Twelve movies

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

Terror on a Train (dir. Ted Tetzlaff, 1953). In Birmingham, England, a saboteur plants a bomb on a train that carries sea mines. An engineer (Glenn Ford, playing a Canadian abroad) is called in to help. There’s little real suspense here: we can be confident that Ford isn’t going to be killed and that he and his wife (Anne Vernon) will be back together when the movie ends (neither of those statements will prove a spoiler for anyone who’s watched movies). The fun here comes from local color — a pub, a refreshment room, a train-loving eccentric (Herbert C. Walton) — and mid-century tech, with telephones and train machinery galore. ★★★ (TCM)

*

High Wall (dir. Curtis Bernhardt, 1947). Starring Robert Taylor, Audrey Totter, Herbert Marshall, and Amnesia. A WWII veteran (Taylor) is accused of his wife’s murder, and he doesn’t remember a thing. In a psychiatric hospital, he bonds with a doctor (Totter), and with the help of sodium pentothal, he begins to piece together a narrative featuring a sinister publishing executive (Marshall). The story is thin, but Paul Vogel’s cinematography makes this movie another good old good one from our household’s favorite year in movies. ★★★ (TCM)

*

A Lady Without Passport (dir. Joseph H. Lewis, 1950). Hedy Lamaar is a Buchenwald survivor awaiting permission to emigrate to the United States from Cuba. John Hodiak is an immigration agent. George Macready is the head of a human-smuggling group. Many interesting on-location shots of metropolitan Cuba, a great score by David Raksin, and closing atmospherics straight out of Gun Crazy (also by Lewis), but a drearily glamorous and at times highly confusing story. ★★ (TCM)

*

The Man with a Cloak (dir. Fletcher Markle, 1951). Joseph Cotten is the man, a mysterious New Yorker known as Dupin, enmeshed in the affairs of a dysfunctional household: a wealthy old French expatriate (Louis Calhern), a housekeeper and mistress (Barabra Stanwyck), a butler, a cook — all of whom are waiting for the old man to die — and his grandson’s lover (Leslie Caron), who has traveled from France to plead with the old man to give money to aid the cause of revolution. There’s a mystery to be solved — a missing will — and, lo, Dupin solves it. Sheer hokum, with clues abounding, and I’m not going to spoil the fun. With another great score by David Raksin. ★★★ (TCM)

*

13 West Street (dir. Philip Leacock, 1962). “I felt like an animal”: mild-mannered engineer Walt Sherill (Alan Ladd in his last starring role) is beaten by a gang of teenagers, and when the police (in the form of Rod Steiger) do little about it, Walt takes matters into his own hands. The interesting thing about this Death Wish-like story is that the gang members are from what are called “fine familes,” though maybe not so fine after all. (When Margaret Hayes plays the gang leader’s mother, drinking the day away by her pool, you know there’s trouble). The most compelling character here is the gang leader himself (Michael Callan), a budding psychopath whose unwillingness to step away from a confrontation brings about disastrous consequences. ★★★ (TCM)

*

The Common Law (dir. Paul L. Stein, 1931). Constance Bennett again, as Valerie West, a beautiful free spirit in Paris who leaves her much older lover (Lew Cody) to work as a model for the thoroughly respectable painter John Neville (Joel McCrea). Alas, John’s sister has ideas about the kind of woman her brother should marry, and Valerie ain’t it. A surprisingly grim story of gossip, rigid mores, and the need for dissembling: Valerie cannot even let John’s family know that they sailed to the States on the same ship. A strange surprise: Hedda Hopper. ★★★ (TCM)

*

Paterson (dir. Jim Jarmusch, 2016). I watched for a second time, with friends, after visiting the Great Falls, and I found myself warming to the movie’s depiction of dailiness: small bright spots (cupcakes for sale), adversities small and large (a crooked mailbox, a destroyed notebook), and routines (walking the dog, getting a beer). Poetry is everywhere in the city: a man in a laundromat, a schoolgirl waiting for her mom, a visitor from Japan. And I loved the absolutely non-condescending depiction of a city with pride in its hometown heroes (Lou Costello, Uncle Floyd). But Paterson (Adam Driver), the bus driver and poet at the center of things, is still a cipher. ★★★ (AP)

*

It Ain’t Over (dir Sean Mullin, 2022). A documentary about the life of Yogi Berra, with numerous interviews and great archival footage (I count ninety names in the IMDb credits). I knew something of Yogi Berra as a speaker of Zen-like sentience, but I didn’t know what a great baseball player he was, nor did I know that his appearance made him a subject of mockery on and off the field, nor did I know that in retirement he supported LGBTQ inclusion in sports. There’s a lot I didn’t know about Yogi Berra. The most exciting moments herein: Don Larsen’s perfect game and the Berra-Jackie Robinson dispute over a call at home plate. ★★★★ (N)

[I say he was safe.]

