Month: September 2008

Wings in the Dark (1935, James Flood)

Wings in the Dark is three-quarters overwrought melodrama with the remainder squandered potential. The film opens with Myrna Loy as the protagonist, an aviatrix (never thought I’d get to type that word) whose flying abilities can’t compensate–in terms of professional opportunities–for her lack of male gender. This part of the film, with Loy trying to make a living when she can’t do much more than stunt flying, is interesting. It reminded me, Amelia Earhart or no Amelia Earhart, I don’t think I’ve ever flown on a flight with a female pilot (or even a female member of the flight crew).

But the film quickly turns Loy into a standard melodramatic female role with the appearance of Cary Grant. Grant’s a successful pilot–who doesn’t even have to time to acknowledge fliers like Loy–and Loy seems to love him for it. It’s excusable at this point, part of the narrative; it isn’t until later the melodramatic syrup clogs the whole film down.

Grant ends up blind–but not really blind, there’s the chance he’ll get his sight back–and the film becomes an advertisement for anti-blindness. It’s too bad there isn’t a word for it, as it’s difficult to describe the film’s hostility towards the blind. Where they could make distinctions between Grant’s character’s situation and those of blind people, they make generalizations. It’s stunning–being blind, according to Wings in the Dark, is worse than being a leper. It really is a burden on friends and family and the world at large. Plus, Grant might awkwardly bump into things, you know, to show off how he can’t see after just having an argument about people deceiving him because he can’t see. All it needs is a laugh track.

Grant and Loy do have a lot of chemistry, which keeps it going through some of the worse scripted scenes. There’s a walk through the woods, for instance, and it’s beautifully done. James Flood’s a fine director, but he can’t do much with the content.

Just before the worst of the poor blind Grant scenes, there’s some more fine Loy as the female flier material. The film’s trying to put way too much into seventy-five minutes and without the screenwriters to pull it off. Both leads have individual story lines deserving of attention and the film’s attempt to tie them together fails.

It doesn’t help the supporting cast is phoning in their performances. Hobert Cavanaugh’s direction was apparently to have a loud Scottish accent and he does, even if it’s shaky at times. Roscoe Karns, who should be lovable as Loy’s thoughtlessly ambitious manager, is not. Any time he comes on the screen, it’s unbelievable Loy would associate with such a snake. Dean Jagger’s good, but he’s only in it at the beginning and end.

There’s some nice aerial photography and there’s a fine effects sequence at the end, but the movie stops early. That effects sequence earns it some more consideration and instead of playing it all out, it ends at the first possible moment following. Going a little longer and concluding some of the story lines wouldn’t have helped a lot, but it would have helped some. Especially since Loy spends the last quarter of the film alone in a cockpit, not the most interesting place for an actor to be….

Choke (2008, Clark Gregg)

Choke working at all is kind of something special. The film’s got a major twist at the end, but it’s a silly one and isn’t, with any thought on the matter, particularly feasible. The film’s got a major plot point for Sam Rockwell–his mother’s diary reports he’s the half-clone of Jesus–and, eventually, he believes it himself. The film never gets the character to the point he could, conceivably, believe it. There’s also the problem of treating a dramatic character study of a sex addict like a Farrelly Brothers comedy. Having Rockwell, strange as it might seem, doesn’t really bolster the film’s prospects. Anjelica Huston’s contribution is far more important (while Rockwell gives a great performance in Choke, it’s the kind of thing he can sleepwalk through), because Huston’s able to combine insane disengagement with genuine concern. Even though the film’s funniest scenes are the ones Huston isn’t in, her scenes are the best.

