The Informer (1935, John Ford)

Smack-dab in the middle of The Informer is a romance between IRA commander Preston Foster and his gal, Heather Angel, sister to an IRA man (Wallace Ford). Foster and Angel steal moments together on one fateful night, tragic circumstances giving them unexpected time with one another, but those same circumstances sort of foreshadowing their very sad future together.

The Informer is Victor McLaglen’s movie. The whole thing is about his performance. Everything is about supporting his performance, even this subplot because it’s going to get into the ground situation of the supporting cast—see, McLaglen is the titular Informer and Ford is his victim.

The film opens with a title card setting the time and place—a particular night in Dublin in 1922. The entire film takes place over twelve to fourteen hours, at night, with fog covering the city. The fog’s so dense, it encourages Ford out of hiding in the hills so he can visit with sister Angel and mom Una O'Connor. The fog’s so cold, it sends McLaglen’s girl (Margot Grahame) out onto the street looking to make some money for food and rent. When McLaglen interrupts Grahame’s potential customer’s approach, they get into a fight about money. The film’s already established Ford’s wanted by the Black and Tans (the cops, working for the British against the IRA) and there’s a reward too. Just enough to cover passage to America for McLaglen and Grahame.

Once he gets to town, the first person Ford looks up is McLaglen—they’re besties, Ford the brains of the operation, McLaglen the brawn; all McLaglen’s recent troubles started after Ford had to lamb it. After a brief expository catch-up to lay out McLaglen’s ground situation, Ford’s off to visit his family. It’s okay, McLaglen tells him, the cops aren’t surveilling anymore.

We then get to watch McLaglen crack with desperation—not greed—and inform on Ford.

Until this point in the film—now, hopefully the Fords won’t get confusing—director Ford has been keeping a tight focus on McLaglen’s performance in close-up. High contrast black and white photography from Joseph H. August, every line and thought visible on McLaglen’s face. The first act of The Informer is mostly dialogue-free, relying on McLaglen and the exceptional diegetic sound use.

Until McLaglen informs, the cast is him, Ford, and Grahame. There are background players but as they’re the only three who matter, which separates it a little from the second and third acts; after McLaglen goes to the cops—and after the cops raid Ford and family’s home—the cast gets very big, very fast.

Foster has head sidekick Joe Sawyer bring McLaglen in for a meeting—McLaglen’s been booted from the IRA, which is why he’s broke and starving—because Foster assumes McLaglen will know who informed on his best pal. McLaglen’s already had about half a bottle of whiskey and he finishes another while bullshitting Foster and Sawyer. Foster buys it, Sawyer doesn’t; they’re meeting at 1:30 a.m. to figure it out.

McLaglen’s going to spend that time getting drunker and drunker, picking up a repulsive little sidekick in J.M. Kerrigan, who thinks McLaglen’s got money but doesn’t realize he’s got money. During their drinking and carousing, much of McLaglen’s early sympathy gets burned off. He’s not too bright—hence needing Ford’s brains and Kerrigan’s ability to sway him—plus he’s exceptionally drunk. Sawyer’s trailing him, counting the money he spends, but it’s more impressive how much whiskey McLaglen consumes.

He’s 6’3”, towering over everyone else in the film, and the drunker he gets, the more uncontrollable he gets. He’s a floundering bull, lashing out all around.

The film culminates in a trial, where McLaglen confronts the man he’s accused in his place—Donald Meek in an incredible performance; his accent is Irish-y McIrish-y but still deep and earnest—as everyone starts to realize maybe McLaglen’s got more going on than just being dim and drunk. The conclusion is very, very good and very, very Catholic. Director Ford goes all out.

In addition to McLaglen, fantastic performances from Ford, O’Connor, Sawyer, Meek, and Kerrigan. Kerrigan’s so loathsome you don’t want to give him any credit but he’s also really good at it. Angel and Grahame are fine plus; when they have their big scene together, they’re both better than when playing off the boys (sort of amusingly—it’s 1935 after all—every syllable seems to fail Bechdel, yet the whole film hinges on it). Foster’s… maybe the only part to recast. He’s fine too, he’s just a little too stoic. While Foster gets to show his humanity in the romance with Angel, Sawyer gets to show it in his bloodthirstiness, which is far more striking.

The film’s impeccably directed by Ford. Wonderful use of sound, composition, music—Max Steiner—August’s photography, George Hively’s editing, the sets—it’s all outstanding. And all of it is to showcase McLaglen’s exceptional turn as a tragic, dumb lug. In the end, the only one who can almost compare is O’Connor, but she only has to be exceptional for three minutes, McLaglen’s onscreen most of the ninety minute runtime.

The Informer’s great.

