New year re-views 1 - Journey To Italy

Widely misunderstood and shamefully ignored at the time of its original release in 1954 (though filmed in 1953), but now recognised as simply not one of Rossellini’s greatest films, but as one of the key works of modern cinema, JOURNEY TO ITALY is a deceptively simple piece, all of 80 minutes. There is little plot to speak of: a marriage is breaking down under the strain of a trip to Italy as we watch. But in its deliberate rejection of many aspects of ‘classic’ Hollywood narrative and its stubborn pursuit of a quite different aesthetic, its mesmerising storyline creates space for ideas and time for reflection, as we follow the wife on her travels around Naples and that Pompeii site.

Catherine and Alexander, wealthy and sophisticated, drive to Naples to dispose of a deceased uncle's villa. There's a coolness in their relationship and aspects of Naples add to the strain. She remembers a poet who loved her and died in the war; although she didn't love him, the memory underscores romance's absence from her life now. She tours the museums of Naples and Pompeii on her own, immersing herself in the Neapolitan fascination with the dead and noticing how many women are pregnant; he idles on Capri, flirting with women but drawing back from adultery. With her, he's sarcastic; with him, she's critical. They talk of divorce. Will this foreign couple find insight and direction in Italy?

This is so influential in lots of ways. Bergman's anguish and feelings of isolation summon up Monica Vitti on that island in Antonioni's L'AVVENTURA, and the couple drifting apart remind us of Mastroianni and Moreau in LA NOTTE - also Antonioni, like the sequences of Moreau drifting alone around Milan. Rossellini has an ideal location here too, overlooking the Bay of Naples, Sorrento, Capri etc. The early 50s Italian chic is to the fore too in those hotels where the couple idle their time. Sanders is terrific here, in one of his best films - as of course is Bergman.

I actually saw this initially as a kid, when most of it would have been over my head, but remember being fascinate by that Pompeii site and the statues of the volcano victims being redisovered.

These Rossellini films were hard to see for a long time, before the video age and the dvd revolution. I remember Ingrid telling us at the London BFI/NFT in the early Seventies (when I practically lived there) how important these films were in the development of Italian cinema, paving the way for Antonioni and the others, and how they were being rediscovered. She was right about that. More on VOYAGE TO ITALY at labels. It is also covered in Martin Scorsese's essential MY VOYAGE TO ITALY documentary.  It is engrossing to see again and perhaps the most modern of the other Rossellini-Bergmans: STROMBOLI, EUROPA 51, FEAR and the comic episode of SIAME DONNE, 

Next up: L'AVVENTURA, PLEIN SOLEIL, DESERT FURY, THE CHAPMAN REPORT, LES DEMOISELLES DE ROCHEFORT, BLOW-UP, and some French double-bills, and more Deneuve and Aimee .... 

THE Italian double bill ?

A friend and I were discussing fantasy double bills, here is my Italian choice ... two of our timeless favourites, discussed many times here, as per labels. Rossellini's 1953 classic VOYAGE TO ITALY (below) with Antonioni's L'AVVENTURA. The Rossellini really paved the way for those Antonioni classics. 

Alternatively, for great Fifties Italian cinema: Fellini's 1953 small town drama I VITELLONI twinned with Bolognini's 1959 saga of petty hoodlums and prostitutes, as scripted by Pasolini, but glamorised and how by Bolognini ... LA NOTTE BRAVA. (We are doing a post on Bolognini next ...).

Below: Jean-Claude Brialy and Tomas Milian in a rather steamy scene (for 1959) from LA NOTTE BRAVA. 

For Italian glamour and decadence, one could not beat Bertolucci's THE CONFORMIST with a Visconti: THE LEOPARD or his final masterpiece L'INNOCENTE from 1976.

I would also have to make a dramatic double bill of Wertmuller's 1975 opus SEVEN BEAUTIES, with maybe Vancini's THE LONG NIGHT OF '43 ...  and what about Visconti's SANDRA from 1975, with maybe Antonioni's LE AMICHE ....  endless possibilities. More on all these at Italian labels. French double-bills soon, perhaps. 

Jupiter's Darling, 1955

"Esther Williams stars as the beautiful woman whose love saves Rome in this whimsical musical delight. The year is 216 BC and almost all of the known world has fallen to the mighty Hannibal of Carthage (Howard Keel). In a bold and daring move, Hannibal has crossed the Alps with his army of men and elephants and is prepared for his final assault on Rome. As the new Roman dictator Fabius Maximus (George Sanders) frets about what to do, his fiancée the spirited and wilful Amytis (Esther) decides to visit the legendary barbarian general herself. Captured and accused of being a spy, she is brought before the formidable Hannibal who orders her to be executed. Amytis’s plea to “spare Rome” intrigues Hannibal and, inevitably, he falls under her spell. Now the might general must decide which he covets more: the conquest of Rome or the heart of the woman he loves. “A spectacular musical” JUPITER’S DARLING is sure to win you over."

