Twelve movies

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

Casablanca (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1942). I remember watching years ago, for the -nth time, in an auditorium full of undergrads, many of whom gasped, literally, when Ilsa reveals that she had been married to Viktor all through her Paris romance with Rick. This time I gasped, figuratively, when I realized more clearly than ever that Viktor understands not only what happened in Paris but also what happened when he was at his underground meeting (that’s when Ilsa steals away to the Café Américain). A great accompaniment to the movie: the Radio Open Source podcast episode “We’ll Always Have Paris,” with Christopher Lydon, Lesiie Epstein (son and nephew of the screenwriters, Julius J. and Philip G. Epstein), and A.S. Hamrah. One observation therein: the movie has only four American-born actors with speaking parts: Humphrey Bogart, Joy Page, Dan Seymour, and Dooley Wilson. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

In a Lonely Place (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1950). Elaine and I are going to read the Dorothy B. Hughes novel, so we thought it wise to watch the movie again while it was available. I was struck this time by how much the movie, with a screenwriter, Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart), at its center, is about the movies — about plots and motives and plausibility. And the plot here suggests that any solid citizen is capable of sudden, uncontrolled violence (witness the after-dinner scene with Dixon and friends). A great performance by Bogart (whose mutually violent relationship with Mayo Methot, his third wife, adds a disturbing edge to the proceedings) and a greater performance by Gloria Grahame as Laurel Gray, drawn to and terrified of her screenwriter neighbor. ★★★★ (TCM)

[Dark enough already, but the novel, as I now know, is much, much darker.]

*

Everything Is Copy: Nora Ephron — Scripted & Unscripted (dir. Jacob Bernstein and Nick Hooker, 2015). Elaine is a big Nora Ephron fan: the two even exchanged several e-mails. I, too, like Ephron’s writing and screenwriting. In this documentary, Jacob Bernstein interviews his mother’s sisters, friends, and colleagues, piecing together a life that became, in various ways, material for writing, as per a precept of Ephron’s screenwriter mother, “Everything is copy,” which I take to mean that whatever happens, a writer should make something of it. The one thing that didn’t become copy: Ephron’s final illness, which she kept secret from almost everyone close to her. ★★★★ (HBO)

*

N Is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdős (dir. George Paul Csicsery, 1993). I am glad that Tolstoy’s passing observation about cows and food and milk led to this documentary. Paul Erdős (1913–1996) was a mathematician of extraordinary eccentricity, with no fixed residence, traveling with a suitcase from one mathematician’s house to another’s, giving away money to worthy students and offering prizes for the solutions to mathematical problems. Watching this documentary left me with great admiration for endeavors that are and always will be beyond me. But — look out — I may be developing an interest in prime numbers. ★★★★ (YT)

[Thanks, Murray.]

*

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (dir. H.C. Potter, 1948). Our household almost didn’t make it to the end of this one. Cary Grant and Myrna Loy are James and Muriel Blandings, and it’s really their dream house, as they both have many suggestions for the architect. Melvyn Douglas is a friend/interloper whose presence leads to a pointless subplot about jealousy. Not funny enough to be a screwball comedy, it’s merely dumb, with anything that can get knocked over getting knocked over, and anything that can fall out of a medicine cabinet, falling out. ★★ (CC)

*

They Drive by Night (dir. Raoul Walsh 1940). A Warner Brothers blend of working-class struggle and noir. The Fabrini brothers, Joe and Paul (George Raft and Humphrey Bogart) are truckdrivers, beset by crooked employers, repo men, and the dangers of the road. When the Fabrinis begin to buy and sell their own loads, they seem headed for success, but along comes Lana Carlsen (Ida Lupino): she’s the wife of a much older trucking magnate (Alan Hale) and has been lusting after Joe since she met him two years earlier. Lupino gets third billing but is the movie’s true star — venomous, desperate, and, finally, psychotic. Also with Ann Sheridan as Cassie Hartley, a smart, snappy waitress. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Three Annas

Anna Karenina (dir. Clarence Brown, 1935). It begins on a spectacular note, with a lavish party, a drinking game, and a dazzling tracking shot of a long banquet table: spectacle! As Anna and Count Vronsky, Greta Garbo and Fredric March are, for me, unconvincing: she, aloof; he, well-mannered and wooden. Aleksey Karenin (Basil Rathbone) is the villain of the piece, and the Levin–Kitty story, so important to the novel, fades away. No second child for Anna (with all the complications that brings), and nothing to follow her death. ★★★ (DVD)

Anna Karenina (dir. Julien Duvivier, 1948). The best of the three. Vivien Leigh is a much more convincing Anna; Kieron Moore is an appropriately glamorous and shallow Vronsky (an image of a man, say, rather than a man). And Ralph Richardson’s Aleksey Karenin is no mere villain. Here too the emphasis is on Karenin–Anna–Vronsky, and here too, nothing follows Anna’s death (save for a screen of text). ★★★★ (CC)

Anna Karenina (dir. Joe Wright, 2012). Finally an adaptation that has more, with Levin (Domhnall Gleeson) and Kitty (Alicia Vikander) getting proper attention, and a coda following Anna’s (Keira Knightley) death: after all, the novel announces itself as about families, not one romantic triangle. But this adaptation is deeply, weirdly ill-conceived: nearly everything happens in a theater, on a stage (all the world’s a, &c.), with dialogue (Tom Stoppard) and movement highly stylized. If this adaptation is an attempt at Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt (“alienation effect” or “distancing effect”), it fails, and the result is more like a Wes Anderson effect, with characters made to look at least slightly ridiculous. The best moment: Levin and Kitty spelling out their future with alphabet blocks — but then someone off to the side blows his nose (haha?). ★★ (DVD)

[And it would help if Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Count Vronsky didn’t look so much like Gene Wilder’s Dr. Frankenstein.]

*

John og Irene (dir. Asbjørn Andersen and Anker Sørensen, 1949). Danish noir: John (Ebbe Rode) and Irene (Bodil Kjer) are partners in a nightclub act and in life. He’s full of schemes and dreams; she’s sleepy and skeptical. Strong overtones of Detour, in an ultra-stylish low-budget production, with unusual camera angles and shadows galore. And, for some reason, excellent subtitles, perhaps from YouTube itself, where you should watch this movie before it disappears. ★★★★ (YT)

*

C-Man (dir. Joseph Lerner, 1949). Dean Jagger plays a Customs agent tracking down the jewel thieves who killed a fellow agent. The plot is thin, and John Carradine, who gets second billing, has almost no part in the proceedings. The movie has three assets: a voiceover, location shots of New York City (I suspect the influence of The Naked City), and a wild score by Gail Kubik. Several overly long fight scenes stretch things out to seventy-seven minutes. ★★ (YT)

*

The Long Day Closes (dir. Terence Davies, 1992). An evocation of a mid-1950s Liverpool boyhood (the director’s of course). The forces that oppress young Bud (Leigh McCormack) — church, school, bullies — are offset by the comforts of family, movies, and music. The film dissolves from recollected moment to recollected moment: talking about the light from the stars, watching a neighbor with cancer walk down the street. When I first saw it six years ago, I thought it was one best movies I’d ever seen, and certainly the most Proustian movie I’d ever seen, and it still is. ★★★★ (CC)

Related reading
All OCA movie posts (Pinboard)