Désirée (1954, Henry Koster)

With some notable omissions (paramours, they’re French, after all), Désirée is shockingly historically accurate. Napoleon really did have an ex-girlfriend named Désirée, who ended up the queen of Sweden, her husband his former general and then adversary. The film gets big and little details right. On its face, Désirée is just a resplendent CinemaScope melodrama. The costumes are gorgeous, the sets are grandiose, the performances are… well, more on the performances in a bit.

Jean Simmons plays Désirée. She does well aging up over the years, though the film’s makeup and hair designers roll back some of the aging in the third act. Not just for Simmons but everyone (except Marlon Brando). Simmons starts the film as a young woman—no longer a child or something to that effect—who happens to meet a man and invite him over to meet her sister, played by Elizabeth Sellers. The man is Joseph Bonaparte (played by Cameron Mitchell, who works his ass off in the background part). He brings along his brother, Napoleon (Brando). The brothers pair off with the sisters, Mitchell and Sellers, Brando and Simmons.

At this point, Napoleon’s a success, but not enough of one anyone’s listening to his ideas. The film tracks Napoleon’s story through Simmons’s informed, nearby perspective, which seems like a narrative device but, again, is actual history. Obviously, the better story is more focused on Simmons and Désirée, but it’s a CinemaScope melodrama. Brando eventually throws Simmons over for Josephine (Merle Oberon, who’s great in a glorified cameo), and Simmons ends up with general Michael Rennie. Rennie’s pretty sure Simmons spends her life in love with Brando, which provides a real subtext to their relationship as things get complicated first by Brando’s rise to power, then Rennie’s move to Sweden in opposition to him.

Most of the history comes through in Simmons’s diary entries (the film’s based on Annemarie Selinko’s historical fiction novel done as the real Désirée diary), and the second half of the film is just a series of quick, sometimes fun, sometimes not scenes. Simmons and Rennie have chemistry, Oberon and Simmons have chemistry (Simmons can have kids with her French general, Oberon can’t with hers), and then Sellers and Mitchell, every once in a while, show up and provide all this character. There’s also a whole movie in Simmons and Seller’s older brother and guardian (an uncredited Richard Deacon) bickering with the Bonaparte sisters; not sure of the historical accuracy of that bit.

While Brando and Simmons get the top billing, followed by Oberon and Rennie, it’s really Simmons’s picture. Brando should get an above-the-title “and” credit after Rennie. Every time Brando shows up in his fake nose and pound of make-up, he’s done like one portrait of the actual Napoleon or another. Director Koster shoots him in medium and long shots, sometimes to show off the sets, which is both good and bad. The bad is when they’re the wanting exterior sets, and the shots are framed to fit the set decoration exactly. Again, CinemaScope melodrama.

In his first scene with Simmons, Brando brings some intensity. It’s also the only scene where he’s shot in anything near close-up. The only other intensity he’ll bring later is rapey; he’s always trying to get Simmons alone, regardless of their spouses. It’s not a good performance from Brando. He’s got no insight into the character, either as written (Daniel Taradash’s script does give him some material, too, Brando just ignores it) or historically. Instead, Brando lets the make-up do the acting. And whatever Koster and cinematographer Milton R. Krasner do to make Brando seem shorter. Is it forced perspective, is it heels, or did they hire lots of taller people? Rennie was 6’4”, Brando was 5’9”, Simmons was 5’6”.

Anyway.

Simmons is solid in the lead. However, she doesn’t really get a character arc because her destiny (get it) is tied to Brando. Rennie’s okay too. Brando’s not incompetent, just not good or interesting. He’s got nothing to say with the performance.

The production’s decent, though Alex North’s music is a little flat. Koster’s a bland visual director, but he’s got his moments with the actors and some of the staging.

Besides wasting Brando as Napoleon, Désirée is a perfectly reasonable and surprisingly historical CinemaScope melodrama.

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.

Hungry Hill (1947, Brian Desmond Hurst)

I have never read Hungry Hill: The Novel, but even before I finished watching Hungry Hill: The Film, I’d decided it’s one of the worst novel-to-film adaptations. It’s impossible know what point novel author Daphne Du Maurier was trying to make but it didn’t come through in the film. If she was even just going for an engaging yarn, it didn’t come through. If she was even just going for rank, trite melodrama, it didn’t come through. Hungry Hill: The Film, which is dropping the subtitle from here on, isn’t even successfully melodramatic. It’s not successfully anything.