This is my original review in 2010:

JUPITER'S DARLING. Another '56 musical
/ peplum  the only Esther Williams movie I saw in the cinema, its her last musical too [directed by George Sidney]. Set in Ancient Rome Esther is promised to emperor George Sanders (who is dominated by his mother Norma Varden! above); 
enter Howard Keel as a splendid Hannibal - he is as good here as in his other musicals like KISS ME KATE, KISMET or CALAMITY JANE. Marge and Gower Champion are terrific too and do a great number with painted elephants (real ones, not CGI). Esther does a bit of swimming (with moving statues, right) and saves Hannibal's life - he can't swim! This cheerful farrago would be a great double bill with MGM's other ridiculous costumer THE PRODIGAL where Lana is the pagan priestess and Edmund Purdom that prodigal son, great MGM production values though you have to laugh when Edmund wrestles with the stuffed vulture and Lana has some ritzy barely-there outfits before being stoned by the mob ...

I am now taking a week or so off, as moving house, going up in the world, in a new apartment block, 10 floors up - great views, especially at night!. We will return with more reviews, including a modern noir double bill: Fritz Lang's HUMAN DESIRE with MAN TRAP, Lester's hilarious and very gay THE RITZ from 1976, the original SHOWBOAT from 1936, and KILL YOUR DARLINGS .... 

All About Eve, once again

"Just because a man knows all the lines in ALL ABOUT EVE ....."

Lots of Oscar winners are on view again, so nice to return to Joseph Mankiewicz's 1950 double award winner (script and direction, among its six wins out of 11 nominations). It s not actually very cinematic at all as the camera just sits and records all that marvellous dialogue played by a cast at the top of their game, and one newcomer obviously going places , with those brilliant dressing room and party scenes. More on Mank and the others at labels. and I have just ordered that book I somehow didn't get around to: "All About All About Eve"!

The quotes alone are stupendous, IMDb only has 88 of them listed - and we won't include Margo's comment about seat belts !

Anne Baxter (after that comedy western A TICKET TO TOMAHAWK forgotten now apart from that Marilyn was in it too) and George Sanders (after another biblical, the enjoyable SAMSON & DELILAH) must have relished gettng their teeth into dialogue like this (while Bette had one of her most iconic roles after her years at Warners). 
Addison: Ah, Eve.

Eve: Good evening, Mr. DeWitt.

Margo: I'd no idea you two knew each other.

Addison: This must be at long last our formal introduction. Until now we've only met in passing.

Miss Caswell: That's how you met me... in passing.

Addison: What do you take me for?

Eve: I don't know that I take you for anything.

Addison: Is it possible, even conceivable, that you've confused me with that gang of backward children you play tricks on, that you have the same contempt for me as you have for them?

Eve: I'm sure you mean something by that, Addison, but I don't know what.

Addison: Look closely, Eve. It's time you did. I am Addison DeWitt. I am nobody's fool, least of all yours.

Eve:I never intended you to be.

Addison:Yes you did, and you still do.

Eve: I still don't know what you're getting at, but right now I want to take my nap. It's important...

Addison: It's important right now that we talk, killer to killer.

Eve: Champion to champion.

Addison: Not with me, you're no champion. You're stepping way up in class.

Eve: Addison, will you please say what you have to say, plainly and distinctly, and then get out, so I can take my nap?

Addison:Very well - plainly and distinctly - though I consider it unnecessary because you know as well as I do what I'm going to say: Lloyd may leave Karen, but he will not leave Karen for you.

Eve: What do you mean by that?

Addison:: More plainly and more distinctly: I have not come to New Haven to see the play, discuss your dreams, or pull the ivy from the walls of Yale. I have come here to tell you that you will not marry Lloyd, or anyone else for that matter, because I will not permit it.

Eve:What have you got to do with it?

Addison: Everything, because after tonight, you will belong to me.

Eve: Belong? To you? I can't believe my ears!

Addison: What a dull cliché.

Eve: Belong to you - why, that sounds medieval, something out of an old melodrama!

Addison: So does the history of the world for the past twenty years. I don't enjoy putting it as bluntly as this. Frankly, I'd hoped that somehow you would have known, that you would have taken it for granted that you and I...

