Tag Archives: Pre-Code

Million Dollar Legs (1932): Klopstokia and The 1932 Olympics

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“All the women here are named Angela. And all the men are named George.”
“Why?”
“Why not?” – Jack Okey and Susan Fleming

This kind of laissez-faire, anything-goes mentality is one of the obvious strengths of Million Dollar Legs‘ comic tableau. There need not be a given rationale behind what it does and with this brand of laxity, there is an empowerment to do anything it so desires.

Thus, the narrative opens in a far-off Eastern European land called Klopstokia. Their chief exports, imports, and inhabitants are goats and nuts! If it’s not evident already the movie looks like it might be an equally oddball companion piece to Duck Soup.

It’s hard not to see its shared space and that’s mostly on a perfunctory level (and because of the fact Susan Fleming married Harpo Marx). One must also note it came first to precede the L.A. Olympics, though it’s not too hard to believe the Mankiewicz brothers did conceive the movie as a vehicle for the crown princes of anarchy.

Since this is not the case, Million Dollar Legs is ripe for rediscovery propping up some other stars who are sometimes less remembered. They didn’t get them, but Herman and Joseph working with director Edward F. Cline wrangled together an absurdist universe for the likes of Jack Okey. He might be most famous to modern audiences for parodying Mussolini in Chaplin’s The Great Dictator.

Here he’s front and center, an itinerant brush salesman, who happens upon the nation on business only to fall head over heels for the country and its people — one person in particular — her name is, of course, Angela (Susan Marx). They brush each other off rather seductively as her kid brother (Dickie Moore), a begrudging and silent cupid, does his best to keep them apart.

But she also has a connection to the country’s fearless leader. Her father is the President (and also W.C. Fields) with his hat and a dictaphone perfect for bad-mouthing his subordinates on his daily carriage ride to the office. He’s the broadest, most formidable name in the movie.

He makes a daily show of his brawn arm-wrestling his sneezing cabinet including such hoodwinked bumblers as Hugh Herbert and Billy Gilbert. The President is oblivious to their conspiratorial endeavors because frankly, even with their secret cache of spies, they hardly seem likely to hurt a fly. One of their spies out in the field, no less, is a pantomiming, cross-eyed man in black portrayed by Ben Turpin.

However, despite their impotence, they agree to call upon the woman who men can’t resist — the ultimate vamp and a caricature of the Dietrich archetype — Mata Macree (Lyda Roberti). What are her plans? To seduce the entire Klopstokia Olympic team in their bid for the 1932 Olympics! It has no import aside from meeting narrative expectations.

So everyone piles onto the ocean liner, including the President, Migg, and his best girl Angela. The movie’s apex might come when W.C. Fields on one side and his cabinet on the other start yanking the wall back and forth as Okey tries to woo his girl with the gibberish national anthem. It’s delightfully absurd both in the immediate visuals and the auditory accompaniment.

The Olympics aren’t much different with the Klopstokian contingent in a shambles before Angela rallies them jumping from the high dive to have it out with the duplicitous mata hari once and for all. Then, her father shows off his feats of strength in the weightlifting competition against his rival cabinet member. All pretense of logic is gone. Just go with it. Take it for what it is.

The final baton is taken up by the speedy Major-Domo who zips past the competition as a last-second entry coming from behind on the urging of Angela on a motorbike.  Truthfully, I’m still trying to figure out who owned the pair of million-dollar legs. For my money, it’s the galloping Major-Domo

What’s not up for contention is Million Dollar Legs as an intriguing vessel of comedy functioning as a kind of cultural time capsule. Not only does it help chart the famed Mankiewicz brothers before the heights of their future successes, it’s also a contemporary commemoration of the L.A. Olympics. Marx Brothers or not, it might just be worth a look as a historical curio.

3.5/ Stars

James Whale: The Old Dark House (1932) and The Invisible Man (1933)

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The Old Dark House (1932)

The Old Dark House has a disarming levity that broadsided me at first. James Whale, the man who famously gave us Frankenstein, has all of his notable features with the tinges of horror on hand for another ghastly delight, and then he goes and pokes fun at the whole setup. Raymond Massey is instantly pegged as a slightly stuffy husband. His wife, dazzling Gloria Stuart, a young ingenue has signed up for more than she bargained for with the outrageous downpour dousing them in the dead of night.

Then, there’s old reliable Melvyn Douglas playing his quintessential character type, always good for a wisecrack, with his feet kicked up, and his pipe tucked in his mouth as they proceed to get hopelessly lost. And of course, he can’t help but whistle a few fractured bars of “Singing in the Rain” when their waterlogged buggy has no recourse but become semi-amphibious.

Oftentimes bathos is used as a kind of criticism — this idea of anticlimax or a break of the mood — because it’s too jokey and therefore undermines all the groundwork put down before it. However, Whale seems to be doing something different.

At any rate, it’s not an out-and-out drama and so while somehow deconstructing his tropes and suggesting to his audience he knows precisely what he’s doing, we reap the benefit of the humor and the chills in ample measure. This is the underlying success of the film in a nutshell. It carries off both and becomes invariably more intriguing in the process.

Because The Old Dark House fits seamlessly into the tradition of Cat and the Canary, Hold That Ghost, House on Haunted Hill et al. A dark and stormy night is a genre given, but the abode itself must bring with it the unnerving idiosyncrasies to make the audience ill at ease. Rest assured. It does.

The proprietors include a white-haired gentleman trembling with timidity and his eternally deaf and priggish sister who condemns all blasphemers en masse. Their valet (Boris Karloff) might as well be a grunting prototype for the wolf man. All of this doesn’t quite suggest a warm and amicable atmosphere. It screams something else. But that’s just the beginning of the festivities…

If I’m to be terribly honest, it seems like an utter waste of Karloff’s talents, especially because I was barely aware he was playing the part. He gets partially overshadowed by the more verbal characters. Charles Laughton, for one, comes tottering through the front door soaked through as gregarious Sir William accompanied by his playful and rather giddy companion (Lilian Bond). Her lithe spirit mirrors Douglas, and they gel nicely. The night quickly turns them into an item. In fact, all the guests hang together.

One could wager it comes out of necessity. It’s a ghoulish space filled with funhouse angles and other parlor tricks. Locked upstairs is a decrepit patriarch and behind another closed door is crazy Saul, who makes a cameo appearance spouting the story of King Saul and David. You know the one, where malevolence came over Saul and he proceeded to spear the other man to death.

