Lists: Those Trash Classics ....

We have been here before - call them what you will: Bad Movies We Love, Guilty Pleasures, Trash or Utter Trash ... those delirious melodramas and just plain bad movies that are so enjoyable - most of the great ladies did some: Lana and Susan and Joan and Bette specialised in them later in their careers, while other great ladies like Olivia and sister Joan dipped their toes in the muddy waters too. 

I have covered them in more detail in my earlier reviews - click on Trash-A label to read on ...http://osullivan60.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/trash-favourites.html

Right now, I list them:

• PORTRAIT IN BLACK - Lana's crowning epic, from 1960 (whereas IMITATION OF LIFE is a cult classic)
• LOVE HAS MANY FACES - Lana does Acapulco, with Ruth Roman and those beach boy bums in speedos in 1966
• WHERE LOVE HAS GONE - Susan and Bette go head to head in this 1964 stinker 
• I THANK A FOOL - Susan and Finch should have been a great team but not in this weird meller shot in Ireland ...
• ADA - Susan in fighting form
  
• BACK STREET - the best of the Susan's ?, 1961
• STOLEN HOURS - love Susan's British remake of Bette' DARK VICTORY, in 1963
• SERENADE - Fontaine is stupendous in this Mario Lansz sudser, 1956
• ISLAND IN THE SUN - Joan 'romances' Harry Belafonte ... 1957
• LADY IN A CAGE - sister Olivia is trapped
• THE SINGING NUN - Debbie's worst in 1966, a travesty of the real Nun's Story
• A HOUSE IS NOT A HOME - Shelley chomps the scenery. 1964.
• SYLVIA - a Carroll Baker epic, its delirious, its delovely 
• SINCERELY YOURS - Liberace's sickly starrer, with Dot Malone and Joanne Dru competing for him ... a 1956 howler.
• MAMBO - a 1954 discovery, torrid saga with Silvana Mangano and Shelley Winters, in Italy.
• FOUR GIRLS IN TOWN - the perfect 1957 Universal-International meller, as is:
  
• THE FEMALE ANIMAL - thats Hedy Lamarr in 1957 with Jan Sterling, splendid as ever.
• GO NAKED IN THE WORLD - Gina ! 1960.
• THE CHAPMAN REPORT - Shelley, Glynis, Claire, young Jane Fonda ... we love Cukor's starry drama, The Higher Trash.
• THE REVOLT OF MAMIE STOVER - Jane Russell ! with Agnes Moorehead as the madam, 1956.
• A GIRL NAMED TAMIKO - one of Laurence Harvey's worst 
• WALK ON THE WILD SIDE - ditto, but with Stanwyck, Capucine, Fonda, Baxter ...
• THE LOVE MACHINE - a scream with gay David Hemmings and Dyan Cannon both wanting John Philip Law
• THE CROWDED SKY - best of the airline disasters?, 1960
• DORIAN GRAY - Helmut ! in 1970s London 
• GOODBYE GEMINI - one of the terrible British flicks of the era, 1970 - as was:
• MY LOVER, MY SON - why Romy. why did you make this terrible film?
• 10.30 PM SUMMER - fake arty 1966 Eurofare, but it does have Melina, Romy and Peter Finch
  
• POPE JOAN - Liv may have been great in those Bergman films but made some stinkers in English, none worse than this in 1972.
• Glenda made some stinkers too, none worse than THE INCREDIBLE SARAH in 1976, where she flounces around as Bernhardt in a Readers Digest travesty. Its a scream. 
• BLUEBEARD - Edward Dmytryk helmed some Trash Classic favourites like THE CARPETBAGGERS, WALK ON THE WILD SIDE, WHERE LOVE HAS GONE, but came a cropper here, aided by Burton's worst performance, in 1972
• THE SQUEEZE - rather good Brit gangster flick, from 1977, with down on their luck Boyd, Hemmings, Carol White ...  BRANNIGAN (John Wayne) and HENNESSEY (Rod Steiger and wasted Lee Remick) were amusing mid-70s British thrillers too ...

We don't bother with the insultingly bad, like THE OSCAR or HARLOW ..... then there are the Troy Donahue and Ann-Margret clunkers, and you know how we love those Bette and Joans: TORCH SONG, HARRIET CRAIG, FEMALE ON THE BEACH, QUEEN BEE, AUTUMN LEAVES, THE STORY OF ESTHER COSTELLO, THE BEST OF EVERYTHING, BERSERK! or two Bettes in DEAD RINGER.