Eve:: Taken it for granted that you and I...[laughs]

Addison: [slaps her] Now, remember, as long as you live, never to laugh at me - at anything or anyone else, but never at me.

Eve: [walks to the door and opens it] Get out!

Addison:You're too short for that gesture. Besides, it went out with Mrs. Fiske.

Addison: That I should want you at all suddenly strikes me as the height of improbability. But that in itself is probably the reason: You're an improbable person, Eve, and so am I. We have that in common. Also our contempt for humanity and inability to love and be loved, insatiable ambition, and talent. We deserve each other.

Margo: And this is my dear friend and companion, Miss Bridie Coonan.
Birdie: Oh brother.

Birdie: What a story! Everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end.

Birdie: Voila!
Margo: That French ventriloquist taught you a lot, didn't he?
Birdie: There was nothing he did not know.

Margo: Write me one about a nice normal woman who just shoots her husband.

Margo: I'll admit I may have seen better days, but I'm still not to be had for the price of a cocktail, like a salted peanut.

Margo: I detest cheap sentiment.

Lloyd Richards: The atmosphere is very MacBeth-ish... what has, or is about to, happen?

Margo: Remind me to tell you about the time I looked into the heart of an artichoke.

Eve: I'd like to hear it.

Margo: Some snowy night, in front of the fire.

Margo: Thank you, Eve. I'd like a martini, very dry.

Bill: I'll get it.

Bill [to Eve]: What'll you have?

Margo: A milkshake?

Eve: A martini, very dry, please.

Margo: She's a girl of so many interests.

Bill: It's a pretty rare quality these days.

Margo: She's a girl of so many rare qualities.

Bill: So she seems.

Margo: So you've pointed out, so often. So many qualities, so often. Her loyalty, efficiency, devotion, warmth, affection - and so young. So young and so fair...

Karen: I'm sorry, Margo.

Margo: What for? It isn't as though you personally drained the gas tank yourself.

There's tons more of course, but otherwise we would be quoting the whole movie! 

ALL ABOUT EVE remains a magnificent comedy drama with all that bitchy theatre talk, providing three great roles with about equal screen time: the curdled cocktail that is Margo, duplicitious Eve and decent Karen - and wisecracking Birdie too (though we don't see her once the action moves away from Margo's duplex - Mankiewicz later regretted that). Mankiewicz scored too the previous year with his A LETTER TO THREE WIVES (with another three great female roles, plus Thelma again), which we like just as much here - see Mank label - and he also did NO WAY OUT that year. He and Billy Wilder certainly wrote the best dialogue (Wilder with his collaborators Charles Brackett and I.A.L. Diamond - but thats another story.) as Billy's SOME LIKE IT HOT ties with EVE for the best script ever, with SUNSET BOULEVARD and DOUBLE INDEMNITY hot on their heels. I loved ONE, TWO, THREE as well and KISS ME STUPID was certainly a lot of fun! 

All About Eve cast photo !

How come I never saw this shot before ? Pity Thelma was not included ....

War weekend 3: Rex and the Crusaders .....

KING RICHARD AND THE CRUSADERS. Ah, 1954 that era of westerns and costumers, ideal for an 8 year old’s (as I was then) first forays to the cinema. Those cardboard castles – Prince Valiant, Black Shield of Falworth, and this Crusaders saga, plus The Silver Chalice, The Egptian, Sign of The Pagan, Attila etc. 
David Butler also directed that early Cinemascope western THE COMMAND that year, and KING RICHARD AND THE CRUSADERS is more of the same, maybe shot around the same locations, with the Crusaders clanking around in their chain-mail as the cavalry, and those hordes of infidels the redskins. 
In fact I think this crusaders epic is generally considered one of the 50 Worst Films Of All Time. 

We follow King Richard (grumpy George Sanders) and his cousin Lady Edith (Virginia Mayo – and yes, she really does say “War, War, is all you think about, Dick Plantagenet”!). Sir Kenneth (Laurence Harvey) loves the lady, but cannot marry her. So far, so turgid, as various knights plot to kill the king. 

Then, just as we are getting bored, things liven up with the arrival of Rex Harrison in blackface as Saladin. (This was a lean time for Harrison, after the Landis scandal of the late 40s, before MY FAIR LADY came his way). Here is an actor enjoying himself and relishing the absurdity of it all, as his Saracen leader runs rings around the crusaders and falls for the white Christian woman. The climax of course is pure cardboard castle time, how well I remembered that fight on the drawbridge … The Holy Land looks just like California and the whole Crusaders thing and why they are there remains a mystery. After the success of IVANHOE perhaps Warners thought another romp with knights and armour, and also from Scott – “The Talisman” – would be a success. KING RICHARD though remains a costumer to laugh at and enjoy its terrible absurdity.

