Tag: Anna Lee

The Crimson Kimono (1959, Samuel Fuller)

The most gracious explanation for The Crimson Kimono’s politics are it takes place in a universe where the U.S. didn’t concentrate 125,000 plus American citizens in camps during World War II. Even in that universe, there are problems, like white people Glenn Corbett and Victoria Shaw gaslighting Asian guy James Shigeta about his ability to perceive racism. Short answer: he can’t, and he’s projecting his own feelings of inadequacy (for not being white) on others. Then a bunch of the movie is just about white over the age of thirty not being able to compete with coeds and strippers for men’s attention, which is the true validation.

Except for that metric shit ton of worms, Crimson Kimono’s pretty great, actually. It’s director Fuller with a crane, tracking shots, and location shooting in L.A. He loves it. He also loves showcasing the Japanese culture as it exists in L.A. He even lets it get ahead of him, like when he lets an actual Buddhist reverend (Ryosho S. Sogabe) act in addition to performing a ceremony. The ceremony’s for Bob Okazaki’s son, who received a posthumous Medal of Honor in the Korean War (there was one Nisei soldier who did at the time; it took the military until 2000 to award the rest). It’s a lovely sequence, even if it’s a bunch of icky propaganda. Ditto the Big Red One recruiting poster in Little Tokyo.

The film starts as a streamlined police procedural. Stripteaser Gloria Pall does her number, goes backstage, and finds a gunman waiting in her dressing room. The gunman chases her out onto the street, where he shoots Pall dead. The cops show up—Corbett and Shigeta—and while interviewing Pall’s manager (a fantastic Paul Dubov), discover she’d been working on a Japanese culture-influenced act… The Crimson Kimono.

The act involves someone breaking bricks before Pall strips. Shigeta goes to find that guy while Corbett tracks down the artist of Pall’s portrait in the kimono. The opening titles are a time-lapse of the portrait being painted, so it all wraps together very nicely. Again, Fuller directs the heck out of Kimono.

Thanks to the Skid Row Michelangelo Anna Lee, Corbett discovers the artist is a fetching coed (Shaw). While he’s trying to get her to identify their prime suspect through sketches and mug books, Shigeta tracks down Pall’s stage partner for the new act, George Yoshinaga. Yoshinaga’s a delight. So’s Lee, but Lee’s a delight because of her performance and the script; Yoshinaga’s a delight because he clearly loves being in a movie. There are a few other background actors who also clearly think it’s a hoot, but Yoshinaga’s got the most significant part.

Except then Corbett puts Shaw’s sketch of the suspect on the news, making her a target, so she needs to move in with them.

Oh, right. In a bold narrative efficiency, Fuller’s script makes Corbett and Shigeta roommates. At a hotel. They were in the Korean War together; Corbett, the white sergeant in a Nisei unit, and Shigeta the guy who saved his bacon. Now they’re L.A. detectives; Shigeta’s trying to make sergeant, but it’s a strange red herring subplot—everyone forgets about it about four seconds after it comes up. But they spend all their money living in a nice enough hotel suite, splurging on room service every once in a while (though it sounds like every day).

When Shaw’s in danger, they move her in with them. But don’t worry about it being untoward; even though Corbett very much uses the close quarters to put the moves on her, they’re going to bring in Lee to chaperone. And supposedly the rest of the suite’s full of plainclothes cops (we never see any).

Having all the characters together means Fuller doesn’t have to go anywhere to get the love triangle going—Shaw goes for soulful Shigeta instead of pretty boy lothario Corbett (who’s such a man slut even the local nuns have the hots for him)—but also Lee’s around to offer womanly advice to Shaw when needed.

Awesome efficiency and kind of a great idea for a TV show, albeit it one with racial gaslighting and intense copaganda.

The acting’s all decent with asterisks. Except Lee; she’s just great. Corbett’s playing a few years older (check the gray streaks), which doesn’t quite work. He’s blandly good-looking, blandly charming, but not in bad ways. Shigeta gets to do more, but often against amateur actors. Not to mention the eventual gaslighting. Shaw’s fine, though given how Corbett possessively paws her without her reacting, it’s low-key terrifying imagining what the movie thinks her life is usually like when she’s not a police witness.

Great black and white photography from Sam Leavitt, occasionally, forgivably bad cutting from Jerome Thoms (Fuller was shooting amateur actors and locations without filming permits, I’m sure the footage was a delight). Fine music from Harry Sukman. It’s a good-looking, extremely inventive low budget production. Fuller and Leavitt luxuriate in those long tracking shots.

Fun uncredited bit part from “Batman” police chief Stafford Repp.