Last summer re-view: La Isla Del Sol

As summer ebbs away here and autumn sets in, our final summer re-view is, appropriately, ISLAND IN THE SUN (or as my Spanish dvd calls it LA ISLA DEL SOL), that sun-drenched trashfest/engrossing drama from 20th Century Fox in 1957, with fascinating casting and it all looks gorgeous, as per my earlier review.  To recap:

ISLAND IN THE SUN. “Scandal, political intrigue and inter-racial romance on a steamy Caribbean island” – well, that’s what the blurb says, and continues: “Its 1957 on the tropical island of Santa Mara (so no, its not Jamaica) where a charismatic new black leader threatens to unseat British rule.” The result though is an engrossing two hours as several plotlines converge around the leading players. Joan Fontaine has a chaste romance with Harry Belafonte (despite the posed still above they do not touch in the film) Which Cannot Be, so they have to give each other up, but it gives her a chance to wear some nice summer outfits and halter tops, with white gloves of course. 
Joan Collins also gets to wear some nifty outfits as she romances a stolid Stephen Boyd (an English lord !); James Mason gets into a murderous rage over his wife’s relationship with Michael Rennie; Dorothy Dandridge (CARMEN JONES) is lovely but rather wasted, and Diana Wynyard is good support, along with John Williams as the police chief tracking down the murderer. 

It was a best-selling novel by Alec Waugh  (a brother of Evelyn) and Darryl F Zanuck produces and gives it that 20th Century Fox plush Cinemascope look mixing in contract players like Boyd, Collins, Patricia Owens, with the more established stars, so another 20th Century Fox literary potboiler like their PEYTON PLACE, THE SUN ALSO RISES, THE WAYWARD BUS, SANCTUARY, THE SOUND AND THE FURY, HEMINGWAY'S ADVENTURES OF A YOUNG MAN. The island here could be a mix of Barbados and Grenada and is a set-designer’s dream. The title song is one of the first pop hits I remember ... A star-studded entertaining chunk of trash then from director Robert Rossen, for a damp afternoon, and so very 1957. 
PS on Fontaine & Belafonte - it caused a furore in America in the '60s when Petula Clark touched him when they were singing on one of her tv shows .... so imagine the fuss in 1957 ! Poor Joan received hate mail! On location, it was the other Joan - La Collins - who got to first base with Harry.

Olivia hits 100

Happy 100th birthday to Olivia De Havilland, and not only that great age but she seems well and enjoying life living in Paris, as per that fascinating recent "Vanity Fair" interview with her. Whether as Maid Marian to Erroll's ROBIN HOOD (and of course also CAPTAIN BLOOD) or Melanie in GWTW or her great Catherine Sloper in THE HEIRESS Olivia has a great legacy of film roles and of course she also broke Hollywood's slave contracts winning her court case to be able to choose her roles.
As the BFI sais about her in its current retrosective on her career:

De Havilland brought all kinds of women to life on screen: fiery independent dames, gutsy fairy-tale beauties, love-starved daughters, single mothers, genteel small-towners and conniving psychopaths. But she had to fight for these diverse roles. Her employer Warner Brothers saw her as just a pretty face. Like many Hollywood actresses today, she was frustrated with the narrow range of parts she was offered; ‘I had quite different ideas about my career’ she told audiences at the BFI in 1972. ‘I wanted to play a real human being instead of a delightful romantic heroine.’ When in 1943 Warners refused to acknowledge that her seven-year contract had expired, she took them to court and won, forever changing the studio system by weakening its control over actors. She went on to pick roles in some of the most acclaimed films in Hollywood’s history. 
It was great, as I have mentioned here before, seeing her on stage discussing her career all of 44 years ago in 1972 (above, when I was a mere child, ok: 26) at London's BFI, which was such a success that her pal Bette Davis did the same two weeks later .... As per label we also like Olivia in HOLD BACK THE DAWN, HUSH HUSH SWEET CHARLOTTE, THE STRAWBERRY BLONDE, LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA and more (and of course we like her sister Joan too...). 

Bad Movies We Love

Here is a Trash Classic indeed. Rebello and Marguilies' 1995 tome on those bad movies we love, with a foreword by Sharon Stone, who gets a whole chapter to herself. The usual suspects though are here in force: Lana, Susan, Joan (Crawford), Bette and all those delirious movies of theirs.

Browsing it again makes one want to dig out QUEEN BEE (Joan - ["wearing the kind of gown a female impersonator would choose"]: "Any man's my man if I want it that way" or: "You look sweet - even in those tacky old clothes"); or Lana's PORTRAIT IN BLACK or LOVE HAS MANY FACES - perennial favourites of ours. Others like THE CHAPMAN REPORT, THE  BEST OF EVERYTHING, SERENADE, PARRISH and those Troy Donahue spectaculars get their due (I will have to look out for PALM SPRINGS WEEKEND, which sounds a hoot).