And maybe the weirdest thing about the film and it being an unsuccessful adaptation is the co-screenwriters… Du Maurier co-wrote the screenplay. She helped gut (based on my read of a synopsis online) her novel and reduce it to….

Not drivel (not exactly). But to the muck. She helped reduce it to the muck.

The first hour ends up being a love triangle between top-billed Margaret Lockwood and brothers Dennis Price and Michael Denison. It doesn’t start as a love triangle involving Lockwood, who takes forever to finally arrive and then doesn’t make things any better. The not better things are Price and Denison’s dad, Cecil Parker; he’s an asshole who pits his kids against each other but clearly favors Denison. Price ends up being the protagonist though, so Parker’s favor means little. Lockwood likes Denison because… he’s rich? At least with Price, she can like his unrestrained passion—Price and Lockwood share some of the flattest, most passionless movie kisses ever caught on celluloid. Especially since Lockwood’s supposed to be a big-time flirt. She’s just a big-time flirt who has zero interest in kissing.

For a while there are also two sisters—Jean Simmons and Barbara Waring. Waring’s around for background scenery and Simmons is there to give Price a chance to be a cool guy even though Parker hates him and Lockwood prefers his brother.

Once the film starts jumping ahead six months every two scenes, it’s only a matter of time before Simmons is presumably going to age out. She’s supposed to be the kid sister, after all. The film ingloriously dumps her and Waring, then remembers to start putting Parker in some old age makeup.

The last thirty or so minutes of Hungry Hill is all about the next heir, Dermot Walsh, clashing with grandfather Parker while mom Lockwood shields him from accountability. The film has lots of time jumps in this last thirty, but they’re rarely identified. Walsh never has to put on old age makeup, though I think his hair style changes. It’s all about him being a self-destructive blue blood alcoholic prick who’s in love with his brother’s fiancée (Eileen Herlie), who leads him on whenever the opportunity presents. There’s like one scene with Herlie and Lockwood (who’s in a bunch of old age makeup but’s still glamorous) and if they’d just chuck the script and have it about them rolling dudes in Monte Carlo or something… well, Hungry Hill would be saved.

Alas, no.

Hungry Hill is a multi-generational family epic with no interest in the family or the epic. The time it spends on Price and Lockwood’s… whatever isn’t just absent chemistry, it’s also narratively pointless given the third act. Again, whatever Du Maurier’s point for the story, for her 400-ish page novel, it never comes across. There’s a whole warring families thing between blue blood Parker and working class Arthur Sinclair but it’s never dramatic, which is an astounding failure given how the plot perturbs. It’s all over the title hill, where Parker is putting in a copper mine. Sinclair’s family used to own the land but Parker got it somehow because blue blood vs. working class. The kicker is Parker doesn’t even need the mine’s profits. He just wants to mine. Parker’s thoughtless, exploitative capitalist scum, Sinclair’s an annoying dick. Not exactly the fight of the century.

Price is likable and gives the film’s de facto best performance. Simmons is likable but she’s just there to prop up the mens. Walsh is terrible. Lockwood’s all right, all things considered. All right over all. She’s really boring at the beginning. Director Hurst seems to think her cleavage is the most important thing about her character. Parker’s bad. They’re all playing badly drawn caricatures. The film’s got no time for character development. The first act doesn’t skip months and years every scene but it tends to skip days and weeks. And it’s not like the actors get any help from Hurst, whose direction lacks even the wooden passion of the film’s kisses.

Real quick about Hurst. His direction is pretty bad, but some of it seems to be a lack of budget. At some point there just aren’t any exteriors available and establishing shots are rare—there’s always a lot at the mine though, like it’s the only real exterior they could shoot on. Hurst can show enthusiasm, however. For the fist fights. The film’s got two brawls and one mano a mano. Hurst all of a sudden remembers he can shoot things on an angle when the fists fly. Terrible, terrible angles.

Desmond Dickinson’s photography isn’t very good. Alan Jaggs’s editing makes no impression and is therefor fine. John Greenwood’s music starts out all right but gets utterly detached from the onscreen “drama.” It’s like Greenwood didn’t see the movie. Lucky him.