*

Plan 9 from Outer Space (dir. Edward D. Wood Jr., 1957). Everyone should see Plan 9 once. The first time through, its absurdities are guaranteed to amuse: the deadly serious Criswell, the laughable special effects, the incoherent plot, Tor Johnson’s “acting,” Bela Lugosi’s “double,” Vampira’s waist, the alien visitor’s passionate denunciation of humankind: “Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!” Repeated viewings tend to make the movie feel longer and longer and longer. Which makes me wonder: is there any great bad movie that rewards repeated viewing? ★★★★ (YT)

*

Mysterious Intruder (dir. William Castle, 1946). “Have we seen this?” “It doesn’t look familiar.” “Wait — this part does.” Yeah, and it’s still a dud, albeit a stylish dud. ★★ (YT)

*

From the Criterion Channel’s Noirvember Essentials

The Maltese Falcon (dir. John Huston, 1941). I’ve watched it many times, but never with as much appreciation for Mary Astor or with less appreciation for Humphrey Bogart. Astor’s Brigid O’Shaughnessy is a quick-thinking manipulator, trying out lies, one after another, to get Sam Spade in her corner, and the viewer realizes, at some point, that Astor is playing — brilliantly — a character who’s acting. As Sam Spade, Bogart is just acting, woodenly, I’m afraid. A detail I’ve never noticed before: Spade’s bed, visible when he gets the news of Miles Archer’s death at the story’s start, appears to disappear once Miss O’Shaughnessy enters his apartment: the Code at work? ★★★★

*

Road Diary (dir. Thom Zinny, 2024). Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band (and E Street Choir), preparing for and going on a world tour after a long hiatus. I’ve never taken to Springsteen’s music, but I found this documentary exciting and solemnly moving by turns. Mortality hangs over everything for a band that’s been together for fifty years: in the deaths of Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici, in Patti Scialfa’s cancer, in Springsteen’s awareness that he is the “Last Man Standing,” as a song says (the last living member of his early band the Castiles), in Springsteen’s comment that he’ll keep playing “until the wheels come off,” and in the set list created for the tour. The musical highlights, for me: “Letter to You,” “Mary’s Place,” “Nightshift,” “Last Man Standing,” and “I’ll See You in My Dreams.” ★★★★ (H)

[As I wrote to a friend who is a (huge) Springsteen fan, “It’ll rip your heart out. Mine’s on the floor.”]

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Clarkson Diner

[152 Leroy Street or 586 Washington Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

The employees of T SIDE and WEST SID, otherwise known as the West Side Iron Works, would have had an easy time of it when the lunch half-hour came around: they were just a short walk away from the Clarkson Diner.

The 1940s.nyc website shows this diner facing Washington Street, with Leroy Street to the north, Clarkson Street to the south, and West Street to — that‘s right — the west. The site has three photos, with this outtake showing the diner to best advantage. If you click for the larger view, you can see a Bell Telephone sign, a Schaefer Beer sign, the name Clarkson, and several blurry pedestrians.

In the Municipal Archives the diner’s address is 152 Leroy Street. The 1940 telephone directory has the address as 586 Washington Street. But the diner itself (listen closely) whispers, “Call me Clarkson!”

[Click for a larger view.]

Today there’s a FedEx warehouse.

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Today’s Saturday Stumper

I began Matthew Sewell’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper with 1-D, five letters, “Back with bucks,” which crossed with 19-A, three letters, “Feng shui favorite with fins.” A fierce struggle ensued. When I finally read 35-A, thirteen letters, correctly — “What many football fans flourish,” not where, much of the puzzle fell together quickly. Note to self: read clues carefully.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

8-D, five letters, “Hustled.” Tricky.

10-D, six letters, “Particle accelerator?” Good grief.

13-D, seven letters, “Misters do it.” A weirdly good clue.

14-A, eleven letters, “Couldn't be better!” Sounds like self-deception to me.

24-D, eight letters, “Mexican rice milk.” It’s delicious, but I didn’t know it was rice milk.

27-A, letters, “Name on the cover of the history Broadcast Hysteria.” I think it’s easy to guess. Is it?

28-D, four letters, “Its seeds make caffeine-free coffee.” I had no idea. This puzzle is increasing my beverage knowledge.

32-A, four letters, “Paradoxical posing.” Oh!

33-D, four letters, “‘Justice Is Served’ utensil set seller.” Would that it had been served and we weren’t facing a four-or-more-year hellscape.

45-A, seven letters, “Court figures, formerly.” What sort of court? What sort of figures?

46-D, five letters, “Swung around.” Just a strange word, and not nearly as old as I would have guessed.

47-A, six letters, “Tweeted self-publishing.” Is it still happening?

54-A, four letters, “Place cited in Broadcast Hysteria.” Another easy guess, I think.

57-A, eleven letters, “Classy?” Groan.

58-D, three letters, “Half a kid’s meal.” Cute, and I just saw it spoken — caution, spoiler — by a cat.