The credit goes to Clark Gregg, who both adapted the novel, directed the film and appears in a small role (as the film’s only–semi–villainous character). With a miniscule budget and excellent casting, Gregg makes Choke into a limited success. The film’s potential is hard to gauge–it doesn’t shoot particularly high and, even with its curbed ambitions, fumbles in the end. A lot of the problem comes from the twist, which is throwaway. It occurs in the last five minutes of the film (Choke only runs ninety minutes; five is a not insignificant period) and never gets resolved with the principles. It gets resolved off-screen, as Choke changes gears into the affable dirty comedy again, so it doesn’t have to take responsibility for being absurd. Choke‘s characters can be absurd–the two main settings are the mental hospital where Huston is committed and Rockwell’s job, a colonial America theme park–but it never can go off the deep end. To get the ending, it goes swimming way too close.

Where Gregg doesn’t work is the music. Gregg relies heavily on it and his choices are off. Their choosing doesn’t imply any inspiration–and in a film filled with flashbacks starring Anjelica Huston… it’s hard not to remember Wes Anderson and his superior choice of music. The flashbacks are another problem with Choke. They’re essential, sure, but they just reveal the story to be unremarkable. Huston and Rockwell have some good scenes together–but not enough–and they raise it. But Choke‘s rather conventional.

The script doesn’t give the supporting cast much content, so when Brad William Henke is excellent, it’s an achievement. Kelly Macdonald ought to be great, but she isn’t. She’s fine, but nothing more. It isn’t really her fault though. Gregg’s script doesn’t give her much to do.

Choke fails to turn its elements–the mother and son story, the addiction story, the con man story–into a cohesive, feasible comedic character study. It tries real hard and does a lot of good things and maybe reveals these elements to be mutually exclusive, but it comes up a little short. It’s a fine film and a fun viewing experience, but there’s the implication it’s going for more and it never gets there.

Design for Living (1933, Ernst Lubitsch)

From the first third of Design for Living, it’s impossible to think it might not be absolutely fantastic throughout. Eventually it does hit a dry period and it’s impossible to think it’s going to pull out of it. Then it does and it’s impossible to think… well, you get the idea. I don’t know why I wasn’t fully trusting of Lubitsch, but during that dry spell, I really did think he’d lost control of the film.

The problem he–and the characters–needs to work out is a familiar one, the love triangle, but here with the added complication of the two male legs being best friends. I’m not sure how much of the solution Lubitsch got from Noel Coward’s source play (Ben Hecht’s adaptation only retained one line of dialogue and I can’t find any information on the plotting), but Lubitsch’s resolution is perfect. The film’s already over its bumpy period and it’s already assured he’s going to end it well, but the way he does is even better than expected.

The bumpy period–which probably only lasts fifteen minutes, at most, of the film’s ninety minute running time–is distinct because of what it lacks. The film opens with Miriam Hopkins sitting down across from Gary Cooper and Fredric March. The opening minutes are silent, followed by a minute of Cooper and Hopkins speaking French, then it’s the trio full steam. They all play perfectly off each other, so when the film’s without them–when it’s just March or just Cooper–it doesn’t work right. Hopkins works great with both of them, but they don’t work quite so well when they aren’t together. In fact, there’s a whole scene emphasizing that point.

Seeing Cooper and March–two leading men–sharing a film like this one, complimenting each other so well, it’s hard to believe they never reunited. The film only spends thirty seconds establishing the friendship–silently no less–between the two. While March went on to do a lot of comedies, Cooper only did them in his (relatively) early career, at least playing up his abilities as a physical comedian. Both of them are superb; hearing them fire Hecht’s dialogue back and forth is joyous.

What’s so frustrating about not knowing how Hecht’s adaptation works is in terms of discussing the scene structure. If I didn’t know the film came from a play, had I missed the opening titles, I might have guessed it. The scenes have a lot of dialogue and a lack of mobility–even if it’s a multi-room setting, the action takes place in the same areas. But then there are other touches–Lubitsch communicating the passage of time with an advertisement on a bus, for example–which are entirely filmic.

