Tag Archives: Fay Helm

Mademoiselle Fifi (1944, Robert Wise)

Posted on 31 October 2012 | 2 Comments

Mademoiselle Fifi is split down the center, roughly, into two parts. The first involves Simone Simon on the trip to her hometown. The second is when she reaches the town. The film takes place in occupied France during the Franco-Prussian War, but it opens with a title card presenting it as an analogue to World War II.

The first half, with Simon’s laundress winning over her fellow travelers, a bunch of stuck-up upper crust who don’t understand why she doesn’t associate with the occupying Prussians. Fifi tries hard to be about recognizing the evils of passive collaboration. It’s more successful when it’s just about Simon and her experiences. It plays very naturally at those times.

Unfortunately, the finale is entirely artificial and contrived, so Fifi falls apart quite a bit. The short runtime is partially responsible. With a few more minutes, the film could introduce real characters into the second half instead of filler. The first half has extremely memorable ones, particularly Jason Robards Sr. as an obnoxious wine wholesaler and Kurt Kreuger as the titular villain. Even the less compelling characters are distinct. Not so at the end, when Fifi mostly introduces Prussian officer caricatures and vapid collaborators.

Simon’s excellent in the lead, as is John Emery as the armchair intellectual she inspires.

Technically, the film’s mediocre. Harry J. Wild’s photography is nice. J.R. Whittredge has some good transitions but, otherwise, his editing is weak. Wise’s direction is indistinct.

Fifi‘s impressive parts make the whole acceptable.

2/4★★

CREDITS

Directed by Robert Wise; screenplay by Josef Mischel and Peter Ruric, based on stories by Guy de Maupassant; director of photography, Harry J. Wild; edited by J.R. Whittredge; music by Werner R. Heymann; produced by Val Lewton; released by RKO Radio Pictures.

Starring Simone Simon (Elizabeth Bousset, A Little Laundress), John Emery (Jean Cornudet), Kurt Kreuger (Lt. von Eyrick, Called ‘Fifi’), Alan Napier (The Count de Breville), Helen Freeman (The Countess de Breville), Jason Robards Sr. (A Wholesaler in Wines), Norma Varden (The Wholesaler’s Wife), Romaine Callender (A Manufacturer), Fay Helm (The Manufacturer’s Wife), Edmund Glover (A Young Priest) and Charles Waldron (The Curé of Cleresville).

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Posted in 1944, ★★, Black and White, Drama, English, French, German, RKO Radio Pictures, USA, War

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Calling Dr. Death (1943, Reginald Le Borg)

Posted on 21 January 2009 | 1 Comment

Reusing music in b movies isn’t uncommon, but to reuse music from a movie with the same star? It kind of gets distracting.

Almost everything about Calling Dr. Death is distracting, actually.

The movie opens with a head in a glass sphere ominously describing the film’s setting (Dr. Death is a filmic episode of Inner Sanctum Mysteries–a radio program). It’s nowhere near as distracting, however, as what the first scene reveals… the hair-styling.

Lon Chaney’s hair is absolutely amazing, perfectly molded in each shot, even when it’s supposed to be messy. It’s a styled, gelled (or whatever) messy.

Then there’s his voiceover narration. Chaney’s neurosurgeon psychotherapist–I really don’t think screenwriter Edward Dein knew what a neurosurgeon did, he just liked the sound of it–describes all his thoughts. There’s a long section of it at the beginning, almost five minutes of it, with Chaney walking around his office talking to himself about himself, then more later, just in smaller doses.

Chaney’s actually pretty good in his role. He seems out of place in the apartment scenes–he’s a neurosurgeon with a butler and a high rise apartment with an ornate dining room–but he does well as the doctor, which kind of surprised me. He doesn’t exactly get any help from the supporting cast.

Neither of his female costars is effective. Ramsay Ames is hilariously bad, but Patricia Morison is lousy too. Ames is–taking screen time into account–better, just because her role is smaller. It isn’t simply a matter of lack of chemistry, it’s how amateurish their performances come off opposite Chaney. He might have be in a crappy b movie without a single competently written moment, but he’s still a professional. Ames and Morison look like deer caught in headlines whenever it’s time for them to deliver lines. You can even watch Ames do something with her hand, flexing it or something, to aid in her delivery.