Pity they did not include Suzanne Pleshette's opus A RAGE TO LIVE, or THE SUBTERRANEANS or THE SOUND AND THE FURY or Lee Remick's SANCTUARY or Jean Simmons' HILDA CRANE or Jane Russell's THE REVOLT OF MAMIE STOVER or Shelley's A HOUSE IS NOT A HOME or Debbie's THE SINGING NUN.... maybe in a new edition, and with a foreword by Joan Collins please? At least JOHNNY GUITAR gets it due - a delicious piece on its gay subtext, as does TORCH SONG, AUTUMN LEAVES, FEMALE ON THE BEACH, Bette's THE STAR and DEAD RINGER and Lucille's MAME, plus the pure trash of THE OSCAR and THE LOVE MACHINE and ... those 'disasters' get trashed again too: those AIRPORTs, THE CASSANDRA CROSSING, EARTHQUAKE etc. too easy to make fun of those! 

Lets' savour a few comments on the usually-respected THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR (the 1968 one, natch): "Its not the money" business tycoon Steve McQueen drawls soulfully "Its me and the System" - that 60s phrase explains why the ineffably cool McQueen - who plays polo, drives a Rolls, pilots his own glider plane and dune buggy, and lives in a killer Boston mansion - masterminds multi-million dollar bank robberies on the side.... Everything's so terribly, laughably with-it in Norman Jewison's chi-chi epic - that you could bliss out with glee from all the faux hip dialogue, multiple-screen images ... Dunaway, all teeth and legs, and blissfully unaware of how disasterously dated she is going to look in those Theodora Van Runkle costumes, sets a trap to catch a thief, McQueen, whom she just knows is the mastermind".

Lots more here too on bad girls we love like Gina Lollobrigida in GO NAKED IN THE WORLD, Taylor and Burton get roasted for THE SANDPIPER and THE VIPs and Liz' THE DRIVER'S SEAT and X, Y AND ZEE (one I have been meaning to return to...). Carroll Baker gets her due (SYLVIA, THE CARPETBAGGERS, HARLOW) as does Natalie Wood (MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR), Ann-Margret ("THE SWINGER might just be the all-time tackeiest major studio  movie") and so many more .... its well worth seeking out for Trash devotees.   

Above: Bette, Susan and director Edward Dmytryk who after his early successes (THE YOUNG LIONS, RAINTREE COUNTY) hit the Trash trail with a vengance: WHERE LOVE HAS GONE, THE CARPETBAGGERS, BLUEBEARD ...

Joan Fontaine on stardom ...

Joan Fontaine's 1978 autobiography NO BED OF ROSES, which I have just rescued from a box filed away in the garage, is a fascinating re-read now. Written by Joan herself it captures her style perfectly, one can almost picture her raised eyebrow as she casts a cool eye over her life and career, plus the story of the "feuding sisters" - her and sister Olivia De Havilland - and the ups and downs of her career and personal life. Here is a taste: a few paragraphs on stardom in the 1940s: 

In the Forties, no chic woman appeared on the street in New York without hat or gloves. We wore real silk stockings, high heels, occasionally a bunch of violets or a fresh camellia on the lapel. On a warm day a scarf of mink or sable was carelessly thrown about a pearl-necklaced throat. Diamonds were only worn at night. At the theatre, hats or velvet ribbons, flowers or feathers were quite appropriate, while I cannot remember anyone not dressing for a performance at the Metropolitan Opera.

 During the Forties, I flew to New York on business. Often I took the train. It was a luxury to board the Super Chief at Los Angeles or Pasadena, knowing that for the next three days I would be rid of outside pressures, of interviews and telephone calls from producers and agents, of the petty problems presented by the morning mail, of the never-ending details of running a house.

In the days of transcontinental train service, smiling porters were as solicitous as mothers. They guarded one’s privacy, acted as alarm clocks upon request, conjured up icy-cold martinis. …. As the long black train snaked eastward over the Rockies, fresh Colorado trout would be boarded, then crip Utah celery, grouse and pheasant from the western plains. The uniformed dining-car steward would tip you off in advance, stowing away the best of the delicacies , so he implied, until you appeared in the dining car. Here silver cutlery danced on starched white linen tablecloths. Wineglasses tinkled against the silver as you looked out the steamy window.  Lights from towns flashed by during the meal, then suddenly darkness until moonlight revealed a snow-capped mountain or shining desert floor.

Often friends would be discovered. This meant cocktail visits in staterooms perhaps ten cars away; then a return visit with all the guests to your stateroom seemed essential. After idle days of reading, writing letters, playing cards, or simply staring out the windows, arrival suddenly became exciting.

In New York during those years I usually stopped at the Hampshire House on Central Park South or at the St. Regis at Fifty-Fifth and Fifth Avenue. Upon my arrival I would find the suite massed with fruit and flowers, a chilled bottle of champagne, courtesy of the management. Bouquets of long-stemmed roses and colourful floral arrangements bore cards from the studio currently employing me, from my agents, from fans. Friends would have left messages and invitations, publicists their long schedules of interviews, autograph seekers crowded outside on the pavement. A studio limousine waited on the street to whisk me to appointments.