The handling of Edward Everett Horton’s character, a ludicrous suitor for Hopkins, is also rather filmic. Horton manages the film’s second most difficult performance (Hopkins having the first, having to convey her conflicted feelings for both Cooper and March in a constantly fresh way); Horton has to both be believable and absurd. The film makes a few drastic changes to the character to keep him in line for the narrative to work and Horton negotiates them well. He’s an amusing, antagonistic buffoon.

The film’s such a success, I’m a little surprised I hadn’t heard of it before. Between the performances–the pairing of Cooper and March and Hopkins in general–Lubitsch’s sublime direction (that opening is masterful), and Hecht’s script… Design for Living should be much better known.

4/4★★★★

CREDITS

Produced and directed by Ernst Lubitsch; screenplay by Ben Hecht, based on the play by Noel Coward; director of photography, Victor Milner; edited by Frances Marsh; music by John Leipold; released by Paramount Pictures.

Starring Fredric March (Tom Chambers), Gary Cooper (George Curtis), Miriam Hopkins (Gilda Farrell), Edward Everett Horton (Max Plunkett), Franklin Pangborn (Mr. Douglas), Isabel Jewell (Plunkett’s Stenographer), Jane Darwell (Curtis’s Housekeeper) and Wyndham Standing (Max’s Butler).

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Thunder Birds (1942, William A. Wellman)

Thunder Birds runs just under eighty minutes and if one were to subtract the propaganda, both narrated and in lengthy monologues–not to mention the flashback to the stoic Brits–he or she would have a fifty-five minute love triangle set at an Army flight training base. The whole reason one leg of the triangle is British (John Sutton) is to rouse up support for the British.

Luckily, the movie’s love triangle is mildly effective, which makes the propaganda digressions tolerable. All of the credit for that success is surprisingly not Gene Tierney. Tierney’s great in the movie, bringing a combination of playfulness and maturity to the role. What’s surprising about the movie’s treatment of her is the constant sexism. There’s a terrible sequence at a Red Cross training with all the volunteers–all female–coming off as man-crazy and incompetent. Worse is Tierney’s grandfather, George Barbier, frequently deriding her (she’s “still a woman,” after all).

But that paragraph was supposed to be positive. Sutton’s quite good in the film, bringing a thoughtful sense to his role (an acrophobic doctor turned RAF cadet). He and Tierney have excellent chemistry; big surprise. Leading man Preston Foster is the last leg of the triangle and he and Tierney too have good chemistry. But when Foster’s with Sutton, the scenes are just bad. Foster’s very Hollywood acting doesn’t mix well with Sutton’s subdued, introspective performance. Either Tierney just worked well with Foster–her performance is a mix of charm and intelligence–or she manages to get good scenes out of anyone.

Since there really is less than an hour of story, there’s not much time for a supporting cast. Barbier’s good as the chauvinist pig (what makes it so disturbing is how he’s siding against his granddaughter’s wishes, which is a bit surprising in a Lamar Trotti script, but I guess Trotti is a servant to his source material). Richard Haydn’s great as Sutton’s friend who disappears way too fast. But Dame May Whitty’s brief, flashback role is a waste of time both for her and the film.

Where Thunder Birds really excels is in the Technicolor cinematography and the action sequence at the end. Ernest Palmer’s cinematography is great and the aerial photography is fantastic. But Wellman is just churning it out during these scenes. It’s all fine, but it’s never particularly significant. The end sequence, featuring Sutton (in a plane) saving Foster from a sandstorm is amazing. Great stuff, with some fine editing from Walter Thompson.

The story–the standard Fox war movie love triangle–does take an unexpected turn at the end. Wellman successfully milks the anticipation for the last five minutes, but then gets stuck with that narrated propaganda for a close. In the last ten minutes, I’m not sure Sutton even has a line–odd for the protagonist. The Fox propaganda movies were always decent and Thunder Birds is fine enough as one; it’s just a little emptier of actual content than I would have guessed.

