Tag: Dean Jagger

Elmer Gantry (1960, Richard Brooks)

Elmer Gantry is all about possibilities. Possibilities for the plot, for the performances, for the film. Director (and screenwriter) Brooks watches the film along with the audience, specifically the performances. Everyone’s just waiting to see what Burt Lancaster, Jean Simmons, and Shirley Jones are going to do next. Sometimes, Brooks emphasizes the performance with quick cuts—the first act has some spectacular sequences, with editor Marjorie Fowler, Brooks, and composer André Previn in divine sync—sometimes, he lets the camera sit. Perfectly lighted scene (courtesy John Alton) and Lancaster or Simmons monologuing.

Though it’s not all monologuing. Gantry’s got some wonderful banter sequences; the film’s practically designed for them.

Set in the 1920s, the film opens with Lancaster amusing a bunch of traveling salesmen. They meet up for Christmas every year because Lancaster knows where to find the best booze (Prohibition-time) and the best women (bored housewives). Lancaster’s holding court, telling dirty jokes, and having a great time; only then the Sisters of Mercy come in asking for a donation, and the heathens are shitty to them. So Lancaster does a sermon, surprising the bar (and helping him seduce a lady) with his seemingly devout religiosity. The scene establishes the character, that duality, and Lancaster’s exceptional way of essaying it.

The film will explore the contradictions in the appropriately lengthy second act, but first, it’s got to get Lancaster to church. Lancaster resists even as he sees posters for traveling tent revivalist Simmons alongside his own sales route. He ends up there one night out of boredom (and a busy housewife) and becomes immediately enraptured by Simmons. But Lancaster’s not her only admirer, though he’s the only one who’s planning to do anything about it. Both Arthur Kennedy and Dean Jagger revere Simmons. Jagger’s her business manager, a good Christian who thinks he’s enabling a prophet. Kennedy’s the atheist newspaperman tagging along with the tour.

Lancaster can’t give Simmons to give him the time of day—he’s too much of a smooth talker—until he seduces her band leader (Patti Page) and weasels his way along with them. But he still can’t convince Simmons he’s godly, except she doesn’t care, it turns out. She’s more than willing to put a smooth-talking bible thumper on stage if it gets butts in seats and pledge cards signed. There’s a business angle to it; after all, local churches pay Simmons and Jagger in advance to bring the revival to town.

We don’t find out about that side of things until around halfway through, when—thanks to Lancaster’s fire, brimstone, and sexy sermons—the local big city asks Simmons to bring her show to them. The film stays in the big city (Zenith, a recurring fictional city in novel author Sinclair Lewis’s work), which makes sense because it’s where Kennedy’s newspaper is based and Jones lives. Jones is an ex-lover of Lancaster’s with a very big, very sharp, very justified ax to grind. The film introduces her early, as Lancaster and Simmons start making news together, raising expectations for when she’ll figure into the main plot. Jones is exceptional.

So’s Simmons. Somehow, Simmons manages to give just as showy a performance as Lancaster (or Jones), but they’re absurdly extroverted, and she’s reserved. It’s Simmons’s revival, no matter what Lancaster or Jagger thinks. However, Lancaster and Jagger’s prickly relationship turns out to be one of the film’s sharpest, subtlest subplots. So good.

Kennedy’s good, too; he’s just not extraordinary. Lancaster, Simmons, and Jones all give these singular performances, while Jagger and Kennedy excel closer in character parts. Of course, Jagger and Kennedy’s characters are mostly reacting to the others, which also affects how they function and what they can do with the parts. The film’s practically overflowing with great performances; for instance, Page never gets enough.

All the technicals are excellent. Brooks’s direction is patient, enthusiastic, and reserved. He never rushes a scene or a delivery. He gives Lancaster and Simmons time for their preaching; the film’s about these characters’ relationship with religion, internal and external, and Brooks wants to showcase it. Done wrong, it’d be anti-climactic; Gantry doesn’t do it wrong, quite the opposite.

Alton’s photography, Fowler’s cuts, Previn’s music, all superb. Dorothy Jeakins’s costumes too. Lots of character development in the changing outfits, sometimes subtle, sometimes not.

Lancaster and Simmons are the whole show. Brooks and his crew are just trying to create the optimal narrative distance on Lancaster, specifically on his experiences with Simmons. Even when she’s not around, when it’s Lancaster and Jagger, Kennedy, or Jones, Simmons’s presence is always felt. She’s the show; they’re all spectators, except Lancaster wants to be on stage too. Kennedy and Lancaster have a great friendship throughout, two cynics on different paths.

As far as who’s better, Lancaster or Simmons, it depends on the scene. Though we get to know Lancaster better through the film, whereas Simmons gets to keep some secrets, which makes her performance inherently more complicated. They’re both so damn good. And then Jones. So damn good.

