Tag: Nina Foch

The Dark Past (1948, Rudolph Maté)

The Dark Past opens with a lengthy, confidently showy, and capable POV sequence. Lee J. Cobb is arriving at work, just like anyone–and the movie does a lengthy “peoples is peoples” bit–except he’s a police psychiatrist. It’s his job to save kids from becoming hardened criminals, thereby not being on the taxpayer dime. It’s progressive but not too progressive. Cobb’s not some wuss.

Cobb is outstanding in the film. It’s a sometimes silly role with the framing sequence, but when he gets to acting, it’s acting. Past is a remake of a stage adaptation, and Maté spotlights the actors. Well, Cobb and Holden. Cobb’s the protagonist and narrator, and Holden’s the star. The rest of the cast stays busy, but everyone gets left in the dust. It’s worst for Nina Foch. Second-billed, and she just disappears.

Oh, yeah, the setup. So, when Cobb has to convince a cop a petty criminal is a human being, he tells the story of his adventure with Holden. Holden’s so infamous everyone recognizes his name. But apparently don’t know anything about his very consequential involvement with Cobb. No spoilers, but the more interesting story is the direct sequel.

So, back to the setup. Holden and his gang crash Cobb’s dinner party. They need a place to wait for their getaway boat. While the guests give Holden’s gang minor trouble, Cobb gets around to psychoanalyzing Holden in a commercial for the Freud method. Holden’s a vicious killer who delights in toying with his prey, but Cobb sees some glimmer of humanity and tries to cure him. Foch kind of wants picket fences and helps Cobb.

The second act is Cobb slowly unraveling the very simple knot Holden’s tied out of his subconscious. Holden can’t unravel it himself because he has repressed memories, which only come out in his single, ever-recurring nightmare. There’s an inverted color dream sequence. It’s not as successful as it should be.

Despite his top billing, the film keeps Holden in reverse for a good while. Once the bad guys take everyone hostage, it takes time even to get Holden and Cobb talking. Partly because of Holden’s reticence, and partly because there are so many subplots cooking. Every single one of them gets left unfinished. The film often feels like the framing device is a distraction from the real story–which is sort of true because there doesn’t end up being a comparison between Holden and the kid criminal in the present. It’s not about criminals possibly being human; it’s about psychiatry curing them of their anti-social tendencies. Cobb’s not even concerned how the patient feels about things.

It’s craven, and it makes for some great scenes. Holden can’t figure out Cobb’s angle, and–with the frame defining the character already–neither can the audience. Cobb’s intentionally inscrutable; the only thing the frame helps with.

Lois Maxwell plays Cobb’s wife, who does get to fail Bechdel with Foch, but otherwise just sits around with son Robert Hyatt. He’ll end up with a bit to do before the movie drops him for the next subplot. Past is so noncommittal to its subplots, for a while near the end I thought they might even skip closing the bookend. At that point, with everything else unfinished, why do it anyway?

Maxwell’s solid. She doesn’t get much at all. Foch is good with a little more. Between Holden and Cobb, Holden probably has the edge. It’s a showier role, but he’s also got an arc. Cobb’s just proving one point or another.

While Past has its problems, the stars are phenomenal, Maté’s direction is good, and Joseph Walker’s black and white cinematography is beautiful.

This post is part of the 6th Golden Boy Blogathon hosted by Emily of The Flapper Dame and Virginie of The Wonderful World of Cinema.

My Name is Julia Ross (1945, Joseph H. Lewis)

The funniest part of My Name is Julia Ross is when May Whitty, just after having local vicar Olaf Hytten visit, says son George Macready needs to kill Nina Foch before a doctor shows up because while they might be able to convince no-nothings like the vicar, a doctor would be able to tell she’s not mentally unwell.

Whitty’s worried a doctor might listen to a woman, which would foil their plans, and obviously, a vicar would not. If ever there were a moment for Whitty to mention she wore a mask during the influenza pandemic.