1/4★

CREDITS

Directed by William A. Wellman; screenplay by Lamar Trotti, based on a story by Darryl F. Zanuck; director of photography, Ernest Palmer; edited by Walter Thompson; music by David Buttolph; produced by Trotti; released by 20th Century Fox.

Starring Gene Tierney (Kay Saunders), Preston Foster (Steve Britt), John Sutton (Peter Stackhouse), Jack Holt (Colonel MacDonald), May Whitty (Lady Jane Stackhouse), George Barbier (Gramps), Richard Haydn (George Lockwood), Reginald Denny (Barrett) and Ted North (Cadet Hackzell).

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Below the Sea (1933, Albert S. Rogell)

Below the Sea really should be good. It’s got a great–somewhat startling when viewed today–opening, it’s got excellent special effects and Albert S. Rogell has some fantastic composition. But it all goes wrong.

The opening is set in 1917 on a German U-boat. It’s carrying gold through the Caribbean and gets sunk following a battle with an American ship. Why the ship’s carrying gold is never explained–not in English anyway. That startling opening is the lack of English. The whole scene on the U-boat plays in German, which makes Below the Sea very different and very unexpected. The prologue’s just great.

Then the descent begins. Frederick Vogeding–the U-boat captain who survives–teams with deep sea diver Ralph Bellamy to recover the gold. There’s a useless sequence with their first attempt to get it, which fails. What’s so strange about this part of the film is how it’s just a time waster. It’s got some impressive storm at sea special effects, but there’s no narrative value.

But it’s a lot better than what follows.

For all the great shots Rogell can compose, he can’t direct actors. Vogeding’s the only principal who turns in a good performance. Fay Wray and Bellamy are both terrible. When their romance begins, their performances only get worse. Writer Jo Swerling seems to think his characters are charming, but neither are. Swerling establishes Bellamy early on as a violent, murderous thug. Exactly the protagonist one wants to spend a movie with. Wray’s character is just annoying and poorly written; she’d be likable if Wray’s performances was any good.

The film’s moderately watchable just because of the treasure hunt aspect, with the fine underwater photography and the nice special effects sequence at the end–Bellamy, in diving suit, versus a giant octopus (to save Wray, of course)–the gravy. And Rogell never disappoints in terms of composition. He’s always framing something beautifully, but the movie just gets worse and worse.

The predictability is a real problem, but worse is the lack of interest in the film’s story. While the treasure hunt aspect is the main plot, there’s a rather interesting subplot about scientific exploration of the ocean. Maybe it isn’t interesting, maybe it only is compared to the terrible romance.

And the romance is a real problem. Wray is presented as a headstrong, independent woman–who needs the rough and tumble Bellamy to break her of that independence. The lack of sympathy the movie tries to kindle for Bellamy is kind of interesting, but not really worth any examination or consideration. Every chance the movie has to excel, it fails. The script’s poor, the leads who should be good are quite the opposite and the director doesn’t seem to know what’s going on.

It’s a disappointment to be sure, but I’m not sure if it’s surprising for anything other than the bad performances from Wray and Bellamy, both of whom I expected to be good. I don’t even want to think about how badly they failed chemistry.

That German language opening, however, is real interesting.

Frankenstein (1931, James Whale)

I’m trying to imagine how Frankenstein looks on the big screen–maybe on one the size of Radio City Music Hall; James Whale fills the screen upward. He directs the viewer’s attention always up, starting with the first scenes in the tower laboratory. The frames are obviously filled with extensive detail, which video certainly does not preserve. This style–tall screen (versus wide screen)–amplifies the watered-down Expressionist sets.

The film’s set design is stunning. Again, to complement Whale’s tall screen shots, the Frankenstein manor has cavernous rooms. The actors frequently occupy corners, making me wonder if theatrical audiences had to search for them in the expansive shots. But when the film’s sets are for the outdoors–the film’s famous graveyard opening for example–Whale uses the frame much differently. The painted backdrop, the endlessly murky sky, is Frankenstein‘s suspension of disbelief on-switch. Opening with it, Whale gets the viewer to accept he or she is no longer on familiar ground. Edward Van Sloan’s opening warning probably contributes as well.