Hungry Hill does get one interested in the novel, if only to see what it was supposed to be like, though the film version might curse—oh, yeah, there’s a pointless Irish curse thing—anyway, the film version might curse the well. The hill. Doesn’t matter: the hill is an utterly unmemorable peak on a matte painting.

This post is part of the The Calls of Cornwall: The Daphne du Maurier Blogathon hosted by Gabriela of Pale Writer.

Mister Buddwing (1966, Delbert Mann)

Mister Buddwing is kind of amazing. And exceptional. But only if both those descriptors are used as pejoratives. Like. Wow. What a mess it is.

What’s funny is how director Mann maybe sees what he’s trying to do with the film but doesn’t see how he’s not achieving it. The film wants to be edgy mainstream and is instead occasionally rather painfully square. Most of the problem is leading man James Garner. He hasn’t got a handle on the performance—getting no help from Dale Wasserman’s screenplay and then somehow even less from Mann. Worse, Mann uses a lot of close-ups on Garner during the movie, usually for reaction shots, and he’s never good enough. He’s rarely ever giving a passing performance. Like, he just doesn’t get the part. No one does, apparently.

Garner wakes up in the first scene in Central Park, with Mann shooting in first person point of the view. The titles roll as Garner (we’ll soon find out) goes into the Plaza Hotel and looks at himself in a mirror. Pretty soon we figure out he’s an amnesiac who remembers absolutely no details of his life. Not even his name. He gets his first name from Angela Lansbury, who he calls when he finds her number in his pocket. Lansbury’s not great, but she’s a lot of fun. And the film will go awhile without any fun. So she should be in it more.

The last name he makes up coincidentally, narrating about it. Though it makes no sense why he so desperately needs a last name other than the script is trying to make the title’s relevance painfully clear. Garner’s narration is terrible. Poorly written, poorly delivered. And then it’s gone, which is weird because regardless of it being good or not, it makes sense. Garner spends a lot of the movie wandering around Manhattan by himself. It might help to know what’s going on since his expression has three varieties of blank. Blank ought to work for the character. Wooden even. But it doesn’t, because Buddwing is so amazing in how it never works.

There’s this amazing scene where Garner has been followed by an old man—the first half of the movie is lousy with over-interested supporting players talking to Garner so there can be exposition. Garner will eventually yell about how he can’t remember his identity; almost every scene has him yelling about not remembering. So the old man (George Voskovec) wants to blackmail Garner into being his manservant. It’s a weird, dumb scene and does absolutely nothing. Doing nothing would be fine if the film wanted to do nothing and, until that point, it seems like it might not want to do much. Garner has just had the first flashback scene, with Katharine Ross appearing as Garner’s years ago love interest. He thinks he knows her—in the present—then we get this long flashback sequence of obnoxiously cut together scenes—Fredric Steinkamp’s editing is really bad, both conceptually and practically (though a lot of both have got to be Mann’s fault)—where Ross plays the woman she’s not. Just in Garner’s imagination. Only it’s unclear how much of the flashback he remembers and how much of it is just for the audience’s edification. Narration might help clear it up. Even bad narration.

Only there isn’t any. There’s Voskovec harassing Garner instead.

It’s such a bad, deliberate move. Especially since the return to the present sequence opens up the film’s periphery as far as people go; Buddwing’s New York is really empty. Except cars. Mann’s inconsistent if there are people around Garner—who never interact because the film’s just the story of one ant among millions—sometimes there are montages with people in the background, sometimes the city’s empty. But there are always cars in the distance. It’s like they couldn’t get the shot they needed so they took the one they got and it didn’t work, which is pretty much the movie overall.

Eventually Suzanne Pleshette comes into the movie and then there’s a flashback where she plays the girl Ross had previously played. Later it’s Jean Simmons. Now, the flashback sequences are written even worse than the present, because they’re hurried along stylistically, but basically they’re all about Garner becoming more and more of an abusive shitheel. Now, the film would never characterize it as abuse, but it’s scary intense. Mann and Wasserman need to keep Garner sympathetic in the present so they have to demonize the “girls” in the past. They even do it in the present when Lansbury makes a too minor but very welcome near third act return.