Stagecoach (1939, John Ford)

Until the action-packed last thirty minutes, Stagecoach is a class drama. A group of strangers and acquaintances are in a stagecoach, traveling West, post-Civil War. It takes fifteen minutes at the start of the film to get them in the coach, with some of the time spent on establishing the characters (and why they’re traveling), but there’s also the danger setup. Infamous Apache leader Geronimo has escaped the reservation with a war party and all the settlers are worried.

Luckily for the stagecoach passengers, Army calvary lieutenant Tim Holt and his men will be escorting them part of the way, then another unit will take over their safety. Everything’s going to be fine, even if coach driver Andy Devine (in a wonderful comedic performance) is very worried about it.

Riding shotgun with Devine is marshal George Bancroft. He’s got to find John Wayne—who also escaped and is on the run, him from a penitentiary—before John Wayne goes off to try and revenge kill Tom Tyler because Tom Tyler is a bigger badass. Just wait until you see Tyler’s hat. Bancroft knew Wayne’s dad and he’s sympathetic to Wayne’s plight but the law’s the law. And Tyler’s the bigger badass.

The passengers are an appropriately mixed bunch and where the class drama is going to arise. Claire Trevor and Thomas Mitchell are both being run out of town by the temperance league. Trevor for being a woman of ill-repute and Mitchell for being a drunkard of a town doctor. Trevor and Mitchell’s friendship is one of Stagecoach’s bedrocks; they’re great together. We also get the initial hints at Mitchell’s potential through his empathy towards Trevor.

Then there’s fidgety, obnoxious banker Berton Churchill (who’s got an amazing “why businessmen should be president” rant no different or more intelligent than modern ones), whiskey salesman Donald Meek, soldier’s wife Louise Platt, and professional gambler John Carradine. Platt’s going to meet her husband and Carradine’s along as her escort; he’s a Southern traitor who served under her father. There’s a great argument between Carradine and Mitchell over how to talk about the war.

All of the class differences are going to flare up once the stagecoach comes across Wayne, who’s looking for a ride, not knowing Bancroft would be riding shotgun. See, Wayne takes an immediate liking to Trevor, who Churchill, Platt, and Carradine have been treating like shit and Churchill and Carradine are terrified of Wayne so they can’t really be mean to her anymore. It leaves Platt in a lurch too, but she’s just following the societal norms and is a little naive about the world.

Of course, Trevor and Mitchell just assume Wayne’s naive about the world too and doesn’t really understand Trevor’s circumstances. But Wayne’s a simple guy; he’s going to kill the guys who wronged him and his family and go down to his ranch across the border… and he daydreams about Trevor joining him.

As much as he can daydream as things start going bad to worse for the cast; they can never find the right soldiers and it seems like the war party is ahead of them, burning down settlements.

They have an extended stopover at Chris-Pin Martin’s stagecoach stopover place, where everyone’s kind of got to get over themselves in a crisis—the war party’s close, very drunk Mitchell’s got to play doctor, and Wayne’s got to decide if he’s going to escape a distracted Bancroft.

Pretty much every performance is great, particularly Mitchell and Bancroft, but Carradine’s also got some excellent moments—with some intense character reveals—ditto Meek, who starts displaying a lot of depth fairly early on and it gradually increases quite well. Devine’s scene stealer funny (to the point you almost wonder if director Ford told anyone else he’d be interrupting them to take over); Trevor and Wayne’s arc is lovely and where Ford expends the most effort outside the action. He spends a lot of time getting the performances right (Wayne’s got one delivery where you wonder who came up with it because it’s so perfect and so unlike his subsequent work, even with Ford). And Trevor’s bigger arc, which requires her to stay quiet and react more than anything else, is quite good. The romance arc makes Wayne’s character and performance work; Trevor would’ve been fine on her own, but the romance just adds to it. Bert Glennon’s photography of that very gentle romance is, like Ford’s direction, only beat by the exceptional action sequences.

Platt and Churchill are both fine. They just don’t have the arcs the other characters get so there’s only so much they’re going to be able to do.

Technically, Stagecoach’s stunning. Ford’s direction, Glennon’s photography, Otho Lovering and Dorothy Spencer’s editing, which nimbly scales from silent resentment reaction shots to the stunt-heavy, grandiose action. The film’s frequently breathtaking, full of these wonderful gradual, patient sequences from Ford where he lets the action unfold for the camera instead of moving the camera until it finds the action.

Stagecoach is exquisite.

All That Jazz (1979, Bob Fosse)

There are few secrets in All That Jazz; the film immediately forecasts where it’s going, with clear shots of star Roy Scheider in the hospital amid the other quickly cut montage sequences. But these are flash forwards, as opposed to the present action and then we’re seeing flashback. Because we’re actually not even seeing “reality” yet. First we meet Jessica Lange, mysterious, magical, dressed in white, in Scheider’s head maybe. These sequences are—except when director Fosse and editor Alan Heim cut them to be so—disconnected from the main narrative. They’re even disconnected from Scheider’s eventual hospital bed hallucinations. They’re not in his imagination, not in his consciousness… maybe it’s his soul. Doesn’t really matter. Putting a noun to it doesn’t change how it functions, giving Fosse and co-writer Robert Alan Aurthur a way to do some show not tell exposition on Scheider’s history as well as give him an egoless outlet.

