Biff's Favorite Books Read in 2025

       

     1)   Second Place by Rachel Cusk

           Few, if any, recent novels has better captured the inner and outer tumult of

           lives in our century. Fierce.

     2)  Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner

           Cadillac Desert was first published in 1986 and stands as the definitive 

           history of water policy in the American West. A jeremiad against 

           the dam happy Bureau of Reclamation, the book's full force is 

           only being felt now as these marvels of twentieth century 

           technology are being removed from Western rivers. The group think and

           hubris displayed by the Bureau is the main focus of the book: not for

           nothing does Reisner preface this tome with Shelley's Ozymandias. 

           However, unlike some environmental screeds, Cadillac Desert is a

           balanced book that makes history come alive. There are memorable 

           portraits of such indelible figures as John Wesley Powell, William

           Mulholland, and Floyd Dominy.

    3)   The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne

           Here is an old chestnut pertinent to our times. Socialistic 

           communes. A ménage à trois. Grifting spiritualists. Sounds like 

           present day Oregon to me.

    4)   Perspective(s) by Laurent Binet

          This is an epistolary novel set in 16th century Florence which centers

          on the (fictional) murder of painter Jacopo da Pontormo. The characters,

          nearly all of them actual historical figures, are a who's who of Renaissance

          Italy: Cosimo de' Medici, Piero Strozzi, Giorgio Vasari, Cellini, Bronzino,

          Plautilla Nelli, Michelangelo, etc.. I have thoroughly enjoyed the three

          previous historical novels by the resourceful French writer and 

          Perspective(s) proved equally memorable. Below is Pontormo's Venus 

          and Cupid which figures prominently in the book. Egads!

     5)    The Last Manager by John W. Miller

             This biography expertly captures the complex makeup of its subject, 

             Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver. Weaver was the premier 

             entertainer of Baltimore during my youth, just eclipsing non-baseball 

             fan John Waters, so one can rightly surmise that I am biased. Weaver 

             was not only a brilliant baseball tactician, but also a great showman. His

             contretemps with the umpires enlivened many a dull game. Miller

             traces the vaudevillian side of Weaver to his childhood in St. Louis where 

             he enjoyed the antic of the Cardinals' Gashouse Gang. Miller also ably 

             outlines the many years Weaver spent in the minor leagues, both as a 

             player and a manager, that helped mold the fiery bantam. The Last

             Manager is a book as wily and compelling as its subject.

    6)     The Prone Gunman by Jean-Patrick Manchette

             This taut 1981 noir sticks everything but the landing.

    7)      Dolly and the Bird of Paradise by Dorothy Dunnett

             One of my favorite writers. I try to dole out my readings of her because

             I'm afraid I'll run out of these treats before I expire. The book is a part of

             her Johnson Johnson mystery thrillers which you could always lend

             to your Aunt Minnie. More Sayers than Christie with modern trappings;

             though Dunnett is way hipper than your Aunt Minnie.

    8)     James by Percival Everett

             No doubt you've heard of this one. I did not like it as much as

             Erasure, but surrendered to it the moment that the character of

             Dan Emmett, author of the song Dixie, was introduced. Belongs on the

             shelf with Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo, a similar treatment of 

             minstrelsy, cultural cross-pollination and appropriation.

    9)     Radetzky March by Joseph Roth

             Ermanno Olmi's film of The Legend of the Holy Drinker hipped me

             to Roth who died just before the start of World War 2. Radetzky March

             traces the decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire through three

             fictional generations of military officers. I have a feeling that Emeric 

             Pressburger was making mental notes when he read this.

   10)    In Love With The Movies by Dan Talbot

            I also enjoyed:

            Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin, The Brutalists by Owen Hopkins

            Tecumseh and the Prophet by Peter Cozzens

            The Journey of August King by John Ehle

            Twisted Kicks by Tom Carson, Caravaggio by Andrew Graham-Dixon

            Bing Crosby by Gary Giddins, Kudos by Rachel Cusk

            Malaparte by Maurizio Serra

Love After Love

Sichun Ma and Feihong Yu           

Ann Hui's Love After Love, from 2020, is a sumptuous romantic melodrama set amongst the very rich in 1930s Hong Kong. Weilong (Sichun Ma), a young and innocent girl from Shanghai, arrives unexpectedly at the home of her wealthy aunt, the merry widow Madame Liang (Feihong Yu). Weilong is naive and awkward and has trouble acclimating herself to the louche and decadent lifestyle of her aunt. Madame Liang strings along a number of men, happily accepting expensive gifts from older men while enjoying trysts with younger ones. Unfortunately for Weilong, she falls for the most feckless of all those young studs, the biracial George (a charismatic Eddie Peng) who beds a large swathe of the female characters in this movie. After Weilong has lost her innocence, in more ways than one, Madame Liang tutors her in the properly improper way to snag and dominate her man. This leads to an ending that is more ambivalent than happy with Weilong realizing that she has turned into the new and improved version of Madame Liang.

