THE AWFUL TRUTH
****½
BIZARRE BIZARRE (DRÔLE DE
DRAME)
****
France
An absurdist farce (too benign
to be deemed Surrealist, despite Prévert's involvement with the group)
that exists and unfolds
on
its own plane. The plot starts up with a botanist who writes mystery
novels under a pseudonym and whose wife pretends she was murdered in order
to avoid scandal. Even if you keep up with its idiosyncratic [non-]logic,
you'll never guess where it goes from there. And it's set in Edwardian
England, and there's also a priest with a naughty secret involved, and a
lovesick milkman, as well as a 'butcher of butchers' out to kill the
author. Not for all tastes, certainly, but it's far more vibrant and alive
than several of Carné and Préverts more acclaimed (and far more
pessimistic) subsequent collaborations.
dir: Marcel Carné
wr: Jacques Prévert
cast: Michel Simon, Françoise Rosay, Louis Jouvet, Jean-Louis
Barrault, Jean-Pierre Aumont
BREAKFAST FOR TWO
***½
USA
Barbara Stanwyck plays a Texas heiress, who tries to steal failed businessman
Herbert Marshall from his gold-digging fiancé.
The two are individually charming and sophisticated, but it's not a
lot of chemistry they stir up between them and the plot they're caught up
in is never rendered believable. The picture falls among the lesser
screwball comedies of this period of classic screwball comedies, but it's
all good fun while it's on, since the formula it follows allows for a soft
landing even when the materials don't necessarily match.
dir: Alfred Santell
cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Herbert Marshall, Eric Blore, Donald Meek,
Glenda Farrell, Etienne Girardot
CAMILLE
****½
CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS
***
A DAY AT THE RACES
****½
DEAD END
****
EASY LIVING
***½
USA
A powerful financier throws his
wife's fur coat out the window and it lands on a typist's hat.
A screwball comedy brimming with inspired lunacy, though it's not very
evenly spread out.
dir: Mitchell Leisen
wr: Preston Sturges
cast: Jean Arthur, Edward Arnold, Ray Milland, Luis Alberni,
Mary Nash, Franklin Pangborn, William Demarest
FIRE OVER ENGLAND
***½
THE GOOD EARTH
**** GRAND ILLUSION
*****
HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT
***½
USA
Jean Arthur is a socialite undergoing a divorce to freakishly possessive
Colin Clive when she falls in love with headwaiter Charles Boyer, who
impersonates a thief in order to protect her, but then ends up accused of
a murder committed by Clive, who blackmails Arthur and forbids her to say
goodbye to Boyer, who is heartbroken and decides to travel with his star
chef to America and make such exquisite food and combine it with such
exquisite service that within weeks their restaurant will be the talk of
the town and Arthur will be bound to come in and check out what all the
fuss is about. Even within the parameters of soap opera, this one takes
things to several silly, overwrought extremes. But Boyer is dashing,
Arthur is radiant and the ten minutes worth of shipwrecking towards the
end (spawned by some mindbending plot turns) are more moving and exciting than three hours worth of either of the
various 'Titanic's.
dir: Frank Borzage
cast: Charles Boyer, Jean Arthur, Leo Carrillo, Colin Clive, Ivan
Lebedeff, George Meeker
THE LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA
*½
LOST HORIZON
****½
NOTHING SACRED
*****
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OH MR. PORTER
****
PEPE LE MOKO
***
USA
A
well-regarded pessimistic gangster romance set in a Casbah that is an
awkward mix of location footage and studio recreation. There are a few
memorable individual scenes, but they don’t seem to belong to the same film.
Director Julien Duvivier is quite adept at evoking atmosphere through
sound, but not so much through photography, and the picture really needed
a visual stylist. It also doesn’t help that the two lovers never look
like they can stand each other.
All the same, Jean Gabin was propelled into international
stardom, the picture spawned a couple of Hollywood remakes, and you can
even sense its influence in "Casablanca" (1942).
dir: Julien Duvivier
cast: Jean Gabin, Mireille Balin, Line Noro, Lucas Gridoux, Gabriel
Gabrio, Fernand Charpin, Saturnin Fabre, Gaston Modot, Marcel Dalio
THE
PRISONER OF ZENDA
****½
USA
Ronald Colman gets to play both King Rudolf V of 'Strelsau' and his look-alike
- an English cousin - who doubles for him when he's kidnapped.
Irreproachably, charismatically noble as Colman is though, you can't help
but want to see more of villainous and slyly sexy Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
The two relish in their double-talk and witty repartee so much so that it
spills into their swordfighting. Even at its most far-fetched, the
picture is light on its feet and too much fun to complain about. And the
lensing by the great James Wong Howe is so painterly and majestic that it
lends class even to the seriously clunky bits of plotting.
dir: John Cromwell, W.S. Van Dyke II, George Cukor
wr: John Balderston, Wells Root, Donald Ogden Stewart
ph: James Wong Howe
cast: Ronald Colman, Madeleine Carroll, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Mary
Astor, C. Aubrey Smith, Raymond Massey, David Niven, Eleanor Wesselhoeft
SHALL WE DANCE
**½
USA
At first Ginger doesn't much care for Fred, then she grows fond of
him and they perform a dance on roller skates, and in the end he has to
pick her out from among two dozen impostors.
This was the seventh time the two were teamed up and for the most part
it's just a matter of going through the motions. It feels a lot longer
than all their previous vehicles.
dir: Mark Sandrich
cast: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Edward Everett Horton, Jerome
Cowan, Eric Blore, Ketti Gallian
SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS
*****
STAGE DOOR
****
USA
A wisecracking ensemble comedy
tracking the chronicles of a New York
boarding house for aspiring stage actresses. It has an unfortunate tendency
to veer towards melodrama, but the wisecracks themselves are first-rate, and the
cast is excellent.
dir: Gregory La Cava
cast: Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Adolphe Menjou, Gail
Patrick, Constance Collier, Andrea Leeds, Lucille Ball, Eve Arden,
Ann Miller, Jack Carson
A STAR IS BORN
****½
STELLA
DALLAS
***
USA
The closest that Barbara Stanwyck ever came to giving a bad performance
was playing the most masochistic mother this side of Mildred Pierce.
Stella Dallas has an unfortunate penchant for wearing at
least four dead animals at any one time. When she discovers that her
outfits have made her the laughing stock of high society and are about to
stand in the way of her daughter's future with a toothy tennis instructor,
she makes the ultimate sacrifice: she parts with the daughter to keep the
clothes.
It's hypnotic watching Stanwyck grasping for dignity from
beneath gravity-defying costumes. And you appreciate her fire and tenacity
that much more, pitted as it is against the rest of the cast's rigid
woodenness, including shovel-jawed John Boles as her purebred husband.
dir: King Vidor
cast: Barbara Stanwyck, John Boles, Anne Shirley, Barbara
O'Neil, Alan Hale, Marjorie Main, George Walcott, Ann Shoemaker, Tim Holt
WAY OUT WEST
***½
YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE
****
YOUNG AND INNOCENT
***½
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