Joan (1917-2013) lived to be 96 - Olivia is 99 now and will surely make 100 this summer. Joan is a favourite of ours here at The Projector, in fact one could say Fontaine is our favourite Joan. I like this posed still from ISLAND IN THE SUN, 1957 where Joan has a chaste romance with Harry Belafonte and looks great in those '50s outfits (plus gloves of course). She and Belefonte don't actually touch in the film (off set it was the other Joan in the film - Collins - who had a fling with Harry...); Fontaine though got a lot of hate mail after the film, as she says "it was too soon to tackle the race question with honesty". 

Joan was wonderful of course in THE WOMEN and Hitch's REBECCA (she won the Best Actress Oscar for his SUSPICION in 1942), I also like FRENCHMAN'S CREEK and of course Ophuls ' LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN. She is disparaging about a lot of her other films, including those Fifties ones like IVANHOE, ISLAND IN THE SUN, UNTIL THEY SAIL, and a Bob Hope comedy (CASANOVA'S BIG NIGHT in '54 which I liked a lot as a kid) and that Mario Lanza extravaganza SERENADE in 1956 where she is perfectly divine as society rich dame and superbitch Kendall Hale (a gay man in the Cornell Woolrich novel) who drives her pickups mad before she discards them - its one of our favourite Trash Classics here. Reviews on this and more at Joan label, including her last film, the hilarious horror THE WITCHES in 1966.

She also did TEA AND SYMPATHY on stage, with Tony Perkins - thats a version I would like to have seen, replacing Deborah Kerr in the original stage production directed by Kazan (Ingrid Bergman played it in Paris), As Joan relates in the book, Kerr later replaced her in real life, as Joan had been dating writer Peter Viertel in the late '50s and was considering him as her next husband and she flew to Vienna (where he was working on Litvak's THE JOURNEY) to surprise him, but it was Joan who got the surprise, as Viertel and the film's star Deborah Kerr had discovered each other, which led to their long marriage.

Mitchell Leisen, Hollywood Director

"Mitchell Leisen, Hollywood Director" first published in 1973 and reprinted in 1995, by David Chierichetti, is a fascinating return to Hollywood's golden age, from the 1920s onwards. The blurb says: "Mirchell Leisen's lengthy film career which spanned the silents through the advent of television, began in 1919 when he was hired as a costume designer for Cecil B DeMille. In the 1920s he moved up to set design and art direction, and he began directing in the 1930s. As director, Leisen's unique cinematic eye was responsible for such hits as TO EACH HIS OWN, EASY LIVING. LADY IN THE DARK, MIDNIGHT, REMEMBER THE NIGHT, and DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY. His story is a fascinating study of Hollywood's Golden Age." The book also gives an indication of Hollywood's rampant gay and bisexual scene back then ... Amusing stories too on those Leisen was great pals with (Carole Lombard) and those he wasn't (Miss Fontaine). 

My friend Daryl, also says this about Leisen:  "Mitchell Leisen was one of the master directors at Paramount in the 1930s; as a former set and costume designer, his films always had an elegant visual surface, and when that was coupled with a script of some merit, the results were some of the true delights of the period. (It's unfortunate that Leisen's reputation was tarnished by Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder - their anger over what they perceived as his meddling - he often cut the scripts if speeches got too unwieldy - caused them to strike out as writer-directors.)"

Leisen (1898-1972)  is now perceived as one of Hollywood's gay directors, but he was also avidly bisexual, being married and also having a long-time mistress, as well as his relationships with men. His early costume designs for Douglas Fairbanks for ROBIN HOOD and particularly THE THIEF OF BAGHDAD in 1924 are still marvellous now.In 1932 he was assistant director, and did art direction and costumes for DeMille's SIGN OF THE CROSS which I like a lot (see Peplums-1 label). He had to measure up a nude Claudette for her bath in ass's milk which DeMille wanted to come up to her nipples - but the heat of the studio was turning the milk to cheese .... 
Lets have a look at some of his successes:

MIDNIGHT, 1939. Today' guest reviewer, my friend Martin did this review of it on IMDB ten years ago, and sums it up perfectly:

As good as a movie can get. Claudette Colbert is the flapper/gold-digger/chanteuse, (take your pick), who arrives in a very rainy Paris in an evening gown and not much else. She is momentarily rescued from her predicament by a gallant taxi driver, (played gallantly by Don Ameche), with whom she immediately falls in love but from whom she runs as fast as her well-turned-out legs can carry her. She runs straight into the clutches of John Barrymore, (a magnificent comic performance), who saves her bacon, so to speak, if only she will seduce gigolo Francis Lederer who is stealing away Barrymore's wife, the always delectable Mary Astor, and thus save Barrymore's marriage.