My favorite in this puzzle: 50-D, five letters, “Email ancestor.” For sentimental reasons.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

A nice Englishman

[Nancy, November 21, 1955.]

In today’s yesterday’s Nancy, Sluggo spies a pedestrian: “Here comes that nice Englishman we met yesterday.” And Nancy, from her chair, reading: “Say hello to him
--- make him feel at home.”

Did this Englishman wander in from Moon Mullins ? I see a strong resemblance to that strip’s Lord Plushbottom.

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Lyonel Feininger, at last

From a 2018 post:

Lyonel Feininger, German-American artist, haunts me. I see a painting of his in a museum, write down his name, plan to look him up, don’t look him up, then see another painting, upon which the process repeats.

Okay, finally: here are some samples of this painter’s work, from the Art Institute of Chicago, the Guggenheim Museum, the Leicester Museums, the National Gallery, and the Whitney Museum.

Feininger was also a photographer (Harvard Art Museums), and he had a career in comics (MoMA). And lo: this photograph of a photographer holding a camera to his face is by Feininger’s son Andreas Feininger.

Sentimental sap that I am, I especially like this Feininger work in painted wood.

Flooding

From Robert Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1974):

By building his highways, Moses flooded the city with cars. By systematically starving the subways and the suburban commuter railroads, he swelled that flood to city-destroying dimensions. By making sure that the vast suburbs, rural and empty when he came to power, were filled on a sprawling, low-density development pattern relying primarily on roads instead of mass transportation, he insured that that flood would continue for generations if not centuries, that the New York metropolitan area would be — perhaps forever — an area in which transportation — getting from one place to another — would be an irritating, life-consuming concern for its 14,000,000 residents.

Everyone calls the book The Power Broker, of course, but I think the subtitle deserves emphasis.

And the population today: 23,500,000.

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S-O

I was today years old when I reailzed — not learned, just realized — that the name Esso comes from Standard Oil.

These guitars are those guitars

He’s selling guitars. Quelle tromperie!

Lacking the patience to spell out the details, I’ll leave these guitars to your careful eye. I’d wager that this American Eagle electric guitar and its Presidential cousins are versions of this Chinese Les Paul knockoff. The American Eagle and Presidential guitars are going for $1500 each. The Chinese guitar: $144 each if you buy two from Alibaba. And the price goes down from there, down to $115 each if you buy a hundred or more.

I haven’t spotted ringers for the American Eagle and God Bless the USA acoustic guitars, but my guess is that these too are sourced from China.

The website offers fun disclaimers:

In-Stock Guitars:
We respectfully ask that you allow up to a few weeks for shipping due to a high volume of orders and the extra time it takes to ensure each guitar is carefully packed for successful delivery.

Pre-Order Guitars:
Please allow 5-6 months for manufacturing and delivery.

Somehow I get the idea that they’re aiming for that bulk-purchase price.

And as with those watches, what you see might not be what you get:

The images shown are for illustration purposes only and may not be an exact representation of the product.

So these guitars might turn out to be some other guitars after all. But as the song says, you can’t always get what you want from a website bearing his name.

[The URL for the Alibaba guitar is valid, but the company wants you to see it in their app. If you’re on a mobile device, just stay in your browser and you’ll be able to see it.]

“Built on a lie”

Robert Caro knows how to use the occasional short paragraph to advantage. From The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1974):

The official records of most public agencies are public records, but not those of public authorities, since courts have held that they may be regarded as the records of private corporations, closed to scrutiny by the interested citizen or reporter.

This was very important to Robert Moses. It was very important to him that no one be able to find out how it was that he was able to build.

Because what Robert Moses built on was a lie.

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Leonardo, no

I’ve never been much of a Ken Burns fan, and whatever affection I might have had for his work evaporated with Jazz. But I wanted to like his Leonardo da Vinci.

And I didn’t. It’s far too busy: split screens, with art on one side, nature on the other; unidentified artworks, by any number of artists, split-screen or full-, appearing and disappearing rapidly; art historians speaking as music plays behind them, or over them. The presentation defies any contemplation of art and makes it impossible, at least for me, to grasp the chronology of the life. The truly false note: yellow subtitles translate the abundant commentary of French and Italian art historians, but Leonardo’s own words are spoken, without attribution, in a deeply accented English by the Italian actor Adriano Giannini. It’s like listening to a commercial for an upscale fragrance.

And if the e-mails from my PBS affiliate are to be trusted, the fragrance would be called da Vinci. Not Leonardo.

It would be a good thing if this documentary were to bring about in its viewers a greater respect for the work of human intelligence: the eye, the hand, the mind.

[I’ve been grateful for many years now to the unknown hand at the British Journal of Aesthetics who changed my da Vinci to Leonardo, thus in a small way making me look smarter than I had any right to look. Post title with apologies to “Caroline, No.”]