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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

Hour of The Gun (1967): James Garner and Jason Robards

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The story is as old as the mythology of the West. You cannot avoid tales of Tombstone, Arizona on October 26, 1881 and the famed Gunfight at The O.K. Corral. John Ford covered the events most famously in My Darling Clementine headlined by Henry Fonda, Victor Mature, and Walter Brennan in the title roles.

A generation later, Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas teamed up to do their version. And the lineage runs a lot wider and deeper than this. It leaves one to wonder how many ways you can retell the same story with the same central characters.

Director John Sturges answers the question almost immediately by doing away with the one scene that this whole mythology effectively hinges on. The movie opens with the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, which feels more like a glorified street fight, done in seconds, with Clanton standing by and unharmed by the events at hand. Whether it plays more to the timber of actual history or not, it sets a precedent and recontextualizes everything we must relearn about these legendary figures of the West.

The men who play them are more than up to the task because of what they bring to the characterizations. Their names should be familiar. James Garner. Jason Robards. Robert Ryan. They are featured prominently in the title credits like figures on the marquee.

There might be some questions of where the movie might possibly go from here because it quickly disposes of its most “climactic moment,” underwhelming or not. Still, there manages to be a story built off the foundations of this inciting incident.

It becomes part courtroom drama momentarily, then it’s a town-wide conspiracy against the Earp brothers, and it finally turns deadly when they are ambushed with shotguns in the dead of night. The bloody gunfights and surreptitious ambushes are quickly deliberated over in the very same courtroom. There’s a kind of legal impasse.

Ryan always managed to be a fine villain, and it’s no different here. He plays Clanton as a shrewd businessman with most of the town on his payroll including sheriffs, public prosecutors, and a bevy of wanted gunmen (including a young Jon Voight). Though he never pulls the trigger himself, he has many minions in his pocket prepared to do his bidding. It’s a lot more convenient since he has the money to spend.

Hour of the Gun also feels like a western straddling two generations. Garner and Robards represent it well. Garner’s Maverick and to some extent his Local Sheriff put a different spin on the western genre as a kind of anti-western star, at least compared to the James Arness or Chuck Connors archetypes.

And Jason Robards, who only a year later would find his way into Sergio Leone’s epic spaghetti opera Once Upon a Time in The West, is equally adept in such an environment. He can be rugged and tough but not without a kind of wry sense of humor and intuition. We like them both for who they are. First, as performers and then as two of the West’s most prominent figures: Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday respectively.

Lucien Ballard was a Hollywood veteran with saddlebags full of movie credits including many entries shooting his wife and leading lady Merle Oberon. Jerry Goldsmith takes on scoring duties with work that observes the purview of the West while reminding us of his crucial role in future New Hollywood and blockbuster hits.

It’s curious how the movie hews closer to history, and it looks to dispel myth and tell a version of the tale that feels more like a procedural. In some ways, it is a more modern expression of the western, though John Sturges is not in the Eastwood, Peckinpah, or even Leone school.

He was actually the very same man who helmed The Gunfight at The O.K. Corral with Lancaster and Douglas. But this is hardly a reworking in the way Howard Hawks remade Rio Bravo multiple times. Rather it feels like Sturges is intent on telling the tale with different terms more to his liking.

Initially, it builds off the legacy of The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape where there’s something honest and sure about its telling, but it’s not gun shy. There’s still a sense of violence and ambiguity in other ways. Because hypocrisy exists in a world where as long as men have warrants and badges or they are fighting wars, killing is legalized. In all other contexts, it’s not permissible.

It becomes so easy to bend the rules either in service of good and often in the service of evil. Hour of The Gun ultimately is quick to distance itself from the comfortable morality of earlier westerns. This too is a bridge to its future brethren in the genre.

Doc is the man who ultimately assembles the troops; it’s a sequence we know well and somehow Sturges’s best films always captured this brand of male camaraderie — the kind of scenes that little boys of a certain generation aspired to. Getting together with their friends to fight the baddies. There’s still a sense of good fun and the kind of innocent naivete the western used to breed. Though it never amounts to anything.

It all comes down to Wyatt Earp and his personal vendettas. Garner shows a ferocity and a simmering rage that’s rare in him or at least he hides it well often through down-home charm or a coward’s prerogative. Here he’s driven by a sense of justice for the deaths of his brothers. He’s not squeamish when it comes to searching it out either.

The ending could not be a further departure from its predecessors. It feels like the dilapidated, windswept ruins and facades in pictures like Vera Cruz or Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid where the classic western modality goes to die in some sense.

Wyatt finally completes his search for Clayton and comes face-to-face with the man who was so very hard to find. Doc and some bandits stand by testily as Earp flips his badge to his friend, signaling this is a personal action not enacted under the letter of the law.