This is a French farce of the very best kind, although it is written, not by a Feydeau, but by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, and directed with supreme elegance by the under-valued Mitchell Leisen. Colbert is wonderful as the wide-eyed chorine, torn between love and riches, Barrymore displays sublime comic timing and Astor is as sharp as a new pin. It feels and looks like a Lubitsch but I doubt if even Lubitsch could better it.

HOLD BACK THE DAWN, 1941. Told in flashback from a preface in which the main character visits Paramount to sell his story - to a director played by Leisen himself. Romanian-French gigolo Georges Iscovescu (Charles Boyer) wishes to enter the USA. Stopped in Mexico by the quota system, his old flame Anita (a doxy on the make) advises him to marry an American, whom he can then desert and return to her, who's done likewise. But after sweeping teacher Emmy Brown (Olivia De Havilland) off her feet, he finds her so sweet that love and jealousy endanger his plans. This is a perfect romantic fantasy where the varied characters have their own stories and motives for what they do. There is that nice very pregnant American lady Rosemary DeCamp (though she is so covered up one can hardly see that she is expecting) who connives to get her baby born on American territory. Olivia again plays a good woman without being cloying - I love that school bus she drives around. She is injured in a trafffic accident after Anita (a terrific turn from Paulette Goddard) confronts her and tells her the truth about how and why gigolo Boyer married her - he then risks all to cross the border chased by the immigration people, to get to her hospital bedside to comfort her and give her the will to live .... does it all end happily? You bet - even Anita lands a new rich patsy.

Wilder and Preston Sturges, in later years, bewailed the havoc Leisen wreaked on their scripts. Painted him as a flamboyant gay aesthete, who preferred décor to drama, party dresses to pithy dialogue. For Wilder, the problem with Leisen was simple. “He was a fag window dresser.”

Ironically, though, MIDNIGHT is a sharper and more stylish satire than Wilder’s dull  LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON (1957). Lacking Wilder’s pervasive sourness and contempt (to the fore in ACE IN THE HOLE, KISS ME STUPID and THE FORTUNE COOKIE), HOLD BACK THE DAWN views its hicks and whores and schemers through a veil of sympathy, suggesting they might have reasons to act as they do.  

Wilder is said to have hated so much what Leisen had done to his scripts – although it’s hard to imagine how anyone could fault MIDNIGHT or HOLD BACK THE DAWN – that he decided to become a director himself so that his scripts wouldn’t, in the future, be ‘butchered’ . "All he did was he fucked up the script and our scripts were damn near perfection, let me tell you. Leisen was too goddamn fey. I don’t knock fairies. Let him be a fairy. Leisen’s problem was that he was a stupid fairy." 
"HOLD BACK THE DAWN, an unlikely tale of redemption, of gigolos and gold diggers conniving their way across the American border from Mexico, would have been unpalatably depressing under Wilder’s direction. Charles Boyer’s and Leisen’s decision to cut a scene in which Boyer, a down-and-out playboy in his seedy hotel room, toys with and confesses to a cockroach, one can only surmise, was a good choice. It was the elimination of this particular scene that stoked most of Wilder’s hatred for Leisen."

I did these reviews here some while back:

Back to 1944 for FRENCHMAN'S CREEK, a costume drama about pirates from a novel by Daphne De Maurier, with her REBECCA star Joan Fontaine. This is now a Spanish dvd: EL PIRATA Y LA DAMA (The Pirate and the Lady), by that interesting gay director Mitchell Leisen. Mexican Arturo de Cordova is the pirate, with hissable Basil Rathbone, dependable Cecil Kellway and blustering Nigel Bruce. 

Joan is the noblewoman who tires of her husband and his decadent friends in bawdy Restoration London and who decamps with her children to her country estate, run by kindly Cecil, in remote Cornwall. She soon finds out that a French pirate moors his ship in a nearby cove and has been using her house and bedroom. They get to meet and have a chaste affair.  She soon enjoys herself dressing up a his cabin boy and getting involved in his pirate activities. 
Then her husband and suspicious Basil turn up as the plot works out to a satisfactory, for its time, conclusion as she has to give up her pirate lover and settle for dull marriage and looking after her children. Joan gives it her all and gets to wear some nice gowns. Arturo and his pirate gang seem a gay lot .... a subtext picked up by my IMDB pal melvelvit, who commented:  "I see what cinema scribes mean when they speak of Leisen's "gay sensibility"; the camera practically caressed Arturo's hairy (unusual for the time) chest and there were lots of lovingly photographed bare-chested pirates" ... A sometimes campy swashbuckler then. Joan's and Basil's fight to the death on the stairs is certainly well done and packs a punch! 

