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An American Affair (2008)
COA + CIA + Mol = Muddle
COA=Coming of Age. It's a set and somewhat stilted genre by now, and _An American Affair_ does little to change that. Young Adam Stafford is isolated in the all-too-predictable World He Never Made: parochial school, iconic period parents cloaked in gray clothes and rote emotions, and females constantly pushing him away for no clear reason. We get the sense Adam's supposed to be Somehow Special - maybe because he's an only child, maybe because he's the big-eyed, callow, Pure Boy - but he's really just inert, a force to be acted upon by the grown-up world.
Gretchen Mol's Catherine is really the only flame of real humanity in the film, the only one not acting out a role of someone acting out a role. The actor who brought Betty Page back to life a few years ago had matured fascinatingly since her days as a pretty bauble. Now we see her without the black wig and fetish gear, and she's a real presence. Her role as Sexy Bourgeoise Bohemienne is contrived - cool jazz, drugs, and a patently silly finger-paint ballet with Adam - but she has a genuine emotional vulnerability that most of the film lacks.
The subplot of neighbor Catherine's involvement with Jack Kennedy - who apparently will talk to the CIA only through her - is not well integrated. As a result, it feels obligatory, as if it's there to beef up the COA story (and perhaps add a little commercial zing). It does provide a counter-irritant to Catherine's sensuality in Lucien and Catherine's ex Graham, the Agency men easily reduced to masculine role-icons. Lucien is so buttoned up he seems almost deliberately awkward, and Graham taking what we're supposed to believe are the only outlets from his masculine role - drinking and rage towards Catherine.
Director Olsson is, of course, working with archetypes - Cold War Washington folk - but he never lets them get beyond their icon status. Particularly telling is his handling of the JFK assassination moment - the parochial school kids left to stand pointlessly in line as all the sisters gather at the television. The news is spread only by Adam, the special boy, who whispers to the pupils - and a silent overhead shot as they scatter like birds in a Paris park. Again, a dance of roles and distance, too stylized by half.
Here's a hint, Mr. Olsson: Camelot wasn't so long ago that you have to play it as somber as a medieval allegory. (What does it say that _The Tudors_ had more men in crew cuts than your vision of 1963?) People - CIA men maybe excepted - did approach one another as people, and European directors often miss that American ease. Ironically, that same ease was what made John Fitzgerald Kennedy so irresistible - not just to his many feminine liaisons, but to his country and the world.
The Fabulous Dorseys (1947)
Music good, but the Dorseys deserve better
THE FABULOUS DORSEYS is not fabulous - a B feature with a C-minus script and D-plus dialogue - but the music at least is enjoyable, as I'd expect from a picture starring not one but two big bandleaders.
Laying aside the rickety wooden dialogue and nonexistent love duo, the story is compressed but basically true: poor Irish mining family produces two talented musicians who don't get along, but rise quickly through the band business, start their own outfit, then inevitably break up. As a band nut I'd have liked to see mention of some of the name orchestras of the 20s including the Dorseys - Jean Goldkette? Freddie Rich? - or of Joe Haymes, a forgotten talent who sold Tommy his first band. But that's just me.
Janet Blair (like the brothers a Pennsylvania girl, and one-time vocalist with Hal Kemp's band) just lights up the screen every time we see and hear her, leading us to wonder just what she sees in a stuffed-shouldered cluck like William Lundigan. Other vocal highlights come from ex-JD singers Bob Eberly and Helen O'Connell and TD's then current crooner, Stuart Foster. Instrumental stars Art Tatum, Ray Bauduc and Charlie Barnet add heart to a jam session sequence. Paul Whiteman, gruff, fast-talking and positive, obviously liked playing Paul Whiteman, liaison between fiction and musical reality.
TD and JD are actually OK on screen - they weren't actors but one should not expect them to be. The fault there is with the mawkishly written dialogue that flops out of everyone's mouths. Their real personalities are visible, though toned down: Tommy's natural side-of-the-mouth cockiness, Jimmy's salty dignity of the veteran trouper. (In reality Tommy was profane and given to physical violence; Jimmy was quiet, decent but more than a little bitter, and both had long love-hate relationships with John Barleycorn.)