He finds a knife and brandishes it with a kind of giddy insanity we don’t know how to respond to. He could do anything. Douglas, the picture of casual confidence and charm for most of the picture, finds his own veneer unseated filling in for David. It’s these kinds of digressions that we never expected, and somehow they make the picture by leaving the audience totally nonplussed.

By the time The Old Dark House is wrapped up, it feels like the gold standard of this brand of haunted house movie because it’s just as much about being a mood piece — finding humor in these outlandish scenarios — and Whale does all of the above with assured aplomb.

4/5 Stars

The Invisible Man (1933)

I always thought about The Invisible Man as a scientific marvel, but now I understand how he’s firmly planted in the realm of horror with added superhuman abilities. There’s something that feels somehow modern about Claude Rains’ portrayal of the eponymous character. It’s almost as if he’s the precursor to some enigmatic alien creature from Star Wars.

He’s unique and out of step with this more traditional setting of a bar and lowly establishment as local folks chew the fat and the incomparable Una O’Connor runs the place. One feels quintessentially British, albeit through the prism of the Hollywood dream factory. Rains is totally a movie machination born of smoke, mirrors, and special effects.

But it’s also as if this camouflage provided Rains the means to give one of his most ballistic and volatile performances. It’s not that he couldn’t play, wry, sly, or even bad-tempered, but his typical onscreen disposition was one of regality. He commands the room but in a very different way.

He’s seething one moment and then hysterical the next. The local constable rightly asserts, “He’s invisible. He gets those clothes off and we’ll never catch him for a thousand years!” It makes the stakes obvious. Soon thereafter the maniacal doctor commences a reign of terror making good on his threats by committing murders and diverting trains off their rails. He makes it clear he has the power to make the world grovel at his feet.

If it’s not obvious already, he’s taken on the mantle of a violent “Superman” cut out of the cloth of Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov. What’s worse, there seems to be no one capable of stopping him.

What’s most fascinating is how the film builds the legitimacy of the Invisible Man. It’s not merely a sitcom-like trope where the invisible are given the freedom to pull practical jokes or take on a Groundhog Day-type disregard of worldly conventions. This is part of it, yes, until it becomes something more.

It turns into a story of fear and broader social implications broadcasted over the news and through every small town by word of mouth. He’s continually left unchecked and the drug he’s taking pumps him full of delusions of grandeur. It’s a drug and addiction of a different sort. Not even the affection of his former girlfriend (Gloria Stuart) can change his mind. He’s too far gone.

The special effects and the choreography get better and better as a crowd of bobbies forms a human dragnet to converge on him in the dead of night. He skips away with a policeman’s trousers sowing chaos and discord wherever he goes. But before anyone gets the idea The Invisible Man is a mere lark, we’re quickly shocked back to reality.

It has a jagged edge of vindictiveness which the production codes would make sure soon enough would never see the light of day (at least for a good many years). For now, it feels like a chilling, compact drama chock full of ideas, invention, and not a wasted minute of running time. It’s also without a doubt Rains’ finest entrance in a movie: It happens in the final frame.

4.5/5 Stars

Reviews: The Mummy, Island of Lost Souls, The Black Cat

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The Mummy (1932)

There’s something deeply prescient about The Mummy beginning with an archeological expedition for The British Museum. If it’s not evident from the outset, the film is firmly planted in the reality of 1922 when Howard Carter famously discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun. This is only one historical example, but even I remember hearing about the exploits of this modern discovery.

Now we live in a world in dialogue with the history of colonialism from the cultural tension over the Elgin Marbles to the very idea of ancient antiquities being housed in museums themselves. Even if it’s mostly to capitalize on something the contemporary audience might be aware of, The Mummy makes it plain, this kind of potential cultural desecration is not a totally new idea from our “enlightened” age. It has deeply entrenched traditions.

The British expeditioners come from two different camps, and they must mediate the pull between doing their methodical work of cataloging and then following the finds that will gain the most press. Those who are fully committed know they are working for the cause of science and not for loot.

It begins with a young man who will not heed the terrible curse on a casket, and he awakens a creature from eons before. It is Imhotep (Boris Karloff), who enters back into the world fully prepared to take back what is rightfully his and reunite himself with his long-lost love by any means at his disposal.

The Mummy starts out promising, but it never quite nails down the extent of its mythology and everything feels far too convenient with the re-animated mummy capable of doing anything he pleases to serve his purposes (and the plot). He’s well-versed in mind control, he has what looks like a shortwave television, and he’s all but indestructible to human hands.

The flashback sequences of Egypt hearken back to the expressionistic imagery of silent cinema and here is where our director, Karl Freund, seems to show his origins as the fantastic cinematographer for revered works like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.

The film’s other compelling theme involves a woman of Egyptian blood (Zita Johann), who almost functions as a doppelganger through time. One man falls in love with her in the present (David Manners) and another man loved her in the past. She’s effectively trapped between two worlds — one distantly remembered — and yet now dwelling in the body of a young woman, breathing and alive.

She is not prepared to make the kind of sacrifice asked of her and only the supernatural can save her. Karloff is expectedly chilling, but the pieces around him aren’t quite as enjoyable as his greatest monster movies.

3.5/5 Stars

Island of Lost Souls (1932)

“Mr. Parker, do you know what it means to feel like god?” – Dr. Moreau

Island of Lost Souls is the kind of movie that all but disappeared with the more stringent implementation of the production codes in 1934. It begins with an uneasy mood as a castaway is rescued by a not-too-genial sea captain, who’s anxious about dumping him at the first sign of land.

This is how our protagonist Richard Parker (Edward Arlen) catches a ride to shore on the Island of Dr. Moreau. There’s something rather uneasy about the whole setup and the movie frequents a landscape and a world not so foreign from The Most Dangerous Game. It’s as if an island conveniently eschews all traditional rules of law and order.

While the earlier film is harrowing, subjecting Joel McCrea and Fay Wray to a grueling game of high-stakes cat and mouse, this one is more thematically rich. This might be entirely thanks to H.G. Wells. He is the man who originally conceived of Dr. Moreau. However, something else must be attributed to Charles Laughton.

There’s a level of devilish forethought to Laughton’s performance. Although he’s not an entirely imposing figure, there’s something mischievous about him. Sometimes he comes off gleefully boyish even as he takes on these calculated and totally premeditated social experiments on his self-made ecosystem.