Love After Love is essentially about Weilong's sentimental education or, rather, her learning about the necessity of holding sentiment in check if one is to get along in life. The film is based on the novel by Eileen Chang who wrote Lust, Caution and a number of other books that Ms Hui has adapted. Love After Love received only cursory showings in America. A number of critics were put off by its slow pace, but I thought it was appropriate for a film focused on the idle and languorous rich. Hui cuts off the privileged characters from the outside world, which is part of the point. There are no allusions to current events, though I did spy a poster for a Charley Chase film. The production design and costumes are gorgeous, a feast for the eyes. The equally eye popping vintage automobiles are each perfectly tailored to individual characters, particularly playboy George's yellow Rolls Royce. Christopher Doyle's cinematography is as lush and expressive as his work for Wong Kar-wai. Ryûichi Sakamoto's score, one of his best, is a neo-classical delight that underpins this film's rejection of Romantic excess.

Sinful Davey

John Hurt and Pamela Franklin

John Huston's Sinful Davey is an unsuccessful picaresque period film from 1969. Set in the 1820s, the film presents the exploits of Davey Haggart (John Hurt), a highwayman and brigand with enough dash to attract the ladies. His childhood friend Annie (Pamela Franklin) remains devoted to him, despite his indiscretions, and is constantly bailing Davey out of the various scrapes he gets into. That is pretty much all there is to the film. It ends up being an inferior Tom Jones retread. The film was loosely adapted from the memoirs of a real life Scottish rogue named David Haggart who went to the gallows in 1821 after a life of thievery and numerous escapes from jail. James R. Webb was the credited and original screenwriter, but the script went through many hands. Huston and producer Walter Mirisch battled constantly during filming and that battle continued during the film's editing. Mirisch, sensing he had a bomb on his hands, took a two hour preview version that Huston was happy with and cut it to 95 minutes. A John Barry score was also excised and has sadly disappeared into the ether, the remaining Ken Thorne score is unmemorable.

I doubt we have a mangled masterpiece in Sinful Davey, anyway. Huston, here and elsewhere, displays little feel for comedy. Sinful Davey's comic set pieces are slackly paced and clumsily shot. Huston was probably more interested in the latest issue of the Irish Racing Form than the picture. That said, Sinful Davey is not quite the debacle its reputation would make you think it is. It is a better film than such Huston disasters from this period as The Kremlin Letter and ...Judge Roy Bean. The film's most interesting insights focus on the criminal underworld of early 19th Century England, something that intrigues Huston more than comedy or romance. The cast is a joy despite being poorly framed. John Hurt is somewhat miscast as Davey, he lacks the open hearted sex appeal of an Albert Finney. That said, Hurt paces his lines properly for a lead in a farce. It was not his fault. I have been gaga for Pamela Franklin ever since I first saw her in The Legend of Hell House when I was twelve, so I will claim no objectivity here, but I find she brings warmth to a one dimensional role. I also admired the performances by Nigel Davenport, Robert Morley, Ronald Fraser, Fidelma Murphy, and Fionnula Flanagan. Sinful Davey is hard to track down and I am not sure you should.

Biff's Best Vintage Films Viewed in 2025

        1)   Red Rose White Rose                                    Stanley Kwan             1994

        2)   So This Is Paris                                              Ernst Lubitsch            1926

        3)   La Collectionneuse                                         Éric Rohmer              1967

        4)   Ensayo de un Crimen                                     Luis Buñuel               1955

        5)   Les Favoris de la lune                                    Otar Iosselini             1984

        6)   Pursued                                                           Raoul Walsh              1947

        7)   The Legend of the Holy Drinker                  Ermanno Olmi             1988

        8)   What Did the Lady Forget?                           Yasujirō Ozu              1937

        9)   The Edge of the World                                  Michael Powell           1937

       10)  The Flesh                                                        Marco Ferreri             1991

     I also thoroughly enjoyed...

             La bestia debe morir, Letter of Introduction, Hell Bent, Pale Flower,

            Vivacious Lady, Canoa: A Painful Memory, La dos au mur,

              Where is the Friend's House?, Ivan's Childhood, Colorado Territory,

            Don't Play Us Cheap, La Otra, Scream of Fear, Reap the Wild Wind,

            Demon Pond, Number Seventeen, Tramp Tramp Tramp and 

            Springfield Rifle.

       

The Best of Rob Reiner

1947-2025

          A lot of times I'll make character driven films -- stories that involve people.