Then there is GOLDEN EARRINGS made after the war in '47 - is it a comedy, a romance or a thriller? perhaps a bit of each then as Ray Milland is on the run in Germany presumably before or during the war and has to depend on gypsy Marlene Dietrich to help him get around the country. Its actually quite amusing as directed by Mitchell Leisen and Marlene is droll in her gypsy makeup and not playing a heartless vamp for once. Bland Milland is dull - the stars did not get on - I read that Marlene sucked the eye out of a fish-head from her her stewpot during his first closeup to disconcert him. Again we get lots of comic Nazis and they do not seem to mind the gypsies roaming around or telling their fortunes - or maybe the gypsies were not being rounded up just then ! You have to laugh at the end: he comes back after the war and there is Marlene with her gypsy caravan and her stewpot as though he had left just a few minutes before...

Leisen continued into the 1950s - I caught THE MATING SEASON from 1951 once on television but it does not seem available at all now, but provided great roles for Thelma Ritter, Miriam Hopkins, and Gene Tierney. We will be looking out for more Leisen films ....  NO MAN OF HER OWN with Barbara Stanwyck sounds an interesting one.

Rebecca at 75

No, not REBECCA and those Forties dramas!  Fascinating too to see REBECCA again, this lush Forties romantic drama/mystery, typically Hitchcock and Selznick, from of course that classic novel by Daphne Du Maurier, still weaves it spell as once again we go back to Manderley. How those wartime audiences must have lapped it up, along with GWTW ......

1940 was an amazing year actually, following on from the great 1939. REBECCA won Best Picture Oscar for Selznick, but Hitchcock did not get best director - that went to John Ford for THE GRAPES OF WRATH, other contenders were Wyler for THE LETTER and Cukor for THE PHILADELPHIA STORY. Likewise James Stewart, in the Cukor, won Best Actor. Olivier was nominated of course, as was Joan Fontaine here, but like Grace Kelly winning over Judy Garland in 1954 - see post below - it was Ginger Rogers as KITTY FOYLE who won Best Actress. But who sees KITTY FOYLE now?, I have never seen it, and its never revived these days. Also nominated were Bette Davis (THE LETTER) and Katharine Hepburn for playing herself - sorry, Tracy Lord - in PHILADELPHIA STORY.

Joan is superlative here as the shy new Mrs De Winter, its a great performance and she is absolutely captivating. Olivier with that moustache is perfect too. No wonder women of that generation swooned over him. Add in Florence Bates as the ghastly Mrs Van Hopper and those amusing scenes in the South of France (California actually), and cad George Sanders and Gladys Cooper, Hitchcock regular Leo G Carroll as the doctor with the key to the mystery, and of course Judith Anderson as Mrs Danvers, and that great location and art direction for Manderley,  

It seems though a film of two halfs. I love the first half . The cinematography, the direction, the chemistry between the two leads (though it seems Larry and Hitch used to say dirty words to Joan to disconcert her), the acting, the large house and the enigma of the dead first wife, Rebecca, are all fantastic, as Hitch builds up the eerie atmosphere with the sinister Mrs Danvers. But once we find out about the true story about Rebecca it loses, for me, some of its magic and turns into a simple mystery/thriller. But, 75 years on, audiences still love REBECCA and it remains a key Hitchcock classic.

We like Joan a lot, see labels for more on her and Olivier and Hitchcock. 

Bad things

Before moving on to some classy repeats on television this week (Antonioni's THE PASSENGER and Haneke's AMOUR - I have covered them both previously, but more in due course), here's a round-up of some trashy items we enjoyed or endured recently ...

Its always a pain to see performers one likes doing something rubbishy later in their careers, say hello to HOW AWFUL ABOUT ALLAN a so-called shocker from that year of Trash Classics 1970 - its by Curtis Harrington who gave us the campy delights of WHATS THE MATTER WITH HELEN?, WHOEVER SLEW AUNT ROO? and GAMES (reviews at Horror label) but this one is dull fare indeed and wastes the talents of Anthony Perkins (perfecting his twitchy neurotics a decade after PSYCHO) and one of my great favourites Julie Harris (see label) in a thankless role.

After an eight-month stay in a mental hospital, a tormented man comes home to live with his sister; but a mysterious boarder may be trying to kill him.

Its a drab affair, that also features Joan Hacklett, and is thankfully only about 70 minutes.

More campy and glamorous is 1973's NIGHT WATCH, which re-unites Elizabeth Taylor with Laurence Harvey, and adds in Billie Whitelaw. 

Ellen Wheeler, a rich widow, is recovering from a nervous breakdown. One day, while staring out the window, she witnesses a murder. But does anybody believe her?

This is one of those campy thrillers with a twist ending - think Doris Day in MIDNIGHT LACE or Lana in PORTRAIT IN BLACK. They also ramp up the glam here with Liz in different gowns and furs and diamonds for every scene .... she and Larry were much more fun in BUTTERFIELD 8, both their careers were on the slide by this time, he was terminally ill and died later that year. NIGHT WATCH is an efficient potboiler which passes the time agreeably as one laughs at it, as dully directed by Brian G Hutton, who also helmed Liz's other 70s Trash Classic ZEE & CO. One cannot reveal the twist .... but its a howler. 