Parker knows nothing about the world he’s wandered into, but he is our stand-in representing everything inherently decent about humanity. And there is something deeper to this since he is white in the age of colonialism. While he might not necessarily bear the “white man’s burden,” certainly he’s aware of his place in the social hierarchy. He’s a benevolent figure. Dr. Moreau is this privileged mentality gone astray.

Judeo-Christian society would look back to Genesis, and the parallel imagery is made plain fairly quickly. There’s a specific order to the world, a created dichotomy between humans and beasts. Because Moreau has installed himself as god on his own private world. However, he has somehow perverted what is good in strange and troubling ways.

These themes get murkier when you start considering ideas of eugenics and even how the aforementioned production codes forbade the outright depiction of miscegenation or the mixing of races in romance. These are not synonymous terms when it comes to humans and beasts living on the island, but it’s hard not to see how predominantly white audiences at the time might conflate the two.

Because Moreau’s rudimentary imitation of creation has elements to mirror what we already know intuitively. His creatures live by basic laws shouted out by their de facto leader (Bela Lugosi), and they realize through roundabout means certain tenets. He has taught them what pain is, and he’s molded some like his prized creation Lota (Kathleen Burke) into his own human image.

If the Christian origin story hinges on a Fall from grace where Adam and Eve were deceived by the serpent and ate from the forbidden tree of knowledge of good and evil, then Island of Lost Souls has its own paradigm. Suddenly, these indigenous monstrosities of his realize their creator is mortal or at the very least they can rebel against him. The law is no more and it’s been disproven. There is no longer anyone willing to uphold or live by it. Namely, because they realize it’s fallacious.

Parker is mostly uninteresting as we watch his repugnance grow, and he looks to be reunited with his innocent love (Gloria Stuart). Meanwhile, the doctor toys with him and tries to set him up with Lota. Lota fits crucially into this deeply human narrative because there’s a suggestion of her “evolution” within the arc of the film even if it’s not in purely Darwinian terms. Because she has come to understand what sacrificial love is: laying one’s life down for one’s friends.

If nothing else, surely this shows her not to be a creature without reason or logic but predetermined with something deeper and more primal inside of her. I find it impressive how something that feels deeply exploitive could still come down on some deeply philosophical ideas without ever forfeiting its obligation to a paying audience. It’s the kind of genre film capable of triggering all sorts of ancillary conversations, and I’m all the more curious to return to Wells’s source work.

4/5 Stars

The Black Cat (1934)

Each lineage of horror movies must have its own in-house aesthetic and stable of performers matched with specific technicians who come to exemplify a studio and their body of work. The Black Cat brings together much of what made Universal Pictures horror so lucrative from the studio, and it gathers together two of their most iconic stars: Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff.

Although we’re not in Transylvania, the story picks up aboard a train traveling through Hungary, a typically foreign locale for a hometown audience. We meet a newlywed couple (David Manners and Julie Bishop) on their honeymoon only to have their compartment’s marital bliss disrupted by Lugosi’s Dr. Vitus Werdegast. He looks nice enough, but there’s always something menacing behind his eyes (even when he’s playing pleasant).

Inclement weather leads to a devasting crash and the couple and their newest acquaintance show up on the doorstep of one of his old friends, although I use the word friend loosely. Hjalmar Poe is a famed Austrian architect, and his abode lives up to his reputation. We must expect nothing less as we are welcomed into the home of the always foreboding Karloff.

For the rest of the picture, The Black Cat feels like an oblique tour throughout the art deco space with a subtle game of death going on between Karloff and Lugosi. Because instead of bringing two unsuspecting victims into their lair, this is much more a grudge match with two unsuspecting parties caught in the middle.

It becomes a world modulating between the polls of the supernatural and baloney. With a rogue gallery of Lugosi and Karloff, we know better, and as the good doctor demures, “There are many things under the sun.” His evocation of Ecliasstes has very ominous underpinnings.

But that’s not the only source of disquiet. The way the two actors lurk around the corridors, the very way they interact around the woman is unnerving. Karloff always seems to be leering and ogling even if that’s how his face is predisposed. Then, moments later, he’s caressing a chess piece in a disturbing manner. Or is it only our imaginations playing tricks on us?

There were lulls that I wouldn’t mistake for tension, and yet there is so much to be said about the architecture of that house even when the architecture of the film seems to fail. Because this aspect of the mise en scene embodies something that fits so perfectly with the personas of Karloff and Lugosi. Somehow always incongruous and ill at ease.

And the film never feels pulse-pounding; it’s outrageous, yes, but it also builds to these harrowing moments. They’re sinister and escalate into a final descent into the pit of Hades further accentuated by the lines of the architecture.

The ending nearly balks on the entire movie. It’s a wink and a joke that dares us to tell others about what we just saw. They’d never believe it because this is the apex of outlandish storytelling. The Black Cat‘s not great, nor is it mediocre; instead, it feels deeply alive with something probably more indebted to Edgar G. Ulmer than Allan Poe.

3.5/5 Stars

Freaks (1932): We’re All Sideshow Attractions

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One of the personal details of Tod Browning’s life was his adolescence spent working in the circus. This gives him an accessibility to the material that some other less-attuned director might have lacked. And yet there’s little denying Freaks is a genuine showpiece when it comes to turning heads. It still bristles with controversy and outlandishness 90 years later.

The movie itself is presented as such to the audience. If you are familiar with any of these carnival entries from Browning’s own The Unknown or later works like Nightmare Alley or The Greatest Show on Earth, you have an immediate comprehension of the milieu.

The people we are about to witness are presented as “living, breathing monstrosities” and “accidents of birth” to the audience. If not outright reviled, they should be reeled at with horror and maybe a dash of pity. These opening moments make it evident the whole movie is quite literally a sideshow exhibition.

But somehow as the movie builds, it both feels exploitative and strangely sympathetic. This seemingly conflicting observation deserves to be broken down. And for this, we must start with the characters and their world.

One of them is the gorgeous trapeze artist, Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova), who is obviously aware of her own attractiveness and uses it to woo those around her. Because perceived ugliness or otherness has a habit of making the vein feel that they themselves are even more superior. Never once does she have a genuine ounce of care for the other performers. They are more like playthings than real people.

Front and center is the dwarf Hans (Harry Earles). Although he already has a girl, he becomes increasingly smitten with the gorgeous blonde and she gladly strokes his ego — fawning over him — she thinks she’s giving him the thrill of his life. When she finds out he’s come into a decent sum of money, that’s even better, and one day they are wed. The fact she is colluding with the local strong man remains to be brought to light.