The film’s present action begins with Broadway director Scheider casting for his next production. Fosse goes through the introduction to Lange, then the quick cut montage sequence of Scheider gearing up for the day (Visine, Dexedrine, cigarettes, positive affirmations), and then gets to the first big dance number. The sequence—Scheider cutting auditioning dancers, then working with the ones who make it—is breathtaking. Set to a live performance (which adds a whole other layer) of George Benson covering “On Broadway,” it’s not just about Fosse’s composition, which showcases both the individual artistry of the dancers but also the scale of the audition as well as Scheider’s place in it, and he and Heim’s editing, which captures movement peerlessly, but also introducing the main supporting cast. Well, minus Ann Reinking. But we meet ex-wife Leland Palmer and daughter Erzsebet Foldi and then the show guys—producers William LeMassena and Robert Hitt, accountant David Margulies, song writer Anthony Holland—from all their various reactions, we get some grounding for Scheider. The show guys are able to tell his not show-minded interest in one of the dancers (Deborah Geffner), which Foldi and Palmer are able to pick up on as well, though they react differently. But Scheider’s not just doing the show, he’s also cutting together a movie, The Stand-Up, about a comedian (played by Cliff Gorman), and running the editing team ragged. It’s also causing Scheider’s contact guy with the studio—Max Wright—nuts.

It’s at the screening of the day’s cuts we meet Reinking, the girlfriend, which is just before we get to see what kind of womanizer everyone’s dealing with. Since leaving the auditions and editing his movie to exhaustion, Scheider’s also had time to ring up Geffner to make a date.

There’s a lot of humanity to Scheider already. The audition sequence, when he’s cutting people, there’s great care in the film to show his hesitations and sympathies. The scene between Scheider and Geffner is where we get to see how Scheider’s empathy has got a strange formula to it. He’s heartbreakingly rude to Geffner, absolutely piggish, but also aware of how his behavior plays out. The asides with Lange have set up Scheider’s convoluted, sorted sexual history with women—Keith Gordon plays him in the flashbacks to working as a young teen in burlesque theaters, where the dancers tease (and don’t tease)—and then we get to see the repercussions of his devout philandering play out with Reinking. Geffner is, apparently, to Reinking as Reinking was to Palmer. Only Palmer’s Scheider’s creative muse—he’s only doing the show so she can headline it—and Reinking’s clearly a good dancer. Geffner is not, adding further complications and giving us a chance to see how Scheider works with his dancers.

The only person Scheider can’t manage—though with Palmer, it’s more she lets him manage her—is Foldi. There’s this amazing scene where Scheider and Foldi dance, with her trying to talk to him about settling down and him workaholicing his way through it, and even though he’s in charge of choreographing the dance, everything she says takes him a little by surprise. The relationship between Scheider and Foldi—well, Foldi and everyone (Reinking and Palmer) have an amazing relationship. In the chaos Scheider drums up so he can control his creative efforts, Foldi’s the only other one able to weather it. Because, like Scheider, she’s native to it.

Scheider’s just cracked the show when the heart troubles go from giving him pause to requiring hospitalization. It’s approximately halfway through the movie. Then there’s the medical drama parts, which race by—once Scheider’s condition improves, Fosse does a lengthy montage sequence, cutting between various moments during Scheider’s hospital stay and some external factors—Foldi’s experience of her dad being hospitalized, the show guys trying to get another director (John Lithgow). Fosse will drop longer scenes in the montage, kind of taking a break before going back to spinning around, seeing all the various moments. It’s all fairly light. Lighter than anything else has been in the film to this point.

So when Scheider’s inability to control his urges hits again and he takes a turn for the worse, it’s time for the hallucination musical numbers. There are four of them, a showcase for Reinking, Palmer, Foldi, and then women in general. They’re all amazing. But whether or not they’re enough to keep Lange’s symbolic lips of Scheider’s….

The choreography of all the sequences is startling. None of them aren’t great. But then there’s how Fosse shoots them too. How Giuseppe Rotunno lights them. How Heim cuts them. It’s extraordinary work.

Scheider’s performance is great. Then Palmer. Then Foldi. Palmer doesn’t get any expository devices with angelic Jessica Langes to establish her character. She barely gets it in the script. She’s got to do it all with looks. She does it. And Foldi’s excellent. Everyone else is good… Reinking has to play a lot with a stone face and she does it well. The show guys are all good. They’re kind of the comic relief. Even as they cover their asses.

Lithgow’s fun.

