Twelve movies

Three Strangers (dir. Jean Negulesco, 1946). London, 1938: a woman (Geraldine Fitzgerald) in possession of a statue of the goddess Kwan Yin, enlists two strangers (Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre) to join her in making a wish to the goddess at midnight of the Chinese New Year (midnight: in what time zone?). Many complications follow, none of which I’m willing to rehearse here. Suffice it to say that this is a movie best watched for atmosphere (and even the title sequence is a nod to The Maltese Falcon). The best line is Lorre’s: “Never get mixed up with a Chinese goddess.” ★★★ (TCM)

*

The True Story of Lynn Stuart (dir. Lewis Seiler, 1958). A superior B movie, based, yes, on a true story that’s even more extraordinary than the one told her. Grieved by the loss of her sister’s son to an overdose, Phyllis Carter (Betsy Palmer), a Los Angeles “housewife” with no police training, insists that the cops and her husband permit her to go undercover to help catch narcotics traffickers. Phyllis becomes “Lynn Stuart,” out on parole after helping in a bank heist, now working as a carhop at a drive-in restaurant where she meets trafficker Willie Down (Jack Lord) and strikes up a relationship with him. The danger grows and grows, and Phyllis soon finds that she’s in deeper than she had expected (and imagine: in real life, she did this work for six years). ★★★★ (YT)

*

From the Criterion Channel feature Love in Disguise

This Is the Night (dir. Frank Tuttle, 1932). When javelin-thrower Stephen (Cary Grant, in his screen debut) gets back home from the Olympics ahead of schedule, he finds that his wife Claire (the ill-fated Thelma Todd) has been planning to travel to Venice with her lover Gerald (Roland Young) — uh-oh. But Gerald’s friend Bunny (Charles Ruggles) saves the day by saying that, no, the tickets are for Gerald and his wife. The one snag: Gerald isn’t married, so the charming Germaine (Lili Damita) is hired to take on the role, and all five are off to Venice, with amusing complications to follow. “Another javelin lesson, I suppose”: that’s pre-Code! ★★★★

Thirty Day Princess (dir. Marion Gering, 1934). The kingdom of Taronia is in financial trouble, and banker Richard Gresham (Edward Arnold) has a plan: a goodwill tour of the United States with Princess Catterina, aka Zizzi (Sylvia Sidney), to get backing for millions in bonds. The plan’s opponent: newspaper publisher Porter Madison III (Cary Grant). The princess is supposed to win him over, but when she comes down with the mumps, Gresham finds a lookalike to play her part: bit actress Nancy Lane (also Sidney). A sweet, witty farce ensues. ★★★★

The Princess Comes Across (dir. William K. Howard, 1936). Carole Lombard is down-on-her-luck Brooklyn-born Wanda Nash, an actress who poses as the Garbo-like Princess Olga to sail across the Atlantic back to the States. Fred MacMurray is King (heh) Mantell, concertina player extraordinaire and ship’s entertainer. Also onboard: a killer, a blackmailer, and five international detectives. Not especially funny, not especially saucy. ★★

The Major and the Minor (dir. Billy Wilder, 1942). Ginger Rogers is Susan Applegate, who poses as an eleven-year-old (“Su-Su”) to get a cheaper ticket back to Iowa from New York, and on the train she meets up with Major Philip Kirby (Ray Milland), who’s headed back to the Indiana military school where he teaches, and to his fiancée (Rita Johnson). We can see “Uncle Philip,” as Su-Su calls him, fight back his feelings for the pseudo-child again and again: he lights up and then appears to remind himself, “Yeah, but she’s eleven.” A weirdly sentimental touch: Ginger Rogers pretended to be younger to get a cheaper fare when traveling the vaudeville circuit by train with her mother, and here, in her one screen role, Lela Rogers, Ginger’s mother, plays Susan’s mother. The Major and the Minor, Wilder’s first American movie, is exceedingly strange. ★★

*

Nocturne (dir. Edward L. Marin, 1946). Had we seen it? Oh, right, we’d seen it. George Raft is Joe Warne, an LAPD detective doggedly investigating what everyone thinks was a songwriter’s suicide. This time around the movie reminded me of The Big Sleep: the leaps of logic with which Joe solves the case defy logic. ★★★ (YT)

*

The Threat (dir. Felix E. Feist, 1949). “Red” Kluger (Charles McGraw) escapes from Folsom hellbent on killing the detective (Michael O’Shea) and district attorney who put him away. Kluger, his goons, his victims-to-be, and a former flame (Virginia Grey), held against her will, hole up a shack in the desert, waiting for the plane that will take Kluger and his comrades to safety. The obvious flaw in this story: any right-thinking feral convict would kill his victims right away. But, of course, it’s a movie, and it offers grisly violence, genuine suspense, and a clever bit of conversation that saves the day. ★★★ (M)

*

Mulholland Drive (dir. David Lynch, 2001). “It’s been a very strange day,” says one character. “And getting stranger,” says another. Los Angeles as a city of dreams, Los Angeles as a city of nightmares and self-destruction, with trope after trope after trope marching across the screen. I have to admit — rightly or wrongly — that I lack the patience to try to work out “the meaning” when I suspect that I’m watching a story whose meaning is ultimately unknowable. ★★★ (CC)

*

None Shall Escape (dir. André de Toth, 1944). A movie of the future: made while the war was still going, it depicts a trial in which a Nazi officer, Wilhelm Grimm (Alexander Knox), must answer for his crimes against humanity, as recounted by a trio of witnesses: his brother (Erik Rolf), a Catholic priest (Henry Travers), and a Polish woman to whom Grimm was once engaged (Marsha Hunt). The movie is unflinching in its depiction of atrocity and casual cruelty. It’s also Marsha Hunt’s finest hour, in a role that calls for great emotional range. The most moving scene: the train platform and Kaddish. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

The Hangman Waits (dir. A. Barr-Smith, 1947). Short and strange, a story of Scotland Yard and the press working to track down a murderer. Hitchcock-like at times in its quick pace and reliance on implication; Lynch-like, really, in its gruesome weirdness. Many telephones, typewriters, and Linotype machines in use — a church organ too. So poverty-stricken that it makes Detour look like a Hollywood extravaganza. ★★★ (YT)

*

Emilia Pérez (dir. Jacques Audiard, 2024). A Mexican drug lord, Manitas Del Monte (Karla Sofía Gascón), hires a lawyer (Zoe Saldaña) to arrange for gender-affirming surgery. Leaving a wife (Selena Gomez) and two young sons behind, Manitas is reborn as Emilia Pérez, and finds a new role in life as the leader of a movement to recover Mexico’s disappeared. A curious question as Emilia’s new life develops: is she still really Manitas after all? An extraordinarily inventive movie, a mix of musical and thriller, with overtones of Hamilton, Vertigo, Jacques Demy’s musicals, and “the woman’s picture.” ★★★★ (N)

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