It’s a quick, unsentimental climax, but it stays true to the opening depiction of the O.K. Corral. I would not hasten to say it’s realistic as much as it gives a more murky and unembellished version of the story. Still, whether he meant to or not, Sturges effectively revises one of the most quoted American myths adding yet another complicating footnote to how we come to understand it. All other things considered, from the imagery to this commitment to a raw account of history, Garner and Robards are still the ones who make the picture.

3.5/5 Stars

The Tall Men (1955)

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We open in Montana 1866 with the Allison brothers (Clark Gable and Cameron Mitchell), two former Confederate soldiers, leaving behind the “heartbreak memory of Gettysburg” for the promise of wealth in California. But first they must traverse frostbitten exteriors.

It’s no picnic as they join forces with Robert Ryan and face a treacherous trail overtaken by blizzard conditions. It chills your bones just watching them wade through the snow, fighting against the icy landscape.

When Jane Russel gets into the picture, the story and the dialogue start to pick up. She always had a way with words — and meeting in a snowstorm has a way of bringing folks together — she’s quickly trading repartee with first Gable and then Mitchell. Ryan just sits by and lets them have at it.

Gable and Russell end up in a cabin together out of the cold. It’s not quite the “Walls of Jericho,” but as Gable cooks up some meat over the fire, and she warms her feet on his back with a few playful kicks, the moment becomes the highlight of the picture thus far. We understand and appreciate the human connection unfolding before us going beyond dialogue or plot points even the nature outside. It’s about two people connecting with one another in a movie but also as individual performers.

In fact, I liked it all very much until I realized I was being imposed upon by a story and a plot. The characters are forced apart and spend the night pouting in their separate corners. It feels like a cheap rom-com ploy in a movie that might have been about something far more gripping and substantive. Instead, it becomes a feeble excuse to inject some amount of tension into the picture.

Sadly, it’s never able to reignite the same alluring lightheartedness of their opening introduction. They’re too busy trying to be distraught with one another to make time for much fun. In this way, Raoul Walsh is not Howard Hawks.

Ryan is frankly subdued if fairly determined with what he wants, be it cattle driving, making money, or charming the women he keeps company with. In his own quiet, self-assured way, he’s out for status and remains the envy of every other man. He can never be mistaken for a villain or even a real rival for Gable. They never play it that way. Even when his hot-headed brother, played by Mitchell gets belligerent, Gable’s quick to defuse the situation.

There’s also little push or purpose to the ensuing cattle drive as it is more of a conduit for the romantic tension, and it hardly seems to be enough to carry the weight of such a lengthy picture. Jane Russell is given ample opportunity to sing, bathe herself, and remove her stockings for the camera. Whatever the contemporary audience might have clamored for, it’s a sorry use for her talents and adds very little to the film.

They do indeed run tall in this movie. What the title fails to mention is how each man is pretty old, past the prime of a cowboy, and so we’re asked to let it slide. It’s almost laughable that Cameron Mitchell is meant to be a youthful hothead. Instead, it feels like he’s caught in a state of arrested development. It could be worse.

So while there’s a desire to see the mythos of the West played out in front of us on a grandiose scale, the movie never quite manages the whole package. Walsh is a consummate professional, and he makes the images as grand and as resplendent as he knows how with all the resources availed him. And yet the narrative itself — the sinew that makes up the story — never hits a lasting resonance. One exception might be a thrilling standoff with some Kansas extortionists.

Alas, there isn’t very much more to appreciate on the journey. It does feel like a sizeable waste of talent even as the film itself has vistas well worth our time.  It is a pity because I couldn’t think of a better way to draw up a western than enlisting the help of Clark Gable, Jane Russell, and Robert Ryan at the height (or even the trough) of their powers. Surely they were deserving of a bit more consideration.

3/5 Stars

The Law and Jake Wade (1958): Robert Taylor and Richard Widmark

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It’s initially intriguing to have a western pairing of Robert Taylor and Richard Widmark, rather like what we get out of Warlock from Henry Fonda and Widmark the year after. My estimation of the dashing ’30s matinee idol has refined over time as he matured into such worthwhile westerns as The Devil’s Doorway, Westward The Women, and even Saddle the Wind.

Here again, Taylor holds the mantle as the inscrutable, no-nonsense lead and Widmark falls back into his role as a merciless reprobate, prone to all sorts of aggression. What’s more, there’s something delightfully skeezy about his voice. He slips into it so seamlessly playing a kindred of Tommy Udo or any of his more reprehensible characters.

The premise is set up immediately with a brazen jailbreak — one man comes in for his pal — and then they shoot their way out of town toward freedom. However, it quickly becomes more complicated. Jake Wade (Taylor) and Clint Hollister (Widmark) are not so much friends as former acquaintances.