The whole picture. So damn good.

Forty Guns (1957, Samuel Fuller)

Forty Guns occupies that rare position of simultaneously playing like a parody of itself without being any campy fun. It’s a perfect storm of budget, cast, story, era, technology, earnestness, and director Fuller.

Oh, and it’s a singing cowboy Western. Well, singing bathhouse owner. Men’s only, which leads to a couple weird scenes where Fuller is palpably chomping at the bit to start a musical number and have everyone bust out. Sadly, the musical number never arrives, and instead it’s always just Jidge Carroll walking around and singing with some guy nearby playing a guitar.

Carroll has one song about Barbara Stanwyck (High Ridin’ Woman (With a Whip)) and a funeral song (God Has His Arms Around Me, which is an exceptionally problematic hymn about God gaslighting you after abusing you). They’re awful songs. And they’re silly. And Carroll’s not good enough to make them worth it. During the funeral song, it’s clear Fuller doesn’t have a bad idea here; he just doesn’t have the time, money, or onscreen talent to figure it out.

For the first act, Forty Guns feels a little like Fuller saw Seven Samurai and decided to American-it-up, meaning multiply the title by six and then do an entirely different movie.

Guns takes place in Tombstone, Arizona, where a Wyatt Earp-type (Barry Sullivan) comes to town to serve a warrant only to fall for local battle baroness Barbara Stanwyck. Sullivan’s got his sidekick brother, Gene Barry, and his baby brother, Robert Dix, along, though Dix is supposed to be moving out to California to be an “agricultural cowboy.”

The good guys are there on federal business, so when local marshal Hank Worden (a nice but not good cameo) begs Sullivan to help him stand up to Stanwyck, Sullivan gives him the “ain’t my wife, ain’t my life” and goes on his way. Only then Stanwyck’s shitty little brother (John Ericson) assaults Worden, burning out his eyes with coffee and shooting him; Sullivan decides he might have to do something about it.

The film quickly becomes a battle of the “wits” between Sullivan and Stanwyck, who don’t seem to know when they’re supposed to be flirting or not. Like their first substantial encounter: Stanywck’s got a great flirt going, and neither Sullivan nor Fuller acknowledge it. Later on, she’ll be hurrying through, and he’ll be trying to slow it down. Very strange, though it has a few good moments, which is a surprise since Sullivan’s terrible and Stanwyck’s doing everything she can to be terrible. It’s the part, however.

Stanwyck’s part is as follows. She’s a strong, self-made woman who went from cattle rancher’s daughter to most powerful land baroness in the state. She has forty riders with her at all times (her Dragoons). She dresses like the hostess at an extremely racist Mexican restaurant where only white people work. Her costumes will change, however, like when forty-nine-year-old Stanwyck—who does her amazing horse-dragging stunt in this movie—starts wearing around Southern belle outfits to show she’s in love with Sullivan.

Only they never say anything about her character arc. It’s terrible, it’s problematic, but it’s entirely offscreen because Fuller’s not interested.

I’m resisting looking up the trivia to see if he was stuck in some contract, hated the studio, and didn’t like Stanwyck, so Fuller made this movie.

Most of the acting is bad. Sullivan’s a lousy lead. The script’s not there but, wow, does he not have any charisma. Or the ability to walk distinctively, which is apparently crucial in the singing cowboy universe of Forty Guns. Barry’s a little better, though he’s got a romance subplot with Eve Brent, and he’s older than the actor playing her father (Gerald Milton) by a few years, and it’s obvious. He’s still rather bad. But he and Brent do have a couple reasonably effective lusty scenes together.

If it weren’t for the third act, Dean Jagger would break the movie. Jagger’s the corrupt numbskull sheriff who tries to save the day and makes things worse. He’s atrocious. Ditto Ericson.

Wait, is anyone not terrible?

Brent and Milton are okay, I guess.

Fuller’s good direction ranges from okay to excellent, obviously less excellent stuff than okay, but he’s also got some silly moves and some bad ones. He’s indifferent to the performances and Joseph F. Biroc’s competent but flat black-and-white photography. Since it’s so bombastic, it ought to be in color.

Fuller and editor Gene Fowler Jr. cover a lot in the cuts, but it’s still good cutting of bad scenes.

Harry Sukman’s music is familiar, varied, and tedious.

So, yeah, Forty Guns. Definitely could be in the “seen to be believed, but shouldn’t be seen” pile, but it’s so much comfier in the “what the hell was Sam Fuller thinking?” one.