Without a musical score, with incredibly delicate sound design and occasionally jarring cuts, Frankenstein is a strange dream. The first scene with Boris Karloff is the best example of this dream state. The nearly silent introduction to the monster, combined with the perspectively challenged sets, distances the viewer from Colin Clive and Van Sloan. This approach to the narrative–it being distant from the characters and more objective–really plays out in the last scene. As the Monster burns in the windmill, it’s hard not to feel sorry for him, but the film doesn’t encourage any sympathy. The lack of music really makes the narrative perspective indifferent.

That indifference only applies to the story of Clive and Karloff–and to some degree to Clive’s romance with Mae Clarke. The film’s very strange for the first act–with the grave-robbing, followed by Dwight Frye robbing the medical college (the lecture in the medical college is also worth some examination, which I’m not going to make time for here), then the rather frank scene between Clarke and John Boles. The friendship between Boles and Clive’s characters hardly gets any screen time, yet it’s present and important to the film. Frankenstein takes a lot of filmic shortcuts, usually to good effect, and that conflicted friendship is successful.

But it isn’t the most successful… the strangest thing about Frankenstein is the place of Frederick Kerr as Clive’s father. As it plays out, Kerr is the film’s main character. Even with all the conflict stemming from bringing a monster to life, the real focus is Clive and Clarke’s wedding, specifically what Kerr’s great scenes related to it. When Kerr first appears, Frankenstein changes direction–it goes from being uncanny to a bent traditional–and each of his scenes is better than the previous.

His performance isn’t the film’s best–all the principals are great, with Clive somehow turning that field day for overacting into one of Hollywood’s greatest portrayals of insanity. But in Whale’s detachment, Clive becomes even more removed in his recovering sanity. Boles and Clarke occasionally seem like they’re in a melodrama, but both have some great moments. Van Sloan’s great, as is Frye.

Karloff’s performance is singular.

Only in the end–like with most Universal horror films–does Frankenstein begin to show its stitches. The lack of content, of actual story, comes out as everything begins to run together (the Monster’s off screen rampaging, the attack on Clarke) and logic hops out the window. Around the same time, men in 1930s dress appear alongside the guys in lederhosen, which might give logic a shove.

It doesn’t really matter much, because by that time, Frankenstein‘s already established itself. Whale’s technically superior hunt through the mountains and the windmill finale, as narratively problematic as they are, still work great.

Amores perros (2000, Alejandro González Iñárritu)

Amores perros could be a public service announcement about canine cruelty in Mexico City. Mexico City has a population of around nine million and takes up about six hundred square miles. For such a big city, it’s kind of odd the cast keeps running into each other, since their only connection is being the subject of this film (destitute assassin and dog lover Emilio Echevarría, who walks everywhere, must secretly be The Flash if he’s going to cover so much ground). I’d barely heard of the film, so I was a little surprised when I found it had such a critical and popular following.

Considering how hard it was to get through the first third–the film’s separated into three parts, rather haphazardly since most of the action in the second part is Echevarría’s and the first part is resolved in the third–I figure I’m alone. The first part is an entirely predictable brother loves brother’s wife story, somewhat accessorized (with the dog fighting). Even when it seems like it’s going to be unpredictable, it really turns out it is, no surprise, utterly traditional. The acting’s a little weak–Gael García Bernal and Vanessa Bauche are about as charisma-free as forbidden lovers can get. Cuckolded brother Marco Pérez, who has almost nothing to do, is a lot better. Bernal’s given the film’s biggest movie star role (except Echevarría, but his role turns out rather well) and he doesn’t do much with it. He’s a passive actor who mugs for the camera a lot–he kind of reminds of George Clooney on “E.R.” when he’d do the thing with looking up with his head down. Except Clooney had better writing.

