, and delivers an indelible portrait of evil. Pius and his Papal states are literally under siege by a burgeoning nationalist movement that would unite the nation into a secular republic under Victor Emmanuel II. Pius' anxiety is illustrated in a few dream or hallucinatory sequences which include his being circumcised by a cabal of Hebrew elders. These moments go a long way in keeping Rapito from being a dry historical treatise. These sequences parallel a number of hallucinatory dream sequences that convey how Edgardo's unconscious is affected by the dogma and graven images of the church. A further parallel is the image of Eduardo hiding under a skirt. Initially he hides under his mother's skirt when threatened with being separated from his family. Eventually he nestles under the pope's robes during a game of hide and seek, marking his shift in allegiance to mother church.

Barbara Ronchi

Edgardo becomes such a devout defender of his newfound faith that he tries to baptize his mother on her deathbed. It is a tribute to Barbara Ronchi's performance as the mother that this climactic moment never seems overheated or hackneyed. Technically, Rapito is immaculate. I particularly enjoyed Francesco Di Giacomo's cinematography and Fabio Massimo Capo Grosso's score. The lion's share of the credit should go to Bellocchio, a filmmaker whose releases in America has been limited. Rapito is an impressively vigorous film from an 84 year old artist. The best of his work that I've seen ( which would include besides Rapito and Fists in the Pocket, Vincere and Devil in the Flesh) indicates that he needs more exposure on these shores.

Woman on the Run

Ann Sheridan and Dennis O'Keefe

Norman Foster's Woman on the Run is a pretty good noir from 1950. This black and white B feature, long thought lost, has been lovingly restored and put out on disc by Flicker Alley. Ann Sheridan stars as Eleanor Johnson, a woman whose husband was witness to a mob hit and is on the run from both the gangsters and the police. She spends the flick racing about San Francisco seeking to find and aid her man. She is aided in this by tabloid reporter Dan Legget (Dennis O'Keefe) who appears quite willing to use checkbook journalism in order to get an exclusive story. The film reveals the identity of the hit man halfway through the picture and this increases rather than ameliorates the suspense. In this, the film is following Hitchcock's dictum that it is more fruitful to let the audience in on the peril facing a protagonist rather than randomly springing it on them. An audience will feel more terror and suspense when they know that a bomb's explosion is imminent rather than experiencing it as an unforeseen jump scare.   

The location shooting in San Francisco captures a blue collar, working port city that was long gone by the time I lived in Bagdad by the Bay in the 1980s. The opening murder sequence was shot in Los Angeles and the concluding amusement park sequence was shot in Santa Monica, but both are well integrated with the San Francisco footage. I especially enjoyed how Foster utilized the Santa Monica amusement park and its roller coaster to ratchet up the suspense in the final reel. A fatal rendezvous is scheduled to take place in the shadow of the roller coaster and Foster uses the coaster's edifice to reinforce the notion that the Johnsons are caught in a trap not of their own devise. A deterministic sense of doom permeates the film, one appropriate for noir. Eleanor finds herself confined on the coaster ride when she gleans that her husband is in mortal danger. She can only scream ineffectively as she rockets along the track. Theme and narrative are one as the protagonist's helpless plight is both metaphorically evoked and expressionistically portrayed.

Foster had started as actor, but by the late 1930s was wholly focused on directing films in Hollywood. He earned his spurs toiling on B features featuring Mr. Moto and Charlie Chan, but never really became a director of the first rank. Like many of his ilk, he had a healthy subsequent career directing television shows and films. I fondly remember the Davy Crockett films he directed for Disney. One aspect of his career that aided in keeping him obscure is his long association with Orson Welles. Foster certainly assisted Welles on It's All True, but the notion that Welles directed Foster's 1943 thriller Journey Into Fear seems to me a canard. Certainly the occasional portentous shot in Journey Into Fear smacks of Welles, though. Women on the Run also betrays Welles influence. Indeed, at times it seems a knockoff of Welles' The Lady From Shanghai, especially with its Orientalism, San Francisco settings, and amusement park climax. Foster use of tilted low angle shots (see above) to create a sense of dislocation and unease is very reminscent of Welles. The difference between the two is that between a journeyman and a genius. Foster is a solid craftsman in the service of his story whereas Welles marshals his effects and affects into creating a cosmos all his own. A world in which lurking evil is a far more palpable and sinister presence than anything found in Foster's films.

Women on the Run is greatly helped by a bevy of fine supporting performances that animate the film's portrayal of the gritty edges of San Francisco, especially by John Qualen, J. Farrell MacDonald, and Steven Geray. Robert Keith, father of Brian, is particularly effective as a police inspector who seems to relish his own cynicism. Dennis O'Keefe is good in a role that lets him show off his raffish qualities. However, this is all Ann Sheridan's picture in more ways than one. Women on the Run was Sheridan's baby, an independent picture that she produced and partially financed after the ending of her contract with Warner Brothers. She was thirty five and apparently no longer young enough to play the oomph girl, though I think she is plenty sexy in both this and the previous year's I Was a Male War Bride. One thing I like about her performance is the ambiguity she projects towards her absent husband. Her Eleanor is not a meek doormat, but a breathing, feeling creature with the conflicting feelings that exist in all mature relationships. It is a brave and ballsy act, but it brought her little acclaim at the time. Woman on the Run was released by Universal who signed Sheridan to a new contract, but it could not prevent a career decline for Southern who died prematurely in 1967.