The music, the dancing, the direction, the technicals… all of it is exceptional. Heim and Fosse’s editing—which is the subject of the movie in the movie subplot, so the editing is begging attention—is singular.

All That Jazz is a peerless motion picture.

The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018, Susanna Fogel)

The Spy Who Dumped Me has, rather unfortunately, a punny title. It’s an accurate title—the film’s about spy Justin Theroux dumping his civilian and not aware he’s a spy girlfriend Mila Kunis—but it doesn’t capture the mood of the film. No doubt, it’s a hard one to title—because even though it starts with Kunis going to Europe to help Theroux on a mission (after a very well-executed gun fight), it becomes more about Kunis and best friend Kate McKinnon as they find their respective knacks in life as spies. Or at least, movie spies, who have to worry about gun fights in public places, evil trapeze artists, and “Edward Snowden” cameos. Spy purposefully goes all over the place (and all over Europe), with the core mystery being engaging enough but never the point. Spy’s all about its performances, not the MacGuffins.

Which makes Sam Heughan’s smooth British spy guy stand out as a fail. He’s fine. He’s even charming at times, but he’s… nothing special. When Kunis has her pick of spies, Theroux or Heughan, she goes Theroux—who’s got his issues too—but at last he’s got some character. Heughan looks like a British spy caricature, acts like a British spy caricature. He’s no fun. Theroux’s not really fun either, but he doesn’t have to be fun. But Heughan? He’s the straight man to partner Hasan Minhaj, whose thing is just being a boring straightedge and he’s so fun at it. Or their boss, Gillian Armstrong, who plays a British spy supervisor caricature and makes it seem like a real character. Heughan’s fine, but he’s a bummer. Theroux’s… a bummer. At least one of them needs to be better.

Nicely, everything else is great so the two supporting dudes being a little lackluster doesn’t matter. And Heughan’s good with the fight stuff; he gets sympathy for being such a surprisingly solid action star. Spy gives Kunis and McKinnon a lot, keeping an undercurrent of humor. Heughan doesn’t really have the humor. Sometimes he’s got Kunis and McKinnon giving audio commentary, which brings some humor, but director Fogel handles it differently. Probably contributes to keeping Kunis and McKinnon in danger. They’re not because it’s still a fish out of water buddy comedy and it can’t kill either buddy but the film’s got to put them in danger for about an hour straight before a resolution. Spy isn’t short—it’s real close to two hours—and it’s really well-paced and keeping tension in an action comedy isn’t easy. Luckily there’s a lot of violence. Spy goes all in on the action violence; lots of great action set pieces; they’re what make the movie work in the first act. It demands attention.

Kunis is a good lead, but McKinnon walks away with it. She’s really funny. Even when the scene isn’t really funny, McKinnon’s really funny. And her third act stuff is impossible and she makes it happen. Fogel’s careful not to showcase McKinnon too much—without not showcasing her either—and giving Kunis her time but… it’s McKinnon’s show. She’s part of all the best material. Kunis gets most of it, but third act is all McKinnon’s. Also Kunis and McKinnon are great together, which makes everything feel a lot more even throughout. It’s just… Kunis gets a romance subplot and McKinnon gets to be hilarious. Shame Kunis doesn’t have better dudes in the triangle. But Heughan’s fine.

He’s fine.

Great cameos from Jane Curtin, Paul Reiser, and Fred Melamed. Ivanna Sakhno’s awesome as the Bond villain assassin out to get Kunis and, especially, McKinnon.

The Spy Who Dumped Me is really good at being really funny and good enough when it’s not being really funny.

Gregory’s Girl (1980, Bill Forsyth)

At no point in Gregory’s Girl does writer and director Forsyth wait for the audience. He’s not hurried, he’s not hostile, he’s just not repeating himself. Ever. The result is a whimsical but grounded film, not exploring much more than its characters could handle and often trying to make space to find some everyday magic. Forsyth doesn’t establish the limits of this magic until he goes rather far with it, which sort of retroactively makes earlier scenes more in the same category. The film doesn’t have a jumpy narrative pace but it does have a speedy one. The pace is key to the film’s particular charm and second only in importance to leading man John Gordon Sinclair.

Sinclair is disarming, sincere, and awkward. His closest confidante, the film goes on to reveal (after the first “act”), is little sister Allison Forster. Sinclair’s home situation, which does get covered at the beginning, appears to be one of ships passing the night. The film introduces his father (Dave Anderson) and mentions his mother, but they’re not part of Sinclair’s regular day and the film is all about the regular days of its cast. When Forster comes in, she helps explain why Sinclair’s so awkward. It’s not just because he grew five inches over the last year to tower over everyone else at school, teachers included, but because instead of having teenage boys as his primary social influence, it’s soulful ten year-old Forster. She’s already got a beau of her own, in what might be the film’s most mature onscreen relationship; the tweens understand dating, the teenage girls understand dating, the teenage boys not so much.

