Twelve movies

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

Guilty Bystander (dir. Joseph Lerner, 1950). A great role for Zachary Scott as Max Thursday, ex-cop, practicing alcoholic, and house detective in a seedy hotel. His son and his ex-wife’s (Faye Emerson) brother are missing, and he has to pull himself together, at least enough to find them. Mary Boland has a great turn as Smitty, the hotel proprietor; J. Edward Bromberg is a poor man’s Peter Lorre as a gangster in a warehouse. A good low-budget effort, restored from a single surviving print: it’s like Italian neo-realism in a B-movie. ★★★

*

No Man’s Woman (dir. Franklin Adreon, 1955). Marie Windsor is a nasty, scheming, treacherous art dealer — what noun did you think I was leading up to? In what became the manner of Perry Mason and Murder, She Wrote, this movie presents a host of characters with good reason to kill: an ex-husband, the ex’s fiancée, a gallery assistant, the assistant’s fiancé, and an art critic. Unambitious storytelling but fine performances. Windsor must have had great fun playing this role. ★★★★

*

The Woman in Question (dir. Anthony Asquith, 1950). A British Rashomon, and a luckily appropriate follow-up to No Man’s Woman. Agnes (Jean Kent), aka Madame Astra, fortune-teller, is murdered, and a police inspector is given five different accounts of her character, from a landlady, a sister, the sister’s beau, a neighbor, and a suitor — and yes, the inspector cracks the case. A tour de force for Jean Kent, who changes from genteel lady to slattern to siren to helpless damsel to scorned lover. Props too to Hermione Baddeley, as an ultra-talkative landlady, and to Dirk Bogarde, who brings an element of Nightmare Alley to the story. ★★★★

*

Christmas in July (dir. Preston Sturges, 1940). A fever dream of capitalism and consumerism, with Dick Powell as an office drudge who devises an inscrutable entry for a rival coffee company’s slogan contest: “If you don’t sleep at night, it isn’t the coffee, it’s the bunk.” When his co-workers concoct a telegram telling him he’s won, a shopping spree and hilarity ensue. I think of Preston Sturges as Frank Capra with an edge, a filmmaker who both mocks and cherishes cheerful realities. With snappy writing and many members of Sturges’s informal stock company. ★★★★

*

I Care a Lot (dir. J Blakeson, 2020). Rosamund Pike plays Marla Grayson, an evil court-appointed guardian who robs old people of their assets and their freedom. When she puts Jennifer Peterson (Dianne Weist) into a care facility, things go very wrong. This movie looks like teary made-for-TV drama at first, before turning into a very dark comedy. Is it my imagination, or is Marla supposed to look like Ivanka Trump? ★★★★

[Ivanka? Did you get your hair cut?]

*

Time Regained (dir. Raúl Ruiz, 1999). An adaptation of the final volume of In Search of Lost Time that takes up and recasts elements from throughout Proust’s novel (including the famous madeleine scene, here treated in a funny, offhand manner). A brilliant film with painterly cinematography that captures the novel’s narrator, Marcel, moving through space and time, as rooms and streets open onto memories, and people change into younger then older versions of themselves. With Catherine Deneuve as Odette, Emmanuelle Béart as Gilberte, John Malkovich as Charlus, and Marcello Mazzarella as an eerily convincing Marcel. It’s for readers only: if you haven’t read Proust, much of what’s here will make little or no sense. ★★★★

*

This Land Is Mine (dir. Jean Renoir, 1943). Life under occupation: the Nazis have marched into town, and residents make peace with the occupiers or don’t. We see a variety of responses: from a pragmatic railway manager (George Sanders) to a switch man and saboteur (Kent Smith). At the heart of things: Albert Lory, a meek schoolteacher (Charles Laughton) who lives at home with his mother (Una O’Connor), secretly adores a colleague (Maureen O’Hara), and unexpectedly finds the chance to speak truth to power. That this movie feels so much of our time in its premise is both tragic and unsurprising. ★★★★

*

Two by Mitchell Leisen

To Each His Own (dir. Mitchell Leisen, 1946). I love discovering a movie I’ve never heard of and being knocked out, as happened here. Waiting for a train, a businesswoman (Olivia de Havilland) examines her life in a series of flashbacks. At the heart of her story: a son born out of, as they used to say, wedlock. So many things to consider here: a small town, small minds, selfishness, generosity, grief, stoic determination, love, self-knowledge, and, as time begins to run out, an ending that puts me in mind of Make Way for Tomorrow. ★★★★

*

No Man of Her Own (dir. Mitchell Leisen, 1950). Even better, I’d say. The story is built of probable impossibilities: pregnant, alone, with nothing but a suitcase and a handful of coins, Helen Ferguson (Barbara Stanwyck) travels by train to San Francisco but ends up in Illinois after a derailment kills her newfound traveling acquaintances, a recently married couple back from a year in Europe. The husband’s family has never seen even a picture of his wife, who was also pregnant. Helen Ferguson takes the identity of the late Patrice Harkness, and thus begins a high-stakes attempt to erase the past and create a new life — but the past, as William Faulkner said, ain’t even past. ★★★★

[I’ve seen two other Leisen films, Murder at the Vanities and Easy Living, but I couldn’t have told you who directed.]

*

The Blue Dahlia (dir. George Marshall, 1946). Shades of the Odyssey: Alan Ladd plays Johnny Morrison, a Navy pilot who comes home to Helen, his two-timing wife (Doris Dowling) and a house full of day-drinking partiers. When Helen turns up dead, Johnny becomes the prime suspect. A satisfying story full of fine performances: Howard Da Silva as owner of the Blue Dahlia nightclub, Veronica Lake as Lauren Bacall, Will Wright as a house detective (did every building have one?), and, above all, William Bendix as a fellow vet prone to fits of rage. My favorite moments: Ladd and Lake in a car in the rain, exchanging snappy patter; Ladd tipping over a table. ★★★★

*

Nichols and May: Take Two (dir. Phillip Schopper, 1996). An episode of American Masters, now at TCM. It’s worth waiting out the commentary from an odd array of talking heads (men only, including Tom Brokaw) to get to the skits, which are incredibly smart and incredibly funny, with incredible timing and tone. It’s comedy that demands attention to every word. Listen, for instance, to Nichols and May talking over music. ★★★★

*

They Won’t Believe Me (dir. Irving Pichel, 1947). I always like seeing TV people in their pre-TV days: here Robert Young, the genial family man of Father Knows Best, is utterly convincing as Larry Ballentine, a player-schmuck who thinks he can juggle his wife (Rita Johnson) and multiple girlfriends (Jane Greer and Susan Hayward). The movie takes the form of extended flashbacks as Larry tells his story to a jury — something like a high-end Detour, and here too the protagonist’s story defies belief. The final scene must have startled audiences in 1947 — it certainly startled me. Favorite line, Hayward to Young: “You’ve got quite an opinion of your drawing power, haven’t you?” ★★★★

[Sources: the Criterion Channel, Netflix, TCM, YouTube.]

Related reading
All OCA film posts (Pinboard)