But this is only one facet — one individual storyline in the world — since Freaks intersperses a lot of narratives throughout highlighting numerous real-life people who existed as sideshow attractions.

A single line of dialogue that might resonate with others goes like this, “God looks after all his children.” The implication is that there are no exceptions or omissions. These people are ostracized simply for the way they look or act, and while they might be different than the norms of their contemporary society, it in no way makes them sub-human. They are worthy and deserving of the same human dignity as everyone else.

Even as Freaks has been hailed as a horror film of the macabre — and there is some truth in this given the way Browning presents the material — he also normalizes the experience of these outcasts. Mind you, this is back in the 1930s. People were more than prepared to gawk at conjoined twins, bearded ladies, a human caterpillar, etc. But we’re not totally enlightened people now by any means. I admit my own shortcomings; some of these characters unnerve me but that is only based on outward appearance. We supposedly learn this in childhood, but how wrong it is to judge people by outward appearance alone.

We need to know their character before we dare to make such rash judgments. In many ways, while Leila Hyams and Wallace Ford are “normal” able-bodied folks, they are also allies and open our own eyes to these characters.

The production was turbulent with footage being heavily cut and talents like Victor McLaglen and Myrna Loy balking at the material. We cannot fully know their reasoning, whether it involved subject matter, money, or costars. Hopefully, we have the opportunity to appreciate Freaks more now because whatever the underlying reasons, Hollywood gave performers on the fringes the spotlight.

As we sink deeper into the bowels of the movie, we are privy to a wedding feast. All the outcasts sitting there, and Hans feels so ashamed as his new wife berates him and his “deformed” friends. It’s so pernicious and ghoulish all at the same time.

My mind could only drift off to what a wedding feast is meant to be. It’s a celebration, it’s a community, it’s a reminder of all the blessings we have been afforded in our lives; it points to a hopeful future of what is yet to come, and it is a capstone of mutual commitment. It’s open to all and everyone who is willing to accept it and be made new. Alas, we live in a broken, befouled world.

Given its shared setting and tortured themes, Freaks plays as a fine companion piece with Browning’s earlier silent feature The Unknown. In fact, it features a finale, equally evocative and terrifying, if not more so. Because a plot to kill Hans is enacted, but he catches wind of it, and they strike in the dead of night as their carnival show moves on amid a downpour.

In some alternative universe, this might be some misshapen, ill-formed hell as Cleopatra is chased off into the darkness by the “Freaks,” who take vengeance upon her. In a moment of self-reflection, the horror is not so much about our own ugliness; maybe it’s more so about how we belittle and dismiss other people. Are we also deserving of such a grisly fate?

Tarred and feathered and paraded in front of everyone as a sideshow attraction to stew in our ignominy for a lifetime. It’s a hellacious image but also a striking warning call. Judge lest you be judged. But enough with the moralizing. If you let it, Freaks still has the power to shock your sensibilities.

4/5 Stars

Dracula (1931): Starring Bela Lugosi

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As the story behind Universal’s Dracula unfolds, it’s a joy to pinpoint all the elements helping to intensify the dread and solidify it among the studio’s emerging array of horror classics.

There has to be a kind of mythology and lore that the scares can be built out of. The protection of the cross is that of a powerful talisman capable of warding off evil.  Superstition and religion intermingle seamlessly like many of the horror films of the day.

Likewise, there must be a visual palette to help the world manifest Bram Stoker’s famed character. He already received a dose of notoriety in F.W. Murnau’s unauthorized adaptation, but now Nosferatu returns in the guise of Bela Lugosi’s now-paradigmatic Dracula. He definitively ate up and defined all future tropes for years to come.

The tale opens in a carriage when a callow young man named Renfield (Dwight Frye) disregards the warnings of the local population and ventures to the castle of Count Dracula on some proposed business. I watch Dracula and I’m immediately taken by the gaunt Transylvanian atmosphere.

Far from feeling corny, there’s an eerie spareness that’s to the credit of the picture introduced in the bleakness of night. The count’s ominous castle proves itself to be both a foreboding space and one falling apart with decay. Working with director Tod Browning, the incomparable Karl Freund translates his cinematography from Europe to become the epitome of Hollywood genre filmmaking at its finest.

The second portion of the story is born when a schooner, the Vesta, is found drifting into Whitby harbor with all the crew having perished aside from one raving madman. He’s put under lock in key in Seward Sanitarium, all but prepared to do his master’s bidding. Because of course, Renfield is now beholden to his master Dracula — by his blood.

In this new locale, Dracula borrows liberally not only from the traditions of Bram Stoker but the menacing Jack the Ripper, Jekyll & Hyde-type atmosphere of foggy London streets weighed down with gloom. It’s in this milieu one evening that Count Dracula makes the acquaintance of Doctor Seward (Herbert Bunston) as well as his daughter Mina. They are perfectly oblivious to who he really is. But, of course, he’s hardly looking for a romantic partner. Rather, he’s on the prowl for another unsuspecting human to provide him their life’s blood.

Meanwhile, a Professor Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) takes a particular interest in Renfield’s peculiar tendencies. When he starts making claims about the undead, Nosferatu, and vampires, this is yet another dose of necessary logos to explain the movie’s scares. Wolfbane is another tried and true vanguard against this unknowable evil.

As such, even as others remain skeptical, Professor Van Helsing becomes the film’s main advocate and certainly fits the mantle of a detective, prepared to deduce the answers and go head-to-head with Count Dracula. The man has no reflection and when he’s found out, he gets desperate like a caged beast.

The Professor and The Count have a standoff in the study — a literal crossing of wills — although Dracula manages to get to Mina and fuse with her blood. It remains to be seen if she (or Renfield) can be saved from their sorrowful fate.

Most of the movie’s horrific power is born in the face of Lugosi — how he is lit, the fire in his eyes — it’s indelible imagery. The rest is illusion borne in the space between what we see on the screen and the cut away. This is what makes it quite effective even generations later. Because it’s not about hokey gore or any such dated method of special effects.

It relies on us and the frights we can conjure up within our own imaginations. The movie supplies the building blocks of terror, but we must put them together for ourselves. Even 90 years later there’s something deeply powerful in this cumulative effect.