This is merely an act of reciprocation because when they raided the Yankees during the Civil War, they formed an uneasy alliance, out of necessity, before eventually parting ways. If they don’t entirely hate each other’s guts, then at the very least they’re deeply mistrustful.

It’s even more curious when Jake returns to his current life. He’s a town’s marshall. How do you make sense of him? In one moment he commits a brazen act of jailbreak, and yet in another, he sits behind a desk in a decent, sleepy town holding a position of repute. Here the noir element is made evident — the way a dark past always comes back to haunt the protagonist and the life he’s tried to make for himself.

In the meantime, the imagery and more specifically the snow-covered mountains are an awesome backdrop and something only the western landscape affords. Jake also is keeping company with a pretty gal. Patricia Owens reminds me a bit of Julie London, mousier but deeply sensible. Her requests make sense, but her man can’t tell her his misgivings without dredging up unwanted memories.

Because Widmark is the force out of his past he can never totally get rid of. We wonder why he pulled him out of prison. It might come down to some moral prerogative, but it feels a lot like letting the monkey out of the cage so it can end up on your back again.

The old gang moves in and Taylor is taken prisoner with the sole purpose of leading them back to a cache of gold pieces he buried in some forsaken town years before. The journey is long and arduous and the callous Clint makes his old partner do it with his hands tied behind his back. He’ll give him a horse, but he doesn’t trust him with more. If you give him an inch, there’s no telling what will happen.

Deforrest Kelly never quite does it for me as one of the heavies — though he’s quite a psychotic hulk in Warlock. Of all the sidekicks, Henry Silva has real umbrage and a chip on his shoulder, coming off smug and vaguely dangerous.

However, in its best moments, it really becomes a fitting inverse of The Naked Spur held aloft by the two central performances dueling it out. The bad guy is the one holding the reins and dictating the story while our hero and his girlfriend are under his watchful eye as they go on the hunt for the buried treasure. The tension rides with them every moment of their trek.

When Widmark skirts off to catch the Native scouts that bode trouble, there’s a fear something will be lost in the movie. We stay back with the others as they wait it out in the ghost town, and it feels mostly stagnant. The dynamic brought by Taylor opposite Widmark is momentarily relinquished.

In its wake, there’s a run-of-the-mill shoot ’em-up Indian barrage. I couldn’t help but compare it with the shootout in Man of the West also preoccupied with a ghost town. However, whereas that film has Gary Cooper and a mythos about it like a knowing predecessor to Sergio Leone’s stylized showdowns, Jake Wade feels mostly unspectacular. It’s a shame because the film packages together a handful of worthwhile performances and tangible menace in fits and starts.

3/5 Stars

Time Limit (1957) Directed by Karl Malden

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Time Limit sounds like it should be the title of a syndicated TV program or at least a game show in the heyday of family entertainment. It is not. The themes are heavy, and there’s a weight behind the picture that means something. And in spite of the clunky title, it bears testament to the main players both behind and in front of the camera.

Like his acting compatriot, Marlon Brando, Karl Malden only ever directed one full feature-length picture. Here it is before us, and you can see his sensibilities in it if only because it does stand for something. There is a purpose to it.

Although we never even see the inside of the courtroom, it still reminded me nominally of Man in The Middle with Robert Mitchum solely due to the scale. They both seem to rely on performance and actors who are up to the task.

Time Limit hones in on an investigation into a potential court-martial of a major who looks to have caved to Communist ideology and committed acts of treason against his men and his country in a North Korean POW camp.

Richard Widmark, as the producer and one of the primary architects, is the anchor of the movie as the primary officer — a clear-minded Colonel — called upon to compile the details of the case.

But it is really Richard Basehart with the most complicated, ever-shifting role. It’s easy to sleep on him because of his stint in Europe, and he was never intent on being a movie star. And yet over a serpentine career, he left a trail of memorable noir (He Walked by Night, Tension), arthouse classics (La Strada), and mostly forgotten dramas like Reign of Terror or Fourteen Hours.

Because Time Limit functions mostly as a character piece albeit laced with flashbacks and ratcheted with tension. The ensemble itself is made up of a handful of others. General Connors is the Colonel’s immediate superior, and he’s pushing for a quick court-martial. He doesn’t want the boys to suffer through any more trauma. Although he’s not a totally unlikeable fellow, he does have a very concrete way of thinking. It’s abrasive, to say the least.

If you’ve read me before, you know I have a soft spot for Martin Basalm, and it started with movies like 12 Angry Men and Psycho and steadily built over time. He’s just so versatile while never losing his personal DNA as a performer.

Time Limit finds him on the more irksome spectrum as a busybody rat fink, who always has a way of divulging information to interested parties, much to Widmark’s displeasure. But for every tattletale by Sergeant Baker, there’s a supreme act of loyalty by the faithful and whipsmart corporal Jean Evans (Dolores Michaels). If we were to codify the movie purely between good and bad, she is one of the movie’s unsung heroes.