The Fall Guy

Ryan Gosling

I found David Leitch's The Fall Guy to be just diverting enough to recommend it. Leitch a former stunt man turned director, with such action packed films as Atomic Blonde and Bullet Train to his credit, is well on his way to becoming the Hal Needham of the 21st century, but The Fall Guy is at least suited to the narrow range of his talents. Ryan Gosling plays the titular stunt man who finds himself working on a science fiction film helmed by an ex-flame played by Emily Blunt. Gosling's character has to perform hair raising stunts, thwart the nefarious plans of the film's villains, and reclaim the heart of his lady love. Which, of course, he does since he is the Goose and this is a formulaic star vehicle built around his good looks and charm. 

I did find that the picture captured the camaraderie of a film set and provided some appealing character roles for its supporting cast: particularly Hannah Waddington, Stephanie Hsu, Winston Duke, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson who turns in an amusing parody of Matthew McConaughey. Blunt, who earned her action spurs on Edge of Tomorrow, has much less to do here than the Goose, but ably portrays a once bitten character who is wary of the macho lug before inevitably falling into his arms. It is a tribute to Ms. Blunt's talents that she is still being cast as a romantic lead even after reaching the Hollywood sell by date of the big 4-0. The relaxed assurance of Gosling ultimately is what sells this picture. The former Mouseketeer brings the physical grace of a dancer to the action scenes and a shy courtliness to the romantic ones.                  

The Unknown Soldier

Eero Aho

Aku Louhimies' The Unknown Soldier is a three hour Finnish epic that follows a single battalion through the course of Finland's Continuation War with the Soviet Union which lasted from 1941-1944 and followed the 1939-40 Winter War between the two combatants. The film chronicles the forth and back of the conflict across Karelia and the Soviet Union. Based on Väinö Linna's 1954 autobiographical novel, this overly handsome, yet technically assured film works best as a combat procedural. A strong point of view is lacking, though, except that war is heck.

Part of the problem is the broad canvas this 2017 flick attempts. Because of this, many of the characters come off as one dimensional: you get a Fascist, a Communist, and a raw recruit who you know is going to bite the bullet because he looks like Bambi. The director and fellow scenarist Jari Rantala have attempted to amplify our understanding of the protagonists by adding more about their loved ones waiting on the home front than is contained in the original novel, but this brings mixed results. It helps the audience better understand the civilian displacement caused by the war, but also overextends an already lengthy project. The romantic lead is a total washout, but Eero Aho as the insolent Corporal Rokka gives the film the focal point it badly needs.

Desperate

Steve Brodie and Audrey Long

Anthony Mann's Desperate, from 1947, is an effective and evocative noir. This B RKO production stars Steve Brodie as Steve Randall, a veteran struggling to gain an economic foothold post-war as a trucker. Audrey Long plays his wife Anne who unbeknownst to Steve, but not the audience, is an expectant mother. Steve takes a suspiciously lucrative job hauling some "perishables" which are actually the ill gotten goods of a heist masterminded by gangster Walt Radak (Raymond Burr). A police officer intervenes and is shot dead by Radak's brother. He is nabbed at the scene and is sentenced to the electric chair, much to the consternation of his brother. Steve, sought by the police and Radak, goes on the lam with his wife. They take refuge with Anne's Aunt Clara in Minnesota, but nothing can stop the inevitable showdown between Steve and Radak.

The script for Desperate, penned by Harry Essex whose checkered credits include Creature From the Black Lagoon and The Sons of Katie Elder, is standard innocent man on the run fare like I Am A Fugitive From the Chain Gang and many Hitchcock films such as The 39 Steps and North By Northwest. Essex even cribs a newlywed jape from Saboteur. Mann brings his own aura of paranoia to the proceedings. The chiaroscuro mix of shadow and shafts of light displays that there was an Anthony Mann look before he hooked up with cinematographer John Alton later that year for his breakthrough film, T-Men. Mann dollies into close-ups of fists, broken bottles, and, most scary of all, Raymond Burr, to conjure the mindset of his hunted hero. He tracks around the gangster's lair creating a milieu which would become familiar to fans of the director, an oppressive world with no sense of cosmic justice in which coiled characters explode into spasms of violence. 