           1).      The Princess Bride                                                       1987

           2).      Misery                                                                            1990

           3).      The Sure Thing                                                             1985

           4).      This is Spinal Tap                                                         1984

           5).      When Harry Met Sally                                                 1989

           6).      The American President                                              1995

           7).      Stand By Me                                                                 1986

           8).      LBJ                                                                                2016

           9).     Albert Brooks: Defending My Life                              2023

          10).    Rumor Has It                                                                 2005

The son of producer, director, writer, and comic genius Carl, Rob Reiner quickly shed the nepo baby rubric After bit parts in his Dad's films Enter Laughing and Where's Poppa?, Reiner landed the role of Mike "Meathead" Stivic on what would prove to be the most popular sitcom of the early 1970s, All in the Family. There he would mouth the the liberal pieties of producer Norman Lear in response to the reactionary rants of series star Carrol O'Connor who played America's most beloved bigot, Archie Bunker. After the long run of this series, Reiner would pretty much abandon acting for the director's chair. Besides All in the Family, the best example of Reiner, as an actor, is a little seen television movie he made with his first wife Penny Marshall, More Than Friends. 

Overall, Reiner proved to be a versatile middlebrow director with more misses than hits. I think a good comparison as a director is Ron Howard, another Hollywood scion whose best films are pleasant enough, but lack personality. Reiner could get playful performances even from humorless bricks like Michael Douglas, but had little visual flair or sense. Even Reiner's best film could have used a little more visual pixie dust. I find A Few Good Men to be Oscar bait grandstanding, a charge that could be leveled at a number of his lesser efforts. His career fell off a cliff both artistically and commercially after The American President. His only hit this century was the odious Christmas cash-in The Bucket List. Still, he was largely responsible for a handful of films that will entertain audiences as long as cinema exists.

Book Review: In Love With Movies by Dan Talbot

Dan Talbot and Alfred Hitchcock circa 1965

Dan Talbot was one of the most important distributors of international films in the US during the 20th century. Along with his wife Toby, Talbot founded the New Yorker Theater in 1960. It became New York's premiere repertory film house and a haven for those seeking adventurous foreign cinema. Frustrated by the absence of many of his favorite international films on domestic screens, Talbot founded New Yorker Films in 1965 in order to rectify this situation. Films distributed by the company included older films by directors like Ozu, Mizoguchi, and Vigo that, at the time, were relatively unseen in America. Soon, the company was successful enough to distribute contemporary films by such cinematic titans as Bertolucci, Godard, Resnais, Varda, Herzog, Fassbinder, Sembène, Itami, Yimou, and scores more. After the New Yorker Theater closed, Talbot and his wife ran several more repertory theaters in New York, most significantly the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas. Talbot died in 2017, but not before leaving behind this memoir which was published in 2022.

This memoir succeeds on a number of levels. Foremost, it is a love letter to cinema. Talbot's affection for the liveliest art permeates each page. He had a warm relationship with pretty much every major non-American auteur of the era and the book is dotted with indelible impressions of these titans. Even when he was taken aback by the demeanor of a figure, he still treats them with warm regard and humor. Of the frosty Robert Bresson he writes, "He and his wife had no children--thank God." The book offers interesting vignettes of the many important critics who passed through the doors of his theater: including Manny Farber, Pauline Kael, and the relatively neglected Vincent Canby. The book also serves as a celebration of the polyglot glories of the Talbot's neighborhood, the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Additionally, the book is a excellent primer for the rare soul who wants to open a repertory film theater. Good luck, brave souls! An ideal yule time gift for your favorite cinephile, In Love With Movies is a witty and avuncular reminiscence. 

He Ran All the Way

                           Shelley Winters and John Garfield                     

John Berry's He Ran All the Way is a good criminal on the run picture from 1951. John Garfield stars as Nick Robey who we meet screaming in his sleep in a very seedy LA apartment as the picture opens. Robey's trauma, stemming perhaps from the war, is never given a back story in this brisk 77 minute independent B feature. Nick's screams piss off his mother, memorably portrayed by Gladys George as a fierce harridan smoking cigs and drinking Pabst. In real life, Ms. George was on her fourth husband, a former bell hop twenty years her junior. Mom tears her boy a new one, so he escapes to the street where his pal Al (Norman Lloyd) greets him with a plan for a payroll robbery at a railroad warehouse. Lloyd who shared roots in the Mercury Theater with Berry, is dastardly fun in a brief appearance. Al and a cop are wounded in the holdup, Nick fleeing on foot with the loot.