Only then in comes Simmons and her present tense mystery woman—infinitely wealthy and drunk and with a past sounding just like the flashbacks and Garner’s memories. At least it seems like he remembers the flashbacks by the time the movie gets to Simmons. He never really shows it, not in performance or dialogue, but Wasserman’s script definitely implies it by the third act. We just missing it, even though the movie is supposed to be about Garner finding out his identity, not the audience finding it. Instead, the film informs the audience first, Garner offscreen. Dumb. And weird.

The third act actually has potential. It’s the strangest thing. If they’d pulled off the third act, Buddwing would probably work, even with Garner’s flat performance and Mann’s jarred direction. Because Simmons is fantastic. In the present. In the past she gets into the problem Ross and Pleshette had; Wasserman writes the part something awful. But in the present, just having fun, Simmons is fantastic. Makes up for Garner even.

Pleshette is affected in the present, but still sort of sympathetic. She’s nothing but sympathetic in the past because she gets the brunt of Garner’s abuse. It’s not really interesting—her affected present day performance—but at least it’s distinctive. Ross is background in her section, which seems weird since Lansbury at least gets her scenes. Ross just gets to be stalked. But in that genial sixties way because Wasserman’s shallow.

Strange small part for Jack Gilford—who wants to convince Garner he’s Jewish because Wasserman’s script is weird in addition to shallow. Joe Mantell’s terrible as a cabbie who seemingly tells Garner an important story. Raymond St. Jacques comes off best, even if he’s poorly written. He’s in the Simmons section and gets to enjoy in its heightened quality. Nichelle Nichols has a tiny part and is phenomenal. More than anything else in the film—even Simmons, who’s stuck with Garner—Nichols seems like she’s visiting from the alternate reality’s Mister Buddwing where it’s great. She definitely gets cinematographer Ellsworth Fredericks’s best work in the film.

Fredericks shoots a really flat New York city, seemingly unintentionally. Or is it supposed to be so dull even when it’s obviously not.

Kenyon Hopkins’s score is similarly disjointed. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, sometimes it’s wrong. The one thing the music needs to be right about, it’s never right about, even when it’s good. But it gets bad and wrong at some point near the third act and never gets any better. Even when Simmons shows up. She succeeds in the harshest of conditions.

Mister Buddwing would need to be seen to be believed. But it doesn’t need to be believed.

THIS POST IS PART OF THE ADORING ANGELA LANSBURY BLOGATHON HOSTED BY GILL OF REALWEEGIEMIDGET REVIEWS.

The Happy Ending (1969, Richard Brooks)

Jean Simmons doesn’t smile until over halfway through The Happy Ending. The movie runs almost two hours and has a present action of like eighteen years. The first eight minutes are a mostly wordless summary of John Forsythe courting Jean Simmons in the early fifties. The time period’s not important–even though the film taking place in 1969 is brought up multiple times in the present–because it’s a storybook (for the early fifties) romance where college girl Simmons falls in love with tax lawyer Forsythe. Eventually we find out Simmons dropped out to marry Forsythe.

The present action is at least sixteen years later because daughter Kathy Fields (in the film’s greatest botched role, both in Fields’s performance but mostly in director Brooks’s weird script–more on that later, obviously) is sixteen. The film opens on Simmons and Forsythe’s wedding anniversary party. Simmons wants to run off for the night, just she and Forsythe. He doesn’t want to cancel the party because it’d embarrass them in front of their friends. More on the friends later too.

So after Forsythe tells housekeeper Nanette Fabray–they’re not rich enough for Fabray to live with them, just to have her do the daily housework and hang out until after midnight when needed–to inform on Simmons’s behavior. See, Simmons’s drinks. Forsythe found her stashed booze. But it’s not open, because Simmons is recovering and being good. Through the course of the film, flashbacks reveal what she’s recovering from while also showing how she finally has to deal with it.

Simmons runs off to the Bahamas. Instead of doing the anniversary party thing, which makes sense as it’s later revealed Forsythe and Simmons don’t have any real friends, their social life solely consists of Forsythe’s clients. But we’ve already met some of the clients’ wives–they get together and get wasted and play cards in the health club locker room while berating one another for their affairs (Tina Louise has a small role as the ringleader; it’s a weird role, given Brooks’s narrative distance to it, but she does all right; the script gets her in the end). Because what the first half of The Happy Ending is about is how hard it is for women to get old and loose their looks. Brooks’s script has… sympathy, I guess, but no insight. It’s also completely unaware of the ingrained misogyny or… I don’t know what it’s called, patriarchal reinforcement. Like, the only two guys in the movie with any honest characterization are Bobby Darin as a gigolo and Lloyd Bridges as an adulterer running around the Bahamas with Shirley Jones, a friend of Simmons’s from college.