The real-life Dorseys - their music, their problems, their era - still await a full-dress Hollywood treatment before their names totally fade from the culture. It's easy to imagine, say, Ben Affleck and Ed Burns in the roles of TD and JD, complete with booze, broads, cuss words, flying chairs, and original orchestrations.
(PS: Those commenting about how over-the-top Mom and Pop Dorsey's Irish brogues were should understand that the actors playing them actually were Irish.)
Symphony of Six Million (1932)
a nice glass Schmalz
A previous viewer commented that there isn't anything "Pre-Code" about "Symphony of Six Million." Ohhhh, yes there is - the frank and loving embrace of Jews and Jewishness, especially the familial bonds of aspiration, hope and love so strong and heart-rending that conflict and guilt are its inevitable by-products.
Such an overtly Jewish photo play wouldn't have been acceptable in the Hollywood of just a few years later. No one would come right out and say so, but the likely reason was the sensibilities of the newly militant Catholic audience, then being stirred up by the likes of Father Charles Coughlin's anti-Semitic radio talks. Also to be catered to were the quieter prejudices of Middle Western Protestants, for whom Will Hays stood in as proxy on the Code committee.
The story being pretty boilerplate, the charm of this film is all in the atmosphere, which is laid on pretty thickly. Crucial to this are able supporting players, especially Gregory Ratoff and Anna Appel as Papa and Mama Klauber. Ricardo Cortez is a bit stiff as the conflicted, noble Felix, but his swarthy, polished earnestness hits just the right note for the well-to-do My-Son-The-Park-Avenue-Doctor, 1932 edition. Irene Dunne as Jessica, Felix's crippled love interest, is lovable mostly for being Irene Dunne, whose refined features and diction don't gibe at all with her role as a ghetto girl. It says a lot about the men who once ran the movies that an obviously Jewish romantic female lead was something they couldn't, or wouldn't, portray. Authentic Jewish womanhood was still inseparable from the family matriarch, played with affecting melodrama by Appel.
TCM's Robert Osborne pointed out that "Symphony" was one of the first talkies with a full original score. At David Selznick's behest, Max Steiner wrote nearly continuous music for the film. It's heavy going at times: Felix's inner drama is too often greeted by heroic heralds of brass, and the lugubrious harmonic-minor strings accompanying Irene Dunne's entrances are like a nice glass Schmalz poured over a sumptuous Sunday chicken dinner.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1910)
so old it's almost surreal
Dorothy, Scarecrow, and Toto bring a donkey and cow (played by Men In Suits) along with them in the cyclone (which is simulated by having them hug a big hay bale that turns around and around).
ALL THE INTERTITLES ARE IN GIANT BLOCK CAPITALS.
Toto is a real dog who turns into Man In A Suit #3 to fight the lion (Man In A Suit #4), who is not cowardly at all.
There is a line of chorus girls and another of palace guards. At the end, the guards ride in on REAL HORSES, which makes the Men In Suits (by now including #5, bug, and #6, frog, from the Wicked Witch's lair, and #7, kitty cat, who otherwise has no apparent role in the action) look really, really lame.
The cast of thousands and elaborate sets make you wonder why no one had yet thought of MULTIPLE CAMERAS, and EDITING. But that was a concept they obviously couldn't wrap their minds around, back in 1910. Who knows - maybe a second camera would have cost more than all the actors, dancers, horses, and animal costumes put together.
March On, Marines (1940)
Technicolor twaddle
Dennis Morgan as a singing drill instructor? Don't buy it for a minute. "March On, Marines" is like a twelve-year-old boy's fantasy of the peacetime Marine Corps - all snappy uniforms, parades and pretty admiral's daughters. The obvious motive of this visually striking two- reeler was to paint a stirring red-white-and-blue portrait of a fighting force whose true nature as hard-ass professional killers wouldn't have been palatable to an innocent 1940 public who needed gearing up for the inevitable conflict to come.
