Ten movies, two seasons

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Criterion Channel, TCM, YouTube.]

Lou Grant (created by James L. Brooks, Allan Burns, and Gene Reynolds, 1980–1981). Among the topics in season four: sexual harassment, chemical dumping, a police killing, rape, the rights of birth parents and adopted children, survivalists, migrant workers, and mudslides. One weakness of the series: the parceling out of different points of view sometimes requires that someone play the City Room idiot, as when Billie Newman dismisses the reality of sexual harassment in the workplace. “Rape” is an especially powerful episode, with Lynne Moody giving a standout performance (one of her two appearances in the series). The other standout: Nancy Marchand’s portrayal of newspaper owner Margaret Pynchon as a stroke victim (in “Stroke”). ★★★★ (YT)

Lou Grant (1981–1982). I know that Ed Asner insisted that the series was cancelled because of his political activity, but I think the writers were beginning to struggle for new ideas. In this final season we have friends and relations who appear out of nowhere (à la Murder, She Wrote) and story lines that go into the past: WWII concentration camps for Japanese-Americans, the HUAC hearings and the blacklist. One great episode: “Hometown,” in which Lou visits Michigan and meets an old love. Better still: “Jazz,” with Louie Bellson, Ray Brown, and Joe Williams, who prove themselves capable actors. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Two by Cyril Endfield
The Argyle Secrets (1948). A low-budget Maltese Falcon-like story, with the Argyle Album, a dossier on Nazi collaborators in the United States, as the object of interest. Newspaperman Harry Mitchell (William Gargan) searches for the album (not knowing at first what it is) and encounters other searchers: a Mary Astor type (Marjorie Lord), a Sydney Greenstreet type (John Banner), and another Sydney Greenstreet type (Jack Reitzen). Emulating Sam Spade, Mitchell even mails an envelope to himself. Funnest scene: dropping in on the boy practicing the violin. ★★ (TCM)

The Underworld Story (1950). The premise is not complicated: amoral newspaperman Mike Reese (Dan Duryea) gets paid off by a crime boss and uses the money to buy a small-town paper. And lo, there’s corruption in Lakeville, as in the big city, with a Black maid being set up to take the rap for a murder committed by the son of an wealthy white father. I liked the cinematography and the depiction of little Lakeville, a New England town with narrow brick sidewalks and an Old English Bookshop. The weak point is Dan Duryea as Reese, who changes for no apparent reason from bad guy to good. ★★ (TCM)

*

More evenings with Dan Duryea
Black Angel (dir. Roy William Neill, 1946). It turns out that we’d seen it in 2015, but it wasn’t until we were forty minutes in that it looked familiar. When a poor unsuspecting sap is sentenced to death for murder, his singer wife (June Vincent) and the dead woman’s ex-husband, an alcoholic songwriter (Dan Duryea), attempt to find the real killer. Honestly, this movie is much better than it might sound, with spiffy production, memorable bit parts (Wallace Ford, Hobart Cavanaugh), and Peter Lorre as a sinister nightclub owner. And then there’s the repeating phonograph. ★★★★ (YT)

‌Johnny Stool Pigeon (dir. William Castle, 1949). A federal agent (Howard Duff) enlists a convict (Dan Duryea) in an effort to infiltrate an international narcotics ring. The story begins in semi-documentary style but switches to straight drama when Shelley Winters appears as a romantic interest. Stealing the movie: John McIntire, as a deceptively cheery cowboy-hatted drug dealer. Best moment: Duryea, in the gutter, whining: “Copper! Copper!” ★★★ (YT)

*

Blue Velvet (dir. David Lynch, 1986). I must have smartened up in the last thirty-five years — or else I’ve just watched more movies. I remembered Blue Velvet as bizarre and incoherent; now it looks like a wonderful entertainment, a stylized noir-like exploration of small-town seaminess and sadism via a magic bag of movie tropes. With Laura Dern, Dennis Hopper, Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini, and Dean Stockwell. I am imagining the bag of tropes as made of blue velvet. ★★★★ (CC)

*

Klute (dir. Alan J. Pakula, 1971). John Klute (Donald Sutherland), a detective investigating the disappearance of a businessman, finds his way to Bree Daniel (Jane Fonda), call girl and aspiring actress. It turns out she’s being stalked by — who? Fonda gives a great performance, self-assured when she’s turning a trick, less confident when she’s auditioning for an acting role. Essay assignment, 2 1/2 pages: What does it mean that the movie is titled Klute and not, say, Bree or Daniel? ★★★★ (YT)

*

Karen Dalton: In My Own Time (dir. Richard Peete and Robert Yapkowitz, 2020). Though she enjoyed little commercial success in her lifetime, Karen Dalton (1937–1993) is now recognized as a distinctive, influential singer. I have to admit that I don’t hear what other people hear in her voice, and I find the favorable comparisons to Billie Holiday baffling. But I enjoyed this well-made documentary, filled with archival photographs and contemporary interviews with Dalton’s daughter and denizens of the folk-music world. The strangest thing about listening to Dalton: one of her ex-husbands was a one-time co-worker of mine, and I had no idea. ★★★★ (CC)

*

The Last Waltz (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1978). On Thanksgiving Day 1976, at the Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco, the Band gave a farewell performance with a host of guests, including Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Ronnie Hawkins, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, and Neil Young. The music is fine, though several guest spots feel like perfunctory interruptions. Also detracting from my enjoyment: the enormous Confederate flag on display in one interview segment, the toxic masculinity on display in many interview segments, and the obvious presence of various substances in various musicians’ bloodstreams. My favorite moments: “Mannish Boy” (Muddy Waters and the Band), “The Weight” (the Staple Singers and the Band, in an added studio performance). ★★★ (CC)

*

From the Criterion Channel feature Billy Wilder’s 1940s
Five Graves to Cairo (1943). What a beginning: the Second World War is on, and a tank full of dead Brits rolls through the Egyptian desert, one corpse’s foot still pressed to the gas. A lone survivor, John Bramble (Franchot Tone), climbs out and finds his way to a recently bombed hotel that houses only its owner (Akim Tamiroff) and a maid (Anne Baxter). When German officers arrive, Bramble assumes the identity of a dead servant and ingratiates himself with the enemy. Chills, thrills, Casablanca overtones, the mysterious “five graves,” and Eric von Stroheim (as Erwin Rommel) make for a satisfying night at the movies. ★★★★ (CC)

A Foreign Affair (1948). A romantic triangle in post-war Berlin. Jean Arthur is Phoebe Frost, a prim member of a congressional delegation investigating troop morale in the city; John Lund is Captain John Pringle; Marlene Dietrich is Erika von Schlütow, a cabaret singer of interest to the investigators. Lubitsch-touch comedy amid the ruins of a city: it’s a bizarre, compelling premise. My favorite moment: pursuit and escape amid file cabinets. ★★★★ (CC)

[The other movies in the Wilder feature: Double Indemnity (1944), The Lost Weekend (1945).]

Related reading
All OCA movie posts (Pinboard)

[About The Last Waltz: a chunk of cocaine in Neil Young’s nose was obscured in post-production. I don’t think of “Mannish Boy” as an instance of toxic masculinity: to my ear the song sounds like comic sexual boasting and a serious affirmation of adult personhood: “No B — o, child — y.”]