It’s a good thing they run into each other on the way too because Forsythe doesn’t let Simmons have any money since she got drunk and went clothes shopping a little while after she survived a suicide attempt, which she attempted after finding Forsythe was cheating on her with a client and–if the somewhat confusing flashback timeline does indeed progress linearly (and it seems too, Brooks’s numerous narrative devices are all way too obvious)–it’s not the first time. Forsythe goes with divorcing clients to Reno and then shakes up with them in their moments of weakness. No one ever says it because it’s not clear Brooks even recognizes it because Brooks breaks the script to coddle Forsythe. On one hand it works he never wakes up and gets it–the audience perception of Forsythe changes a lot throughout and a tad too gradually since it just gives Forsythe and Fields more screen time than they deserve, performance and character-wise. The reason it’s important it takes so long until Simmons cracks a smile in the present action, delayed by all those flashbacks? Because she’s been the subject of her own movie until then. Brooks does everything he can to avoid developing her character, particularly in the flashbacks. Because then he can’t keep Forsythe from ever seeming like a dick, which is the goal of the film. Right up until the very end.

Oh, right–Nanette Fabray’s housekeeper. Turns out she’s Simmons’s only friend, because even though her house is used for wife-swapping, Simmons herself has never participated. Because all of the other women have either slept with Forsythe or tried. Brooks is downright misanthropic in his depiction of upper middle class America but he never embraces it. Simmons is at least a dreamer; we learn right away she cries at all romantic endings, happy or sad.

Hence the title. At the wedding scene, Forsythe’s face is replaced with clips of happy endings from old Hollywood movies. Like, Brooks gives Simmons a very definite character and then avoids letting her develop the character for about half the movie. It’s not until she meets up with Darin’s gigolo where Simmons gets to do anything. Until then it’s mostly being functionally drunk and pissed off at Forsythe’s utter lack of self-awareness. And to get betrayed by mother Teresa Wright (who apparently had Simmons at age ten) and ignored by super-annoying daughter Fields.

Oh, right, and for Forsythe to track her by phone to make sure she’s all right since she’s a suicidal drunk and all. Like, he calls all the places she goes. The only place she gets any privacy is her bar, where her uncredited bartender doesn’t snitch on her to Forsythe.

And Brooks discreetly establishing Simmons’s situation is fine. It would even be efficient if it didn’t get so confused with flashbacks. There’s nothing but melodrama in the flashbacks as Simmons keeps getting into trouble and whatnot.

It’s such a relief when Jones and Bridges show up. Jones’s life philosophy as a professional mistress is a little… messed up. Like Brooks has good instincts for what kind of exposition the film needs, he just doesn’t write it well. Or direct it well. He’s got these walking and talking scenes where he cuts from location to location as the conversation continues. He doesn’t have a reason for the gimmick other than it maybe stretches the film’s verisimilitude to allow for these unlikely conversations and whatnot. But it’s not like the film has a different style first half to second, once the dumps become more frequent, it’s always the same dialogue tempo, with Michel Legrand’s music not booming but pressing, and Conrad L. Hall’s way too soft lights. Happy Ending really ought to look better. Like, it’s fine, but it ought to look a lot better. Brooks’s direction is tediously competent and always really safe. He never goes big, he never goes small; he avoids them equally. And it does the film no favors.

Simmons is really good when she’s got material of her own, which is maybe a quarter of her scenes. Brooks abjectly surrenders on trying to write her with Fields, which is incredible. Forsythe’s not good. He could be a lot worse. But he couldn’t be any blander. Somehow Forsythe’s bland performance doesn’t inform the bland character.

Jones is great. Bridges is better than any of the other male performances. Darin’s not good but at least he’s trying something, which is more than Forsythe does. Or Fields. Or Wright, who’s utterly pointless except for a late stage revelation which does nothing for the film but instead absolves fathers of responsibility.

Fabry’s good as the confidant, but she’s got zilch to do on her own. She’s literally the help in story and script.