The second story, which is hinted at during the first, turns out to be excellent and is a complete surprise. It’s a joy no less. Married publishing guy Álvaro Guerrero runs off with his mistress, a supermodel (how they met isn’t really explained and it’s a problem at first, since Guerrero’s character is a tad shallow). There’s a dog trapped in the floor, there’s the supermodel recovering from a car accident, there’s Guerrero’s wife ready to take him back. It’s the film’s most singular story–it reminds of a deceptively good short story, one the reader might dismiss while going through only to have a realization about on the last line. Even when it seems like it’s going to be cheap, it pulls through. Goya Toledo is good as the supermodel, probably giving the film’s second-best performance.

The best performance is easily Echevarría, who gets the goofy nomination friendly role here (Mexico has an Academy Award equivalent, right?). It’s almost absurd all the work he gets to do, but he does it all well. The film runs two and a half endless hours and the third story takes an hour. Subtracting the resolution to the first story (Guerrero and Toledo are noticeably absent from the third story, but given how well their’s went… maybe it’s for the best), it still probably runs fifty minutes. It’s frequently surprising and Echevarría makes the melodrama work. He’s got a couple big actor monologues and then gets to walk off into a Herzog shot.

The script uses some really cheap devices to bring its cast together and the narrative’s fractured, future here, past there, which is sometimes distracting and never really any good. Iñárritu’s direction is fine, does a decent film as video verité (I think it’s film anyway). It’s kind of a small movie pretending to be big, where the three stories either don’t deserve a feature or desperately do. Taking the Nashville approach seems to be something of a recurring cinematic fad… except some films tell stories requiring and some do not. Amores perros does not.

1.5/4★½

CREDITS

Produced and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu; written by Guillermo Arriaga; director of photography, Rodrigo Prieto; edited by González Iñárritu, Luis Carballar and Fernando Pérez Unda; music by Gustavo Santaolalla; production designer, Brigitte Broch; released by Nu Vision.

Starring Emilio Echevarría (El Chivo), Gael García Bernal (Octavio), Goya Toledo (Valeria), Álvaro Guerrero (Daniel), Vanessa Bauche (Susana), Jorge Salinas (Luis), Marco Pérez (Ramiro), Rodrigo Murray (Gustavo), Humberto Busto (Jorge), Gerardo Campbell (Mauricio), Rosa María Bianchi (Aunt Luisa), Dunia Saldívar (Susana’s Mother), Adriana Barraza (Octavio’s Mother), José Sefami (Leonardo), Lourdes Echevarría (Maru), Laura Almela (Julieta), Ricardo Dalmacci (Andrés Salgado) and Gustavo Sánchez Parra (Jarocho).

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Navy Secrets (1939, Howard Bretherton)

Low budget filmmaking–both today and in the past–has always been the most successful when the narrative takes the budget into account. Navy Secrets takes place over one day, with most of the locations being in cars, apartments or restaurants. In other words, easy sets. There’s one slightly more complicated scene in a park. The scenes are all competently lighted and, in general, the film never reveals its b-movie status. The lack of recognizable actors does a little.

What’s so smart about the film is its structure. That one night, with two main characters who the viewer knows relatively nothing about–all the viewer knows, five minutes in, is not to trust Fay Wray. The viewer isn’t necessarily supposed to distrust her, just be wary of her actions. It makes the film an almost interactive experience, with each line of dialogue, each look between characters possibly revealing information (or not). It’s a smart way to do a low budget film, to make the whole thing as quiet as possible.

The other main character, played by Grant Withers, is also suspicious. So is the entire supporting cast after a while. Navy Secrets‘s resolution is one of the obvious possibilities, but it’s never confirmed until the final moment and until that confirmation, there’s always a chance of something else. It keeps the whole narrative unsteady, especially since for the majority of the film, it isn’t even clear if there’s a mystery to be solved.