Forsyth gets a lot of quiet humor out of Forster’s beau, Denis Criman. He’s a similarly soulful ten year-old. He and Sinclair have a great scene together.

Albeit one where Forsyth’s limited composition techniques gets in the way—Forsyth relies way too heavily on close-ups, which could be a budgetary thing, but it’d be nice to have a two shot for some of the banter; the two shots do eventually come in, at the end of the film for the… action-packed (at least from Sinclair’s perspective) finale. Their arrival isn’t just welcome, it’s noticeable. Gregory’s Girl never amps up the pace or drama. Forsyth never changes the gentle, lyrical, detached narrative distance.

Including when Forster comes in—sorry, there’s something else to talk about with that sequence. Forsyth juxtaposes soulful Forster, with her wise-beyond-her-years (or just appropriately pre-hormonal) understanding of coupling, with already graduated Douglas Sannachan coming back to visit his pals. While Sannachan is explaining the sexual conquests being a window cleaner allows, Forster is hanging back, waiting to give Sinclair better advice. Forsyth constantly plays with the idea of mutual exclusivities in the film. Boarish bullshitter versus sweet and sincere, for instance.

But then there’s also the whole football thing.

Soccer football.

In addition to all the boys getting interest in the girls—though the film doesn’t discount the possibility they could be interested in boys (Gregory’s Girl, which doesn’t have homophobia or bullying, is a decidedly un-American teen movie)—they’re interested in footy. One of the main plot lines involves football coach Jake D’Arcy demoting former star striker Sinclair (he grew, it’s not his fault, he’s got too much height now to walk properly) to goalie and getting a new striker. Turns out the best striker in the school is a girl, Dee Hepburn. Sinclair immediately falls for Hepburn, watching how she can control the ball, while D’Arcy goes on this “girls can’t play boys sports but wait she’s better” arc. Only it’s a really quiet arc. Meanwhile Hepburn’s got to fight the preconceived notions. For the first two “acts” (quotation marks because it’s pointless to think about the film epically), Forsyth splits the narrative between Sinclair, D’Arcy, and Hepburn. Once the football ends—once Sinclair outgrows it—he’s ready for romance.

Even if he doesn’t understand it.

The only other subplot to last until the finish is Robert Buchanan and Graham Thompson’s. They’re comic relief; the boys even more inept at the romance than Sinclair. They’re a lot of fun. Thompson’s the silent one, Buchanan’s the motormouth. Their subplot is mostly aside from Sinclair’s main one, but the threads intersect early on to lay the groundwork for a pay-off in the finale. It’s another of the lovely, deliberate moves in Forsyth’s script. If only he liked two shots more.

Nice photography from Michael Coulter, fun smooth jazz score from Colin Tully. John How’s cuts are always a little too rushed, especially with the lack of coverage, but maybe the lack of coverage is why the cuts are a little too rushed.

Forsyth’s got some big moves he saves for the end (might be nice if they’d been foreshadowed) and they’re more than worth the wait. Gregory’s Girl is a delightful peculiarity.

This post is part of the 6th Annual Rule, Britannia Blogathon hosted by Terence Towles Canote of A Shroud of Thoughts.

The Stepford Wives (1975, Bryan Forbes)

The Stepford Wives puts in for a major suspension of disbelief request in the second scene–what is Katharine Ross doing married to Peter Masterson. They’ve gone from being a somewhat posh New York couple to a New York couple with kids and so they’re moving to Connecticut. Lawyer Masterson is going to take the train in to town while aspiring photographer Ross hangs around in the country, ostensibly taking care of the kids.

Ostensibly because they disappear for the most part, even though they ought to be around all the time, yet aren’t. Not keeping track of the kids, except when they need to be around for emphasis or plot contrivance, is one of director Forbes and screenwriter William Goldman’s fails. It’s one of their joint fails. Both have their own personal fails. It’s not even one of their major joint fails. It’s one of the “oh, yeah, they forgot about this subplot” fails. There are many.

Ross is bored in the small town. She doesn’t have anything in common with the other wives, who seem solely interested in keeping a tidy houses for their hard-working men. And, right away, Masterson joins the town’s men’s club and starts spending every night with the boys. In their big scary restored mansion (more in it in a bit).

Luckily, Ross soon finds the other new “Stepford Wives”, starting with Paula Prentiss. They’re fast friends who, after consulting with another new-to-town wife, Tina Louise, decide to start a women’s group. Except it turns out all the other women have to complain about is not having enough time to clean their houses, which Ross, Prentiss, and presumably Louise (who gets one of the lousier roles in a movie with an endless supply) all find peculiar.