He takes refuge in an indoor public pool where he has a cute meet with Peg Dobbs, a shy working girl well played by Shelley Winters. Desperate for a place to hide, he ingratiates himself with Peg and is soon ensconced in the apartment that Peg shares with her father (Wallace Ford), mother (Selena Royle), and baby bro Tommy (Robert Hyatt). The film has flipped into High Sierra and The Desperate Hours territory: a miscreant holding hostages in a confined space. Berry and cinematographer James Wong Howe get the right sense of menace from the interiors featuring looming and brooding figures in jagged geometric configurations; as above. Nick is pictured as a victim of nurture, as opposed to nature, who cannot love, so he tries to dominate. He treats Peg roughly, even on the dance floor. The white lace curtain gentility of the Dobbs' apartment represents a happy domesticity that is utterly foreign to him. It is in stark contrast to the flat that he shares with his mother which is so seamy that I craved a tetanus shot after seeing the film. Later in her career, Ms. Winters made a mint being loud and abrasive, but she is convincing as a naive girl who responds to Nick's masculine allure. Winters soon became typecast as the submissive girl, seduced and then abandoned, usually at the bottom of a body of water. For once, in He Ran All the Way, Winters' character gets the last laugh. 

Gladys George, fully armed

He Ran All the Way is one of the last gasps of red Hollywood. Berry soon went into exile in France. Garfield, beleaguered by the blacklist, was dead of a heart attack by the next May, at the age of 39. He Ran All the Way is based on a 1947 novel by Sam Ross. Dalton Trumbo wrote the initial adaptation, but it passed through many hands before being filmed. The leftist bent of the writers helps the film by conjuring a genuine working class milieu. Peg, who works at a large bakery, and her dad, who is a printing press operator, have believable occupations that are well integrated with the narrative. Regardless, Garfield owns the picture, his last. I think Berry lets him get away with some over statement when Garfield signals his paranoia early in the pool sequence, but this film does show the range of his talents. He looks a little harried and worn, but it suits his character. When little Tommy breaks down in tears, Garfield shows great restraint, sensitive towards tipping this moment away from bathos. At the other end of the spectrum, He Ran All the Way provides him a final exit that stand's along Cagney's bravura death scenes. 

Blockade

Henry Fonda

William Dieterle's Blockade is about the worst film I have seen from the golden age of Hollywood in the last year or so. This does not seem to be an unusual or controversial stance. When Otis Ferguson wrote about the film for the June 29th, 1938 edition of The New Republic the review was entitled Spanish Omelette, with Ham. However, the flick is interesting from a historical perspective as one of the few American films to address the Spanish Civil War during that conflict. Blockade was released in 1938, the only other Hollywood feature I could think of that addressed the war before Pearl Harbor was 1937's The Last Train to Madrid. This is do to many factors, such as the Neutrality Act, but it is closely aligned with Hollywood's kid glove treatment of rising fascist regimes in the 1930s.

Henry Fonda delivers a typically nuanced and sensitive performance, but is woefully miscast as a Spanish shepherd.  He meets cute with the top billed Madeleine Carroll when her jalopy plows into his oxcart. Fonda and his oxen pull Carroll to a fictional port town, where they sadly part. Moments later in screen time, Fonda is musing to his best buddy (Leo Carrillo) what a peaceful and serene place their Spanish valley is when their idyll is broken by the sound of cannons. Immediately caught up in war, Fonda rallies the peasantry to defeat the fascists brandishing a rifle a half a century out of date. The brief combat section displays that action was not Dieterle's forte. The picture ambles into international intrigue as it is revealed that Carroll and her father (Vladimir Sokoloff) are fascist agents who the newly promoted Fonda must apprehend. Soon, the port town where all the characters have congregated is under attack by bombers with submarines poaching the nautical supply line. Carroll eventually sees the error of her ways, but most viewers will have checked out long before.

Blockade is an odd hodgepodge of war, bathos (lots of starving children), thriller elements, and even comedy. The point of the film was not entertainment, but agitprop to call attention to the fascist menace in Spain. However, the film contorts itself to muddy the actual issues that provoked the war. The name Franco is never mentioned. Viewers of 1938 could probably suss that Fonda is fighting for the Loyalist army defending the Spanish Republic, but fear of censorship dilutes the film's impact. William K. Everson has sagely noted the similarity between Blockade and another Madeleine Carroll potboiler, 1936's The General Died at Dawn. That film was directed by Lewis Milestone, memorably deemed a formalist of the Left by Andrew Sarris, who was initially slated to direct Blockade. Ms. Carroll had also had  success in a number of Hitchcock thrillers, but Blockade doesn't have the thrills or the sophistication of The 39 Steps or Secret Agent. Outside of those two films, Ms. Carroll displayed little onscreen charisma and the paucity of her character in Blockade does her no favors. Dieterle's wispy expressionism adds little to this muddled message picture. What does tie the picture together is Rudolph Maté's sparkling cinematography which achieves Eisensteinian heights picturing the huddled masses during the final reel.

