[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)
Monday, June 3, 2024
Twelve movies
New directions in apparel
One half of one of our closets will now forever be known as the home of “Papa’s gentleman shirts.”
In truth, there are no shirts there, only garment bags. Maybe that’s where gentlemen keep their shirts.
*
June 4: I was not on the scene for this coinage. Now I think I know what it was about: garment bags mean jackets and suits, which a very young person might dub “gentleman shirts,” just as, once upon a time, the ocean was known as “feet water.”
Zippy noir
[“Gumshoe.” Zippy, June 3, 2024.]
Beautiful noir art in today’s Zippy. Complete with the Venetian-blind effect.
Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)
Sunday, June 2, 2024
Slim’s Radio Service
[Madison Avenue between 118th and 119th Streets, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]
Quite a variety of establishments in this stretch of Madison Avenue: a grocery store, Sun Shine Lunch, Slim’s Radio Service, a fish and vegetable market (“Fresh Fish Daily”), and Ebenezer Spiritual Church. I chose this photograph for Slim’s, which might be at 1820: there are few photographs and much ambiguity for this stretch. I like Slim’s signage.
The Municipal Archives’ online materials have been reorganized: tax photographs now seem to be searchable only by address, not with the block and lot codes preserved in the photographs themselves. And the photographs are now available sans watermarks. I’ve posted an especially large version of this one: if you click for the larger view, you‘ll see many details.
Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)
Saturday, June 1, 2024
In the Proust aisle
Today’s Saturday Stumper
Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper is by “Anna Stiga,” or Stan Again, Stan Newman, the puzzle’s editor, using the penname that signifies an easier Stumper. It was easier, but not that easy. I made three mistakes that I caught only when I read through the puzzle for choice clues and answers.
The choice items:
1-A, ten letters, “Buster Keaton silent sleuth spoof (an AFI ’Funniest’).” If it’s a giveaway, I’ll take it. This clue had me ready to like this puzzle.
5-D, five letters, “20-year Swedish coffee commercial character.” What? thought I. I’m supposed to know a character from Swedish advertising? Oh, wait.
11-A, four letters, “Bar tended at restaurants.” This one’s tricky.
14-A, eight letters, “They hold bread racks.” I was trying to think of a seven-letter word for a cash register.
18-A, four letters, “Name related to 2-Down.” And 2-D, six letters, is “Butte neighbor.” I’ve seen the answer to 18-A similarly clued in a recent Stumper. Experiential learning.
30-A, three letters, “Central casting.” I’m not sure I understand this one.
35-A, seven letters, “Fish out of water.” Clever and a bit misdirective.
35-D, eight letters, “What Ariel and Aladdin are at Disney World.” A slighty wacky anwer, and appropriately so.
36-D, eight letters, “It has the most primary interstates passing through it.” Heck yeah.
40-A, eight letters, “Lodging place?” Groan.
53-D, five letters, “Kitchen brand created from female names.” It feels strange to now know that.
60-A, ten letters, “Extreme avoidance.” One of the more difficult clues in the puzzle.
63-A, ten letters, “Don’t go straight.” Another of the more difficult clues in the puzzle. So many possibilities.
My favorite in this puzzle: 27-A, seven letters, “Mac not a PC.” So clever, and everyday life gave me the answer.
No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.
Friday, May 31, 2024
Marian Robinson (1937–2024)
Marian Robinson, mother of Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson, has died at the age of eighty-six. From the New York Times obituary:
Raised on the South Side of Chicago, Ms. Robinson was known as a loving, down-to-earth matriarch who became an emotional ballast for her daughter and granddaughters, Malia and Sasha, but also for Mr. Obama, who had rocketed to political superstardom and whose family, at times, had to scramble to keep up.Elaine and I met Michelle Obama when Barack Obama was running for the United States Senate. And our whole family met Barack Obama later in that campaign. I wish we could have met Marian Robinson too.
When Mr. Obama became the first Black man to win the presidency in November 2008, he sat and watched the returns alongside his mother-in-law. Their hands were clutched together as they watched their family’s future change alongside the course of American history.
187 years
At his press conference In his Queeg-like ravings just now, Donald Trump suggested that he may be going to jail for 187 years.
Allay!
[A Glencairn Whisky Glass was sitting on the counter — might it get knocked over? They are not cheap.]
“I’ll allay your fears and wash it.”
“No, it's fine.”
“I’m gonna allay! I’ll allay!”
Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)
Know the difference
[Reposted from December 8, 2018.]
I created this visual aid one day after making a post titled Felonious Trump, which began, “I’m no lawyer, but it seems clear that Individual-1 directed Michael Cohen to commit felonies.” And now Individual-1 is a felon.
Now more than ever: know the difference.