Meanwhile, at home, Masterson is drinking all the time but loving hanging out with the boys. The boys–Josef Sommer, Franklin Cover, and George Coe–are a bunch of bores. Creepy silver fox Patrick O’Neal runs the club. He used to work at Disney. The other guys all work in cutting edge technology. William Prince, playing a retired pin-up artist, is the only one with any social skills. Masterson only drinks to excess in private, like he’s got something to hide from Ross.

Not to entirely spoil the movie, but it’s because he and his friends are plotting to murder Ross. It’s not like Stepford isn’t in the dictionary. The “twist” is a whole other thing I don’t even want to talk about. It’s not undercooked, it’s raw; there’s a lot of undercooked material in Stepford, but the twist hasn’t even been in the oven. Not the way Forbes and Goldman want to do it. Apparently they disagreed on the ending and Forbes got his way, but even if Goldman had it his way, it wouldn’t make up for the awful character development throughout the film informing it.

Masterson’s kind of mean to Ross. There aren’t any good men in Stepford, which is fine and accurate, but Masterson’s still too much of a jerk right off the bat. He’s such a trollish jerk, it’s hard to believe he’s a lawyer. He’s not a jerk in the right ways. It’s also hard to believe he and Ross ever had chemistry. In the first act, before the murder plot, he thinks he’s piggishly charming, even though Ross never positively responds to him. Goldman entirely slacks off on Masterson’s character establishment and development.

Masterson doesn’t transcend the material. It’s also not entirely the material’s fault. Maybe it’s just the casting director’s fault. Or just Forbes’s fault. Forbes has a shockingly bad handle on the material.

There’s satire and commentary about commercialism–at times–in Stepford Wives. Goldman usually comes up with adequate material and then Forbes utterly flops on it when directing the scene and the actors’ performances. You can see where the joke ought to be in Stepford, but instead of getting there, you watch Forbes repeatedly miss it.

The only excellent performance in the film is Ross. She’s outstanding. She’s got a crappy, underdeveloped character who can’t keep track of her kids, doesn’t have a believable “art” arc in her photography, and is inexplicably married to a jackass, but Ross is outstanding. The one thing Forbes does right is let Ross be alone. It’s no good once Forbes is trying generate scares–in that aforementioned scary mansion–but when it’s just Ross existing in a moment, it’s great. Ross is acting in a far better film than Stepford Wives. She’s just doing it in Stepford Wives.

Prentiss is likable but not good. She’s funny and seems to have a better handle on how to do the satire scenes than Forbes; she’s the only one who doesn’t look lost. But who knows because Forbes is hesitant to let the Wives act against one another too much in the same shot. He avoids those shots, preferring two Wives at a time in close-ups.

Paula Trueman is also fun. She apparently runs the town newspaper, or at least writes for it. She’s got a lousy part as it turns out. It’s like Goldman adapted the source novel without reading it. He never establishes continuity of behavior in the supporting cast. Trueman’s character doesn’t even get a name, even though the character–and actor–are a couple of the film’s stronger assets.

Otherwise the performances are basically just adequate. Even Louise, who gets a crap part, is just adequate. She just has more wasted potential than some of the other Wives, principally Nanette Newman. Newman is Ross’s neighbor who Ross never gets to meet without Prentiss being along because Newman has nooners with her husband. Is it for sure her husband? It’s worse if it is Sommer than if it isn’t, actually. There’s an extreme (and unexplored) connotation if it’s the latter, but if it’s the former… well, it’d be another of those major joint fails for Forbes and Goldman. Because even though the movie’s supposed to be satirical, Forbes doesn’t do metaphor. Even if it’s in the script. Forbes skips it.

I’m going a little longer than Wives deserves–unless one’s talking at length about Ross’s performance–but I do need to get to the finale. It’s like they ran out of money and decided to do a haunted house sequence. Because haunted houses always get scares. Except Owen Roizman doesn’t shoot Stepford like a thriller, he shoots it like a seventies drama. Michael Small’s score is for a seventies drama; mostly. When it’s trying for the horror, it’s for a bad horror movie. The music goes from one of the film’s pluses to minuses real fast.

So Forbes stumbles through the finale, which has Ross running from her fate. There’s no closure for Ross’s character arcs, not even the hint the character arcs have occurred. In fact, the finale gives one of the bad guys a monologue describing Ross to her. It’d be nice the monologue, which seems to greatly affect her, actually matched her character she’d been playing for the previous 110 minutes.

But it’s also a badly directed finale in a constrained set. It’s a bad, boring set and Forbes has no ideas for it. The movie deserves better. Ross deserves much better. She keeps Stepford afloat all by herself. Even as Forbes and Goldman try to sink it from under her.

The Stepford Wives is a peculiar, if predictable, fail.