There are two other artists behind the film that I think qualify more than Dieterle to be the film's true auteur. Walter Wanger was probably the only independent producer to have cojones to make a picture like this at the time. Fonda had starred for him the previous year in Fritz Lang's You Only Live Once. Carrillo had appeared as the comic relief chef in Wanger's production of History is Made at Night, Frank Borzage's sublime masterpiece from 1937. I think it is fair to say that comedy is out of place in a film about the Spanish Civil War. Carrillo is wonderful in the earlier Wanger production, but his comic efforts are flat beer in Blockade. Which leads me to the man who I think was the real auteur behind this flick, screenwriter John Howard Lawson. Lawson was the sole writer credited on this picture, so one can only conjecture on the contributions of Clifford Odets, who also contributed to The General Died at Dawn (I'll guess continuity) and James M. Cain (sex). Lawson eventually became the most unrepentant member of the Hollywood Ten. He remained a committed communist and was never invited back into the Hollywood fold. He was a big influence within the CPUSA ranks and it was his efforts to make What Makes Sammy Run? hew closer to the official line that made Budd Schulberg quit the party. One watches Blockade and hears Lawson use his feeble characters as a mouthpieces to decry the rape of Spain. Henry Fonda closes the picture by exhorting his comrades to continue to resist fascism, crying out to isolationist America, "Where is the conscience of the world!" Despite noble intentions, this is one lame flick.

Three in the Attic

Yvette Mimieux

Richard Wilson's Three in the Attic is an above average AIP exploitation flick from 1968. Yvette Mimieux is the top billed star, but this film was primarily designed to exploit male lead Christopher Jones after his success in AIP's Wild in the Streets. Screenwriter Stephen Yafa adapted the film from his novel Paxton Quigley's Had the Course. In the film, Jones plays Quigley, a young Lothario allegedly attending an all male college in Vermont. The role is within his range, a preppy James Dean who reads Kierkegaard. His main squeeze, Toby (Ms. Mimieux), attends a nearby all female school. She is an All American gal with an incredible wardrobe who is trying to steer Paxton into a commitment. John Beck is in support, dependable as always, as Paxton's best pal back at the frat. 

Beck's character is always counseling Paxton to steer clear of the wimmun, but the boy can't help himself. Every time he runs into a chick there is a gimmicky boing editing effect that signals a future conquest. The first is an African American gal named Eulice (Judy Pace, who had a pretty good film career and was at one point Mrs. Curt Flood) who he picks up hitchhiking. Eulice is both a student, an accomplished painter, and a kindergarten teacher. She teaches an afternoon class that is all black, an anomaly in Vermont, but not in North Carolina where the picture was filmed. The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill stands in well enough as the two campuses. Eulice speaks in a playful southern drawl and calls Paxton "Poopsie". She has Paxton pose nude for her, but ends up only painting his face. When he ask why, she replies, "I only wanted to take a peek." On his way to a tryst with Eulice, Paxton runs into a self-described psychedelic Jewess named Jan. Jan and Paxton have sex, sample "magic" brownies and, de rigueur for a 1968 flick, paint flowers all over each others' nekkid bodies. Paxton juggles his three women for awhile, but the audience knows his Captain's paradise can't last.

Once Paxton's hound dog ways are exposed, the three women plot revenge with Toby taking the lead. They imprison Paxton in a sorority attic where they have him sexually service each of them. Paxton goes on a hunger strike and the authorities become concerned about the missing student. A kindly and pipe smoking Dean (an effective Nan Martin, most famous for her dual role in Nightmare on Elm Street 3) susses the situation and counsel Toby to forgive Paxton so she can move on. Toby relents, but wants Paxton to offer a rationale for his misbehavior. Something, of course, that he is unable to do. Toby heads to the bus station, but Paxton stops her from leaving in a sequence that shamelessly cribs from the then recent hit, The Graduate.

Christopher Jones and Judy Pace

I would not quite call Three in the Attic a good film. It is padded by ineffective musical montage sequences which serve as the film's Hamburger Helper. The music alternates between songs by Chad and Jeremy, already has-beens by 1968, and an anonymous raga rock score by Chad (Stuart). The latter is used to ridiculous effect in one sequence in the attic when Paxton gets lost in a book of Hindu erotic sculpture. However, the film charmed me more than I thought it would. It seems like no one took the making of this sex farce too seriously, certainly not director Wilson who was a past associate of Orson Welles. The sexual politics of the film holds up. Each of the female characters is given sexual agency and even Paxton redeems his porcine side by trying to prevent the molestation of a stripper at his frat. In full egalitarian mode, we see as much of the naked Jones, though not Jones' Johnson, as we do of the ladies. The portrait of frat life in the 1960s is reasonably accurate. Three in the Attic is a much better film than Wild in the Streets and most sex farces of that era such as Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush.  