But they must also have witnesses — people with first-hand knowledge of the case — both personal and otherwise. An almost unrecognizable Rip Torn is a clean-cut, fresh-faced member of the unit who was there in the POW camp when the Major turned. Mrs. Cargil (June Lockhart) has a much different point of view because she still can’t believe the debilitating change that has come over her husband. It’s not like him. Something else is going on under the surface.

The score rages too much for my liking, but for what it is Time Limit plays quite well. The General starts breathing down Edwards’ neck — with personal interest invested — his son was one of those killed in the camp. It certainly cannot be discounted. Then, there are these very particular repetitions in the many testimonies (describing factors like acute dysentery). Something does not add up because everything lines up almost too perfectly.

More than anything, it does feel like Malden makes his actors look good. I’m thinking of a particular scene where Widmark is absent. Balsam leads Basehart into the office to wait but then prepares to ambush him and give him a piece of his mind. Michaels makes sure she is present to moderate, but first Balsam leans over his superior in his chair. Then, the close-ups cut back and forth between him and Ms. Evans as they have at it.

The tension in the sequence is palpable because the scene is blocked and covered in such a way that we feel the entire essence of what is going on. The visuals not only augment the performances but also the emotions underlying the sequence.

Winston Churchill is cited as saying, “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies. Widmark turns these words on their head because he says, “Truth can be more rotten, more vicious, and destructive than any lie.” Within the context of this move, he’s right.

Like Act of Violence, it becomes a film of making sense of a clouded past under circumstances the offenders are not proud of. The General invokes an unbreakable code for all his men — even his son — a code that must be adhered to with unswerving resolve. It’s a graceless proposition that no one can stand up to. Because for the hundreds of days men are heroes, there’s always going to be a few where they falter.

The question remains how do we canonize others? Is it at their most cowardly and despicable or at their very best? For those paying attention, the irony in the General’s final convictions should not be lost on us, “The Code is our Bible, and I thank God for it.”

If you’ll allow me one final digression, a book that’s pierced me to the core is Silence by Shusaku Endo. It is about Catholic priests, not soldiers, but they face a similar conundrum: the desire to attain some sort of martyrdom. However, what if someone is forced to face the ultimate ignominy instead? Each must struggle and make peace with a world that will openly disdain them, and that is a tough pill to take for any person.

3.5/5 Stars

Backlash (1956): Donna Reed and Richard Widmark

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Only in a western could we meet our protagonists in a sand trap known as Gila Valley. It says everything you need to know about the Arizona landscape, and then the sweeping Technicolor tones say a bit more.

Richard Widmark is easy enough to place as an enigmatic figure. There’s a glint in his eyes, and we know from his pedigree he’s capable of playing shifty. The true pleasure is watching Donna Reed — because she becomes very much his equal — another sturdy customer with her own personal agenda.

It feels so very unaccustomed for the woman who played Mary Bailey and anchored her own family comedy. Then, again, the edges of From Here to Eternity are not too far in the past. It’s hard to forget what she did there across from Monty Clift.

The movie gets its legs when a man takes a shot at Jim Slater (Widmark) from the rocky crags above. He thinks he’s been a mark. The woman, Karyl Orton, was trying to play him, and he nearly fell for it. Leaving her behind, he scurries to the rockface to have it out with his enemy on the high ground.

Backlash is a constant exhibition in deciphering characters’ intentions. Because as an audience we are thrown into the action and asked to follow what’s going on. She’s searching for some gold, and he asks us to believe his interests are purely in his father who disappeared in the territory.

Although it’s adapted from source material, it does feel reminiscent of some of Borden Chase’s other patented efforts with a craggy showdown reminiscent of Winchester 73′ (1950). Thematically, John Sturges’s turn as director also proves a decent facsimile of some of Mann’s best westerns where the blending of psychological duress, perturbing imagery, and in-your-face action strings out the story into a taut state of tension.

It’s easy to become genuinely immersed in the first act with a fleeing stagecoach looking to cut across the open plains with Indians in hot pursuit. As they fall back, they’re forced to hold down an isolated trading post against the onslaught of marauders.

Unfortunately, all this buildup feels a bit too convenient. Because Slater searches for a seasoned soldier named Lake (Barton MacLane), who was a part of the detail that found the dead bodies that were left behind in an earlier massacre. In serendipitous Hollywood fashion, the old man keels over from a battle wound, just before divulging the remnants of what he remembers of a “6th man.” Surely he is the key to the movie, and Slater has been propelled forward.

