Twelve movies

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

Moana (dir. Ron Clements, John Musker, Don Hall, Chris Williams, 2016). As grandparents to three young girls, we sometimes need to set aside the film noirs and fancy books to watch a kids’ movie. I’m relieved to report at this late date that Moana is a wonderful one. Mythic themes, great songs (Opetaia Foa’i, Mark Mancina, Lin-Manuel Miranda), and brilliant animation — and now we know how to play Moana. (It’s called lifelong learning.) ★★★★ (DVD)

*

The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film (dir. Richard Lester, 1959). Lester, Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers, et al., at play in an open field. Surrealism abounds: e.g., a man puts a record on a tree stump, holds a needle to the surface, and runs around the stump to produce music. If you wonder where the zaniness of A Hard Day’s Night and Help! comes from, it’s here: the Beatles were fond of this short movie film. A clear influence on Monty Python as well. ★★★★ (CC)

*

The Girl in the Kremlin (dir. Russell Birdwell, 1957). Bonkers: Stalin undergoes plastic surgery and flees the Soviet Union with piles of cash as a double takes his place. Meanwhile, a defector to the United States (Zsa Zsa Gabor) comes to Berlin to ask an ex-OSS agent (ex-Tarzan Lex Barker) to locate her twin sister (also Zsa Zsa Gabor), last known to be working as Stalin’s plastic surgeon’s nurse. Jeffrey Stone provides some cheesy fun as a one-armed Russian: he’s Buz Murdock to Barker’s Tod Stiles. Two more reasons to watch: William Schallert (the father from The Patty Duke Show) as Stalin’s son Jacob, and an unnerving scene, unrelated to anything else in the movie (or to historical fact), with Stalin watching excitedly as his minions shave — yes, really — the head of a peasant girl (Natalie Daryll). ★★ (YT)

*

High Tide (dir. John Reinhardt, 1947). Two men lie gravely injured after their car has gone off the road and onto a beach, one man in the car, the other trapped underneath, and as the tide comes in, their story unfolds in one long flashback. It includes a newspaper, big-city rackets, adultery, and revenge — all non-GMO ingredients. Clark Gable lookalike Don Castle plays a reporter turned private investigator; Lee Tracy is a newspaper editor. Like The Guilty and Lighthouse, it’s a Jack Wrather production, and another reminder that not every movie made in 1947 was a great one. ★★ (YT)

[Elaine once observed in passing that 1947 might be our ideal year for movies. It’s the year of The Lady from Shanghai, Nightmare Alley, and Out of the Past.]

*

Man Afraid (dir. Harry Keller, 1957). A minister (George Nader) accidentally kills a violent burglar, and a family is thrown into turmoil: the minister’s wife (Phyllis Thaxter) is at least temporarily blinded by the burglar’s attack, the press demands access to its newly minted hero, and the burglar’s father (Eduardo Franz) begins to stalk the minister’s young son. The movie looks back to The Window and ahead to Cape Fear, and it offers several eerie, terrifying moments, but Nader’s lifeless acting and every character’s lack of common sense are serious weaknesses. Free advice: When you see obvious evidence, when you hear strange noises in your house, when someone presents as an obvious danger, call the police (or if you are the police, do something). Henry Mancini’s score and Reta Shaw’s performance as a nurse add value (though even the nurse lacks common sense). ★★ (YT)