 

Buchanan Rides Alone

Manuel Rojas and Randolph Scott attend a necktie party

Budd Boetticher's Buchanan Rides Alone, from 1958, is a pivotal film within the Ranown Westerns, the five B oaters that marked the collaboration between producer Harry Joe Brown, director Boetticher, and star Randolph Scott. The films are all revenge potboilers that don't exceed eighty minutes, yet they contain a multitude of great characterizations and portraits of the many grey shades of villainy and heroism. Randolph Scott plays, of course, Buchanan who rides into the border town of Agry at the beginning of the film and departs the burg for Texas at film's end. Agry is controlled by the family of fat cats which includes the corpulent and bloviating Sheriff, Lew Agry (Barry Kelley), Amos Agry (Peter Whitney) who runs the hotel and resembles Tweedledee, and the big boss, Judge Simon Agry (Tol Avery). Buchanan soon cottons to the crooked nature of Agry, but runs into trouble before he can hit the road. 

Buchanan runs afoul of the Agry's by defending a Mexican youth named Juan de la Vega (Manuel Rojas) who he sees being beaten by the sheriff and his deputies. Unbeknownst to Buchanan, Juan has just murdered the prodigal son of the Argy clan because he had raped Juan's girl back in Mexico. Juan and Buchanan barely escape a lynching thanks to the intercession of the Judge who has a scheme up his sleeve. The Judge has learned that Juan comes from a prominent family and intends to extort $50,000 from the family for his release. When news of this plan leaks out, the Sheriff and his minions kidnap Juan in order to score the ransom money. Buchanan, who has bonded with Juan during their time together in the clink. works to help free him. Of all the Ranown Westerns, it is Buchanan Rides Alone that best fits Andrew Sarris' description of Boetticher's films as "...floating poker games where every character took turns at bluffing until the final showdown." 🌵

L.Q. Jones and Randolph Scott

Buchanan Rides Alone's script is credited to Charles Lang who also wrote the script for Decision at Sundown, the film made just before Buchanan... in the Ranown cycle. These two films are closely aligned. In each, Scott rides into a Western town that is controlled by an evil oligarch. In each film, Scott runs afoul of the oligarch and is imprisoned in the town. In Buchanan..., Scott is twice imprisoned in the hoosegow, in Decision... he is trapped in a livery stable along with a sidekick played by Noah Beery for much of the film. This is why Decision at Sundown is the least interesting film in the series: it suffers from stasis. The film lacks the gorgeous tracking shots of men on horses that Lucian Ballard provides for Buchanan Rides Alone.

The other factor that makes Buchanan... a superior film to Decision... is the depth of characterization. This is presumably due to the uncredited efforts of Burt Kennedy who was brought in to punch up the script. Kennedy was credited as the sole author of the scripts for the other three films (The Tall T, Ride Lonesome, Comanche Station) that comprise the Ranown cycle. Kennedy's dialogue tends to be wittier than Lang's and he provides more ambivalent motivations for the villains. This film provides rich opportunities for supporting players such as Craig Stevens who suavely embodies the personage of Carbo, Judge Agry's lead gunsel, and Joe De Santis who plays the right hand man of the unseen Mexican patriarch. 

I also especially enjoyed Peter Whitney as the film's comic relief, particularly his gambols around town to fill the characters in on the latest development in the overly convoluted plot. The character of Amos is as scuzzy in his mien as he is in his morals.

Jennifer Holden

The performance I will most cherish from this film is by L.Q. Jones. He plays Pecos, a hired hand of the Agry clan who is eventually instructed to help in the assassination of Buchanan. However, the two have bonded over shared Texas roots and Pecos dispatches his fellow assassin, saving Buchanan. The relationship between the two men is foreshadowed by a brief moment in Decision Before Sundown in which Scott acknowledges a fellow Texan. This is amplified in Buchanan Rides Again into a warm portrait of nascent male friendship. Before Pecos' inevitable demise, he and Buchanan talk of partnering on a ranch in Texas, a pipe dream marriage of males out of Leslie Fiedler. Jones was born in Beaumont, Texas and the role suits him perfectly. It is nice to see him for a change in a role in which he is not a creep or a cold blooded killer. Scott was a preppy from the south, but was always pretty good at approximating a Texas drawl. His aristocratic demeanor is helpful in this series because he is playing an embodiment of noble rectitude. He would have made a good George Washington. On the other side of the acting spectrum from the petrified statuary of Scott are the few flashes of Jennifer Holden, who is lightening in a bottle in this very good Western. After appearing in Jailhouse Rock and Gang War, this was her final screen appearance.