This might be an unpopular observation, but somehow, having a movie unaccompanied by music somehow augments this sense of piercing dread. There’s something direct and unembellished about it — it’s starkly beautiful — and yet it pierces like a stake through the heart.

The story is expeditious, but these quick strokes are so heartily effective until the very last heartbeat. Dracula does everything we should require from a horror movie, and it remains a timelessly perturbing experience.

Like so many of the horror greats, Bela Lugosi would forever be typecast by the part. It’s the curse of an actor but the glory of a screen icon. He’s unforgettable and people never have forgotten him even those who have never seen the movie. He lives on purely through our cultural consciousness.

4/5 Stars

Ladies They Talk About (1933): Starring Barbara Stanwyck

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Ladies_They_Talk_About

“Too much deaconing took all the sweetness out of me” – Barbara Stanwyck as Nan Taylor

From its opening moments, the movie feels like a  fine prelude to Baby Face for Barbara Stanwyck, who flaunts her feminine wiles and indecent levels of charisma as a gangster’s moll.

After sending the police on a wild goose chase with an erroneous tip, she runs interference, schmoozing her way past the bank security guard. He obviously ignores protocol and normal operating hours in deference to a pretty face. 

Soon the thugs in the idling getaway car burst in and get down to business raiding the establishment and their inside man — actually their inside woman — plays the damsel in distress. She plays her part quite well fainting on the spot. But when a police detective comes onto the scene, her resourcefulness runs out. He’s familiar with her rap sheet and all of sudden she’s left holding the bag. Stanwyck’s made her M.O. quite clear. 

In stark contrast, the film introduces pious David Slade (Preston Foster), a young man on a righteous tirade against dirty politics, and he takes to the radio waves to mobilize the votes of the public with an “Old Fashioned Revival.” He’s the kind of principled, tough-on-crime type of person, who becomes a thorn in the backside of miscreants and city officials alike. Because he’s more than prepared to shake up the status quo. 

The narrative strands are tied together by our two leads because they have a shared past — from the same town no less — although they’ve followed starkly different paths. Nan rebelled against her father’s religiosity, and it led to a life in reform school. There are still fragments of goodness in her, and they make Slade fall in love with her. He sees only her innocence, all but ignorant of her past sins. 

One of the best sequences in the movie is understated — completely focused on Stanwycks’s emotive face as she finally levels with him about her past sins. Here she is being real for the first time and her savior takes offense. He thinks he’s been used. All we see are her eyes cast upwards before she senses the movement as he huffs away to his desk. It’s such a tiny moment within the film but how it’s articulated exemplifies such a lovely bit of nuance.

Because it’s imperative Stanwyck treads this line between vice and virtue as she gets caught between a man who wants her and a district attorney who wants to keep his job. However, she feels betrayed and castigated for finally laying herself bare. The window for them is closing. 

After opening up, she hardens again, closing up like a steel trap; this is what she knows. It’s a defense mechanism, and she’s not going to let the world hurt her anymore. Even if it means a prison sentence.

San Quentin Penitentiary feels a bit like the playground with everyone eyeing and feeling out the fresh meat. Nan throws her weight around not taking any flack from the “Daffodils” especially when it’s Slade speaking on the other end of the tube. Everything she loathes in life is exemplified in Sister Susie (Dorothy Burgess) a former sinner who now is hopelessly devoted to Slade’s righteous war. 

Nan is far more chummy with Linda, a fellow inmate who obliges by showing her the ropes. This is hardly what I was expecting from Ladies They Talk About; it becomes a bona fide story about incarcerated women. It has all the beats. A highlight is watching Stawnyck give a massive wallop to her rival even as she acclimates to life and earns a rapport with such chipper lifers as Aunt Maggie (Maude Eburne). 

Lillian Roth plays her streetwise yet amiable second banana with a casual charm. Doing some quick tabulation, my mind went to Susan Hayward and her role in I Want to Live. A few years after that she would actually play Roth in the biopic treatment of her life I’ll Cry Tomorrow. It’s nothing more than a trifle of an observation.

But a movie that started with a brazen bank robbery, must include an Alcatraz-level escape attempt. Once more Nan finds herself being the inside woman joining up with her old cronies. It looks like the movie can only have a tragic fall for Nan Taylor. She bides her time in the clink just to get another chance at the outside — an opportunity to face her old rival — and give him the business. 

Sure enough, she’s back at “The Old-Fashioned Revival,” runs into an old friend, and enters the reverent proceedings with a gun. There’s only one place this drama is going. That is until it gets maudlin. Although perhaps this is too harsh because, for once, the story relinquishes puritan religiosity for agape love — a sacrificial love that holds no record of wrongs. Given what it is in terms of genre, mixing a wayward woman picture with crime and prison drama, Ladies They Talk About is a hardy recommend if only for Stanwyck’s talents. 

There are some actresses you could watch in just about anything because they take on all sorts of roles and no matter the breadth or the make-up of the characters, they seem to intuit and then embody the humanity found therein. If the moral dichotomy of the movie is obvious and the tropes easy enough to guess, then Stanwyck elevates the material to a degree and actually makes us care for a moment, long enough to enjoy the thrills. It’s a solid Warner Bros. picture thanks in part to her. 

3.5/5 Stars

Me and My Gal (1932): Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett

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Spencer Tracy falls easily into the role of an Irish cop on the beat, Danny Dolan, working in the heart of the pier on the Lower East Side. What stands out immediately is his humanity and good-natured benevolence extended to his neighbors. In a matter of minutes, he’s nabbed himself a banana, rescued a dog, and drummed up a bit of small talk with a pretty cashier (Joan Bennett).

The film itself provides a  fairly simple framework. Director Raoul Walsh finds himself sculpting a world out of characterizations and vignettes, not unlike future endeavors like Strawberry Blonde or Gentleman Jim. But it showcases precisely how a couple of weeks of shooting can translate into an enjoyable piece of work.

Dolan falls into company with a detective named Al (Adrian Morris) hanging around the docks and watching out for a big-time gangster named Duke Castanega. However, before they can roll out the welcome wagon, they get accosted and thoroughly distracted by the most persistent drunks in film history (Will Stanton). He’s in a perpetual state of belligerent inebriation only made funnier by the fact he’s probably the scrawniest character in the whole picture.

One of the other scenes bursting with life comes in the wake of the marriage of Kate Riley with her sister Helen (Bennett) by her side. Soon the minister has summed up the proceedings and every man looks to get a smooch from the bride before her nebbish husband can get in edgewise.