If we can stop for a moment to acknowledge them, Backlash has a couple doozy bits of casting with the normally maniacal heavy Jack Lambert playing a sniveling Indian trader. Then, Harry Morgan, in a role reversal, takes on the role of a squat, no-nonsense heavy out to hunt Slater with his big brother. Because Slater killed their sibling.

But if there was any doubt in the red-hot chemistry of our primary stars, it sizzles while Reed brandishes a knife to cauterize the gunman’s most recent injury. It is a movie moment made for the big screen audience if there ever was such a thing. This smoldering passion and growing relationship are nearly enough to salvage the picture in its slower ebbs as they continue their search for answers.

In the end, they split the thread pretty thin between the two of them. It can only go one of two ways. Either the man he’s looking to find is her long-lost husband, a corrupt man, or it’s his own father — a man he’s never known a thing about. We must wait to discover the answer.

But the factions in the buildup are interesting. Our protagonists meet a man named Major Carson (Roy Roberts), who runs a local ranch. He seems like a pragmatic, sensible sort of fellow, and he’s got a range war on his hands thanks to a man named Bonniwell (John Mcintire).

One hotheaded sharpshooter (William Campbell) goes turncoat, and there are still thugs looking for Slater to gun him down in an act of retribution. The local sheriff (Robert Foulk) aims to remain impartial in all of this while still maintaining some manner of civility. He’s not concerned with private vendettas, only some semblance of local law and order. Widmark quickly gets tossed into the jailhouse, effectively sidelining him and leaving him incapable of exerting any influence on either side.

I won’t spell out the final act because that’s part of the fun of the picture, watching it unfold. There’s a dog-eat-dog mentality; it’s about family, but it never stops being a picture founded on Richard Widmark and Donna Reed. If you’re curious about seeing them together, that’s a good enough reason as any to invest in this western from an often underrated craftsman.

3.5/5 Stars

Colbert and MacMurray: Gilded Lily, Take a Letter Darling, Egg and I

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One of my latest ventures was to view a handful of romantic comedies of the ’30s and ’40s, many with screwball elements, and you could not broach this territory without eventually crossing paths with Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray. They starred in 7 films together throughout the decade and also paired opposite some of the most prominent stars of the era (including Clark Gable and Carole Lombard).

Here are three of their movies, two that star both of them, and one with Fred MacMurray in the lead with another worthy romantic partner:

The Gilded Lily (1935)

It opens on a park bench with MacMurray and Colbert chewing the fat as they share a bag of popcorn. What it does is create this instant familiarity going far beyond the bounds of the film as we’re thrown into their relationship that feels more platonic than romantic.

Thus, it’s not so much about the build-up to a prototypical relationship but the chafing that comes with their differing feelings. He has the hots for her. She loves him as a friend but still seems to be looking for her prince charming.

Prince Charming comes in the form of Ray Milland, a rich British aristocrat who’s come to America incognito. You can immediately imagine the complications arising from the fact Peter (MacMurray) is a nosy newshound and the other man has a secret to hide. They’re still to be cast as true romantic rivals and there’s already a tense undercurrent between them.

Meanwhile, Marilyn finds herself having to choose between two men as Lord Charles (Milland) promises a life of cultured sophistication. But Peter is always there, her ever-faithful confidante, and he’s also not going down without a fight.

He churns up the news mills to turn her into a household celebrity and the whole world seems to know her name. Even Charles is tickled by her world-class notoriety, but this is only a paltry imitation. If it’s not evident already, she needs a man who wisecracks, buys her popcorn, and wants to love all of her, whether she’s a big shot or not.

I’m still a bit smitten by the movie’s public bench premise because it allows our stars to do what they do best: laugh at the world together. No one can break their bond, and it teases out new contours to the Colbert-MacMurray partnership.

3.5/5 Stars

Take a Letter Darling (1942)

Although he does have a devoted following, Mitchell Leisen still does feel like a mostly unheralded director in broader circles. Take a Letter Darling is another modest feather in his cap, and it has numerous charms.

The gender norm-bending premise was actually quite intriguing for the era and MacMurray and Russell are more than up to the task of sparring in and out of the office. She’s a high-powered businesswoman who enlists a male secretary who can help her land her deals. He has a very important job: keeping jealous wives satisfied as she trades shop talk with their husbands.

There’s an obvious level of emasculation to the part, and MacMurray is more than game for it as he becomes the laughingstock of the secretarial peanut gallery. You see, he’s MacGregor’s fourth man and she’s running out of options. Still, it’s a lucrative way to bankroll his true passion: painting.

If Claudette Colbert was in fact originally earmarked for the part, I think I’m still partial to Russell in this particular role. I just find her brand of delivery perfectly metered for any kind of antagonistic comedy. And there’s a sense it builds on the kind of workplace dynamics she stirred up with such legendary fervor with Cary Grant in His Girl Friday, between quizzical glances and whipsmart repartee.