Brenda Starr, Reporter (1945, Wallace Fox)

Brenda Starr, Reporter never has a chance. Worse, lead Joan Woodbury never has a chance. Of all the characters in Brenda Starr, Woodbury gets the worst. Well, wait. No. Lottie Harrison gets the worst part. She’s Woodbury’s cousin (and roommate) and she’s constantly making fat jokes at her own expense. Other characters get close, but Harrison gets the majority of the worst jokes. It’s unfortunate–but is apparently comic strip accurate.

Based on my cursory research–I read Brenda Starr back in the nineties for a bit, but had no idea going into the serial knowing who was from the comic strip and who wasn’t. Anyway, based on cursory research, only William ‘Billy’ Benedict is playing another comic strip character. He’s the idiot newsroom gopher. The script plays him for dumb laughs, but it never works. Benedict’s terrible, Fox’s direction of him (and the actors in general) is lousy, and the script isn’t funny. So they’re these painful scenes. And Benedict is on the bottom of the Brenda Starr caste system. It goes Benedict, dimwit copper Joe Devlin, photographer Syd Saylor, Woodbury herself, then Kane Richmond is at the top of the food chain. Alongside Frank Jaquet as Woodbury and Saylor’s boss, which is weird.

Richmond’s the dreamy police lieutenant who Woodbury always seems to be competing with. Because all either of them do is go to the scenes of crimes, either in progress or to follow-up, and get in trouble with the bad guys. Richmond never investigates anything. Woodbury never actually publishes stories. The Reporter part of the title is a complete misnomer after the third or fourth chapter because Woodbury becomes Richmond’s de facto deputy. Any information she finds, she has to turn over to Richmond and get permission to use it in a story. Managing editor Jaquet isn’t a crusader, he’s a stooge for the cops and sells Woodbury out every chance he can get.

And it’s no spoiler to say the serial isn’t about Woodbury going out against orders and saving the day. It’s not. It’s about her going out against orders and not saving the day until she learns her lesson. Once she learns her lesson, the bad guys start kidnapping her more. They’ve also hold her hostage various times throughout. Sometimes Woodbury gets to save herself, usually it’s up to Richmond.

Shocker the serial is much better when it’s Woodbury and not Richmond doing the saving. Richmond’s obnoxious and not very good. Woodbury’s sympathetic and fine in a poorly written part, but her performance never impresses. She’s likable though. She’s totally solid lead and if she got to do anything solo, the middle chapters of Starr would work much better.

It probably wouldn’t save the thing. The ending’s real, real bad. The serial rallies towards the end, at least in parts, with this subplot involving Ernie Adams and Wheeler Oakman. They’re two-bit crooks who are trying to blackmail George Meeker’s gang leader. He works for an unknown boss who speaks to Meeker and the gang. Starr’s constant with its thugs–Jack Ingram, Anthony Warde, and John Merton are more sympathetic than most of the rest of the cast too. Especially Ingram. Ingram can’t hide his exasperation with the serial from his face. It’s kind of funny.

Meeker’s pretty good. Adams and Oakman are both better than good, Adams more often. Oakman’s scenes with Woodbury are pretty weak, unfortunately, but because of the script.

Before I forget, sometimes screenwriters Ande Lamb and George H. Plympton repeat conversations. Especially with Adams and Oakman. It’s not just the same expository information, it’s the same lines. From the same character. And it doesn’t seem to be a mimeograph error, it seems like filler.

Okay, back to the acting. Saylor’s bad when he’s the butt of jokes, better when he’s sincere (worrying about Woodbury, kind of a dopey uncle), sometimes real funny when he’s doing physical humor, sometimes not. It all depends on how much Fox’s setups are going to mess things up. Fox will occasionally have a good action sequence or a good big scene but it’s somehow never encouraging; it’s always clear they’re flukes.

The script has occasional flukes too. Marion Burns is awesome as this magician who Adams and Oakman enlist to get Meeker. She gets a three or four chapter arc. Cay Forester gets an arc early on, which is unfortunately lost. Brenda Starr, Reporter is incomplete. It was thought entirely lost until it was restored in 2011, unseen for almost seventy years. The missing material is from early chapters and might have a good performance from Forester. She’s not in what’s left enough to gauge her performance. But it’s not like more Brenda Starr would make anything better. The serial forgets subplots–or introduces big ones deus ex machina. It doesn’t build to anything. A bad serial can seem like all it needs is the first chapter and the last, everything in between is inconsequential. Brenda Starr isn’t consequential until the penultimate chapter. And even then the last two episodes would be full of redundancies. There’s just no story.

The basic plot has Oakman knowing about a payroll heist, which happens before the first chapter starts. Instead of investigating the heist, idiot cops Richmond and Devlin hound Woodbury, who’s at least managing to investigate something. Meanwhile, Meeker is a model citizen running a crime empire out of a night club. Meeker plays it like a sleaze-bag running a crime empire out a night club, yet Richmond and Jaquet treat him like a prince. Even for what’s obviously a cheap, rushed serial, Starr gets mind-boggling dumb.