The chemistry between Withers and Wray has to do well to sustain the film, since there’s little action (there’s one decent fight scene towards the end, which is a surprise, given the one early is awful). The film only runs an hour and two minutes, but it actually seems to go much longer, a combination of it being all dialogue and all in one night. It’s not real time, but–for the most part–the viewer only misses eating scenes and some traveling scenes. The film seems to relate the rest of the characters’ evening… omitting, eventually, some story points to later surprise the viewer.

There’s one particularly nice scene–that park scene–where Wray and Withers kill five or seven minutes of the running time. The flirtation between the characters is rather nice, with Wray’s performance the most engaging. Withers is no slouch, but Wray assumes the lead in the film–the script doesn’t assign it to her–just because of her performance. In some ways, from what I’ve seen of her films, it’s her best performance.

The supporting cast is okay, unless they’re doing accents. Even if the accents are real, they come off poorly. But accent-free Dewey Robinson is solid. Maybe it’s simple–with the accents, the characters are automatically suspect, while without, there’s some added doubt.

The film ends somewhat nicely… a little too neat, a little too style-free. The majority of the film takes place at night with some well-produced street scenes. The last scene, an interior, lacks any flavor. The street scenes–with the rear projection of locations–give the film a real mood, one they should have kept.

Navy Secrets is a fine diversion–the title doesn’t really work for the content–and it’s a nice role for Wray.

2/4★★

CREDITS

Directed by Howard Bretherton; screenplay by Harvey Gates, based on a story by Steve Fisher; director of photography, Harry Neumann; edited by Russell F. Schoengarth; released by Monogram Pictures Corporation.

Starring Fay Wray (Carol Evans), Grant Withers (Roberts), Dewey Robinson (Nick Salado), Wilhelm von Brincken (Cronjer), Craig Reynolds (CPO Jimmy Woodford), George Sorel (Slavins), André Cheron (Joe Benji), Robert Frazer (Peter), Joseph Crehan (Captain Daly), Duke York (Babe), Arthur Housman (Singing Drunk) and Joseph W. Girard (Navy Captain).

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Canyon Passage (1946, Jacques Tourneur)

Canyon Passage starts out strange. Dana Andrews shows up in 1850s Portland (Oregon) and, after some character establishing, fends off someone breaking into his room. It got me thinking later if the unseen event leading up to the intruder is actually the film’s dramatic vehicle, the event setting off the action. Because Canyon Passage is an odd narrative. The film’s presented, in its first act, as an unfolding exploration of the characters’ situations. Andrews and Susan Hayward introduce the viewer to the film’s setting, to the lives and hardships of the supporting cast.

But Canyon Passage keeps an even tone throughout, never hinting at its action-oriented conclusion. Most of it is straight drama as Andrews romances Patricia Roc to the dismay of both Victor Cutler and Hayward. Hayward’s engaged to Andrews’s best friend, played by Brian Donlevy, however. Those last two sentences suggest Canyon Passage is something of a soap opera, but it isn’t at all. The attraction between Hayward and Andrews is gradually and gently developed; the film’s focus is far more on the friendship between Andrews and Donlevy.

I’d forgotten Jacques Tourneur directed Canyon Passage until the opening titles, and given his noir-heavy 1940s filmography, it seemed like an odd fit. But the complicated friendship between Donlevy and Andrews–Andrews’s feelings of responsibility, Donlevy’s resentment at Andrews having to be the response one due to his success–is really at the film’s center. Sort of.

The problem with identifying Passage‘s central focus is how little it has of one. Just like I was trying to identify narrative features, I was also trying to figure out some kind of rule for the film’s scenes–as in, who has to be in the scene for it to be a scene. Andrews disappears for a little while once his romance with Roc is established, with Donlevy and his gambling addiction taking over (the consideration given to Donlevy’s character, who’s basically just weak-willed, is incredibly sensitive and also sets Passage apart). But there’s little rhyme and reason to who gets a scene and who doesn’t–it’s probably something as simple as the source novel focusing on more of the supporting cast and adapting their salient scenes, but the film suggests it isn’t. It suggests a certain lyricism to its unfolding events.