Ross is the tale of Foch’s very bad job placement. She’s a single girl living in London; her landlady, Doris Lloyd, is a mean jerk, and the building’s maid, an enthusiastic Joy Harington, is a mean jerk who’s also a thief. The film opens with Foch back from another unfruitful job hunt. She finds a letter awaiting her—a wedding invitation from former co-lodger Roland Varno. He’s off and gotten married, even though Lloyd thought Foch would seduce Varno away from his fiancée. There probably ought to be a pin in that detail—and there’s sort of a half-pin—but Ross only runs an hour and five minutes, so there’s no time for subplots.

Besides the wedding invitation, Foch also finds an advertisement in the newspaper for an employment agency she’s never visited before. So she hurries off and has such a great interview with Anita Sharp-Bolster (who’s not in Ross enough; in fact, she inexplicably disappears around the halfway mark) she gets the job on the spot. Well, after Sharp-Bolster can bring Whitty and Macready in for the final interview.

See, the employment agency is a sham. Whitty and Macready are looking for someone to replace Macready’s absent wife, but just in body. Can’t collect on life insurance without a body.

Before Whitty and Macready can drug Foch and whisk her off to the seashore for the main part of their scheme, Foch has to go home and see Varno one more time. His fiancée dumped him at the last minute for moaning Julia Ross at inappropriate times. The scene where Varno explains it to Foch is somewhat painful, as the film flexes Varno’s confusion at the fiancée’s problem. It also reveals Varno’s going to be a weak link in the cast. Foch has to hold their slight scene up entirely.

It also might not help Varno’s next scene is during some of the film’s day-for-night shooting, which looks terrible even on the backlot. Burnett Guffey’s photography is usually one of the film’s strongest technicals, but the day-for-night’s bad. Luckily it’s only a couple scenes throughout. Ross is technically solid—especially for a B picture—with director Lewis having some strong scenes. Editor Henry Batista doesn’t seem to know how to cut them, though, so there aren’t any breakout scenes.

Most of the film consists of Foch in her prison—a seaside manor house—where maid Queenie Leonard can’t figure out why Foch isn’t happy to be married to a rich guy; she’s got such nice clothes, after all. Leonard’s not in on the scheme, so Foch is usually trying to convince her to help. But Leonard’s also not going to be believing any women, especially not over upper-crust Whitty’s say-so.

Throw in regular implications Macready is uncontrollably violent, and they’ve got a reasonably compelling hour-long mystery.

It doesn’t pay off in the finish, with the finale being particularly contrived, but it’s an okay B suspense thriller. Whitty’s good, but not singular. Ditto Macready, who Lewis knows how to direct… while Macready doesn’t understand how Lewis is directing him. It’s a peculiar situation. Finally, Varno’s a lukewarm, slightly damp towel (at best).

And Foch’s okay. She’s never not successful in the part, but never anything more.

My Name is Julia Ross is okay. It’s a suspense thriller told from the perspective of the people causing the suspense, not the person experiencing it, which isn’t a sound narrative structure; it’s also only sixty-five minutes.

We’re in the Army Now (1943, Jean Negulesco)

We’re in the Army Now is somewhat inexplicably a rarity. It’s a Warner Bros. “training short” for the Army (during World War II) but in the public domain. It’s got no IMDb entry, no Google results outside a citation from Doug McClelland’s Eleanor Parker: Woman of a Thousand Faces book (with the wrong title), yet it’s available on archive.org and YouTube. The book’s got a seemingly accurate cast list, so McClelland got his information from somewhere… but that somewhere hasn’t been digitized. Or isn’t available digitized anymore.

Anyway.

Most of Army appears to be documentary stock footage. Some of the action-packed shots might be from a Warner Bros. movie, but a lot of it is definitely real-life stuff. The short’s all about the establishing of the Woman’s Army Corps (WAC) and women from all walks of life joining the service so the Army men can do the important thing, be cannon fodder.