There’s probably a lot you could pick apart in Brooks’s script and film, but it’s not really worth looking at in those terms. There’s gristle but so what. It’s not distinct gristle.

The film does give Simmons a potentially great role and then denies it to her. She’s still able to give a rather good performance. If the material had met her, however, it’d be a better one. Brooks is just too afraid to let her be the protagonist. It’s mildly then significantly disappointing, because he never improves and it’s almost two hours long.

Plus, Legrand’s music and (especially) the original songs grate.

And the Hall cinematography is wasted.

Happy Ending is a mess of missed opportunity and bad choices.

THIS POST IS PART OF 90 YEARS OF JEAN SIMMONS BLOGATHON HOSTED BY VIRGINIE OF THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF CINEMA and PHYLLIS OF PHYLLIS LOVES CLASSIC MOVIES.

Trio (1950, Ken Annakin and Harold French)

Trio is a lopsided anthology of three W. Somerset Maugham short story adaptations. The first two segments, directed by Ken Annakin, are deliberate, thoughtful, wry comedies. The last one, directed by Harold French–and taking up over half the film’s runtime–is something of a tragedy. It’s deeply, chastely romantic, full of characters and enough story to probably run for a feature length outing on its own. Instead, it gets fifty minutes to meander to its finish.

Maugham introduces each story, though not for very long. Trio cuts away from him while he’s in mid-sentence, the uncredited narrator always cutting him off. Kind of strange, given Maugham’s one of the three screenwriters. Apparently someone thought he’d detract from the adaptations themselves.

Annakin does an excellent job with the first two segments.

The first has long-time church verger James Hayter losing his job. His boss finds out he can’t read or write and so does the Christian thing, throwing Hayter out on his butt (because liability issues). All right, so the vicar does give Hayter the chance to become literate but Hayter isn’t interested.

Hayter’s performance is awesome. It’s a quiet, cautious, deliberative performance. Much of the segment, at least in the first half, is just understanding Hayter’s perception of the world and his place in it. When he does make his moves for the future, involving landlady Kathleen Harrison, the segment speeds up quite a bit without losing any of its personality. Very nice work from Annakin, Harrison, and, obviously, Hayter.

The second segment has a much bigger principal cast. Nigel Patrick is an annoying passenger on an oceanliner, who irritates his roommate (Wilfrid Hyde-White) and his roommate’s colleague (Naunton Wayne) and the colleague’s wife (Anne Crawford). While the first segment does end with a bit of a punchline, the second just moves along until it gets to a smile.

The strong direction from Annakin, the excellent performances–particularly Patrick and Crawford, but everyone’s quite good–it gets Trio to a good place before kicking off the third story… the feature presentation, as it were.

Before cutting from Maugham, Trio establishes Roland Culver is going to be playing an analogue of the author. He’s got tuberculosis and he’s going to a sanatorium to recuperate. Sanatorium is also the title of the story. There he meets a cast of interesting people who have all sorts of things going on. Well, not Marjorie Fielding and Mary Merrall, who inexplicably don’t even warrant getting credited. They’re the two gossips who pishposh about goings on.

The main story is between Michael Rennie and Jean Simmons. He’s a retired Army officer and a determined cad. She’s the young woman who’s spent over a third of her life recuperating from tuberculosis but she’s not easily fooled. We never see her not be easily fooled, Culver just talks about observing it multiple times. Rennie pursues her, Simmons doesn’t want to be pursued, but doesn’t entirely avoid his attention.

Meanwhile, Raymond Huntley is a bore to visiting, suffering wife Betty Ann Davies. And John Laurie and Finaly Currie comedically bicker. André Morell’s the doctor in charge of the place, though he really doesn’t have anything to do. Neither does Culver. He’s just around to give Davies someone to talk with about Huntley. Rennie and Simmons function on their own, Laurie, Currie, Fielding, and Merrall are all background.

From the start, director French clearly doesn’t have the same kind of handle Annakin did on the first two segments. French and cinematographers Geoffrey Unsworth and Reginald H. Wyer frequently rely on bad projection backdrops, and French really doesn’t have anything interesting to do with all the talking heads shots. He’s seemingly more concerned with keeping it appear busy.