The acting is all spectacular. Andrews plays the conflicted leading man better than anyone and his muted attraction to Hayward, present but clouded from their first scene, is fantastic. Hayward’s great too, with her reciprocal attraction being more of a complicated narrative development. Donlevy’s best scenes are probably when he’s on his own (Donlevy’s always seems more a leading man, even when he’s not the protagonist)–but his scenes with Andrews are singular. The supporting cast–Andy Devine, Hoagy Carmichael and Lloyd Bridges, in particular–are excellent. As the villain, Ward Bond is terrifying. Bond plays him with a mix of evil and stupidity–the stupidity making the evil even more scary.

Tourneur’s direction is great–only during the big travel scene in the first act does the editing get choppy, otherwise Tourneur’s got lots of good coverage. The film shot on location in Oregon and it shows (though Crater Lake isn’t as close to Jacksonville as the film suggests). Edward Cronjager’s Technicolor cinematography is beautiful.

And it doesn’t hurt Carmichael contributes some songs either.

The film starts solid, but just gets better and better. It’s great.

The Son of Kong (1933, Ernest B. Schoedsack)

King Kong opened in April 1933, The Son of Kong opened for Christmas 1933. The rush shows. The special effects really suffer–for whatever reason, when Robert Armstrong and Helen Mack are added to the little Kong’s shots, it’s fine, but when little Kong is added to Armstrong and Mack’s… it’s not. It’s like the focus is off on the rear projector.

But the story suffers more. Son of Kong runs a lean seventy minutes, with almost forty-five gone by before the little Kong shows up. That pacing is actually fine. It gives the movie time to catch up with Armstrong and skipper Frank Reicher, get them out to sea in a new story and then introduce the girl. There’s got to be a pretty face. And when Helen Mack shows up, Son of Kong takes a decidedly darker turn. It’s a downer–Mack’s stuck on a tiny port village with no prospects thanks to an alcohol father (a disturbing Clarence Wilson). Armstrong runs into an old acquaintance, who ties into the first movie, played by John Marston. Marston’s also playing a down and out drunk and the whole film sort of wallows in despair.

It opened with a fine comic sequence with Armstrong avoiding process servers, which mixed the character’s despair with being an amusing film experience… but later on, writer Ruth Rose apparently didn’t want to curb it. The scenes at the port are so depressing, it’s fully believable when Armstrong and Mack soon connect onboard the ship–even though their fortunes aren’t much better. At least they aren’t in that port anymore.

The relationship between Armstrong and Mack is Son of Kong‘s best feature. The sequel’s entirely superfluous and, at its best, is a simply another seventy minutes the viewer gets to spend with Armstrong. Here he gets to develop the character free of narrative constraint and his performance is excellent. Reicher also gets a lot more emphasis and he’s great too. But with Mack, Armstrong’s performance comes alive. There’s nuance and subtlety to their interactions, something more sublime than the film could ever hope for. It doesn’t hurt she’s a perfect counterpart to him, down to her voice.

When the film gets to the island and little Kong and the assorted monsters, it does all right for quite a while. It’s all rapidly paced, but it gets into the kinship between Armstrong and the little Kong, which is affecting thanks to Armstrong’s performance.

Then the movie ends. Had it gone on for longer–and I’m not even talking about a decent Armstrong and Mack kiss–I’m just talking about some more content, it would have been much better. Because the entry to the island, the set-up there, is all fantastic–and then it stops. Instead of the bigger sequel of today, it’s the smaller sequel–the pre-Empire Strikes Back sequel. When Skull Island sinks at the end, it almost seems like the filmmakers are ruling out any further, even cheaper returns… and it’s damn unfortunate this one wasn’t given more of a budget. As an inessential sequel goes, The Son of Kong has a lot going for it and it’s a shame it wasn’t able to fully realize it.