Now, since these training shorts were intended for Army consumption and not the general public, the jingoistic narration probably could use some thorough unpacking (the description of U.S. involvement in World War II as deciding the “nation’s destiny” is a little weird), as well as how the narration tries to appeal to women—you get new clothes to wear! Women are good drivers and mechanics too! But their real talent is at switchboards! Also this woman’s army lets ladies lie about their weight plus and minus fifteen pounds!

But the original narrative material is its own thing. The short follows four very different women through their basic training. There’s lead Nina Foch (lead because she gets the most close-ups). She’s the receptionist good girl. There’s Faye Emerson, she’s the slutty shopgirl. Ann Shoemaker is the motherly one (two sons in the war already) who has to lose weight to join. She gets a first and last name though, which is more than almost anyone else gets. Finally, there’s Eleanor Parker as the college girl.

I mean, you almost want to see a movie where Foch, Emerson, Shoemaker, and Parker are all basic training buds, even though none of the material in the film is good and it’s often cringe-y (at one point Emerson seems to be shaming Parker for being in college), but they’re all likable at least.

Negulesco’s direction is adequate, I guess. There’s nothing he’s got to do outside try to match a couple of the dramatization shots with documentary footage. It’s not heavy lifting.

I’m very curious about why We’re in the Army Now is somehow lost to history while still being extant but as the short itself is fairly superfluous. Outside seeing future stars slumming it in an Army training film.

An American in Paris (1951, Vincente Minnelli)

For most of An American in Paris, Gene Kelly’s charm makes up for his lack of acting ability. Even after it turns out the story’s about him stalking Leslie Caron until she agrees to go out with him. It’s okay after that point because she falls immediately in love with Kelly once she does. He makes her laugh.

Funny thing about Caron’s part being so razor thin? She’s the only one with a backstory. She’s the orphan of French Resistance fighter parents. Georges Guétary took care of her. And now she’s legal age and so of course Guétary wants to marry her. So there’s a lot of potential character development.

The script–by Alan Jay Lerner–does none. Caron’s introduction is a series of dancing vignettes, as Guétary describes her. Her personality changes with each. Then later it turns out she doesn’t get a personality at all.

Anyway. Adding to Kelly’s creep factor is how he picks up Caron when he’s out on a date with Nina Foch. She’s a wealthy American who likes Kelly’s paintings and wants to be his patron. Kelly thinks she’s after his bod. But he still harasses Caron on a real date. There’s even a scene where Foch yells at him and Kelly blows her off.

Immediately after it’s forgotten–as in, the script has Foch and Kelly talking about how it’s forgotten; basically Foch is around for American to mock. Not really for comic relief, but in a vaguely mean-spirited way. Because the movie’s not actually about Kelly arriving as a painter.

Oh, right. Kelly’s an ex-G.I. who stayed behind in Paris to become a painter. He lives above a café. His neighbor and pal is Oscar Levant. Levant’s old friends with Guétary, leading not to a love triangle so much as some situation comedy regarding Guétary and Kelly being after the same girl. Both men are old enough to be her father (though in Guétary’s case, only because he’s French).

The film opens with Kelly, Levant, then Guétary narrating an introduction to themselves. The film almost breaks the fourth wall and just has the actors directly address the audience. Given how laggy the device gets–not to mention how the film completely abandons it–a direct address might have worked better.

So while Kelly starves and struggles–before Foch shows up to save him in the second scene–but he’s actually an amazing singer and dancer. Everybody on the block loves it when he and Levant (a concert pianist who’s never had a concert) does a big musical number. The traffic stops. The pedestrians stops. Everyone watches and applauds.

You’d think Kelly would just get a job singing and dancing then.