Raymond Burr and William Challee

Desperate is part of a cycle of postwar films, such as The Stranger and Key Largo, in which the specter of fascism is shown nestling in the bosom of America, usually in the guise of gangsters, as a threat to domestic harmony. This is rendered fairly literally in Desperate. The final face-off between Steve and Radak, a crescendo of ultra close-ups, takes place in the family kitchen amidst sandwiches, milk, and family portraits. The inclusion of a wedding and dance sequence set in a Czech community in Minnesota posits the US as a haven for immigrants far away from Europe's turmoil. When Radak menaces Anne's Aunt Clara, he and his henchman resemble the portrayals of the Gestapo in Hollywood films during the war; something that can't be considered accidental when reviewing the films of the director born with the name Emil Anton Bundsman.

Steve Brodie and Audrey Long are more than fine as the leads. Brodie worked in Hollywood till the end of his life. He was typed as a supporting player and Desperate gave him his only lead role. Ms. Long married Leslie Charteris, author of many novels chronicling the adventures of Simon Templar aka "The Saint", and retired from show business. Burr is always money as a noir heavy. Desperate also boasts a passel of fine supporting performances: especially Douglas Fowley as a weaselly private eye, Cy Kendall as a crooked car dealer, and Ilka Grüning as kindly Aunt Clara. Best of all is Jason Robards (Sr.) as a tough police lieutenant who is willing to dangle the film's hero as bait in order to nab his man.

Crime in the Streets

John Cassavetes, Mark Rydell, and Sal Mineo

Don Siegel's Crime in the Streets is a dated juvenile delinquent melodrama from 1956. The film was originally an hour long television drama, written by Reginald Rose and directed by Sydney Lumet, that aired on The Elgin Hour the year before. Two of the members of the TV cast were retained for the film production, Mark Rydell as the most psychotic member of the juvenile gang and John Cassavetes, making his film debut, as the gang's troubled leader. What plot there is hinges on the possible murder of a retiree who has finked on the gang. The picture was produced by Allied Artists, the successor to bargain basement Monogram Pictures, and it shows. Action is pretty much limited to the single set that represents a slum block in Queens. 

The central problem with the film is the hackneyed script by Rose, most famous for penning 12 Angry Men. Changing the script from a 52 minute TV model into a ninety minute film, Rose pads the project with redundant monologues from Cassavetes's character's mother (Virginia Gregg), a girl sweet on him (Denise Alexander), a local merchant (Will Kuluva), and the local social worker (James Whitmore), all decrying the nihilistic attitude and feckless behavior of modern youth. Rose even provides a half-baked motivation for the anti-social demeanor of Cassavetes' Frankie Dane, what Manny Farber called "the gimp". Beatings from Dane's father have caused him to react defensively to human contact and he shies away from even the most benign touch. In the film's most ridiculous moment, a slap from a neighbor cause a psychotic break for Dane. The camera ratches out of focus to indicate Dane's temporary detachment from reality.          

All in all, Siegel does what can with the shopworn material. However, only the opening rumble between gangs displays his gifts for action cinema. Someone got the bright idea to put the opening credits over this sequence, but as with Touch of Evil, even this distraction can't lessen its kinetic impact as Franz Waxman big band jazz score blares away. Waxman must have felt liberated to do this kind of score after the acceptance of Elmer Bernstein's jazz score for The Man with the Golden Arm, but it sounds more like a facsimile of jazz rather than the real thing. Nothing else in this film matches this sequence, though I did enjoy Siegel's judicious use of close-ups, even the one of a dog eating from a garbage can. Siegel sensitively handles his cast, reining in those who tend to overact (Cassavetes, Rydell) and giving space to the more restrained performers (Whitmore, Mineo). Dane's gang members are given little characterization. Only Rydell and Mineo are even given a semblance of a character, but they represent little more than the dark and little sides of Dane's character, each trying to push Dane towards enlightenment or depravity. Rydell, who eventually became a successful film director, clashed with Siegel over his performance and, luckily, Siegel won, restraining Rydell's more cartoonish impulses. Mineo gives the best performance of the film, in a role very reminiscent of his breakthrough performance in Rebel Without A Cause. He plays "Baby", the youngest and most sensitive member of the gang and manages to suggest a youngster struggling with his moral conscience without telegraphing the effect.

Cassavetes and Denise Alexander

Cassavetes character is quite ridiculous, his tough is no more realistic than Travolta's in Grease, but he glowers effectively in a role that could have been risible. Denise Alexander would end up snagging a linchpin role of over four decades as Lesley Weber in the daytime drama, General Hospital. I once was confused when Andrew Sarris described James Whitmore's career arc as that of never becoming the second Spencer Tracy, but his role as the social worker here cleared that up for me. When he is not mouthing the liberal pieties provided by Reginald Rose, he is trying to buddy up with the gang by offering to treat them to a beer. The gang members, of course, tell him to scram. Essentially he is playing a secular variation on Tracy's Father Flanagan. The role verges on parody, but Whitmore, as assuredly effective here as when pitching potting soil, emerges with dignity. Robert Preston, another good salesman, played the role on television.