It doesn’t really help director Reginald Le Borg is mind-numbingly boring. He’s got a couple bad shots, but nothing atrocious. Nothing good either. There’s a well-produced montage (unfortunately uncredited). It’s fairly well-lighted, with Virgil Miller bringing small points of light into previously dark shots. The costumes–Vera West did the gowns, which look competent, but I’m not talking about those–are hilarious. Chaney’s running around his apartment in a silly, sort of flower-patterned set of pajamas for a while. It’s something to see.

The problem’s the script. Not just the mechanical failure of the narration, but the lack of compelling situation. Why should we care if Ames is lousy to Chaney, because he can narrate a voiceover explaining it? Calling Dr. Death opened in December, which means moviegoers weren’t in search of air conditioning. Heat, perhaps?

0/4ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Directed by Reginald Le Borg; written by Edward Dein; director of photography, Virgil Miller; edited by Norman A. Cerf; music by Paul Sawtell; released by Universal Pictures.

Starring Lon Chaney Jr. (Dr. Mark Steel), Patricia Morison (Stella Madden), J. Carrol Naish (Inspector Gregg), David Bruce (Bob Duval), Ramsay Ames (Maria Steele), Fay Helm (Mrs. Duval), Holmes Herbert (Bryant, the Butler), Alec Craig (Bill, the Watchman), Frederick Giermann (Marion’s Father), Lisa Golm (Marion’s Mother), Charles Wagenheim (Coroner), Mary Hale (Marion), George Eldredge (District Attorney) and John Elliott (Priest).

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Posted in 1943, ⓏⒺⓇⓄ, Black and White, English, Film-Noir, Horror, Mystery, Universal Pictures, USA

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The Wolf Man (1941, George Waggner)

Posted on 28 August 2008 | 1 Comment

The Wolf Man‘s most lasting influence–beyond the advantages of using Larry Talbot as a synonym (Pynchon did it in Vineland) and the endlessly suffering protagonist–has to be the music. I noticed parts both John Williams (for The Empire Strikes Back) and Danny Elfman (for Batman Returns) lifted. The music is an essential part of the film, as many of Lon Chaney Jr.’s scenes are almost silent film style solo ones, where Chaney visualizes his internal turmoil.

Director Waggner’s style works for the film and against. There’s little attempt to create any sense of the uncanny. Between the booming music and Waggner’s fast-paced chase scenes, the film rushes toward its conclusion. All subtlety is lost in the last act, which is unfortunate, since the film started with so much.

Behind the film’s big story and special effects is the quiet one between Chaney–as returning, long absent son–and Claude Rains–top-billed as the father (and seventeen years older than Chaney). Rains has some lengthy monologues, which he’s good at delivering, and some other scenes involving Chaney, but at the end, when the two of them finally have a talk, The Wolf Man reveals itself. Rains then gets another nice scene on the same subject, only without Chaney. Had the film followed Rains, through his conflict over his son returning to his concern for the son’s sanity, to the fear the son might be right, The Wolf Man would have been high psychological drama.

Similarly, had it followed just Chaney, it would have been a stranger entering stranger and stranger lands.

As a mix of the two, it’s awkward. The big script holes don’t help either. There’s no consistency on how to prevent werewolf transformations or how often they occur. The film’s in a hurry to get done and it plays way too loose with the time it covers.

The other primary aspect of the film–the romance between Chaney and Evelyn Ankers–actually gets enough attention. Though Chaney and Ankers infamously did not get along, they appear to have lots of chemistry in the film, to the point Ankers’s absolute devotion (in the third act, after being off-screen for a while) makes perfect sense. Chaney’s transition through the film from utterly assured to abjectly despondent is one of the more fluid character progressions I can remember. Ankers helps out quite a bit.

Curt Siodmak’s script is best during those scenes with Ankers or Rains. The overuse of the gypsies is questionable as is the wasted supporting cast. The film’s filled with characters–Universal apparently needed roles for Ralph Bellamy, Warren William and Patric Knowles–and it doesn’t have room for them. While Bellamy’s got a great, unintentionally absurd line, the film never–after mentioning it–discusses he and Chaney being childhood friends. William’s a superfluous doctor and Knowles should form a third side in a love triangle (for Ankers’s affection) but strangely does not.

There are a lot of ideas in The Wolf Man, but few of them are explored. Even the ending is strangely undercooked. The film stops rather than ends, but as it’s more in the hands of non-characters Bellamy and William, there’s really nothing else it can do.