His numbers are all good. Guétary’s not so much. He only gets one, though he also drags at one of Kelly’s. Sure, he’s French, sure, it’s Paris, but the French-ness overwhelms the musical number value. The accent. It’s distracting. And Paris’s Paris is already a little too fake. It’s beautifully constructed, beautifully lighted (Alfred Gilks’s Technicolor is gorgeous), but there’s barely anyone but Americans around. Foch, Levant (Levant’s gutturally American), an uncredited Noel Neill. Except Guétary getting a number to himself (and a slight subplot) takes up time and An American in Paris is always looking for ways to kill time.

Like Levant’s daydream where he’s playing all the parts in a concert performance. Pianist, audience member, accompanying musician. It’s funny. It’s utterly pointless. But it’s funny. And it’s beautifully executed with the photography effects.

Caron might as well be American. She gets so few lines it barely matters her accent is authentic.

The movie moves along pretty well until the third act, which has a seventeen minute ballet. It’s sort of where Kelly’s heart is broken and he finds himself in the Paris of his paintings but not really because the film never spends enough time on the paintings. Though Kelly can’t make the painting thing work. He dances great. He acts not great.

Spectacular choreography, beautiful sets, great photography, awesome editing from Adrienne Fazan. Okay direction from Minnelli.

American is an expertly executed musical. Shame about the script and acting.

1.5/4★½

CREDITS

Directed by Vincente Minnelli; story and screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner; lyrics by Ira Gershwin; director of photography, Alfred Gilks; edited by Adrienne Fazan; music by George Gershwin; produced by Arthur Freed; released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Starring Gene Kelly (Jerry Mulligan), Leslie Caron (Lise Bouvier), Nina Foch (Milo Roberts), Georges Guétary (Henri Baurel), and Oscar Levant (Adam Cook).

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Scaramouche (1952, George Sidney)

Scaramouche is a deliberately constructed film. I’m curious if screenwriters Ronald Millar and George Froeschel followed the source novel’s plot structure, because it’s a very peculiar series of events. It doesn’t open with the leading man, instead starting out with villain Mel Ferrer. Janet Leigh, as his love interest, gets introduced long before Eleanor Parker–who’s second-billed and leading man Stewart Granger’s love interest.

Except, of course, Ferrer and Granger are Frenchmen so the idea of them having one love interest is… against their character. But there’s also the matter of Richard Anderson, who sort of sets off the big plot–Granger’s want for vengeance–and on and on.

Director Sidney does a beautiful job focusing the viewers attention where it needs to be in each scene, but also where it’s going to need to be in the next scene. A couple huge details–maybe even three–only come up in dialogue. Scaramouche isn’t a film for the disinterested viewer.

But it’d be hard not to be enraptured with the picture. Charles Rosher’s lush color cinematography–which equally showcases the fantastic location action sequences but also the eye-shadow they’ve got on Parker–makes for a transfixing experience.

All the acting is good. Granger’s an able leading man, Ferrer’s fantastic as the villain, Parker’s outstanding in the most complicated role. In the second most complicated (the men aren’t complicated though so it’s not much), Leigh occasionally wavers but is still quite strong.

Wonderful Victor Young score too.

Scaramouche is delightfully thrilling.

In the Arms of a Killer (1992, Robert E. Collins)

Someone with a lot of time–and a low propensity for retching–could probably do a fine comparison between television cop movies of the late twentieth century and b-movies of the decades immediately prior. In the Arms of a Killer is absurdist in its portrayal of police investigation, between John Spencer’s disgruntled detective smoking cigars first thing in the morning (at crime scenes, ashing over evidence, I’m sure), Jaclyn Smith’s rookie detective being promoted from… I think it’s some kind of civilian job, Spencer breaking and entering (with his handy, leather-bound lock pick kit), to I don’t know what. It’s a constant assault on the sensible.