Soon the after-party is flowing with beer, belches, drumsticks, and boisterous conversation. Walsh pulls out a trick he would use later in Gentleman Jim where his characters speak to the camera. Actually, they speak over and past it and what it does is intuitive, bringing us into the fold of the movie. So right in this moment, we as an audience are there at the wedding experiencing the frenzy with everyone else.

The chemistry sparks early between Tracy and Bennett, and it slowly grows into a mutual appreciation. He does her a good deed at her sister’s wedding, turning a blind eye and earning points with her blustering father. Later, Danny and Helen trade advice: He straightens his new bowler and she stops chewing gum.

One of their lighter moments on the beat involves the aforementioned drunk in yet another altercation. This time they must defuse a confrontation involving a man who was slapped in the face with a fish. It doesn’t fall into the realm of high-brow comedy, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be delightful.

For Me and My Gal — like many films from bygone eras — also has standalone details we can look at from our current station in history and truly appreciate. A radio salesman pulls out all the tricks to get the Rileys to bite on his best merchandise. The budding couple eat vanilla ice cream together in the kitchen, and a cup of java is two bits.

Even better is the linguistic education. Sporting the new bowler, one asks the other “Well, how do I look?” They say “Jake”  with a playful flick of the brim and a superlative adjective is born. Likewise, the weighty insult getting hurled around on all sides is “beezock.” Look it up. 

In fact, nothing’s sacred. They take a few minutes to razz a contemporary moving picture where they say one thing out loud, and then a minute later express what they really think. The way they amuse themselves with this gag feels like unusual territory for the era as we hear their inner thoughts playing against their spoken words (in a prodding nod to the movie Strange Interlude). 

As he tugs her down and she plops on the couch next to him, they are such a wonderful portrait of romance so perfectly in sync. In these self-reflexive sequences, I couldn’t help but find my mind drifting to Joan Bennett and Spencer Tracy. They both had long and illustrious careers, and almost 20 years later they would play opposite one another in a starkly different picture: Father of the Bride.

For now, they are young and in love. Bursting with all sorts of sass and equally romantic elan. Take the scene later on when he charges into her hash house aiming to marry her, and she’s clattering around behind the counter giving him her glib repartee. It’s the way romance is supposed to play out and around all the cliché beats of wanted gangsters and what-have-you, these are the other elements of the movie that feel singular and almost transcendent.

These are the little “pieces of time” Jimmy Stewart said actors can give an audience. When they reach over the counter to kiss, the embrace sends both their feet shooting up in the air like a pair of cinderellas. Tracy’s a terribly genial chap, but he works all the better with an able sparring partner. Bennett has a whipsmart, blistering independence about her, and she’s also constantly at the defense of her cowering sister.

Kate’s one weakness is the man she’s trying to forget, an escaped gangster named Duke (Walsh’s brother George). We know where the picture is going after a prison escape, the sheltering of a fugitive in an attic, and a brazen bank robbery. Only one logical resolution remains. There’s the obligatory confrontation and Tracy becomes a hero. Why dwell on any of this? We’ve seen it umpteen times before (and after). 

Walsh seems to have a great deal more fun in the final minutes. Now there is a second wedding in process, and it’s yet another excuse for mayhem. We sit there trying to take it all in as Tracy and Bennett get whisked around, swamped by people, trading kisses. How lovely it is to be a part of this contingent living vicariously off their energy. 

Spencer Tracy always makes the toils of an actor feel effortless and Bennett does a swell job to counter him. People don’t talk much about their onscreen partnership, but it’s pleasantly appealing. In the back of our minds, we know with content in our hearts Me and My Gal was just the beginning. More people should seek it out.

3.5/5 Stars

Of Human Bondage (1934): Bette Davis Ascends

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“There’s usually one who loves and one who is loved.”

Philip Carey (Leslie Howard) is a sympathetic man who made a go at an artist’s life in Paris. However, a mentor tells him to move on; worse than a failure, he’s a mediocre talent. Although he has the industry, he lacks the genius, so he resolves to devote himself to something else: pursuing medicine like his father before him. It also constitutes a move back to his native London in the process.

Although it has nothing to do with his individual strength of character, wherever he goes in society at large, he is forever marked by his club foot. His history of rejection sets the stage for the story at hand. Of Human Bondage is based on W. Somerset Maugham’s partially autobiographical novel from 1915. I know little about its source material, but the film obviously does condense the narrative and hone in on one relationship in particular.

On the behest of a medical school colleague, they strike up a conversation with an “anemic” waitress (Bette Davis) at a local tea room. There’s a shrill, hard edge to her — denoting the lower classes — and she wears a tough exterior. Howard’s corners are rounded and refined in comparison.

Davis uses certain ticks to her advantage, for instance, how she always tilts her head from side to side. She’s proud and aloof in spite of her upbringing. Philip gives her a playful going over, and yet can’t stop thinking about her. She holds a power over him.

After only one encounter he’s completely smitten, asking her out to the theater, then dinner, while she barely gives him the time of day. Her ploy is to keep him at arm’s length accepting his requests for companionship, even as she keeps company with other men (including Alan Hale).

For those who have been in love, it’s the greatest disappointment when feelings are not reciprocated. She becomes his mind’s primary obsession during medical examinations, totally commandeering his life. He is only a passing fancy for her. Nothing more. Given the circumstances, his hopeless devotion toward her can only end in one way: heartbreak. What’s worse than having it happen once, is the cycle continuing over and over again.

Because she tells him more than once, that she’ll never love him; they have no future together. She goes off and marries something else, only to get thrown back out on the street. Philip finds himself taking her in out of pity because her husband dumps her, and she has an infant child to care for.

Although he’s not well-off, he still extends his hospitality to her even as it scourges him to have her in his space. He knows he cannot give himself over to her again. It would only torment him more.

Even as his medical career progresses and he finds another woman, a decent woman, and one who genuinely loves him, the pull of Mildred is too great. Not that he loves her, but she is in need of someone, someone to have mercy and give her shelter to provide for her child. As there is no one else, it falls on Philip.

Thankfully, there are a few bright spots in his life. One of his patients (Reginald Owen) is a particularly jovial chap who welcomes him into his home after he’s received a good bill of health and even introduces his beautiful daughter (Frances Dee) to the eligible bachelor.