🌵 Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema, pg. 124.

The Nile Hilton Incident

Fares Fares

Tarik Saleh's The Nile Hilton Incident is an engrossing crime thriller with political overtones. Set in Cairo in 2011 amidst the fall of the Mubarak regime, the film chiefly follows the investigation by police officer Mostafa Noredin of the murder of a would be singer named Lalena. The film, an original screenplay by Saleh, is based on the real life murder of Suzanne Tamim in Dubai. As in that case, the murderer, who has Lalena executed by a professional, is a wealthy businessman with important connections amoung the powers that be in Cairo. The widespread corruption under Mubarak is stressed, even Noredin (Fares Fares), the film's ostensible hero, is not above filching cash from a stiff. As counterpoint to Noredin's investigation, the film chronicles the struggles of the case's star witness, a maid at the Hilton named Salwa (Mari Malek). Salwa lives with a group of Sudanese refugees lorded over by the cruel man who brought them to Cairo. The hovel Salwa lives in is in marked contrast to the funky bachelor pad that widower Noredin uses to watch TV while he drinks.    

A number of American critics compared this to Chinatown and LA Confidential, but it reminded me more of the crime films based in New York that were directed by Sidney Lumet. Like Lumet, Saleh is a socially conscious director who chooses to expose institutional corruption in his films. Both directors utilize an array of supporting performers in an effort to paint a broad portrait of a city's populace. One of the joys found in The Nile Hilton Incident is the gamut of memorable supporting performances that evoke the variety of characters one finds in a vast metropolis, from an opium smoking pimp and extortionist to a stone faced secret police officer. Hania Amar has a wonderful turn as a singer who seduces Noredin into a honey trap. Salwa is the only two dimensional character, verging on a damsel in distress. Noredin is not always the most sympathetic protagonist, but Saleh is able to humanize him with deft touches like having Noredin share a smoke with a picture of his late wife. I recommend The Nile Hilton Incident which is currently streaming on Netflix and has been issued on a handsome disc by Strand Releasing.

Razzia sur la chnouf

Lila Kedrova and Jean Gabin

Henri Decoin's Razzia sur la chnouf (roughly "Dope Raid") is an effective, if unspectacular French crime melodrama. The film was adapted from a novel by Auguste Le Breton whose canon includes novels which were the basis for the films Rififi and The Sicilian Clan. Jean Gabin plays Henri Ferré, who we meet returning from the United States where he has been reputably working for a narcotics ring. Ferré is recruited by a local crime boss named Liski (the always welcome Marcel Dalio) who needs a steady hand to run his drug operation. Liski arranges for Ferré to manage a club which serves as a front for the cartel. When Ferré needs to rub out weak or untrustworthy links in the organization, he calls upon Liski's gunsel, Roger the Catalan, embodied by the ever dependable Lino Ventura. A comely and very young barmaid (Magali Noël) does what women do in Jean Gabin pictures and tucks herself into his trench coat. Lila Kedrova, most famous for her role in Zorba the Greek, is featured as an unreliable dealer who has been dipping too regularly into her own stash. 

Kedrova is the only one in the cast who chews the scenery a little too much, but given the lurid nature of her role that may not be entirely her fault. Her character is so off the rails that she, after having a few puffs on a reefer, pulls a train in an "Arab" club. The whole film veers close to exploitation, reveling in a display of sexual proclivities and drug use not possible for a Hollywood film in 1955. Decoin's direction is workmanlike and efficient. There is little use for flashy stylistics in a piece of pulp like this. Decoin resorts to a whip pan at one point, but just to disguise the fact that his louche club set is a partial one. Gabin hold together the film with his unflappable presence. After the success of Touchez pas au grisbi gave his career a second wind, Gabin would spend the rest of his career gliding serenely through the gangster haunts of nightclubs and working class cafes. His stoic demeanor barely masks a macho vigor that puts the beta males in their place and proves to be catnip for the ladies. I particularly like the finale of Razzia sur la chnouf in which a lineup of the usual suspects serves as a fitting curtain call for the players. 

Train Dreams

Joel Edgerton

The duo of Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar, the team behind Sing Sing, should be congratulated for having the good taste and gumption to adapt Denis Johnson's Train Dreams.

Johnson's novella, which chronicles the life of logger and homesteader Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton) in the Idaho panhandle during the early years of the twentieth century, is his most beautifully written book, a landmark of 21st century American fiction. The film adaption is handsomely mounted, boasting gorgeous cinematography by Adolpho Veloso. I also enjoyed the narration by Will Patton which hews closely to Johnson's prose. Edgerton is well cast and effective as the taciturn Grainier. John Diehl and Paul Schneider contribute effective supporting turns. However, on the whole, I found this adaptation to be overly decorous. The changes made by Bentley and Kwedar to the material domesticates and softens it, neutering the film's impact.