The central story involves Morgan and his brother as two buck sergeants competing for one appointment to Annapolis, and one admiral's daughter. Morgan welcomes new recruits (every one in a soft floppy campaign hat) with a speech so fatherly and democratic it would barely cut the mustard at Scout camp, then leads them through a "sea school" that consists entirely of knot- tying. Pal-o-mine dialog and college-boy rah-rah, right down to a lusty male choir singing "Over the Sea, Let's Go, Men!" gives the impression that the U.S.M.C. is just a swell bunch of clean-living fellas who happen to be the finest-trained soldiers on earth - despite their comical WW1 tin hats and sissified elbow pads on the rifle range. Morgan's DI character never cold-cocks a recruit or even raises his voice above a necessary level. One hopes Morgan, who died in 1994, went to his heavenly reward - because legendary gunny sergeant Lou Diamond would surely have been waiting for him in hell.
Lord Byron of Broadway (1930)
Should I reveal exactly how I feel?...Blehhh!
If the name of Ukulele Ike makes you smile with informed warmth, you may want to give a quick flip past "Lord Byron of Broadway" when TCM replays it in thirty years or so. If you're obsessive-compulsive enough to wait out scene after scene of tepid love talk for two-strip Technicolor Albertina Rasch dance routines, or lesser-known Nacio Herb Brown songs trilled by operetta-singing stiffs, you may even sit thru a good portion of it. But whatever you bring to it, be warned that you cannot possibly like this picture.
Even to the 1929 audience, "Lord Byron" must have been a bland plate of turkey indeed. The color dance numbers aren't too bad to look at - Mme. Rasch owed a debt to Busby The Great, or maybe vice versa - but listening to the draggy, chirpy musical settings is painful even if you love the music of the 20s. And if the name of lead actor and grade-B recording star Charles Kaley means anything at all to you, you've watched entirely too much Joe Franklin. Or perhaps you ARE Joe Franklin.
Strictly for nostalgia nerds, this, and even for them, it's not all that rewarding.
The Television Ghost (1931)
a "first" - but lost for good
"The Television Ghost" - "murder stories as told by the ghost of the murdered" - was a regular feature on the CBS experiment station W2XAB, which broadcast from 1931-33. It has been called TV's first "dramatic narrative anthology series." This is stretching things a bit. The low-resolution mechanical scanning system of the day limited every program to views of one or two "talking heads." In reality, the show probably consisted of an unrelieved 15-minute monologue by actor George Kelting, who is described in a period account as wearing ghastly white face makeup and a small towel draped shroud-like over his head. Even given the excitement of seeing live pictures over the air in those early days, "The Television Ghost" must have made very tiresome viewing. It is safe to say that "The Television Ghost" is lost for good - as is every other TV broadcast of that era. Existing receiver screens were so dim that capturing a telecast on film was never even attempted. The station logbook, and scattered write-ups and photos in the contemporary press, are all that remains to document CBS' first venture into television. Information from William Hawes, "American Television Drama: The Experimental Years" (University of Alabama Press, 1986) and assorted other sources.
F.P.1 (1933)
could have been better, but ahead of its time
(This review refers to the English-language version of "F.P.1", which was made in simultaneous German and French-language versions with three different casts. The French-language version is presumed to be lost.)
"F.P.1" is of greatest interest as one of very few science fiction features made in the 1930s. Curt Siodmak's screenplay was based on his own novella, the story of Flight Platform 1, a huge aircraft refueling station in mid- Atlantic. Designed to aid transoceanic flight, it frustrates surface shipping interests, who connive to destroy it. Amidst the intrigue is a love triangle between the F.P.1's creator, his aviator buddy, and the shipping heiress who makes it all possible.
It's a great premise, with some unique model and effects work and moments of real adventure. However, there just isn't enough of them. It's not just that the airplane and action scenes are so brief (the German version included a good bit more.) It's that what is left over is so typically tepid and slow-moving - a real tragedy for a film with any pretense to futurism. Result: a muddle, though an intermittently entertaining one.