Another forgotten '60s movie: The Kremlin Letter

The Sixties was that great era for Cold War thrillers, from the deadly serious (THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, THE QUILLER MEMORANDUM (scripted by Pinter, it was on tv again yesterday), THE IPCRESS FILE and its sequels (though Ken Russell's BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN was rather too over the top), Hitch's TORN CURTAIN and TOPAZ, and Huston's THE KREMLIN LETTER in 1969) to the farcical - those Dean Martin Matt Helm and IN LIKE FLINT capers, to the stylish Losey MODESTY BLAISE and lesser jokey items like SEBASTIAN, OTLEY et al... (the '70s paranoia thrillers were a different matter - see Thrillers label).

One could say too that John Huston's last great era peaked in the mid''60s (after NIGHT OF THE IGUANA), he then tried various other genres: costume dramas A WALK WITH LOVE AND DEATH, SINFUL DAVY, the genial western THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JUDGE ROY BEAN (with Ava Gardner as Lily Langtry) and had a late hit with FAT CITY in 1972 (when I saw him in conversation at London's National Film Theatre) - then more films of varying quality followed until that last final THE DEAD in 1987  (reviews at Huston label) ...

I saw THE KREMLIN LETTER on general release, but it quicky vanished from sight. It is the standard espionage drama, with some suspense, as we follow that international polyglot cast around Moscow. The preposterous plot involves a network of older spies from the West who recruit a young intelligence officer with a photographic memory to accompany them on a mission inside Russia. They must recover a letter written by the CIA that promises American assistance to Russia if China gets the atomic bomb - but here the cast is the thing: 

Oh George !

Orson Welles and Micheal MacLiammoir (old pals from Orson's Irish days), Max Von Sydow and Bibi Andersson from Ingmar Bergman land; Richard Boone, Patrick O'Neal and Barbara Parkins - a job lot from America. Also involved are Italy's Raf Vallone, England's Nigel Greene, Lila Kedrova, Dean Jagger, and most astounding of all - George Sanders, in drag, as he entertains in a gay club. Huston himself puts in an appearance too. (This was the time when he was acting a lot in items as diverse as THE CARDINAL, DE SADE, MYRA BRECKINRIDGE and of course, terrific in CHINATOWN).

It is an intense study of intrigue, double-crossing, revenge, sudden deadly action, plot twists and several nasty guys, no wonder there is that atmosphere of fear as it depicts the  callousness of the spy business... the Cold War never seemed colder. Sanders as ever acquits himself well, and Parkins is lovely. Max as ever is grimly efficient - just as he was in that 1975 THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR. THE KREMLIN LETTER deserves to be better known and certainly keeps one watching. Above: George and John have fun.

Rare '30s/'40s double feature: Michael Strogoff & Bel Ami

THE ADVENTURES OF MICHAEL STROGOFF, 1937. Part of an interesting double bill our BBC ran last Saturday morning, with the 1947 THE PRIVATE AFFAIRS OF BEL AMI. I loved this 1937 adventure “based on Jules Verne”, produced by Pandro Berman and directed by George Nichols, Jr. It actually looks and feels like a Josef Von Sternberg film, with so much going on, from Tartar hordes, gypsies, and a dancing bear! Anton Walbrook is our dashing hero who has to carry secret messages from Tsar Alexander II in 1870 Russia to a military outpost, while hissable villain Akim Tamiroff (chewing the scenery as usual) tries to intercept him. The film is only 80 minutes long but crams in so much it feels twice as long … Elizabeth Allen as the nice girl, Margot Graham as the bad one, even Eric Blore for comic relief, and Fay Bainter scores as our hero’s mother. Its all terrific fun, with torture, a supposed blinding of our hero and a rousing climax, the intense Walbrook (a Person We Like) is terrific here. (there was a 50s German version with Curt Jurgens, and a 1970 one with John Philip Law).