Crimson Kimono’s problematic in the extremis, but also a darn good picture.

7 Women (1966, John Ford)

First, it’s actually 8 Women; Jane Chang doesn’t count because she’s not white. Though I suppose it could just be counting good Christian women, then Anne Bancroft doesn’t count. Women is a Western, just one set nearer to modernity and not in the American West. Instead, it’s about a mission in China on the border with Mongolia. By 1966, apparently Hollywood had decided it was no longer okay to do yellowface of Chinese people, but you could still go whole hog on Mongolians. Including eye makeup. It’s a lot. It takes a while for the Mongolian raiders to show up, and the film definitely saves its big swings for them.

Bancroft is the new doctor at the mission. She had to take the job because she wanted to get out of the States, where being a female doctor in the thirties meant a mostly unhappy life helping out in the slums. The mission’s boss is Margaret Leighton, who’s definitely the most tragic figure of the film. Women has many hurdles with Leighton’s character; she’s a repressed, self-loathing lesbian, which the film sensationalizes for a moment then sort of drops. The film also swings hard against Leighton’s religiosity, especially after a harder working missionary from elsewhere in the province stops in. Flora Robson plays that other missionary; she’s actually British, while Leighton’s character (Leighton herself being British) is a stuck-up American from the Northeast. Nevertheless, Leighton’s definitely the most interesting character in the film, even if the last third has her descending into religious blather as Bancroft has to maneuver a way to save everyone’s life.

Well, everyone who’s left. Women’s a Western with the Mongolians standing in for the Native Americans, but the Mongolians have automatic weapons and can kill lots of people at once. It’ll eventually be a combination siege and hostage picture, with Leighton, Robson, Sue Lyon, Mildred Dunnock, Betty Field, Anna Lee, and Chang hostages; Bancroft’s a hostage with privileges.

Bancroft gives an excellent performance. She lifts up every other performance in the film, which usually has religious constraints. The film calls bunk on Christian missionary philosophy, but it can’t actually call bunk on it, so it instead shows it playing out as bunk. Specifically American Christian missionary philosophy. Robson, Lee, and Chang, representing the British, come off a lot better. They’re at least aware of themselves. Leighton’s not happy unless everyone works themselves into severe depression thanks to cognitive dissonance, including protege and object of her affection Lyon. It breaks Leighton’s heart when Lyon takes to brass, worldly Bancroft; if it weren’t for Bancroft, no one but her would be getting Lyon’s attention. Dunnock is meek, Field is exceptionally annoying. Of course, Field’s also there with her husband, Eddie Albert. Albert always wanted to be a preacher, but the closest he could get was teaching badly at a mission school in China.

So there’s no one to impress Lyon except Leighton, who hates herself for wanting to do so, but at least it’s kind of sympathetic for a while. At least until she shows how much she’s willing to jeopardize others to maintain her control.

While Bancroft is top-billed, she’s more the catalyst than the protagonist. Especially in the last third, when Bancroft’s machinations off-camera with white guy in yellowface Mike Mazurki and Black guy in yellowface Woody Strode drive the plot. The film still can’t be too explicit about what’s going on–well, unless you’re a Bible freak like Leighton, who can’t stop spouting made-up scripture to damn everyone but her–so knowing looks and fade-outs do a lot of work.

The film’s got its technical high points—while director Ford goes for Western siege picture most of the time, he and composer Elmer Bernstein treat Bancroft’s arc like it’s more of a film noir. Okay photography from Joseph LaShelle. LaShelle should’ve gotten Ford to double-check the headroom, though. The framing’s always just a little off, with Ford sometimes struggling to fill the wide Panavision frame. There’s also some crappy “Oriental” music in Bernstein’s score. Not as much as there could be, but the rest of the music is good especially Bancroft’s themes.

Otho Lovering’s editing is fantastic.

7 Women (8) does pretty well with all its constraints, including Lyons, who’s likable but not very good, and is an outstanding showcase for Bancroft. It’s also classist, racist, misogynist, and homophobic.

But it does pass Bechdel with flying colors. And it’s got no time for hateful religious malarky.

This post is part of the Anne Bancroft: A 90th Birthday Celebration Blogathon hosted by Crystal of In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood.

The Sound of Music (1965, Robert Wise)

So much of The Sound of Music is exquisite, the film’s got enough momentum to get over the rough spots. The film has three and a half distinct sections. There’s the first, introducing Julie Andrews to the audience, then introducing Christopher Plummer and family to the Andrews and the audience, which then becomes about Andrews and the kids. The second part has Plummer returning after an absence, with Eleanor Parker and Richard Haydn along with him to give him something to do. Then there’s the strange part following the intermission, which probably played better theatrically when one really did get up and leave the film for a period. When it returns–and Plummer and Andrews’s romance takes off (at the expense of almost everything else)–the film is different.