But the segment gets by. All the performances are good, even if the actors don’t have much in the way of parts. Whether due to the adaptation or the original text, the potentially good scenes (for the narrative) get avoided so there can be occasional reveals. When it does wrap up, it does so without much resolution. French is going for melodramatic effect, nothing else; shame the actors’ fine work adds up to so little. The segment needs more time. It’s got too much for the anthology and not enough for the story itself.

Trio’s universally well-acted, fairly well-written, either well-directed or at least mediocrely, but the lopsided nature of the segments–in terms of runtime and overall effect–hurt it.

2/4 ★★

CREDITS

Directed by Ken Annakin and Harold French; screenplay by W. Somerset Maugham, R.C. Sheriff, and Noel Langley, based on stories by Maugham; directors of photography, Geoffrey Unsworth and Reginald H. Wyer; edited by Alfred Roome; music by John Greenwood; produced by Antony Darnborough; released by General Film Distributors.

Starring James Hayter (Albert Foreman), Kathleen Harrison (Emma), Nigel Patrick (Kelada), Anne Crawford (Mrs. Ramsey), Naunton Wayne (Mr. Ramsey), Wilfrid Hyde-White (Mr. Gray), Roland Culver (Mr. Ashenden), Michael Rennie (Major Templeton), Jean Simmons (Miss Bishop), Betty Ann Davies (Mrs. Chester), Raymond Huntley (Mr. Chester), Finlay Currie (Mr. McLeod), Marjorie Fielding (Mrs. Whitbread), Mary Merrall (Miss Atkin), John Laurie (Mr. Campbell), and André Morell (Dr. Lennox).

RECENTLY

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Perry Mason: The Case of the Lost Love (1987, Ron Satlof)

The Case of the Lost Love is a rather charmless Perry Mason outing. Jean Simmons is an old flame of Raymond Burr’s and he ends up defending her ungrateful husband (Gene Barry). Simmons and Burr have some chemistry as Lost Love establishes their history, but the movie’s so technically inept, it never quite comes across right. Simmons doesn’t get a reasonable character to play so Burr can’t react to her reasonably. And Barry’s just lame, both in terms of script characterization and performance.

There’s a lot of lame acting in the movie. Most of it is because it’d be impossible to be anything but lame given the technical problems. Director Satlof doesn’t give editor David Solomon enough coverage, but Solomon doesn’t even cut the stuff he does get well. And Arch Bryant’s photography is weak, so the shots rarely distinguish themselves visually. And Satlof’s really bad with the actors here. Not even Gordon Jump can survive Lost Love.

Performance wise, Barry, Stephen Elliott, Robert F. Lyons and Leslie Wing are the worst. Wing is the female cop who gets to get chatted up by William Katt. Katt’s got a far less interesting wardrobe than usual this time. He and Wing have negative chemistry. There’s really nothing going for Lost Love, not after Simmons starts getting strange and Burr spends all his time doing the investigating. Writer Anne Collins hints to doing something with Burr and Barry, but it doesn’t come across. It’s way too forced. And the less said about Simmons and Barbara Hale’s interactions the better.

Everything about Lost Love is either forced or contrived, which makes it exhausting. The weak supporting performances mean there’s no joy in seeing them get to act. Except Jonathan Banks, of course. He’s trying really hard and not getting any support from Satlof. There’s almost a good performance there. Almost, but not really.

And the mystery itself is lame. Collins tries doing something different with it–having Burr doing the important investigating, trying to present necessary information to the viewer to keep them interested, but it doesn’t work. Not just because of Satlof’s direction, but because the script’s poorly paced. And Hale gets nothing to do, which seems to be a trend.

Case of the Lost Love needed to percolate some more before getting released on an unsuspecting public.

Give Us the Moon (1944, Val Guest)

Even though Give Us the Moon ends up going exactly where I expected it to go, the film’s not predictable at all. It opens with Peter Graves’s post-war layabout. He was a war hero, his father (Frank Cellier) is a rich hotelier, he wants to do nothing with his life except enjoy it. Through coincidence, he meets a woman (Margaret Lockwood) who similarly wants to do nothing with her life except enjoy it–this idea of being idle following the war never gets a lot of attention, but many of the film’s characters share the thought–so Give Us the Moon will inevitably be a romantic comedy.