THE PRIVATE AFFAIRS OF BEL AMI, 1947. Having seen the recent RPatz version a while back (review at 2000s label), I was looking forward to this, as directed by Albert Lewin whose DORIAN GRAY and PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN are favourites of mine. While this starts out well tedium soon sets in and we are begging for it to be over as the two hour mark approaches … Not having read the De Maupassant novel I am not sure how faithful this is, George Sanders is ideally cast of course as George Duroy, that SOB on the make in 19th Century Paris. 
Angela Lansbury is a spirited Clothilde, Ann Dvorak is the married woman Madeleine Forestier, and John Carradine her ailing husband who sets events in motion … Frances Dee and Marie Wilson (Rachel, the prostitute) are also good but it all begins to drag, before that dawn duel with carriages and umbrellas in the rain – not quite how the recent version ends, interesting seeing '40s morality imposed on the material. There is one terrific scene of a frenetic can-can type dance Sanders and Lansbury engage in which leaves one as breathless as they are. 

Hollywood ! - an occasional series ...

For all you people out there in the dark: That astounding Buster Keaton stunt in STEAMBOAT BILL JR, and a few Norma Desmond and Margo Channing moments from SUNSET BOULEVARD and ALL ABOUT EVE, both 1950 at the dawn of THAT decade (as like PSYCHO, L'AVVENTURA, LA DOLCE VITA and THE APARTMENT ushered in the '60s), Billy Wilder's and Joseph Mankiewicz's tributes, curdled cocktails both, to the movies and the theatre - Bette and Gloria should have jointly won the Best Actress Oscar, and both movies replay endless re-viewings ...

"Fasten your seatbelts ..."

Both films of course were turned into musicals, successful at the time - several productions of the Andrew Lloyd Webber SUNSET, Norma is a great role for ageing divas (though not it seems for Dunaway, whom The Lord dismissed).  EVE became APPLAUSE, which seems dreadfully dated now with that '70s look and Bacall was, frankly, miscast. I saw the '73 London production, and seeing a recording of it recently was GRIM! - as per post on it (Bacall label).

Grand larceny

Philandering Commander Max Easton, now desk-bound and under-worked in the Admiralty, finds he suddenly needs to make some money when he falls for American Virginia Killain. When he hatches a plot to disappear in circumstances that suggest he has defected and then return to sue the papers, Virginia doesn't take much notice - at least at first.

How nice to discover a pleasant comedy that takes 3 players one likes and gives them a decent script and amusing situations. A TOUCH OF LARCENY is an amusing souffle that got rather lost among that great year 1959's big hitters.  James Mason, Vera Miles and George Sanders had been toiling throughout the 50s and earlier, often in routine movies, so nice to see them having fun here, Vera gets glammed up too as the ritzy American both the men are trying to catch. Sanders is the pompous bore she is engaged to but Mason is not rich enough to keep her in the luxury she is used to, so he hatches up a plot to be seen to disappear from his sensitive job in security, while he lies low on a remote Scottish island and can then return to sue the papers for suggesting he has defected to "the other side" (this was still the cold war era...).  How this plays out is amusingly done in Guy Hamilton's nifty comedy with some good supporting players too: dependables Harry Andrews, Robert Flemyng, Duncan Lamont and little Martin Stephens.

These were the stars' busy years, going from film to film, doing several a year. Mason still had Kubrick's LOLITA ahead and that good career of supporting roles as the '60s progressed, Sanders kept working too and Vera was soon back with John Ford in THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE. Now retired in her 80s she keeps silent on that long career but her 2 for both Ford and Hitchcock will always be in circulation - she was of course under contract to Hitch (the only actress who was, apart from Tippi Hedren) who was grooming her for VERTIGO but she famously got pregnant (and by Tarzan, no less - her husband Gordon Scott!), Hitch though put her in the smaller role of Marion Crane's sister Lila in PSYCHO in 1960, where she wears that unsuitable wig as her hair had not grown back from being shorn in that De Laurentiis war film FIVE BRANDED WOMEN (Silvana Mangano label). She was of course out west numerous times (not least in THE SEARCHERS, Westerns label) so good to see her ramping up the glamour here, while those two sardonic gents James and George relished having a decent script to play with.

 

There is a lot on James Mason here, including on the time I saw him at the London BFI NFT in the 70s, see label - I particularly rate his A STAR IS BORN, PANDORA & THE FLYING DUTCHMAN, NORTH BY NORTHWEST. I grew up on George's '50s costumers in KING RICHARD & THE CRUSADERS, MOONFLEET, THE KING'S THIEF, SOLOMON & SHEBA, and THAT KIND OF WOMAN, I CAN GET IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE, CALL ME MADAM, JUPITER'S DARLING etc, not to mention ALL ABOUT EVE and his '40s cad in SON OF FURY, among so many others, before his suicide in 1972. Soon: George and that eclectic cast in Huston's THE KREMLIN LETTER, 1969.

 

George with Sophia, left - and with Gina as Sheba, right.