But none of these elements, or even the ones my brain has (thankfully) already expunged), are particularly damning. Any number of solid police thrillers have such elements. What’s different about this one is the writing. Robert E. Collins is an old TV director, so the technical competence shouldn’t be surprising (it is surprising, while watching the movie, since the events transpiring on screen are so stupid). Collins has a nice moving camera, gets away with the impression of a lot of long takes, uses color to symbolize. He’s absolutely solid as a director. As a writer, he’s a joke.

Spencer hates rich people. From Smith’s character’s last name (Quinn), he can tell where she’s from on Long Island and her family’s financial history. I’m not familiar with the Quinns of Long Island (are they descendants of Dr. Mike?–Arms of a Killer is badly written to the point I’m admitting I can make “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” references… wow). I’m not sure what else Spencer has as a character except that constant and goofy hatred. He’s a good guy underneath it all of course, I’m sure. Watching Spencer have to chum out one liners at every scene break is painful enough, but having to listen to him deliver that wretched dialogue is painful. It’s clear Spencer’s a good actor, even if this performance is bad–due to the script–and, given I watched the movie because of him, it’s terrible he never got recognition until so late in his career.

As for Smith… she’s just awful. Her hair never moves and neither does her face. Every delivery is wooden (and unbelievable). I can’t believe Smith made a career out of being in lousy TV movies, especially given the incompetence of her performance. You’d think someone would have realized how stupid the dialogue sounded when she delivered it.

Unfortunately, it isn’t Spencer who manages to rise above the material. Instead, it’s Michael Nouri, who also did a lot of similar garbage, who turns in a reasonable performance. Nouri seems disdainful of the material as he delivers it and maybe it endears him to the viewer. It’s like he’s the viewer’s friend, acknowledging the viewer–just like he is–is wasting time on this movie. Precious time never to be recouped… except for Nouri, of course, since he at least got paid for it.

The Return of the Vampire (1944, Lew Landers)

The Universal monster movies notably ignored modern events–when World War II came around, the clocks turned back on all their European-set monster movies to some indistinguishable point. The Return of the Vampire, a Columbia cheapie, on the other hand, sets the events directly in contemporary settings, both after the First World War and during the Second. It’s set in London, so there are bombing raids, which change the physical settings the film has to tell its story in. This acknowledgment of reality makes Return of the Vampire interesting. While it’s obviously cheap, it’s a neat idea, so’s the one where there’s a twenty-three year gap, which is only successful because of Frieda Inescort, who gives a good performance in her aging make-up.

I watched Return of the Vampire for a couple reasons. First, I might have owned it years ago on an EP VHS tape–though this viewing didn’t bring about any memory of it–and second, because it’s got a werewolf and a vampire. For some reason, that combination, mixed with the low budget, seemed like it might amuse. Unfortunately, the werewolf–played by Matt Willis–fails to amuse much. Willis is terrible as the werewolf, though sincere as the human alter ego. And I suppose Bela Lugosi is better in this film than he is in Dracula, but he’s still terrible. He’s getting old here and when the girl falls for him, it’s visibly absurd.

The acting makes a lot of Return of the Vampire passable. Inescort’s got good scenes with both Gilbert Emery and Miles Mander and Nina Foch seems like she’s a better actor than her part. The direction’s actually half good, usually going bad after a really good shot, but it’s probably better direction than most of the Universal monster movies of the era. Adding to the acceptability is Lugosi’s relatively short screen time and the film’s seventy-minute running time. However, if it didn’t have a peculiar approach, I doubt it’d be tolerable.

0/4ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Directed by Lew Landers; written by Griffin Jay and Randall Faye; directors of photography, L. William O’Connell and John Stumar; edited by Paul Borofsky; music by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco; produced by Sam White; released by Columbia Pictures.

Starring Bela Lugosi (Armand Tesla), Frieda Inescort (Lady Jane Ainsley), Nina Foch (Nicki Saunders), Miles Mander (Sir Frederick Fleet), Roland Varno (John Ainsley), Matt Willis (Andreas Obry) and Gilbert Emery (Dr. Walter Saunders).

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