Twelve or thirteen more movies

[No spoilers.]

The Amazing Mr. X (dir. Bernard Vorhaus, 1948). He’s a California psychic (played by Turhan Bey), with two sisters under his spell. A B-movie, now in the public domain, available as a murky blur at YouTube. It’s sobering to see Cathy O’Donnell in these low-budget surroundings, just two years after The Best Years of Lives. Cinematography by the great John Alton.

*

A Taste of Honey (dir. Tony Richardson, 1961). Resolution, independence, and codependence. Rita Tushingham as an ill-mothered teenager is a delight — she looks vulnerable and tough, sparkly and wised up, like a cross between Audrey Hepburn and Mick Jagger. Whatever will become of her? This film must have been a major influence on Mike Leigh. The best line: “Who’s happy?”


[Rita Tushingham as Jo. Can her Dickensian name be mere coincidence? Click for a larger view.]

*

Mascots (dir. Christopher Guest, 2016). As you might have guessed, a faux documentary. As in Best of Show , a variety of characters come together in a competition. Most of the usual suspects are present (Michael McKean is missing), along with several newcomers. Harry Shearer is heard but not seen. Especially delightful are Parker Posey and Susan Yeagley as the Babineaux sisters, Cindi and Laci. Guest himself has an improbable but welcome cameo.

*

A Face in the Crowd (dir. Elia Kazan, 1957). The prophetic power of this film, in which a cocky vagrant becomes a charismatic everyman, media sensation, and aspiring demagogue, cannot be overestimated. And the heck with Lee Remick: it’s Griffith and Patricia Neal who provide the truly compelling eroticism here. You’ll never see The Andy Griffith Show in the same way again.

*

La Chienne (dir. Jean Renoir, 1931). From Georges de La Fouchardière’s novel of the same name. Minutes in, we realized that this film is from the same source as Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street . But Renoir’s film evinces much greater compassion for the participants in the lovers’ triangle, each hapless and frail in her or his own way, each subject to a cruel fate. The last scene, filmed on a Parisian avenue, is extraordinary.


[Looking at a Renoir. Click for a larger view.]

*

Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the “National Lampoon” (dir. Douglas Tirola, 2015). My acquaintance with the Lampoon began with the August 1971 issue, whose cover showed an Alfred E. Neumanesque William Calley above the tagline “What, My Lai?” To a fourteen-year-old, that made Mad seem like kid stuff. But looking through a gallery of Lampoon covers, I recognize nothing past 1975: I outgrew the Lampoon much earlier than I would have imagined. This documentary, a celebration of humor that often did little more than attempt to shock, is too affectionate, too self-congratulatory, and too dull.

*

Gentleman Jim (dir. Raoul Walsh, 1942). One of those films that make me wonder: how did this get into the queue? Because I added it, though I have no idea why. Maybe I was looking to see more of Ward Bond. “Gentleman Jim” (Errol Flynn) is the boxer James J. Corbett. Every trope of Irishness is on display in this story— drink, fisticuffs, the old songs, priestliness. But there’s nothing to explain how Corbett developed a new approach to boxing. Best scene: John L. Sullivan (Ward Bond) turning the future over to Corbett. And it’s fun to see William Frawley in his pre-landlord days.

*

The Mask You Live In (dir. Jennifer Siebel Newsom, 2015). An exploration of masculinity. What does it mean to be a man, and what expectations does the unholy command “Be a man” place upon boys and young men? Especially important viewing in what threatens to be the age of Trump. Where did Dunning K. Trump get his idea of what it means to be a man? The most interesting figure among the film’s speakers: former NFLer Joe Ehrmann.

*

The Fly (dir. Kurt Neumann, 1958). Here’s the real reason we shouldn’t try for GMOs. Herbert Marshall and Vincent Price lend some high seriousness to a premise that could easily become laughable but instead remains compelling. The special effects are blessedly few, and the best one is gruesomely ordinary: a mechanical press. My favorite moment: the writing on the blackboard. The best lines: “Inspector, what does all this mean?” “I have no idea.”

*

A Life at Stake (dir. Paul Guilfoyle, 1954). Lust and life insurance: a variation on Double Indemnity , with Angela Lansbury and Keith Andes. Lansbury’s character here seems to look forward to Isabel Boyd in The World of Henry Orient and Eleanor Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate . (We’re a long way from Cabot Cove.) Yet another excellent B-movie found at YouTube.

*

Murder by Contract (dir. Irving Lerner, 1958). An obsessively orderly young man named Claude (Vince Edwards) aspires to work as a hit man. He achieves considerable success. This story has deeply existential overtones. The handheld camera work, tight closeups, quick pace, implied violence, and odd musical score lift this film into greatness. (I thought of The Third Man and Breathless .) Herschel Bernardi and Phillip Pine add an element of comedy, at least for a while, as Claude’s handlers, hapless middlemen both. Martin Scorsese cites this film as a major influence (he dedicated New York, New York to Lerner). Now playing at YouTube.

*

City of Fear (dir. Irving Lerner, 1959). Another YouTube find. We didn’t realize that we had picked another Irving Lerner/Vince Edwards film until the credits began to run. Edwards plays an escaped convict carrying a steel canister that he thinks holds a fortune in heroin. The canister in truth contains Cobalt-60. This film recalls the dangers of Panic in the Streets and Kiss Me Deadly , pneumonic plague and “the great whatsit.” I especially liked this film’s depiction of unglamorous Los Angeles: endless wide avenues of auto-repair shops and billboards.

We didn’t know while watching, but we’ve seen at least one more Lerner film: To Hear Your Banjo Sing (1947).

Related reading
All OCA film posts (Pinboard)
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