Twelve movies

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

The Soul of a Monster (dir. Will Jason, 1944). It rivals The Seventh Victim for B-movie strangeness: it’s a Faustian story with striking camerawork (Burnett Guffey), bizarre dialogue, and long silent stretches. George Macready plays a surgeon saved from certain death by a mysterious woman (Rose Hobart) who seems to have claimed his soul for Satan. The movie cheats in the end and thus loses a star. Best moments: the cellar doors opening, the boy selling newspapers by a barrel fire on a deserted street, and a starring role for Rose Hobart, whom I knew only from Joseph Cornell’s film of that name. ★★★ (YT)

*

Devil at the Crossroads: A Robert Johnson Story (dir. Brian Oakes, 2019). A handful of musicians and scholars retrace the story of Johnson’s life. Outrageous claims about Johnson’s musicianship — it’s like Bach, it’s like three guitars — do him no service. Nor does the tired story of Johnson selling his soul to the devil, already discredited by the time of this documentary. But it’s remarkable to see Johnson’s son Claud Johnson (d. 2015) and grandson Michael Johnson: reminders that Robert Johnson was a human being, not a myth. ★★ (N)

*

The Dead Don’t Die (dir. Jim Jarmusch, 2019). I’m puzzled by negative responses to this movie: to my mind, it’s a delightful assemblage of tropes and meta moments. The premise: polar fracking has tilted the earth off its axis and created a zombie apocalypse in the small town of Centerville, and it seems, everywhere else. Bill Murray and Adam Driver star as small town police, exchanging deadpan commentary in their patrol car à la Joe Friday and Bill Gannon. With a bewilderingly deep cast: Steve Buscemi, Danny Glover, Selena Gomez, Carol Kane, Rosie Perez, Chloë Sevigny, Tilda Swinton, Tom Waits, and many, many more. ★★★★ (N)

*

The Wonderful World of Tupperware (dir. George Yarbrough, 1965). It’s an unironic presentation of the story behind, let’s admit it, some beautifully designed products. Much emphasis on materials (our friend petroleum) and engineering, less on what happens at Tupperware parties. The strangest sequence: scenes from a “jubilee,” a four-day gathering of Tupperware executives and successful saleswomen (and, of course, their husbands). Two terrifying jubilee moments: Anita Bryant singing a Tupperware-themed version of “Blues in the Night” and Johnny Desmond singing “Hello, Dolly” while kissing Tupperware ladies. ★★★ (TMC)

*

Tread Softly Stranger (dir. Gordon Parry, 1958). Two brothers, rogueish Johnny (George Baker) and dweebish Dave (Terence Morgan), the one on the run from London gambling debts, the other a clerk at a Yorkshire steel mill. And then there’s Calico (Diana Dors), Dave’s girlfriend, whose penchant for the finer things has led Dave to cook the company books, and whose penchant for Johnny and his penchant for her make a rift between the brothers. But a scheme to steal the company payroll before the books are audited will solve all problems, right? Great performances and several surprises, and it has to be said: Diana Dors, while a looker indeed, was also an actor of considerable talent. ★★★★ (YT)

*

A Bullet Is Waiting (dir. John Farrow, 1954). It’s a noirish triangle somewhere out west: lawman Frank Munson (Stephen McNally), badman Ed Stone (Rory Calhoun), and, living in a remote cabin, Cally Canham, the educated daughter (Jean Simmons) of an ex-Oxford professor (Brian Aherne) who’s away from the cabin for most of the picture. The three principals find themselves stuck at the Canhams’ place when the only route back to civilization is flooded. Can you guess which of the two men Cally will be drawn to? Many moments of high tension, though the ending is a letdown. ★★★★ (YT)

*

The Naked City (dir. Jules Dassin, 1948). Location, location, location: it’s filmed almost entirely on location, and it’s perhaps the greatest movie about New York City ever made. The plot is thin, and Barry Fitzgerald’s Irishisms wear on me, but the real point here is atmosphere, from Jimmy Halloran’s (Don Taylor) sunny Queens neighborhood to swank Fifth Avenue shops to a Lower East Side tenement. This time I watched with greater appreciation of two of the supporting players: David Opatoshu (Sgt. Dave Miller), always with his notebook, and Tom Pedi (Detective Perelli), who provides humor and uncovers evidence. A forever-unanswered question: why do bad guys climb upward when they’re trying to get away? (CC) ★★★★

*

Uncovering “The Naked City” (dir. Bruce Goldstein, 2020). One film lover’s exploration of the film’s locations and production. Bruce Goldstein is beyond knowledgable, about The Naked City and about Manhattan then and now. The detail that most amazed me: he tracked down the days for filming a scene from the changing titles on a theater marquee in the background. A Criterion Channel exclusive. ★★★★ [Sentences first posted in 2020.]

*

Stray Dog (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1949). Dumb luck: we didn’t know when we chose this movie that Kurosawa cited The Naked City as an influence, but it’s unmistakable: a hot, sweaty metropolis (Tokyo), with two police detectives, rookie Murakami (Toshiro Mifune) and veteran Satō (Takashi Shimura), searching for the rookie’s Colt pistol, which was stolen from him on a crowded trolley. The search takes Murakami into a seedy section of the city, where he hopes to penetrate the black market in firearms. Hanging over the action is the catastrophe of the war, which figures heavily in the life of the yakuza who has been using the Colt in the commission of crimes. The ending is stunning, joining the pursuer and the pursued as children walk by singing, oblivious. ★★★★ (CC)

*

Drunken Angel (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1948). “It’s like he’s sick to the core”: illness as tuberculosis, illness as metaphor. The story charts the relationship between a gifted, brusque, sometimes violent, alcoholic man of medicine, Doctor Sanada (Takashi Shimura), and a patient in denial, a tubercular yakuza, Matsunaga (Toshiro Mifune). The complications are noirish: a yakuza boss, released from prison, is looking to push Matsunaga out of the rackets, and that boss’s former girlfriend is now working as Sanada’s nurse. Like tuberculosis (notice all the garbarge-strewn pools of standing water), criminality is an illness that permeates the culture, and it leads to an ending of extraordinary tension and violence. ★★★★ (CC)

*

The Tattooed Stranger (dir. Edward Montagne, 1950). More dumb luck: it’s The Naked City in B-movie form (just sixty-four minutes). Here, as there, the plot is prosaic: in Central Park, a woman is found shot to death, and the only obvious clue to her identity is a tattoo. And here, as there, the city is a star: the American Museum of Natural History, the Bowery, a Brooklyn tattoo parlor, a Bronx monument company. A bonus for our household: the score is by Alan Shulman, whom Elaine met when she was a Juilliard student. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

The Woman in the Hall (dir. Jack Lee, 1947). Lorna Blake (Ursula Jeans) calls on rich people, pleading various hardships, picking up funds here and there, and eventually picking up a husband (Cecil Parker, perhaps best known as the philandering husband in The Lady Vanishes). Before that husband comes into the picture, Lorna’s daughter Jay (Jean Simmons) removes herself from her mother’s house to live a different kind of life but ends up committing her own non-violent crimes. The film weakens as it goes on: there’s nothing to prepare for the revelation that Jay is being charged with anything. I even wondered if I had fallen asleep and missed something (I hadn’t), but now I wonder if a scene might have been cut from the film. ★★ (YT)

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