I mean, Lockwood’s got an assortment of fellow layabouts who provide wonderful support and she’s got an adorable, if troublesome little sister (a fantastic Jean Simmons). It’s got all the pieces for romantic comedy, only director Guest takes it in an entirely different direction. Eventually. Graves and Lockwood have immediate chemistry, which their characters recognize in one of the script’s most efficient moves, and for a while Moon stays on its predictable course.

Until Guest deviates, sort of demoting Graves from his position as protagonist, then even demoting Lockwood as his replacement. Instead, the film becomes this wonderful situational comedy involving all her sidekicks, led by Vic Oliver. Oliver’s a con artist, whether he’s trying to get a pound off would-be saviors or getting into a hotel suite, and he’s an absolute delight. The film introduces him, brings him back, starts lingering more on him and then realizes he’s the one to follow. Well, him and Simmons. She’s got a phenomenal arc, even managing to stay relevant when she’s off-screen for some of her character’s best action.

Graves is a charming lead; Lockwood gets some great material towards the beginning before joining the supporting ranks. Cellier’s good as Graves’s disappointed father and there’s wonderful support from everyone, especially Roland Culver, Eliot Makeham and Gibb McLaughlin. Guest’s direction is solid–though filming restraints are a little obvious (although it’s set after the war, Moon was made during it)–and it’s all technically fine. Maybe Phil Grindrod’s photography could be a little better, but it all works out.

It’s a delightful comedy, full of marvelous performances. It’s simultaneously fortunate and unfortunate Graves and Lockwood don’t have a better story arc. It’d be nice to have seen more of them, especially in the second half, but the film doesn’t really need them. There’s so much good stuff going on anyway; Guest’s wrangling of it all is most impressive.

3/4 ★★★

CREDITS

Directed by Val Guest; screenplay by Guest, Caryl Brahms, S.J. Simon and Howard Irving Young, based on a novel by Brahms and Simon; director of photography, Phil Grindrod; edited by R.E. Dearing; music by Bob Busby; produced by Edward Black; released by General Film Distributors.

Starring Peter Graves (Peter Pyke), Margaret Lockwood (Nina), Vic Oliver (Sascha), Jean Simmons (Heidi), Frank Cellier (Mr. Pyke), Roland Culver (Ferdinand), Max Bacon (Jacobus), Iris Lang (Tania), George Relph (Otto), Gibb McLaughlin (Marcel) and Eliot Makeham (Dumka).



THIS POST IS PART OF THE MARGARET LOCKWOOD CENTENNIAL BLOGATHON HOSTED BY TERENCE TOWLES CANOTE OF A SHROUD OF THOUGHTS

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Black Narcissus (1947, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)

If you’ve never seen a film by the Archers (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger), you’ve never seen a film like one of theirs’. If you have seen a film by the Archers, and you sit down to watch another of their films, you’ve still never seen a film like the one you’re about to watch. I’m not much of an Archers scholar–Black Narcissus is probably their most famous film and this viewing is my first–but I have seen a couple, not counting their last film–the awful Australian tourist film, They’re a Weird Mob (to be fair, Powell directed and Pressburger wrote, usually they shared duties).

The film’s story–nuns in the Himalayas–is probably impossible to describe. So much of the film depends on feeling, on little things. Describing the film, also, would cheapen it. I’ve had Black Narcissus to watch for quite a while and kept putting it off. I don’t know why, probably because the Archers made such great films, my expectations were incredibly high. The film met those expectations and even surpassed them, since it had me off-guard throughout, even when what I assumed was going to happen did. Black Narcissus doesn’t “give” the audience a lot, it expects them to take a lot from it. I can’t imagine what my response to this film would have been ten years ago, when I was first getting into Criterion laserdiscs and might have come across it for the Martin Scorsese commentary. (I could get Goodfellas at seventeen, but Goodfellas isn’t all that quiet).

There’s so much to look at in Black Narcissus, so many things one could talk about, I’ve mostly run out of ideas. The acting is great–the supporting cast has a lot to do and they’re all wonderful. You know these characters, even though there are quite a few, right away. Jack Cardiff’s cinematography is famous on this film and it is amazing–even more, I suppose, since it was all shot with miniatures and matte paintings–but the editing is fantastic too. The editing makes a lot of the film.

I can’t recommend this film highly enough… certainly don’t wait around to see it like I did.