And what the heck is Conrad Veidt, that preening, sinister aristocrat of the B's, doing playing a daring round-the-world aviator? His Major Elissen spends more time in white tie and tails than in a flight suit, and his appeal to strongheaded heiress Claire (Jill Esmond, delectable in white satin evening dress) is hard to explain. Perhaps he slipped something into her drink. Veidt didn't yet speak English very well in 1932, and his performance is a bit off, leering and simpering over Esmond rather than enveloping her in suave allure. His sidekick "Sunshine" (Donald Calthorp), a shabby news photographer, could have been Veidt's comic foil if he weren't so very underplayed.
Claire eventually does throw Elissen over in favor of his best pal, straight-arrow Commander Droste (Leslie Fenton, "Nails" Nathan from "The Public Enemy"), designer-captain of the F.P.1. The romance angle recedes at that point. Droste is merely a stand-up guy, although he needs Elissen's help not just to build the F.P.1, but eventually to save it from the shipping cabal.
An actual floating soundstage was built in the Baltic Sea just off Hamburg for the F.P.1 sequences. It's fascinating to see, with its broad expanse of concrete flight deck, humungous ballast valve system, and chromium Art Deco chairs for Elissen to throw through windows during a gas attack. Yet Elissen's plane is an open-cockpit Junkers whose slab sides and corrugated aluminum skin give it all the grace and aerodynamics of a grain silo. And few other planes - except a derelict old crate - figure in the action.
The German-language version, "F.P.1 Antwortet Nicht" (F.P.1 Doesn't Answer) retains more of the techno-geek footage and is worth hunting down if you are curious. Not that it's much better in pacing or performance. Hans Albers and Paul Hartmann, the male leads, are way overage for their roles, and Albers is an awful ham even if you don't understand a word of German. But there's Sybille Schmitz as a strong and hauntingly sexy Claire, and Peter Lorre as the sidekick has a more substantial piece of the picture.
An aside in the narrative unintentionally calls the whole F.P.1 concept into question. Elissen at one point is said to be flying a new plane that can go around the world without refueling! You have to love a sci-fi flick where the key technology is already obsolete by the end of the second reel.
The real problem with "F.P.1" was beyond the director's or the studios' control. It should have been made by Frank Capra, then still in his Poverty Row adventure days ("Flight", "Dirigible"). It positively cries out for Joel McCrea, Fay Wray, a streamlined Lockheed Vega monoplane, and American-style snappy patter to leaven the love stuff. And what a formidable "Sunshine" Lionel Stander might have made...
Mothers Cry (1930)
campy but watchable
This family weepie takes full advantage of the static, austere feel of genre filmmaking in the early sound years. In no way exceptional, even for 1930, "Mother's Cry" and its actors nonetheless do the job, despite some talky speechifying and a particularly tacked-on ending. Edward Woods (not the 50s schlock director, although they share a fondness for heavy eyeliner) plays eldest brother Danny Williams, gangster in the making and prime mover of the plot. With his insane mugging, canned "I'll-say-she-isms" and tight-vested jazzbo suit, he's a regulation foot soldier in the Vitaphone crim army. Woods is better, and better remembered, as sidekick to Jimmy Cagney in "The Public Enemy," made the following year. The family home, where the camera stands as still as the 1900 furniture, offers a bit of subtext for dedicated pre-Coders. Silver-haired Ma Williams clucks and gushes in expected manner over budding architect Artie (beta-male lead David Manners) and baby sister Beattie (the exquisitely fragile Helen Chandler). These two cuddle, kiss and coo in a way not at all appropriate for siblings. Meanwhile, older sister Jennie marries much older Karl, whose only role is to add German (Yiddish?) comedy relief and father cuddly twin babies. Danny's crimes eventually strike closer to home than we expect, as he falls victim to an appalling failure of judgment. Here, near the end, occurs some real heart-tugging drama. The ultimate happy ending isn't worthy of that pre-climax (to give you an idea, it implies Artie has designed the Chrysler Building, which changes appearance three times in one short sequence).