I will admit that Take a Letter Darling loses some of its comic edge when it turns saccharine, and the inevitable romance materializes. Until this point, the movie uses its premise to mine a plethora of laughs only to peter out as it makes Russell shed her authoritative business acumen for warm, fuzzy feelings.

However, while the final act can’t quite maintain the same level of comic tenacity, it also doesn’t whimper out as much as I was expecting. Yes, MacGregor wants her man back, but in typical Russell fashion, she crosses paths with him out on the road and comes armed with pebbles. She’s not going down without a fight, and she won’t totally acquiesce. It’s against her nature.

I feel like womanhood, especially in the ’50s, is glazed with this perceived antiquated patina, but watching the likes of Russell, Barbara Stanwyck, Jean Arthur, or even Irene Dunne during the ’30s and ’40s, provides a more nuanced landscape. It wasn’t all marriage and motherhood. They managed to grapple with the lives of modern working women in numerous ways. While Take A Letter Darling is no unsung masterpiece, it’s still easy enough to extend the recommendation.

3.5/5 Stars

Egg and I (1947)

Egg and I is based on a popular real-life memoir by Betty MacDonald, but for anyone who doesn’t remember it, it’s easy to pitch it as the original Green Acres — a Hollywoodized version of Grant Wood’s American Gothic. The fact it began with source material explains Claudette Colbert’s conspicuous introduction to the audience.

Otherwise, much of the movie is forged through comedy of the situation much like the wacky ’60s comedy with mostly mild and goofy trifles to contend with. The long-standing screen chemistry of Fred MacMurray and Colbert anchors the movie as its most imperative asset.

They’ve bought themselves a dilapidated house that’s riddled with leaks during the first rain. And once they’ve hunkered into their new home, next come the daily rituals that come with tending to a farm, and its livestock. They have lots to get used to. However, there’s also the local anthropological element.

Before the “Rural Purge” in the early ’70s, in deference to more urban entertainment, Hollywood has long mined comedy out of eccentric country bumpkins. Egg and I was no different introducing audiences to the first incarnation of Ma and Pa Kettle who became a bit of a low-budget institution in their own right with Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbridge.

One of the representative moments involves the local hoedown where men of all shapes, sizes, and dancing styles whirl Colbert around the dance floor, leaving her feet sore and her ears talked off. However, her greatest concerns are the advances of a local beauty (Louis Albritton), who her husband must do business with. She’s worried it’s a bit more than business, but if you watch him look at her, it does feel a bit silly.

I found the movie to be a bit too long and a tad more twee than it was gripping. Especially because Green Acres had numerous episodes and seasons to engage with analogous themes and character tropes to greater effect.

However, there are a few rewarding moments. It’s easy to recall the almost deceptively moving solidarity when the whole town bands together to loan the couple resources after a devastating fire obliterates their livelihood. For all their flaws, it’s a reminder of the close ties of small communities, and it makes Egg and I easy to root for even if it is mostly light-hearted recreation.

3/5 Stars

1930s Screwball: Love is News, Double Wedding, Young in Heart

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I normally try to focus on a theme to better curate my viewing. This post will encapsulate 3 films whose primary players don’t have much in common. However, if you wanted a loose point of connection, all three are comedies from 1937-38.

It all happened when I was on the lookout for some underrated screwball comedies and though some of them are more innately screwball, I was pleasantly surprised by what they had to offer. If you haven’t seen them already, consider this a hearty recommendation to check out some underrated films:

Love is News

Love is News (1937):

Although it traverses the same worlds of pictures like The Front Page, Platinum Blonde, and Libeled Lady, there’s something rather lustrous about getting Tyrone Power in his first headlining role with his leading lady being such a fine rival as Loretta Young.

In the 1930s the prevalence of newspaper movies makes them a workplace subgenre all their own. Love is News is made by this sense of good-natured ribbing and antagonism found end-to-end. In the office, Tyrone Power and Don Ameche feud incessantly, always buzzing the intercom to pull one another off the payroll. And this comic fodder continues when Steve Leyton (Power) finagles a scoop from the “Tin Can Heiress” (Young), sidestepping all the red tape and effectively gaining her confidence.

The piece de resistance is (no, not George Sanders playing a jilted French lover), but the fact the heiress hatches her own scheme as an act of revenge. She calls in a story to say she and Leyton are to be married!! She’s used to the publicity hounds, but he is pummeled by his newfound notoriety without a moment’s peace.

What makes the movie is the kind of rambunctious reunion you would expect given such a scenario. A podunk Judge (Slim Summerville), with a jailhouse falling apart at the hinges, locks them both up: She receives a speeding violation, and he’s apprehended in the middle of grabbing, err “stealing” her vanity case.