I do not believe a film adaptation has to hew exactly to its source. However, in judging a film adaptation, comparing a film to its source displays the filmmakers choices for good and ill. The film virtually eliminate the book's vein of black humor. The film expands the roles of Grainier's wife Gladys, Claire Thompson, and storekeeper Ignatius Jack. This greatly increases the interactions Robert has with humans, but defeats one of the chief purposes of the book: to portray the life of a hermit who largely turns his back on mankind to live both within and against nature. However, nature in the film is not as fierce as that in the book. The hardships and loneliness of frontier life are watered down in the film. The costumes and sets are too tidy and clean. The homestead that Edgerton and his missus (a wan Felicity Jones) live in resembles a glamping cabin in a Magnolia magazine photo shoot. Likewise, the physical toll that logging takes on Grainier is deemphasized. The book goes into greater detail in picturing the dangers of logging. When the film shows the tragic mishaps that befall loggers, one resulting in the death of a key supporting character, the results are so tossed off that they have little visceral effect.

The film suffers from contemporary virtue signaling. In both the book and film, Grainier is haunted by the murder of a Chinese rail worker. However, in the book, Grainier is much more culpable for his role in the crime. Likewise, the book truncates the scene where Grainier, as a boy, encounters a dying man named William Coswell Haley. Haley's monologue is one of the novella's highlights, but I can understand excising it in an adaptation. However, the version the film provides eliminates the reason the moment haunts Grainier for the rest of his life. In the book, Grainier is so stunned by his predicament that he ignores the dying man's last request for a drink of water, a request he honors in the movie. These changes make Grainier more of a heroic protagonist, but less of an interesting and believable character. Finally, I thought the adaptation loses something by lessening the presence of wolves in the film. This not only eliminates the theme of an atavistic bond between the protagonist and nature, but renders the reappearance of a major character late in the film nonsensical. If you've never read Train Dreams, the film retains enough of the book's qualities to please the uninitiated, but I was disappointed.

Petrov's Flu

Semyon Serzin

Kirill Serebrennikov's Petrov's Flu is the most inspired Russian film I've seen since Beanpole. Released in Russia in 2021, the film is an adaptation of Alexey Salnikov's novel Petrov In and Around the Flu, a better title but one that does not fit snugly on a marquee. Salinikov has written a number of novels, but none have been translated into English. Both film and book center around Petrov (Semyon Serzin), a cartoonist who lives in the southeastern Russian city of Yekaterinburg. The film is mostly set in 2003 or so, but the film flits back and forth in time and space. We see the childhood memories of Petrov's, but also his fantasies and those of his estranged wife, Nurlinsa (Chulpan Khamatova). Nurlinsa's fantasies are chiefly the grisly kind, but are of a piece with the very dark and Russian humor of the film. 

We first meet Petrov on a grim and crowded bus during Christmas time. The garish ticket taker is done up seasonably as the Snow Queen, which we will soon learn is a link to Petrov's childhood memories. The central motif of the film is sickness. Petrov is coughing and hacking on the bus and throughout the film. The child he shares with Nurlinsa is also badly ill with the flu, worrying the couple to no good end. The film invokes this by shooting the 2003 sequences in a blue green blear, as if sickness permeates the land. Sickness is a common motif in Russian literature, most prominently in Dostoyevsky where the ills of crowded urban centers infect the populace. All this miasmic swampiness might get tedious, but the film shifts gears half way through and we witness the back story of a woman named Marina (Yulia Peresild) who played the Snow Queen in a holiday pageant that Petrov witnessed in 1971. These are shot in crisp black and white and include Marina's fantasies of what the objects of her desire look like naked. Other repeated motifs in the film are those of UFOs and the Soviet space program, the former suggesting a desire to escape the homeland and the latter a reminder of the faded glory of the USSR.

Petrov's Flu is going to be too much for some people at a nearly two and a half hour length. I found the animation sequence disappointing and would have pruned some of the tedious arguments between Petrov's parents. However, I was stunned by the invention displayed by Serebrennikov in the film's many transitions from consciousness into unconsciousness. Though it is extremely disjunctive and digressive, Petrov's Flu unspools relatively seamlessly. I was caught up in the film's momentum all through the film and loved the entire cast, including supporting performance by Yuri Kolokolnikov as the twisted Hades and Aleksandr Aleksandrovich as Marina's drunken, but philosophical brother. An imaginative treat for mature viewers.

Chulpan Khamatova X2