*

The Price of Fear (dir. Abner Biberman, 1956). O, contingency: Dave Barrett (Lex Barker) and Jessica Warren (Merle Oberon) are an unlikely pair, brought together by circumstance in the form of a hit-and-run accident, a gangland murder, and a stolen car. The relationship that develops between the principals is compellingly ambiguous — it’s never clear who’s using whom. The supporting cast makes for an especially strong movie, with Warren Stevens as a smoothfaced villain, Gia Scala as the accident victim’s daughter, Konstantin Shayne as a pawnbroker, Stafford Repp (later Chief O’Hara in Batman) as a cabdriver, and Mary Field as the cabbie’s wife. The final scene in a railway baggage car is worth the wait. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Cat People (dir. Jacques Toruneur, 1942). Nicholas Musuraca’s cinematography makes scene after scene a brilliant composition of utter darkness and sharp flashes of light. The movie itself is a clash of darkness and light, animality and reason: when Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon), who believes the stories about her Serbian village’s cat-people and loves the dark (“It’s friendly,” she says), marries Oliver Reed (Kent Smith), a friendly, well-adjusted architect who works at light tables (!), worlds collide. A Val Lewton production, filled with real scares, real panthers, and Tom Conway as a sleazy psychiatrist whose The Anatomy of Atavisim gives the movie its over-the-top epigraph. ★★★★ (TCM)

[“Even as fog continues to lie in the valleys, so does ancient sin cling to the low places, the depressions in the world consciousness.”]

*

The Curse of the Cat People (dir. Gunther von Fritsch and Robert Wise, 1944). Here Musuraca brings mostly enchantment and light, with mysterious shadows at night and in the big old house down the block. Smith and Randolph return as the parents of a young daughter, Amy (Ann Carter), a dreamy, lonely child who has difficulty distinguishing between reality and fantasy. She wishes for a friend: enter Irena (Simon again). As Mrs. Julia Farren, the old woman in the old house, Julia Dean steals the movie. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Mad Love (dir. Karl Freund, 1935). Peter Lorre’s American debut as the grotesque surgeon and incel precursor Dr. Gogol. Obsessed with Yvonne Orlac (Frances Drake), an actress in a Grand Guignol-style show, he visits her backstage and buys a wax effigy to keep at home (think Pygmalion and Galatea). Gogol insinuates himself into Yvonne’s life when her concert-pianist husband’s hands are mangled in a train accident: the skilled Gogol transplants the hands of a murderer, with predictable but still startling results. Best moment: Gogol in disguise — yow! ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Dangerous Mission (dir. Louis King, 1954). The plot is common: Louise Graham, a witness to a murder (Piper Laurie) runs for her life, and an undercover cop (Victor Mature) tries to protect her from a hit man (Vincent Price) as the two men vie, sincerely or not, for Louise’s affections. What makes the movie unusual: Louise flees to Glacier National Park, so there’s lots of natural scenery and wonderful mid-century interiors (oh, those postcard racks on the gift-shop counter). Genuine suspense at the end, with a desperate chase through the snow. It’s sobering to see the way the death of a Native man is utterly forgotten — but you’ll have to watch to understand. ★★★ (TCM)

*

From the Criterion Channel’s Pre-Code Divas feature

Safe in Hell (dir. William A. Wellman, 1931). Dorothy Mackaill plays Gilda Carlson, a New Orleans prostitute who flees to Tortuga (no extradition) when she’s sought for killing the man who first trafficked her. Mackaill gives an extraordinary performance as a “bad” girl who vows to be “good” for “the one good man” she’s ever met, but on Tortuga, her past catches up with her. The movie is a profound lesson in the male gaze, as the various criminals hiding out on Tortuga sit back and stare at “the only white woman on the island.” Noteworthy supporting players: Nina Mae McKinney (who sings “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South”) and Clarence Muse, the owner of a hotel and her employee. ★★★★

The Cheat (dir. George Abbott, 1931). Lordy: had I seen this movie in 1931, I might have thought about putting together a production code. Tallulah Bankhead stars as Elsa Carlyle, a spendthrift partier married to endlessly forgiving workaholic Jeffrey (Harvey Stephens). When Elsa loses an impulsive expensive bet, she finds herself in the debt of the sinister explorer and man about town Hardy Livingstone (Irving Pichel),who has his own ideas about how Elsa can repay him. Lurid in the extreme, with details I won’t divulge here. ★★★

Related reading
All OCA “twelve movies” posts (Pinboard)