On to 1998 and VERY BAD THINGS - a thriller starring Christian Slater and Cameron Diaz.

A group of friends head to Las Vegas for a bachelor party.. only things go wrong and a woman is killed. Soon, the bodies are piling up and the friends find themselves turning against one another as the cover-up builds.

The main interest in this now is that one of the guys (the one who accidentally kills the prostitute) is an almost unrecognisable Jeremy Piven (right), well it was 17 years ago - a long way from his sleek MR SELFRIDGE which entertains us on Sunday nights here now.

Its a dark black comedy which keeps one watching, as director Peter Berg mixes laughs with chills as bodies get cut up to be buried out in the desert. Daniel Stern is good too and Cameron is ace as the bride-to-be from hell. Chunky hairy Piven is deliciously sleazy and its certainly ramps up some scuzzy Tarantino-esque fun as we watch some good guys do evil things as events get progressively out of hand. VERY BAD THINGS remains a polarising movie, with some either loving or hating it.

Back to 1944 for FRENCHMAN'S CREEK, a costume drama about pirates from a novel by Daphne De Maurier, with her REBECCA star Joan Fontaine. This is now a Spanish dvd: EL PIRATA Y LA DAMA (The Pirate and the Lady), by that interesting gay director Mitchell Leisen. Mexican Arturo de Cordova is the pirate, with hissable Basil Rathbone, dependable Cecil Kellway and blustering Nigel Bruce. 

Joan is the noblewoman who tires of her husband and his decadent friends in bawdy Restoration London and who decamps with her children to her country estate, run by kindly Cecil, in remote Cornwall. She soon finds out that a French pirate moors his ship in a nearby cove and has been using her house and bedroom. They get to meet and have a chaste affair.  She soon enjoys herself dressing up a his cabin boy and getting involved in his pirate activities. 
Then her husband and suspicious Basil turn up as the plot works out to a satisfactory, for its time, conclusion as she has to give up her pirate lover and settle for dull marriage and looking after her children. Joan gives it her all and gets to wear some nice gowns. Arturo and his pirate gang seem a gay lot .... a subtext picked up by my IMDB pal melvelvit, who commented:  "I see what cinema scribes mean when they speak of Leisen's "gay sensibility"; the camera practically caressed Arturo's hairy (unusual for the time) chest and there were lots of lovingly photographed bare-chested pirates" ... A sometimes campy, sometimes dull swashbuckler then. Joan's and Basil's fight to the death on the stairs is certainly well done and packs a punch! 

In the mood for summer repeats

Rapture! - In the mood for IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE again ... (as per review last year, 2000s label). 

Our heatwave seems to be finally over, as rain and cooler weather arrive,with that autumn nip in the air already! I won't have to be drinking too many cool Italian lagers or Belgian ciders then .... but we often get a good warm late summer here in the British Isles, and over on the West coast of Ireland, where I spend time too, right on the edge of Europe ...

Meanwhile, those summer repeats keep on coming. I have a stack on recent releases to watch: THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, DALLAS BUYERS CLUB, INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS, THE GREAT BUDAPEST HOTEL, CAPTAIN PHILLIPS, SAVING MR BANKS, THE GREAT BEAUTY etc. as well as been entranced by Visconti's THE LEOPARD now even more stunning on Blu-ray (see post below), as is Lean's LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, but instead its more repeats of favourites on tv: ROBIN AND MARIAN, Channing's THE EAGLE and boxsets like LOVE/HATE, HOUSE OF CARDS, WHITE COLLAR etc, as well as vintage boxsets on Lee Remick as JENNIE (Churchill) and Francesca Annis as LILLIE (Lily Langtry, which also has Peter Egan as an exquisite Oscar Wilde).. See labels here for more on all these:

ISLAND IN THE SUN was on again, from 1957. Nice to look at, thats a perfect Caribbean island, from that best-selling novel and Fox gave it the plush treatment. I love Joan Fontaine's outfit for meeting her sort of lover Harry Belafonte (Joan received hate mail for appearing in scenes with the handsome Harry, meanwhile it was the other Joan - Collins - who was getting intimate with Belafonte..) but her white gloves and pink pencil halter top dress ensures she looks great; the above is a posed shot - they never touch in the film, apart from where he helps down from the bus ! 

meanwhile starlets Joan Collins and Stephen Boyd romance in the surf and Dorothy Dandridge is marvellous with John Justin (whom I have seen quite a bit lately, in 1943's THE GENTLE SEX and those '70s Ken Russell farragos, as reported below). James Mason is also here, married to Patrica Owens, and he kills Michael Rennie in a fit of jealousy as  policeman John Williams puts two and two together ... delirious stuff, I loved that theme song as a kid.

