Twelve movies

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

Somewhere in the Night (dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1946). I’ve seen it once before, but I’d forgotten how good it is. The plot is confusing (how, for instance, does amnesiac George Taylor (John Hodiak) know to go to a train station locker?), but as in, say, The Big Sleep, it doesn’t matter. There’s a strong Hitchcock element (The 39 Steps, Saboteur), with a man (Hodiak) and a woman, nightclub singer Christy Smith (Nancy Guild), thrown together by circumstance to solve a mystery that takes them into one odd setting after another. And there’s just a dash of The Maltese Falcon — wait for it. ★★★★ (YT)

*

The Stranger (dir. Orson Welles, 1946). A New England town, a professor, a past making itself present: The Stranger is for me the most Nabokovian of movies (I’m thinking of Pale Fire). Edward G. Robinson is Mr. Wilson, a hunter of war criminals; Orson Welles is Charles Rankin, a history professor (that’s what the boys call him) at a private school; Loretta Young is Mary Longstreet, the professor’s desperately loyal fiancée. Smaller parts: Billy House as a self-satisfied druggist; Konstantin Shayne as Konrad Meinike, a figure from the past, announcing, in a brilliant bit of misdirection, that he brings a message from “the most high.” My movie eyes must be strengthening: for the first time I noticed Erskine Sanford (from Citizen Kane) in a brief appearance as a party guest. ★★★★ (YT)

*

The Mystery of Marie Roget (dir. Phil Rosen, 1942). Sisters (Maria Montez and Nell O’Day), a grandmother (Maria Ouspenkaya), a swain (Edward Norris), the detective Dupin (Patric Knowles), and a prefect of police (Lloyd Corrigan). An adaptation of the Poe story, set in 1889, with characters who say things like “And get this.” But like potato chips and pretzels, this movie makes for a pleasant snack. Corrigan and Ouspenskaya are the only memorable members of the cast. ★★ (YT)

*

The Silent Partner (dir. Daryl Duke, 1978). Watching (mostly) movies from the 1940s and ’50s, one forgets about the possibilities of graphic violence and frontal nudity. They’re both here, in the story of a meek bank teller (Elliott Gould), a bank robber (Christopher Plummer), and schemes galore. Céline Lomez and Susannah York are on hand to add complications, both scheme-related and and non-. And handwriting plays a crucial role: who could ask for anything more? ★★★★ (CC)

*

From the Criterion Channel feature Hollywood Crack-Up: The Decade American Cinema Lost Its Mind

Lilith (dir. Robert Rosen, 1964). Vincent (Warren Beatty), a young veteran adrift, takes a job in occupational therapy at a private mental institution, where his main occupation becomes an affair with Lilith (Jean Seberg), who might be called a schizoid pixie dream girl: beautiful, artistic, elusive, sexually voracious. Says Lilith of herself: “She wants to leave the mark of her desire on every living creature in the world.” The nature of desire — both Vincent’s and Lilith’s — emerges in all its darkness as the story develops. The most disturbing scene: Lilith whispering. ★★★★

Pressure Point (dir. Hubert Cornfield, 1962). One long flashback, as a Black prison psychiatrist, unnamed (Sidney Poitier), tells a story to a white prison psychiatrist (Peter Falk) who’s hitting a wall with a Black patient. It’s 1942 in the flashback, and Poitier’s character is assigned a young leader from the German American Bund, unnamed (Bobby Darin), serving a two-year sentence for sedition. As the two men speak, we learn the details of the patient’s early life, the sources of his hatred, the reasons for his terrifying dreams. The story is eerily of our time, a stark commentary on psychopathy and political success. It’s stunning to see that Bobby Darin was a hugely gifted actor. ★★★★

Brainstorm (dir. William Conrad, 1965). Yes, that William Conrad, the heavy of The Killers, the detective of Cannon. Here he directs a story of erotic obsession, deception, and madness, with a straight-arrow scientist (Jeffrey Hunter) who saves the life of and falls in love with the young wife (Anne Francis) of his boss (Dana Andrews). What follows is indeed a crack-up. I had to sign an NDA to watch this movie and cannot reveal anything more. ★★★★

Pretty Poison (dir. Noel Black, 1968). Dennis (Anthony Perkins) is a young arsonist, just released from psychiatric hospital where he spent most of his adolescence; Sue Ann (Tuesday Weld) is an honor-roll student and drum majorette who falls under his spell — and vice versa. Dennis claims to be a CIA agent, a fiction that makes his life of factory labor more exciting; Sue Ann buys into the fiction, and together they plot — oops, there’s another NDA. All I can say is that she is madder than he is. Filmed in the Berkshires, with immediately recognizable locations for anyone who knows the area. ★★★★

Targets (dir. Peter Bogdanovich, 1968). Bogdanovich’s first film, in which two storylines converge: a clean-cut young husband (Tim O’Kelly) modeled on Charles Whitman embarks on a killing spree in the San Fernando Valley, and a fading star of horror movies (Boris Karloff) prepares for an appearance at a drive-in theater. The movie is a darkly comic commentary on American gun culture and American entertainment. I sense a major debt to Hitchcock, in matters large and small, especially in the brilliant, bizarre ending. Karloff’s dapper Byron Orlok has the best line: “Is that what I was afraid of?” ★★★★

*

Busses Roar (dir. D. Ross Lederman, 1942). German and Japanese agents plan to place a bomb on a night bus to San Francisco with the aim of damaging oil wells, and the scheme — no surprise — is foiled. Most of this B-movie is devoted to the people of the bus terminal: drivers, travelers, servicemen passing through, a ticket seller, a cashier at a tobacco and magazine counter, a porter, a panhandler, a woman waiting for her husband, a woman who’s broke and trying to borrow $5.40 for a ticket. Ugly racial stereotypes abound. The movie has Eleanor Parker’s first screen appearance, as Norma, the cashier, a long way from the von Trapp villa. ★ (TCM)

*

Shadow of Fear (dir. Albert S. Rogell, 1955). Hamlet hangs over this story: upon her father’s death, April Haddon (Mona Freeman), a student studying in America, returns to her home in an English village. Her mother died the year before; Florence Haddon (Jean Kent), her mother’s nurse and her father’s second wife, now runs the house; and we’re meant to have no doubt that Florence did away with both Haddons, will do away with April, and thus will inherit an estate. A wonderful game of cat and mouse, with April figuring things out and matching wits with a wicked, wicked stepmother. My favorite line: “Nothing’s too awful for that woman!” ★★★★ (YT)

*

This Was a Woman (dir. Tim Whelan, 1948). The dark triad is alive and kicking in Sylvia Russell (the Agnes Moorehead-like Sonia Dresdel), a British wife and mother who seeks to destroy the happiness of her husband Arthur (Walter Fitzgerald) and daughter Fenella (Barbara White). (Her son Terry (Emrys Jones) is off the hook.) Malevolence abounding, with family members making allowance after allowance, but when Arthur’s successful friend Austin Penrose (Cyril Raymond) comes to visit, Sylvia’s schemes take a new direction. My favorite line: “You’re like someone drawing soothing fingers along an exposed nerve.” ★★★★ (YT)

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