Waggner’s got a gimmick he uses–blocking some of the frame with a lamp base or a tree–and, though it gets obvious, he uses it to great effect occasionally. The sight of Rains striking the unknown, even though the music is too bombastic, is haunting.

I was going to end there, but realized I haven’t really lauded Chaney enough. From his first moment on film, there’s nothing he can’t do here–and the script asks for a lot. He’s got to have all that turmoil in the middle and the end, but the beginning requires him to be completely different. Chaney does it all–and those silent-but-for-music scenes, as he discovers his feet getting furry or the wolf tracks in his bedroom, are amazing. He’s under-appreciated.

CREDITS

Produced and directed by George Waggner; written by Curt Siodmak; director of photography, Joseph A. Valentine; edited by Ted J. Kent; released by Universal Pictures.

Starring Claude Rains (Sir John Talbot), Warren William (Dr. Lloyd), Ralph Bellamy (Col. Montford), Patric Knowles (Frank Andrews), Bela Lugosi (Bela), Maria Ouspenskaya (Maleva), Evelyn Ankers (Gwen Conliffe), J.M. Kerrigan (Charles Conliffe), Fay Helm (Jenny Williams), Forrester Harvey (Twiddle) and Lon Chaney Jr. (The Wolf Man).

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Posted in 1941, Black and White, Drama, English, Horror, Universal Pictures, USA

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Phantom Lady (1944, Robert Siodmak)

Posted on 31 December 2007 | Leave a comment

There’s a distinct, definite brilliance to Siodmak’s direction. The film itself is unique in casting a woman as the hero in a film noir, essentially Bogart in The Maltese Falcon, while maintaining her as female. Ella Raines’s boss (played, in the film’s only mediocre performance, by Alan Curtis) is falsely convicted, due to perjury. Raines goes after the three perjurers and Siodmak creates, in each case, a magnificent sequence, whether it’s chase or just discomfort. Phantom Lady’s most well-known for the sexually charged scene with Raines and Elisha Cook Jr. at a jam session, but Siodmak’s just as impressive during the subsequent resolution to that scene.

All of or most of Phantom Lady was shot on set and Siodmak even uses matte paintings–quite effectively–for one of the pursuit scenes. Early on, during the trial, Siodmak gets the acknowledgment of artifice out of the way, summarizing the trial with voiceovers, tracking time with a court stenographer’s shorthand, focusing the cameras on Raines and Thomas Gomez (the sympathetic cop). Once that very artificial sequence is out of the way, once the audience has digested it, Siodmak doesn’t have to worry about anyone griping about the sets.

The relationship between Gomez and Raines is particularly interesting, because he’s in that position as the film noir sympathetic cop who shouldn’t be helping but is helping… but he’s also sensitive to Raines’s position (she’s in love with convicted boss Curtis). The two details never conflict for Gomez (and, to some degree, it’s entirely believable Raines would be as dedicated without the emotional investment). It’s a big surprise, seeing such unique gender dynamics in a Universal noir from 1944.

All the performances–besides Curtis’s–are fantastic. Raines is both the Kansas farm girl in love with her boss and the film noir hero without ever toggling between the two. She’s always both… Cook’s good in his scenes, as are Fay Helm and Andrew Tombes. Franchot Tone is great, surrounded by weird statues in an apartment; it looks like the Coens adapted it for Blood Simple.

I think I’ve only seen Phantom Lady once before, but certainly remembered it being good… I just didn’t remember Siodmak’s utterly great direction (or maybe just wasn’t filmically mature enough to appreciate it).

3/4★★★

CREDITS

Directed by Robert Siodmak; screenplay by Bernard C. Schoenfeld, based on a novel by Cornell Woolrich; director of photography, Elwood Bredell; edited by Arthur Hilton; released by Universal Pictures.

Starring Franchot Tone (Jack Marlow), Ella Raines (Carol Richman), Alan Curtis (Scott Henderson), Aurora Miranda (Estela Monteiro), Thomas Gomez (Inspector Burgess), Fay Helm (Ann Terry), Elisha Cook Jr. (Cliff Milburn), Andrew Tombes (Mac the bartender), Regis Toomey (Detective Chewing Gum), Joseph Crehan (Detective Tom), Doris Lloyd (Madame Kettisha) and Virginia Brissac (Dr. Helen Chase).

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Posted in 1944, ★★★, Black and White, Crime, English, Film-Noir, Mystery, Portuguese, Universal Pictures, USA

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