By now the last place he wants to be is stuck right next to her — anything else would do — but she orchestrates everything just so. There’s an exuberance because now the game is afoot as Young playacts her way to her desirable conclusion.

Even if the enemy-to-lover romantic arc is something we see so often, it’s the leads who make it spark, and there’s enough chaos to make it more than palatable. I couldn’t help thinking about how bright-eyed Power and Young both feel at this point in their careers, and it gives a kinetic vitality to their chemistry.

3.5/5 Stars

Double Wedding (1937)

Double Wedding feels like it banks on all the best characteristics of William Powell. He’s witty, at times churlish and juvenile, but boy does it make for goofy, ever-contentious comedy. This was one of his prevailing gifts as a film actor. We have a fine time messing about with him, and he never quite relinquishes his charm.

I’ve previously mentioned how I’m partial to The Thin Man movies because it plays off the amenable chemistry of Powell and Myrna Loy; not on their antagonism. It’s more about their repartee as comedic and matrimonial equals than it is watching them quarrel and make up.

But enemy-to-love arcs must cast Loy in some other way. In movies like Double Marriage or I Love You Again (1940), she must seem unreasonable from the outset or at least chafe against the wisecracking good humor of Powell.

In this story, she’s the fastidious businesswoman and older sister, who effectively runs her younger sister Irene’s life. It makes her an easy target for Charles Lodge, a man who’s probably a bit slap-happy and far too bohemian for the ’30s, living out of a trailer and putting on his own stage productions.

He scorns this kind of buttoned-up oppression and though Irene and her wet-noodle of a fiancee are charmed by his influence, they’re also not brave enough to stand up to Margrit. It’s so easy to sink back into tedium as she begins to set about planning their future wedding.

Powell feels like the lynchpin of the movie as he rebuffs Irene’s newfound advances, tries to help the dreary Hugo reclaim his manhood, even as he tries to woo Margrit under the most unconventional circumstances. It hardly seems material that the title gives something away. It feels like more of a signpost for us to aim for.

The escalated chaos of the finale exceeded my expectations as folks crowd in and around Powell’s mobile home for the wedding proceedings overseen by the ever-handy Donald Meek. It just keeps on going and going, but then again, I should expect nothing less from a Powell/Loy comedy. John Beal and Edgar Kennedy are other personal standouts to keep an eye out for.

3.5/5 Stars

Young in Heart (1938)

Without any preconceived knowledge of Young in Heart, it actually positions itself with an intriguing premise. It’s built out of a family ensemble of con artists who are always looking for ways to get ahead with varying degrees of success.

Their esteemed patriarch and matriarch are played by Roland Young and Billie Burke respectively. Father is constantly ingratiating himself as a distinguished Colonel who fought with the Bengal Lancers. The grown kids (Janet Gaynor and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) are out on the prowl for eligible suitors, who also happen to be loaded. The French Rivera has more than a few prospects though the authorities are especially vigilant.

The whole movie comes into its own after they’re unceremoniously kicked out of the country and then stuck aboard a train trying to figure out their next angle. George-Anne (Gaynor) meets a kindly old lady, “Miss Fortune,” who has her own compartment. She gladly shares it to stave off her loneliness and the family is quick to oblige. She’s just another mark they can perform for.

She welcomes them into her home, glad to have the company, and they realize if they’re nice to her, she could very easily credit them in her will. For modern audiences, it has the ring of Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite albeit without the social commentary. Instead, this family secretly unearths their soft hearts finding that as they model goodness, they find it suffusing throughout their lives.

The Colonel becomes a revered car salesman of “Flying Wombats” to the wealthy.  Richard stumbles into an engineering firm because of the pretty girl behind the desk (Paulette Goddard) and soon learns the edifying nature of an honest day’s work. They also fall in love.

If we see the progression from a mile away, it’s still a pleasure to watch this family evolve in front of us, and it feels like each member gets their individual moments to shine. Gaynor feels like the undisputed focal point, and though I don’t necessarily buy her in a skeevy role, we like her already, which is half the battle.

Young and Burke might be known for a single role each (in Topper and The Wizard of Oz), but they always can be counted on with a highly specific brand of comic eccentricity. There’s something wonderful about watching their charms bubble over. Although we could have easily had a Fairbanks-Goddard rom-com on its own, it might have been a bit bland. The ensemble brings the best out in everyone.

3.5/5 Stars

Autumn Leaves (1956): Cliff Robertson and Joan Crawford

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You might not immediately connect Joan Crawford and Nat King Cole, but his brand of velvet crooning provides a fine backdrop (and namesake) for Autumn Leaves. It presents the consummate leading lady with a lighter more congenial personality — the kind of Joan Crawford who seems easier to connect with.