Then the final part, with the Nazis out to capture Plummer, is entirely different. Unfortunately, director Wise is most ambitious in the setup of the film. He knows if he gets all the establishing stuff right–with Andrews, with Plummer and the kids–everything else will work out. The final part of the film with the family on the run is strong, but it’s action. Wise is doing this action thriller. It works because his direction is good, Ted D. McCord’s photography is glorious throughout, ditto William Reynolds’s editing, and there are some amazing sets. And some good humor in Ernest Lehman’s screenplay to lighten things appropriately.

This dramatic conclusion overshadows how briskly the film has changed itself. Andrews and Plummer are wonderful arguing and flirting, but their romance itself is tepid. Both of them get better scenes regarding it with Parker than they do with one another. And Wise doesn’t take the time to progress that part of the narrative organically when it comes to the kids, who are actual characters in the first hour of the film only to become likable accessories in the last hour.

The Sound of Music has a lot of things Wise has to get right in the first hour and he gets them, lots of things he has to establish so he can lean upon them later. It’s fine, but it’s never as good later on, whether with returning characters or song encores. The handling of the songs in the first hour and a half are glorious. Once intermission hits, Wise is in a rush and the film suffers. There’s so many great stagings in the first part–down to using an adorable puppet show to get in another song–the remainder, with far fewer group songs and instead questionable duets, can’t measure up.

Still, Wise has got all the right pieces. Plummer and Andrews, even when they don’t have much to do, are great doing it. There’s also Ben Wright’s odious villain, who Wise and Lehman had been foreshadowing (but not enough). The Sound of Music gets through the choppy waters to succeed. It just could’ve been better.

Bedlam (1946, Mark Robson)

Bedlam is about a third of a good picture. It’s like writers Val Lewton and (director too) Robson didn’t quite know how to make it work, what with having to have Boris Karloff in it. Karloff’s the villain, the head of a mental institute in the eighteenth century. Karloff’s so evil–and surrounded by so many bad people (the aristocracy has inmates perform for them)–the film’s always unpleasant.

But Karloff’s not the lead; the lead’s pretty Anna Lee and she learns being rich and comfortable is nothing compared to caring for one’s fellow man. She’s even got a Quaker love interest (Richard Fraser) who helps her find the right path.

Maybe half the film is Lee figuring out she should do something to help the people in the institution. Then the second half is after Karloff institutionalizes her.

During that second half, the film shines. Lee discovers she is capable of actively helping her fellow man instead of just advocating for his or her help. She’s got a great narrative arc, but Lewton and Robson have no idea how to write it. They give her awful patron–Billy House in a weak performance–way too much screen time.

As for Robson’s direction, he’s disappointing. Most of the film either takes place in House’s house (sorry) or the institution. The budget doesn’t exactly show, not until one realizes how unimaginative it gets.

Maybe if Lee were better. She’s okay, nothing more. And Karloff’s a caricature.

Bedlam is an unpleasant disappointment.

Non-Stop New York (1937, Robert Stevenson)

I’d almost say Non-Stop New York has to be seen to be believed, but it might imply someone else should suffer through the film’s endless seventy-some minute running time. It’s a completely idiotic British attempt at an American proto-noir.

The film opens in New York, so you have a bunch of British actors not really even bothering hiding their accents. The opening introduces James Pirrie, Anna Lee and Francis L. Sullivan. All three are atrocious, but only Sullivan is at all interesting in his bad performance. He plays the portly villain a little like a flaming Adam West “Batman” villain. However, being interesting doesn’t make his performance any less awful.

Luckily, Pirrie dies quickly, then Lee’s off to England to be falsely accused in a related manner and she has to get back to the States to save an innocent man.

The idiocy of the script manifests most prominently in Pirrie’s murder case. Lee is a witness to the crime and the entire world (literally) is looking for her. Except, of course, John Loder’s Scotland Yard inspector, who dismisses her.

Loder’s bad too.

Particularly annoying is Desmond Tester (who appears in the second half, which is Grand Hotel with intrigue, set on a double decker airplane crossing the Atlantic).

The only passable performances are Athene Seyler and, to a lesser extent, Frank Cellier.

In defense of Stevenson’s weak direction, he seems to think he’s directing an absurdist comedy.

Unfortunately, the joke’s on the audience (I couldn’t resist).

