Invisible Agent (1942, Edwin L. Marin)

Just about an hour into Invisible Agent, Axis allies Cedric Hardwicke and Peter Lorre have a falling out. See, Lorre’s smart, actually, while Hardwicke’s just devious. The film had been establishing those traits from the first scene—when they try to strong-arm the Invisible Man formula out of Jon Hall—but what I didn’t realize was Lorre was supposed to be Japanese. Hardwicke says something about how it works in Germany and Lorre starts talking about his country and I’m like… surely he’s not supposed to be Italian.

Nope. He’s supposed to be Japanese. After the falling out scene, the Japanese embassy in Berlin and its staff become a plot point (of course, Lorre’s the only non-Asian person playing a Japanese person so it’s still uncanny and gross and then also problematic just on the propaganda level). But until then… I was giving Invisible Agent a lot more—okay, maybe not more credit, but I certainly wasn’t cognizant of all its defects. If I ever suffer through again, I’m sure I’ll be all the more punished.

Invisible Agent is one of those bad then worse pictures. Sometimes it’s not terrible, but rarely. The first act, before the film introduces femme fatale Ilona Massey (also bad, but gets worse) shows up, is slightly better than what follows. Maybe because there’s still the potential for something in the first act. The concept—the grandson of the original Invisible Man (Claude Rains in the original, who the second film in the series established murdered hundreds) Hall becomes a spy for the Allies, going to Berlin to find some secrets—does at least have possibilities for good set pieces. But the execution of the concept is quite bad. And gets worse as things go along. When buffoon Nazi J. Edward Bromberg is going his screwball comedy thing, it’s actually surprising how bad Curt Siodmak’s script has gotten over the runtime.

There aren’t any good special effects set pieces. The special effects themselves aren’t bad and are at times even effective—the invisible man stuff is more reliable than the military-related stuff, which occasionally has something like a matte painting at an entirely wrong angle and director Marin and editor Edward Curtiss rely on speeding up the film way too much. But if you don’t see the remnants of Hall’s eyes under the cold cream (he’s caked in it so Massey can see him and they can flirt, or whatever it’s called when actors acting badly perform a poorly written script), it’s pretty impressive. Or impressive enough.

Because Invisible Agent is never enough. Hardwicke being really effective as a pervy old Nazi or Lorre being able to be good in an impossible, bad part are not surprising revelations. If Hall weren’t terrible it’d be enough. If Massey weren’t a combination of bad and lost, it… no, it wouldn’t be enough. Hall’s too bad. Siodmak’s script is too bad.

I hope Invisible Agent proves forgettable. I fear it will not. But I hope it does.

Escape Me Never (1947, Peter Godfrey)

Until now, I’d seen all of Eleanor Parker’s readily available films (the ones on VHS, laserdisc, and DVD) except Escape Me Never. She made two films with Errol Flynn, playing the lead in the other, Never Say Goodbye, and a supporting role in Escape Me Never. Ida Lupino plays the lead female. Parker plays the other woman, who’s married to Gig Young, who’s playing Flynn’s brother. It makes little sense and the whole film hinges on an agreement with the viewer never to question Flynn being irresistible.

The film is set in Venice in 1900. While the Venice sets, gondolas, canals and all, are quite nice, Lupino spends her first scene talking in 1940s slang. I’ve never seen Lupino in anything before and Escape Me Never certainly encourages me to be wary about seeing her in anything again. It’s not just the slang–or the special lighting she gets–or even her accent appearing and disappearing… she’s just really annoying (though her ludicrous costumes might contribute). Flynn is bad as well, somehow he’s impossible to take seriously as a tortured composer. Gig Young is fine, but looks and acts like he belongs in a different movie–one actually set in 1900….

Eleanor Parker–in one of her most glamorous parts–is so completely lost I can’t even mount a grand defense, which is fine, since it’s the studio’s fault. A few years before, Warner had given Parker the villainous role in Of Human Bondage (which she essayed brilliantly), but in Escape Me Never, her character’s not responsible for her objectionable actions and so the character has no depth. It’s probably Parker’s shallowest role, but it fits the film’s opinion of women. Women, it observes, are only of value for the reasons Flynn (and Flynn alone) says… There’s even a line about it. More than one, probably.

It’s impossible to imagine anyone speaking the film’s dialogue and conveying any sense of quality. Thames Williamson’s script is occasionally so ludicrous, along with Lupino’s shoddy performance, I was convinced the film was a farcical comedy. The scenes of Flynn, Lupino, and Young walking through the mountains, dressed in lederhosen certainly seems like it belongs in a farce. When the film moves its focus to a mountain resort (incredibly modern-looking for 1900 in Italy), the farce stops amusing and the viewer realizes it’s supposed to be serious. Escape Me Never came at the end of the studio system–Flynn and Lupino were on their way down while Parker and Young were moving up–and it’s a fine example of the system’s failings. It’s another one of those films I always had available on hand, but never watched for no good reason, only to watch it and wonder why I ever did, the original avoidance turning out to be fortuitous.

The Red Shoes (1948, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)

Well. What an incredibly unfortunate experience. The Red Shoes contains twenty of the most beautiful minutes ever put on film, the ballet sequence. It’s a visual feast–the film must be awe-inspiring on the big screen. The story, however, is awful. For a film with a fifty-two minute (of 134 minutes) first act, the idea of constructing a metaphor for The Red Shoes, Hans Christian Anderson’s story, amid a film about a production of a ballet of the same story… It’s incredibly unsuccessful. The final act is silly.

With The Tales of Hoffmann, the Archers just made an opera. They made a filmic opera. Maybe they couldn’t get the money to do a filmic ballet, but that’s all they really wanted to do with this film. The “real” moments still retain the surreal filmmaking techniques of the ballet sequence. Given this method, along with Marius Goring’s terrible performance–and utter lack of chemistry with female lead Moira Shearer (who’s passable, but obviously not an actress), the film is tedious at best.

Anton Walbrook is good as the Svengali ballet producer, I suppose, but he’s playing a type, but a character. There are deep character in this film. When, at the fifty-two minute mark, there’s an attempt at adding a layer to The Red Shoes, it’s so out of place you can see it grappling with the film’s existing structure. Amusingly, both Walbrook and Goring are eye-brow actors. Except Goring can’t do it and no one ever told him. In fact, Goring’s doing an Ernest Thesiger imitation (the Bride of Frankenstein mad scientist). In Tales of Hoffmann, someone else did a Thesiger imitation.

The film–for much of it–is incredibly well-made, incredibly beautiful to look at (again, it all comes apart in the third act, even if the Archers thought it was good stuff, it’s hard to package bullshit). It’s also an amazingly influential film. Bob Fosse lifted quite a bit for Cabaret, but the facehugger (!) from Alien is in here too. And Mel Brooks duplicated a scene here in Young Frankenstein–on closer examination, Gene Wilder’s whole performance in that film seems based on Walbrook’s here.

So, for the second time this month, the Archers failed me. Besides Powell’s Peeping Tom, I haven’t seen anything of their 1950s and after work… except They’re a Weird Mob, which was awful. I guess I’m not upset, because most of the film is watchable (if boring), it’s just that the Archers’ films usually are great. I never thought one (or two or three) wouldn’t be just as great.