She’s known for her typing speed, working from home before it was en vogue, and banging out manuscripts for thankful clients. Although she leads a solitary existence alone, she’s buddy-buddy with her landlady and seems generally contented with life. When she goes out to a show or dinner, she’s comfortable going alone — it doesn’t feel foreign to her — and she enjoys her time in solitude.

There’s a moment in Autumn Leaves as Crawford sits in an audience, the lights go out so the spotlight is only on her, and the pianist on the stage takes her back into her memories. It felt so reminiscent of a scene in Penny Serenade where music, whether live or on vinyl somehow fills up the human heart and carries with it so many easily-tapped emotions.

“Autumn Leaves” feels less like a gimmick to cash in on the season’s newest love song, and it starts to pervade and then slowly suffuse throughout the entire movie until it becomes the tactful accent to almost every scene of the ensuing romance.

Because this all feels like a prelude. We have yet to meet our other primary player. Cliff Robertson was from the east coast and an actor forged out of his training at the Actor’s Studio. He’s still fresh-faced and Autumn Leaves was his second truly substantial movie role after the movie adaptation of Picnic with William Holden.

When he steps into the bustling restaurant and eyes Milly in the one booth with an extra seat, he makes his way over. There’s a disarming approachability about him. It starts to melt the ice and break down the barriers between him and his new acquaintance. Partially because there’s no threat to him though he’s still good-looking. Rather you feel like you can get to know the guy and like him. And she does.

They spend time together, going out more and even taking day trips. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship, and yet I hesitate to use these terms because it makes it sound mercenary. In the most innocent ways, they just enjoy one another’s company, and it shows.

The former Army veteran shows off his beach body on one outing chasing Milly into the waves. He feels like a movie creation. Can Joan Crawford have her own version of a 1950s manic pixie dream boy? But this is only a momentary suggestion. He becomes more of a person in the ensuing scenes. When she prods him about his old girlfriends, he shrugs them off. “Young people are too young for me,” he says.

If they do seem like an odd couple, they aren’t totally unprecedented. Because while loneliness is not a foundational reason to get married, it’s true we need each other. Burt believes that sometimes you meet someone and you know; they provide something you are lacking. I’m reluctant to say they complete you. Still, maybe with someone else’s hand to hold, it makes the world just a little less lonely and the pain a little less galling. Milly loves him and after minor reservation, falls into his arms for better or for worse.

They have a bit of marital bliss below the border, and yet something starts happening. Burt lets bits of his biography slip. All very matter-of-factly and there’s nothing guileful about it; it feels innocent enough, but she begins to realize they don’t match up. First his hometown, then his military service, and there are other discrepancies.


Then, Vera Miles shows up on her doorstep as a manifestation of all her sinking fears about Burt. His insinuating father (Lorne Green) is next to appear. There was a time when the movie could have easily been Joan Crawford’s Middle of The Night. Instead, she becomes devastated by the newfound revelations about her husband, and then must become protectorate shielding her love from the unfeeling world all but ready to exacerbate his condition.

She’s ready to battle for him. If it’s not righteous anger then it’s certainly indignant anger. She sees people for who they really are and calls them on it. Whatever Burt’s shortcomings, he has everyday, common decency. Her maledictions against the character of others might seem excessive (“Your filthy souls are too evil for hell itself”), and yet she’s not entirely wrong. If nothing else, she’s lashing out as a defense mechanism.

However, she’s also caught in the most excruciating of conundrums — one of those scenarios where it seems you are required to do something against your nature out of the deepest sense of sacrificial love, even if it’s not perceived as such. Her deepest longings are for Burt to be born again — that he might live a new, better life than he had before. It leaves the door open for another outcome. It’s very possible if he overcomes his illness, he might come out on the other side as a man who wouldn’t need her anymore. It’s either keep him for herself or watch him return to a happy, normal life (without her).

In the meantime, Burt isn’t getting better. In fact, his circumstances are far worse, and so Crawford is stirred to action. One of the film’s more pronounced shots is of Crawford as she reaches for the phone and resolves to make the fateful call. The low angle makes her loom large in the frame, not so much in a threatening way, but expressing just how much magnitude this moment is imbued with. Her eyes flicker slightly, this way and that, before she speaks into the receiver. There is no turning back.

Whether it’s purely a credit to the scenario, the direction, or the winsomeness of Crawford, I’ve never felt so devastated for her before. She’s put through the emotional wringer, not from noir tension or antagonism, but the kind of burden cutting deep and breaking your heart in the most tender of ways. She’s rarely been more sympathetic and her fortitude is easy to admire.

The final moments are quick, but that is not to say they aren’t pregnant with meaning. The couple is reunited, and I will leave the rest up to you to experience. Robertson and Crawford make the movie work, and this whole story hangs in the balance of their rapport. They weather both the mundane and the melodrama together. It’s pleasantly captivating watching them.

4/5 Stars