0/4ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Directed by Robert Stevenson; screenplay by J.O.C. Orton, Roland Pertwee, Curt Siodmak and E.V.H. Emmett, based on a novel by Ken Attiwill; director of photography, Mutz Greenbaum; edited by Al Barnes; music by Hubert Bath, Bretton Byrd and Louis Levy; released by Gaumont British Distributors.

Starring John Loder (Inspector Jim Grant), Anna Lee (Jennie Carr), Francis L. Sullivan (Hugo Brant), Frank Cellier (Sam Pryor), Desmond Tester (Arnold James), Athene Seyler (Aunt Veronica), William Dewhurst (Mortimer), Drusilla Wills (Mrs. Carr), Jerry Verno (Steward), James Pirrie (Billy Cooper), Ellen Pollock (Miss Harvey), Arthur Goullet (Abel), Peter Bull (Spurgeon), Tony Quinn (Harrigan) and H.G. Stoker (Captain).

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The Last Hurrah (1958, John Ford)

While the title refers to politics, The Last Hurrah also, unfortunately in some cases, provided to be the last hurrah of a number of fine actors as well. It’s a fitting–I can’t remember the word. It isn’t eulogy and tribute seems intentional. I don’t know if Ford knew he was making the last film like The Last Hurrah, and there are a number of films like it. Watching it, the mood, the politics, and James Gleason reminded a lot of Meet John Doe. Jane Darwell, for some odd reason since she wasn’t in it, reminded me of The Informer. The Last Hurrah is very much the last film in style–and not the exact style, Ford was a fluid filmmaker–Ford pioneered in the 1930s. While Touch of Evil is, I suppose, a later stylistic descendent, The Last Hurrah‘s the last in the storytelling vein.

Ford’s direction here, his composition, his camera movements, are all very assured, very confident, but also very sentimental. He ties the composition to the story content, letting the frame express what sometimes Spencer Tracy cannot verbalize. I meant to start with Tracy, then I thought I’d save him, but now’s as good of time as any. Tracy’s performance, down the way his nose moves when he breathes, is perfect, so perfect it’s hard to remember he’s Spencer Tracy and was probably in a hundred movies. He’s nothing like any of them. He and Ford, whether by design or accident, create something amazing–Ford for constructing the framed arena capable of supporting Tracy’s performance–but also needing nothing less–and Tracy for filling this field.

The other performances, starting with Jeffrey Hunter, are excellent. Hunter’s great as the film’s emotional reference. He’s new to it, so is the viewer. The rest of the characters have all been around a while; Hunter doesn’t lead the story or even provide an access point, he just shows on screen what the viewer is experiencing. Frank S. Nugent’s script’s something fantastic, but in the story it tells, and the way it tells it. Everyone’s good so it doesn’t make sense just to list them all, but Basil Rathbone’s great as a villain, Carleton Young as Tracy’s assistant, Dianne Foster as Hunter’s wife and Edward Brophy. Brophy’s role’s hard to describe and what he does for the film. Pat O’Brien too, in maybe the least flashy of the film’s roles for good actors.

The way Ford finishes it. Coda. Is coda the word I’m looking for? Maybe The Last Hurrah is coda for certain kind of film, the adult drama of the 1930s and 1940s. Anyway, Ford’s last shot in the film. The pace, the sound, the shadows. It gets blood from a stone. It reveals a deeper capacity for feeling. It’s his best close.

4/4★★★★

CREDITS

Produced and directed by John Ford; written by Frank S. Nugent, based on the novel by Edwin O’Connor; director of photography, Charles Lawton Jr.; edited by Jack Murray; production designer, Robert Peterson; released by Columbia Pictures.

Starring Spencer Tracy (Mayor Frank Skeffington), Jeffrey Hunter (Adam Caulfield), Dianne Foster (Mave Caulfield), Pat O’Brien (John Gorman), Basil Rathbone (Norman Cass Sr.), Donald Crisp (Cardinal Martin Burke), James Gleason (‘Cuke’ Gillen), Edward Brophy (‘Ditto’ Boland), John Carradine (Amos Force), Willis Bouchey (Roger Sugrue), Basil Ruysdael (Bishop Gardner), Ricardo Cortez (Sam Weinberg), Wallace Ford (Charles J. Hennessey), Frank McHugh (Festus Garvey), Carleton Young (Winslow), Frank Albertson (Jack Mangan), Bob Sweeney (Johnny Degnan), Edmund Lowe (Johnny Byrne), William Leslie (Dan Herlihy), Anna Lee (Gert Minihan), Ken Curtis (Monsignor Killian), Jane Darwell (Delia Boylan), O.Z. Whitehead (Norman Cass Jr.) and Arthur Walsh (Frank Skeffington Jr.).

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