Mildred continues to be the noose slowly tightening around Philip’s neck. Despite all the generosity he’s shown her, she ultimately lashes out at him with a vindictive fury, trashing his apartment and desecrating the paintings he has cherished for so long. But he is a changed man and as Mildred sinks back into the gutter, he continues to rise out of it.

We have a budding love story on our hands and in the company of Thorpe Athelny (Owen) and his daughter Sally, Philip cultivates a life-giving bond with the makings of a happy ending. Suddenly, all the former heartaches and woes have passed away, and Philip is blessed with a new life. Mildred is not so lucky…

Leslie Howard is an able performer and his talents probably get overshadowed a bit today due to playing a supporting role in Gone With the Wind and dying so tragically during WWII. But in a picture such as Of Human Bondage, he exemplifies both a sensitivity of spirit and a capacity for love. Frances Dee holds what might be considered a token role, but she’s teeming with beauty opposite him as one of the unsung starlets of the decade.

However, as you might have guessed, there is no considering this picture in its full breadth without considering Bette Davis’s performance. In hindsight, it’s fascinating to think about how some of the greatest stars made their ascensions. If the role of Mildred acts as an inflection point for Davis, then it’s quite an extraordinary anomaly for the era, but also a stunning showcase.

In some way, Mildred runs very radically against the tide of the times — not the victim but the aggressor — and a femme fatale before they were thoroughly popularized by noir in forthcoming decades

We must marvel at the courage and foresight of Davis to fight for the part, to go at it wholeheartedly, and willingly play a so-called undesirable, unglamorous character. Because she realized in all the mess, all the vulnerability, there is a character worth considering. Frankly, she feels human and honest though we do see her most petty and debased inclinations. This is precisely the point. The actress’s own words do much to color her appreciation of the characterization:

“My understanding of Mildred’s vileness – not compassion but empathy – gave me pause … I was still an innocent. And yet Mildred’s machinations I miraculously understood when it came to playing her. I was often ashamed of this … I suppose no amount of rationalization can change the fact that we are all made up of good and evil.”

Davis seems supremely perceptive, and she touches on one of the keys to creating indelible performances. Great actors are able to empathize with all characters and find their core truth — the wounds and hurts and realities — making them into genuine, broken people. There are a handful of Bette Davis characters that are easy for me to dismiss; I usually look down on them because I don’t like them as people.

Only as I grow older do I realize their flaws momentarily look like my own. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t see myself in Mildred Rogers or Margo Channing, but I’d be remiss to say I’m better than them or totally impervious to similar sins. Bette Davis is such a legendary talent because she forces me to have empathy with wretches such as these. Because on my worst days (and some of my better ones), I am one too.

3.5/5 Stars

Scarlet Empress (1934): Marlene The Great

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In the case of his excursions into historical drama, director Joseph Von Sternberg only used the past as a kind of malleable tableau on which to impart his own creative vision. Once more the cornerstone of this vision is Marlene Dietrich, and she is poised to become the greatest monarch of her time: Catherine The Great.

A nice bit of tribute finds Dietrich’s daughter (Maria Riva) portraying Sophia in her youth. Her movie mother’s only desire is to find a fine husband for her to marry to improve the family’s stability. Her father is a far more benevolent figure (C. Aubrey Smith).

Very early on there is the juxtaposition of ghastly torture mechanisms reminding us how dastardly humans can be with their cruel devices. Contrary to this is the sheer opulence and in this regard, The Scarlet Empress is all but unparalleled in its generation of period dramas. Historical accuracy be hanged.

The story continues with pace which is usually a welcomed addition when it comes to the often sluggish genre of period drama. Marlene plays her opening scenes wide-eyed, with a kind of spaced-out innocence. Because she is still a creature of adolescence as she gets sent to Russia as the betrothed of Peter III.

Her husband to be (Sam Jaffe in his debut) is vacuous, head on a swivel with a dopey incredulousness plastered on his face. Meanwhile, her demonstrative Queen Mother (Louise Dresser) remakes the impressionable girl to her liking — with a new name, new clothes, and all the expectations that come with her new station. More than anything else, she is expected to bear a son, an heir to the throne, and this is her primary usefulness. This is her only agency.

It’s almost gluttonous how indulgent the wedding sequence and all the subsequent sequences are in their pomp and regal showmanship. With the nation still dragged down by the Depression, one questions if the common man was taken with the escapism or was nauseated by the sheer extravagance.

While the images are visually splendorous, initially there are far too many title cards interspersed. However, they do begin to make their purpose more evident as the movie never seems to get unnecessarily bloated by dialogue. In some respects, they do set a kind of narrative precedent and use that to create a rhythm throughout the movie. It’s almost more like a silent picture, more concerned with a sweeping overview of a life — the impressions left behind — than honing in on every significant moment.

The sheer scale is staggering in the most extraordinary manner because there is no CGI. Von Sternberg has manicured and incubated this entire consolidated world inside the palace that’s without equal.

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The lighting, the ornate touches, gossamer canopies veiling Dietrich’s face in her chamber, and then outside the inner court hosts of ghoulish gargoyles, statuettes, and iconography of the Pantokrator fill the halls. It gives this uneasy sense of orthodoxy mixed with German Expressionism, but Von Sternberg utilizes it well. The Scarlett Empress really does feel like an exhibition for his skills as a wizard of mise en scene and environment. The costuming certainly is another extension of this.

Dietrich doesn’t really come into her own until a good hour and 10 minutes into the movie. From thenceforward there’s no stopping her consolidation of power. With his mother on a sharp decline and then on her deathbed, the king (Jaffe) is ready to marry his mistress and cast his wife out as he makes his long-awaited ascension.

But Catherine is no longer that ignorant girl she once was who merely avoided her gawky husband. She now knows how to play the political game — the kind of nepotism a station like hers relies on, and she readily uses all the means at her disposal.

Her feminine wiles mean she has the army in her skirt pocket bent to her whim. One of her greatest allies and lovers is the dashing rapscallion Count Alexei (John David Lodge). She has a secret passageway in the back of her chambers where she can usher her lovers in and out so they realize they aren’t totally indispensable.

What’s intriguing about the movie is not distinct plot points but growing to understand the textures of the world and how they form and shape the people in their midst. The Scarlet Empress becomes as much about how people look and how they carry themselves as much as anything else.

Marlene Dietrich might be altogether unmatched in this department. Purportedly she requested her iconic fur hat to be created especially for her, and it met with some resistance from the costuming department. Whatever the qualms, who could ever doubt her?

