Twelve movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers.]

The Shadow on the Window (dir. William Asher, 1957). An unusual dramatic role for Betty Garrett as Linda Atlas, a freelance secretary, held captive by thugs in the farmhouse where she’s gone to do some work. Her son Petey (Jerry Mathers) looks in a window, sees what’s happening, and runs off, traumatized into muteness. Linda’s estranged husband Tony (Phil Carey) is a police detective: can he find his wife before it’s too late? Genuinely suspenseful and sometimes brutal, with John Barrymore Jr. as the thugs’ ringleader, and Corey Allen (Buzz from Rebel Without a Cause) as an obedient second. ★★★★

*

When Tomorrow Comes (dir. John M. Stahl, 1939). Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne are ill-fated lovers: he is a concert pianist, internationally known; she, a waitress dedicated to union organizing. Their relationship can only be a brief encounter — but why? The story is told with an understated tact that respects each character’s truth. My favorite scenes: the organ loft, and the final seconds. ★★★★

*

Interlude (dir. Douglas Sirk, 1957). A remake of When Tomorrow Comes, with a German-Italian orchestra conductor (Rossano Brazzi) and an American in Munich (June Allyson). I’d dare anyone to watch both movies and prefer this one. It’s partly the dopey ending, and it’s partly the landscapes and gaudy interiors, which swamp the human element, but it’s also partly the human element itself: June Allyson’s character seems like a dull (English-only!) naïf abroad; it’s difficult to understand what a big-time conductor might see in her beyond a malleable fan. Look for Jane Wyatt as a hyper officer manager. ★★

*

Crack-Up (dir. Irving Reis, 1946). “All right, all right, I’m psychopathic!” A storyline that baffles almost to the end, with Pat O’Brien oddly cast as a museum curator who gives folksy, friendly lectures on art. His life begins to go wrong when he’s in a horrific train wreck. But was he even on the train? With Ray Collins, Herbert Marshall, Erskine Sanford, and Claire Trevor, and, in my imagination, perhaps Basil Rathbone in the starring role. ★★★

*

Broken Strings (dir. Bernard B. Ray, 1940). Clarence Muse stars as Arthur Williams, an acclaimed classical violinist with contempt for all things swing. When his left hand is injured in an auto accident, his children take to the stage in a nightspot playing — gasp — swing music to raise money for an operation. The movie shows an all-Black world of accomplished, sophisticated men and women: executives, secretaries, booking agents, radio producers, and, above all, musicians. Watch for Matthew “Stymie” Beard as a crafty young violinist and Elliott Carpenter, an extraordinary pianist and, here, emcee. ★★★

[Clarence Muse, a star here, plays a Pullman porter in the early minutes of Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt.]

*

The Longest Night (dir. Errol Taggart, 1936). With a running time of fifty-six minutes, it’s not the longest night, but it is a slog. Robert Young is the heir to a department store that employs two lovely sisters played by Florence Rice and Eve Sutton. There’s something funny going on with stolen goods, and all sorts of other funny stuff too. The best thing about this movie: the chance to see a studio recreation of a 1930s department store. ★★

*

Sweet Smell of Success (dir. Alexander Mackendrick, 1957). For anyone who’s never seen it: a press agent is given the job of breaking up the relationship between a newspaper columnist’s sister (Susan Harrison) and a rising jazz musician (Martin Milner). Tony Curtis as press agent Sidney Falco and Burt Lancaster as columnist J.J. Hunsecker are outstanding, the one a sycophantic Michael Cohen, the other a Donald Trump** plotting to destroy anyone in his way. “Tell him that, like yourself, he’s got the scruples of a guinea pig and the morals of a gangster,” another columnist says to Falco. Great Manhattan street scenes, a great score by Elmer Bernstein and Fred Katz, and great cinematography by James Wong Howe. ★★★★

*

Dementia (dir. John Parker, 1955). No dialogue, just music, sound effects, occasional screams, and maniacal laughter. A young woman, the Gamin (Adrienne Barrett) wanders through a nightmarish world of mean streets, threatened by a wino and a lecher, seduced by a rich man, terrifed by a scene of childhood trauma. I’m subtracting a star for the loss of momentum when Shorty Rogers and His Giants take over for an extended interlude of West Coast jazz. This Criterion Channel offering would pair well with Carnival of Souls (dir. Herk Harvey, 1962) for stylish low-budget strangeness. ★★★

*

Cast a Dark Shadow (dir. Lewis Gilbert, 1955). Everything about this movie (from the play Murder Mistaken by Janet Green) is meant to make its viewer profoundly uneasy. Dirk Bogarde plays Edward “Teddy” Bare, a louche young man married to a much older woman (Mona Washburne). Enter a feisty wealthy widow (Margaret Lockwood) and a househunter (Kay Walsh), each of whom brings complications to the story. It’s more drawing-room drama than film noir, with further complications that the movie only hints at: why is Edward reading a muscle magazine while sitting in a café? ★★★★

*

The Steamroller and the Violin (dir. Andrei Tarkovksy, 1961). The title suggests, to me, anyway, a moment of grotesque slapstick destruction, but there’s nothing like that at all. This short student film from a renowned director (whose work I don’t know at all) shows the unlikely friendship of a fatherless boy violinist and a steamroller operator. Around the edges: a mother, a would-be girlfriend, a music teacher, and feral bullies. Some beautiful moments of filmmaking: reflections on water, the steamroller rolling across a nearly empty screen. ★★★★

*

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (dir. Albert Lewin, 1951). As weird as it gets: on the Spanish coast, a beautiful woman from Indianapolis, Pandora Reynolds (Ava Gardner), meets Hendrik van der Zee (James Mason), the Flying Dutchman (a man, not a ship), condemned to sail the world until he finds a woman who will die for him. Dazzling Technicolor scenery on the coast of Spain adds value, and a bullfighting subplot makes the story something of a bizarre cross between ancient myth, modern legend, and The Sun Also Rises. My greatest difficulty amid all the weirdness: Ava Gardner is not an especially good actor, certainly not good enough to sustain the weight of this story. ★★

*

Killer’s Kiss (dir Stanley Kubrick, 1955). So artful, so stylized, right down to the last minutes in Penn Station. A triangle of love, sex, and violence, with a washed-up fighter, Davey Gordon (Jamie Smith); the taxi-dancer who lives across the courtyard; Gloria Price (Irene Kane); and a brutal dancehall owner, Vinnie Rapallo (Frank Silvera). Eddie Muller calls the movie disjointed, but I prefer to think of it in terms of Umberto Eco’s characterization of a cult object: “one must be able to break, dislocate, unhinge it so that one can remember only parts of it, irrespective of their original relationship with the whole.” Thus Gloria at the mirror, Davey in the dark with a can of beer, the ballet story, Vinnie watching the fights on TV as he mauls Gloria, the prankish Shiners, the long staircase, the gladiators in the mannequin factory. ★★★★

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All OCA film posts (Pinboard)