There’s some bad day for night photography from Ira H. Morgan. Brenda Starr mostly takes place at night–Woodbury will get woken up at two in the morning and go out and get in trouble while Harrison is at home cooking for her. Harrison cooks for everyone. Lamb, Plympton, and Brenda Starr creator Dale Messick sure are comedic geniuses. But there are a lot of poorly lighted night scenes.

There’s not much to like about Brenda Starr, Reporter. It makes casualties out its better cast members. Its visual range is from ugly to low mundane. It’s a fail because of the production, not the cast. Not even the bad ones. Not even Richmond’s cop. Who you end up hissing after a while, he’s such a patronizing dick.

Brenda Starr, Reporter (1945) ch13 – The Mystery of the Payroll

While most of the thirteen chapters of Brenda Starr, Reporter don’t deal with it, The Mystery of the Payroll is what the whole thing is supposedly about. And it gets solved in the last chapter. Though not really. I mean, it’s solved, but not satisfactorily. In fact, one of the big twists just raising more questions. Luckily, there’s no time to answer them because the serial is over.

After what should be an action-packed cliffhanger resolution (it isn’t, though there’s at least some action in a long shot), the story moves back to the newspaper office. Joan Woodbury is in trouble again with boss Frank Jaquet for disobeying copper Kane Richmond. Pretty soon, there’s a deus ex machina reveal and the wrap-up begins.

I suppose it’s efficiently executed; there’s quite a bit of wrapping up to do, even if none of it involves Woodbury. Given how poorly the serial leaves her, it’s probably better she didn’t get any of that material. It’s mostly Syd Saylor and William ‘Billy’ Benedict.

This chapter might be Benedict’s least annoying performance in the serial. He’s not a constant drag on the proceeding like usual. Or it might just be the “final chapter” energy.

Payroll is a disappointing end to a disappointing serial. It might have been nice, at least once, for Woodbury to take the titular Reporter job seriously instead of just being an adventurer.

Of course, the same goes for inept copper Richmond.

Brenda Starr, Reporter is a drag. Mystery of the Payroll might have been able to brace it after the last few chapters’ general competence. Unfortunately, it doesn’t.

Brenda Starr, Reporter (1945) ch12 – Murder at Night

Murder at Night features two murders at night. It doesn’t, however, have much night. Ira H. Morgan’s day-for-night photography is so inept, most of the action seems like it’s taking place late afternoon. The visual cues run contrary to the script, which has all the action taking place over hours.

So, basically, no one sleeps in Brenda Starr. Cousin Lottie Harrison stays up all night in case Joan Woodbury comes home and needs a meal cooked for her (and any guests).

Oddly enough, the script introduces a whole new element–there’s a mole for the bad guy at Woodbury’s newspaper. Woodbury doesn’t even know the bad guy’s identity. Everyone thinks George Meeker is on the up-and-up, not realizing he’s running a gang for the still unseen (and not really heard from lately) “Big Boss.”

There’s some energy from the finale chase scene, which does set up a real cliffhanger, but the chapter–penultimate or not–is more of the same from Brenda Starr. There are double-crosses, there are betrayals, there is repetitive dialogue. Practically all of Wheeler Oakman’s dialogue involves begging Woodbury to turn him over to the cops; she always refuses, with her reasons getting thinner as the chapter progresses.

The chapter also has a pointless flashback to another chapter. Time killer.

There’s a lot to wrap up in the final chapter–the “Big Boss,” the mole, the secret code (presumably the location of some stolen money)–and Starr needs to use all its remaining time wisely, which seems highly unlikely given the serial to this point.

Brenda Starr, Reporter (1945) ch11 – On the Spot

This chapter has Joan Woodbury not just getting out of a trap, she executes a great plan for it too. A surprising one. Not a lot of surprises in Brenda Starr, Reporter, so getting any of significance–even this late (On the Spot is the penultimate penultimate chapter)–is nice.

Overall, it’s not a bad chapter. Too much with idiot cop Joe Devlin. Starr’s either got condescending super-cop Kane Richmond (who hasn’t solved a single thing… though neither has Woodbury) or idiot Devlin. On the Spot gives Devlin the illusion of more to do, but then cuts away when it’s his turn.

Syd Saylor’s playing the same type of part–dimwit sidekick–but he’s at least good at it. And his character isn’t as much of a dimwit.

After the escape sequence, it’s all about Ernie Adams scheming until the cliffhanger. Of course Woodbury has inserted herself into that situation; she’s tried to call for back up, but William ‘Billy’ Benedict messes it up.

There are a lot of thin characters in Brenda Starr but Benedict’s got the worst. Whenever he shows up on screen, the serial becomes practically intolerable. I’m not sure if anyone could play the role of office numbskull with charm, but Benedict doesn’t.

Still, it’s a lot better of a chapter than the serial usually puts out.