She only wears it momentarily. Maybe for a mere scene. Is it too frivolous? Certainly, but as she walks through the chambers inspecting the troops, looking as smart as she ever has, she’s totally inimitable. In that moment, she feels like one of the greatest cinematic royals hands down. Images are powerful. We know that.

It has little to do with policy or even action. All these things come later and that’s why we read our history books. No, here in The Scarlet Empress it’s about posture and presence and all those intangibles making the greats great and all the others merely peons and subsidiaries in the game of life.

Amid the clamoring bells and rapid montage, as she charges up the steps triumphant, flanked by her newfound army, Von Sternberg aids in The Scarlett Empress’s ascension to the epoch and with it the ascension of Marlene Dietrich as a star. It takes someone with true magnetism to fill up such a role promising so much, and she handles it with her usual aplomb. You can’t well forget her. She won’t let you. She embodies the Scarlet Empress. She is Marlene The Great.

4/5 Stars

Dishonored (1931): Marlena Dietrich, The Sultry Spy

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The premise is established in broad strokes. It’s 1915 and the remnants of the Austrian empire are caught up in war. This can only have meaning if we see some of the chaos in front of us. In this case, a prostitute lies dead in the street — with a host of onlookers crowded around — a mysterious mustachioed man eavesdropping and poking about. He’s looking for someone, listening to their conversation.

As the people walk through the streets, the sensation of rain sounds almost tinny and fake but this is part of the marvelous illusion. Because this is Joseph Von Sternberg, the famed spinner of bounteous tales offering so much to their audiences in the form of sensations and palpable milieu.

Eventually, the clandestine man — actually the chief of Austrian secret police — settles on a woman, but not just any woman. It is Marlene Dietrich in all her glory. They settle on a romantic rendezvous.

Not only does Dietrich give us so much, as is her habit, but her apartment itself is cluttered with all the sorts of trinkets that allow us to make sense of a person or at the very least appreciate them more fully.

There’s the piano. Sketches up on the walls. The place where she stashes her shoes. The little dancing figurines suspended from the ceiling. The empty bottle of wine. However, more crucial than anything else she proves her own character — she might live a meretricious lifestyle, and yet she’s a staunch loyalist and a war widow. Her allegiances are unmistakable.

It’s immediately evident Marlene is a woman in a man’s world, but she sure has her pick of the litter. Because everyone is bending over backward to escort her, to be with her, to get to know her. Her new superior is well aware of her assets supplying her a new alias — X-27 — and an assignment of vital importance to her homeland.

There’s a casual nonchalance to her when being propositioned spy work. But this only works if there’s a brazenness in the face of certain danger. She has both in equal measure. It’s true the subject matter plays as surprisingly lithe and modern for Von Sternberg as he casts his muse as a Mata Hari-inspired spy with steely poise and a touch of class. She’s an inscrutable beauty fit to play the game.

What’s lovely is how everything is delivered in between the lines. Heroes. Villains. Friends. Enemies. What’s the difference? For these people, it’s their business and so they find time for romance whatever the scenario might be. There are no hard feelings because the current climate has bred this kind of immediacy. Nothing beyond the here and now can matter. One must make the most of the moment.

Dietrich is brilliant at the masquerade party. It’s our first chance to see her in her new regalia — plumed and sequined, teeth smiling from under her disguise — and she’s only one of a myriad. It’s the most gloriously decadent party I’ve ever seen. You’ll have to see for yourself if it’s hyperbole or not.

However, X-27 has other business to attend to. Her first mark is Warner Oland a high-ranking General who’s also subsequently purported to be a turncoat. She must use the art of seduction to implicate him. But he’s not the only one.

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Captain Kranau (Victor MacLagen) was also present at the party and equally taken with the woman’s allure. He’s a Russian Agent playing the same game of cat and mouse she is. In the service, of Ford, MacLagen always felt broadly Irish. Here he seems toned down and well-fitted for the role if only for the fact he hardly tries to upstage Marlene. It’s better not to have Coop. She needs no equal in this picture and it’s true no one can outdo her. This is her story more than anyone else’s.

What more can be said as they joust back and forth globetrotting across borders and meeting under all varying degrees of circumstances? X-27 does her finest impression of a cleaning woman and a kitty cat all in one sequence. He finally has her cornered. We think this spells the end and yet she riggles free. Her wealth of secrets transcribed into music and memorized. She wins another round.

This is what becomes so riveting because the movie is constructed out of these kinds of jocular bits of leisure, but they are a pretense or a visual projection or smokescreen over a very harsh even cutthroat subject matter. He tells her in one interchange, “the more you cheat the more you lie, the more exciting you become.” It’s like a harbinger of Bond decades later.

However, lest anyone misconstrue his intentions, Von Sternberg is vehemently critical of unyielding military protocol. In fact, in a gut-wrenching final scene, it makes a young soldier blubber. He witnesses the utter cruelty of war when it comes to the rule of spy and counter-spy. Still, Marlene takes it with her usual poise — stalwart to the end — and frankly, she’s unforgettable. As she waits out her final days, her last requests are authentic to her character from the beginning. She requests her piano and the black dress she used to wear in her previous life. These are her identity. This is her uniform.

The ultimate irony of the movie is its title. Against the vociferous objects of Von Sternberg, the studio settled on “Dishonored.” But this cut-and-dry analysis of her station in life fails to understand the intent of the entire film. It’s tantamount to saying Sophie Scholl was dishonored in standing up to the Nazis or that the figure of Christ was dishonored for standing up for what he believed in, what he was called to. In X-27’s case, her guiding light was love — even love precipitated in momentary encounters — it can still be a driving source behind any human heart.

We have a fair amount of modern spy movies now anchored by female stars. Their main objective seems to be an exhibition in showing women as powerful entities, capable of kicking butt. This is fine, but sometimes there is no illusion left. No added depth of character. Dietrich is unparalleled, feeling exciting and aloof until the very last frame. We want more of her not less, but she leaves us while she’s still ahead. What a run she had with Von Sternberg, in her third picture following The Blue Angel and Morocco, with still more to come.

It’s less heralded but might just be the best of the lot. It comes quietly and then ambushes you with all its many assets — thoroughly exquisite to look at and also thematically resonate. What’s more, it has a genuine sense of fun and intrigue which isn’t always the easiest combination to come by. Its range of surprises is the kind you relish as a moviegoer. They stay with you.

4.5/5 Stars