Alligator (1980, Lewis Teague)

Alligator has quite a few things going for it. Lead Robert Forster is great, Robin Riker’s solid as his love interest and sidekick, John Sayles’s script has some excellent moments in it (some of them just being the attention he pays to Forster and Riker’s relationship), the giant alligator effects are solid, Larry Bock and Ron Medico’s editing is outstanding. Unfortunately, director Teague is a bit of a liability. He doesn’t direct actors well, he doesn’t set up shots well, he doesn’t understand scale when it comes to the giant alligator. The film is also shooting Los Angeles for Chicago, which comes off as pointless since there’s nothing Chicago about the film except the casting. They don’t even have second unit shots of Chicago. They shoot second unit against the mountains. Teague’s lack of ability and imagination with the budget hurt immensely.

Other problems–let’s just get them out of the way now–include the score and the plotting. Craig Huxley’s score rip-offs the Jaws theme way too obviously, but then the rest of the music is bad too so it’s not like it should be a surprise. Joseph Mangine’s photography is generally competent–especially given the amount of sewer shots–but lacks personality. Even though Forster and Riker have personality, Alligator doesn’t.

There’s some nice supporting work from Henry Silva as the absurd great white hunter. He comes off the best besides the leads. Dean Jagger is pretty lame as the evil industrialist who unintentionally creates the giant alligator because he’s an evil industrialist. I’m assuming Jagger’s part was supposed to be humorous, but Teague doesn’t have an ear for comedy. At all.

Michael V. Gazzo should be better as Forster’s boss. The only thing Teague does reliably is direct Gazzo’s scenes worse than anything else in the film. Perry Lang’s okay as a young beat cop, Bart Braverman’s okay as the noisy reporter. If the film just had more perfectly okay performances… well, it would still have all the problems Teague brings to it.

It’s hard to dislike Alligator, but only because of Forster, Riker and the film’s somewhat reluctant concentration on their relationship. Oh, and Silva. Silva’s really amusing. And you want to like Gazzo’s performance. It’s just not well-directed enough to get over the budget issues and it’s not well-written enough to get over the directing issues and it’s not well-produced enough to get over any of it. It’s all right. For a giant alligator movie set in Chicago but filmed in Los Angeles without enough good supporting performances, tepid direction and a too wonky script, Alligator is all right.

2/4★★

CREDITS

Directed by Lewis Teague; screenplay by John Sayles, based on a story by Sayles and Frank Ray Perilli; director of photography, Joseph Mangine; edited by Larry Bock and Ron Medico; music by Craig Huxley; produced by Brandon Chase and Mark L. Rosen; released by Group 1 International Distribution Organization Ltd.

Starring Robert Forster (David Madison), Robin Riker (Dr. Marisa Kendall), Michael V. Gazzo (Chief Clark), Dean Jagger (Slade), Jack Carter (Mayor), Sydney Lassick (Gutchel), James Ingersoll (Helms), Bart Braverman (Kemp), Perry Lang (Kelly) and Henry Silva (Brock).

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Revolt of the Zombies (1936, Victor Halperin)

What an unmitigated disaster.

It takes a lot for me to open with such a statement–well, maybe not, but certainly for a film I finished watching, even if it only does run sixty-two minutes.

But Revolt of the Zombies might be one of the worst things ever and really shouldn’t be. Okay, worst things ever is an overstatement, but it really should have been better.

It opens as a war film, set during the first World War, with zombies–the brainwashed kind, not the flesh-eating–being used as a weapon. Interesting idea, kind of groundbreaking for 1936. But then the film rushes off to Cambodia, where a bunch of Europeans take time off from the war to try and destroy the secret of zombies, so no other power can use it.

Then the film turns into this turgid soap opera with Dorothy Stone playing a scheming harpy who seduces and gets engaged to Dean Jagger in hopes of getting his best friend, Robert Noland, interested in her.

Once she does, Jagger loses it and starts turning everyone into a zombie in order to win her.

Or some such nonsense. It’s really hurried and almost impossible to follow… with some of the terrible acting–Jagger and Stone are particularly atrocious–to complement the terrible script.

There’s some nice rear screen footage of Angkor, but the film’s dreadfully cheap. There’s zero filmmaking ingenuity here–Halperin’s direction seems almost embarrassed.

It might’ve had a chance if they’d stayed in France.

0/4ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Directed by Victor Halperin; written by Victor Halperin, Howard Higgin and Rollo Lloyd; director of photography, Jockey Arthur Feindel and Arthur Martinelli; edited by Douglass Biggs; produced by Edward Halperin; produced by Academy Pictures Distributing Corporation.

Starring Dorothy Stone (Claire Duval), Dean Jagger (Armand Louque), Roy D’Arcy (Col. Mazovia), Robert Noland (Clifford Grayson), George Cleveland (Gen. Duval), E. Alyn Warren (Dr. Trevissant), Carl Stockdale (Ignacio MacDonald), William Crowell (Priest Tsiang), Teru Shimada (Buna) and Adolph Milar (Gen. von Schelling).

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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….