I can never resist another look at RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, now, like BODY HEAT (also scripted by Lawrence Kasdan) one of the key movies of the '80s. It all works perfectly here, from that perfect opening sequence with Alfred Molina to the high-jinks in Nepal before going on to Egypt .... This and Harrison's AIR FORCE ONE may well be my favourite popcorn movies. Amusing touches here too, like the (male) pupil with an apple for teacher .... with Denholm Elliot and Paul Freeman sterling support and Karen Allen as that very spunky heroine.

Two years ago we had a Hitchcock summer here, as the BFI showed all his films, and canonised VERTIGO as the best film of all time, in their "Sight & Sound" magazine (see details at Hitchcock label) - now our Film4 channel starts a 'frightmare' season with PSYCHO and THE BIRDS. I never tire of THE BIRDS and that marvellous interplay between the characters, its a very witty screenplay, Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren are ideal - particularly as she dials the telephone with her pencil - and Suzanne Pleshette is ace too.

PSYCHO continues to amaze me, one notices new things - the opening titles tell us its December 12th, but the only sign of christmas is one shot showing street decorations as Janet drives out of town, and of course its the first time a toilet was flushed in a mainstream American film! Janet Leigh is simply astounding here, and should surely have been nominated for an Award.....

Our Sky Arts channel has discovered Ingmar Bergman's THE SEVENTH SEAL which they are showing frequently, maybe most people's introduction to those foreign arthouse movies. It has of course been parodied many times, but it still has the power to mesmerise us as Death plays chess with the Knight, and the family of simple folk make their escape - the unforgiving medieval world is essayed here as the young witch is burned and people flagellate themselves to hopefully avoid the Black Death ..... its still a stunning film full of indelible images, even simple shots of the sea and the waves and the rocks have a stark power of their own. On his return from the Crusades, a Swedish knight, Antonius Block (Max Von Sydow in his signature role), is accosted by Death but staves off his demise by challenging him to a game of chess. Ingmar Bergman's best known early film is not all existential gloom. Well, all right, it is, but is alleviated by the film's inventiveness and audaciousness, and Death is hilariously sardonic. Pity the doomed souls being led away at the end, dancing on the skyline .... 

THE ELEPHANT MAN, 1980.  Nothing new to say about this apart from that I was stunned and mesmerised all over again. It has to to be one of the most powerful films ever made and David Lynch’s keeper. All the elements are there: that Victorian industrial background, the stunning black and white photography capturing it all, and the superlative cast – did John Hurt and Anthony Hopkins do anything better?, with sterling support from John Gielgud and Wendy Hiller, not to mention Freddie Jones, and that perfect ending as we clear away our sobs. Its still a key 80s movie.

SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER remains deliriously over the top too, as Katharine Hepburn's Mrs Violet Venable descends in her elevator to persuade doctor Montgomery Clift to lobotomise her niece Elizabeth Taylor to remove what she saw happen to Sebastian last summer .... poor Monty seems to be sleepwalking through this as Taylor (in that white swimsuit which was "a scandal to the jaybirds") and Hepburn go head to head ...

And then a large helping of cheese: GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER .....  I tried to avoid it but looked in before the end. It seemed even worse than I remembered, but how we loved it back in 1967. I remember friends and I going to a late night show at 11pm – not so common in London then! Watching it now one can see all the glaring faults – its shot like a tv sitcom, that house full of art and the view over San Francisco are laughably opulent and fake now, and that ghastly score.

Thankfully I missed that excruciating scene at the drive-in ice cream parlour where Tracy comes across as just old and doddery and annoying. The daughter of course is an airhead, and Dr Prentice (Poitier) seems a living saint and they just have to rush to Geneva as he has to work for the World Health Organisation so both sets of parents have to give their approval right away for their union. The black servant ("part of the family") still has to serve dinner though – and don’t get me started on this wealthy liberal family who are not Catholics, with their pet priest (dear twinkly Cecil Kellaway) who is Irish and likes that whiskey !  But of course one has to see it in the context of its time:  race relations were still very problematic then and this sugar-coated pill (along with Poitier's other hits that year IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (which I loved) and TO SIR WITH LOVE) may have helped things along. At least it revitalised Katharine Hepburn’s career (while her contemporaries were mired in cheap guignol flicks, and Kate was even bigger the next year when THE LION IN WINTER was such a hit, winning her another Oscar) – there she was on the cover of LIFE magazine and standing on her head, as a whole new generation fell in love with her - she had really been off the screen since 1959's SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER, Lumet's LONG DAYS JOURNEY INTO NIGHT in 1962 was not widely seen at the time despite winning awards at Cannes, in fact I didn't see it until the dvd became available). I love her costumes and little hats in this film which she breezes through, particularly the great scene where she fires the art gallery assistant. Like all Kramer’s films of the time, it seems hopelessly overdone now.   below: Visconti's sumptuous 1963 THE LEOPARD, once again.