Roman revels

Two more Ruth Roman movies from that busy year for her, 1951 - when she also played the female lead in Hitchcock's STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, probably her best remembered film. Ruth, as I have mentioned here before - see label - was a tough gal, who did lots of melodramas and routine actioners (ok, B-movies) in the '50s and into the '60s, having began in the '40s - she is in Bette's BEYOND THE FOREST, and thanks to my IMDb pal Jerry for a mid-'40s serial she is in: JUNGLE QUEEN - I am saving that one for "some snowy night in front of the fire" and I am the lookout for her 1955 take on Shakespeare: JOE MACBETH (with her as the mobster's Lady Macbeth), which I remember seeing as a kid.  Ruth should have been as big a name as those other tough gals like Susan Hayward, or Barbara Stanwyck - Ruth could have played a lot of Stanwyck '50s roles like CLASH BY NIGHT or BLOWING WILD (she is the good girl in that, while Barbara is the bad wife, they have a nice scene together), or even some of Joan Crawford's roles, or Lizabeth Scott's or Jan Sterling's, and of course we love her in 1966's LOVE HAS MANY FACES where she gives Lana  Turner a run for her money in that delirious soap/trash classic. Ruth (1922-1999) ended up in shows like MURDER SHE WROTE and KNOTS LANDING. 

TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY teams bad boy Steve Cochran with cheap dime-a-dance girl Ruth - looking very glam in a brassy blond wig (like Jane Russell's 'hostess' in wartime Hawaii in Trash Classic THE REVOLT OF MAMIE STOVER, Russell label). 

Here is the blurb:

What kind of future awaits a couple with a past? Ruth Roman and Steve Cochran in a film-noir gem.

A man who spent his formative years in prison for murder is released, and struggles to adjust to the outside world and escape his lurid past. He gets involved with a cheap dancehall girl, and when her protector is accidentally killed, they go on the lam together, getting jobs as farm labourers. 
But some fellow workers get wise to them. Steve Cochran conveys the loneliness of his character, freed for killing his brutal father when he was only 13, and now he's still a tentative, gawky pubescent operating inside a man's hulky frame. Lonesome, he visits a 10-cents-a-dance palace and falls for brassy, grasping Ruth Roman. But the sudden shooting of her police-bigwig boyfriend causes the ill-matched couple to hit the road, ending in a California migrant-worker camp. Directed by one Felix Feist.

This conjures up a world of diners, drab rooming houses, people on the move hitching lifts and riding on trains and cheap motels like the Shady Nook where our couple on the run hole up, before they join that settlement of farm workers and make friends and seem to have a whole new life, leaving their sordid pasts behind them. Ruth even lets her hair go natural to black. But Steve's photo turns up in a magazine and the neighbours have to decide whether to turn him in for the reward .... fate however intervenes, but the ending is uplifing as our newly free couple can start all over again. Though surely a good time girl like Ruth would hardly settle for living in a shack and working in the fields ?

Both Cochran and Roman are ideal, he is in his prime here, as magnetic as Brando's WILD ONE in his tee-shirt and jeans, at least Warners didn't insist he shave his chest, like William Holden had to for PICNIC! - he was also good with Anne Baxter (another dame who could be tough when called for) in CARNIVAL STORY in '54, and of course his best known film, as the lead in Antonioni's IL GRIDO in 1957 (review at Cochran/Antonioni labels), and we reviewed his last film MOZAMBIQUE a while back. (He died aged 48 in 1965 while sailing a yacht in the Pacific, a notorious Hollywood bad boy in the Erroll Flynn tradition...).

LIGHTNING STRIKES TWICE is a more routine meller, directed by the great King Vidor (the '56 WAR AND PEACE, RUBY GENTRY, DUEL IN THE SUN, SOLOMON AND SHEBA etc), with British actor Richard Todd, and sterling support from Mercedes McCambridge firing on all cylinders as usual (as in JOHNNY GUITAR!) and that seedy lothario Zachary Scott (in a similar role here to his in MILDRED PIERCE). This time Ruth is the touring actress recuperating in the desert small town and getting to know Todd who is on reprieve from murdering his wife and facing a re-trial. Mercedes is the possessive woman who was on the jury, so it has all the elements for a romantic murder mystery suspense. 
Is the heroine in danger? - though hard to imagine Ruth not being able to fend for herself. It all plays out nicely, but if only it was as over the top as that other meller set in the desert in lurid colours: 1947's DESERT FURY which had Lizabeth Scott and Mary Astor as well as the young Burt Lancaster and that odd couple of John Hodiak and Wendall Corey, as per my review (Astor label).  

I have now seen a 1987 episode of MURDER SHE WROTE (from Series 4) where Ruth guests as Loretta, the owner of the Beauty Salon (think pink!) in Cabot Cove, where the local ladies - including ageless Julie Adams, Kathryn Grant and Gloria De Haven - get their hair done and gossip.
 Ruth is a joy and obviously in her element presiding over the Salon and dispensing gossip to Jessica .... she did 3 episodes of Lansbury's successful series, I shall now have to see her other two guest spots as well, as Ruth wound up her career here in a good way, in a deliciously entertaining tale. 

Bette's Anniversary ...

Before we move on to more challenging movies, here is a treat from 1968 - Bette Davis in THE ANNIVERSARY, one of her later films made in England. Its a play I have a history with .... back in that great year 1966 when I was 20 and had started theatre-going in London (having already relished Barbra Streisand in FUNNY GIRL from the front row of the stalls - I had never seen anyone with a little microphone taped to them before - and Robert Stephens stunning as the Inca king in that great National Theatre production of THE ROYAL HUNT OF THE SUN, from up the in the cheap seats at The Old Vic) I saw the first production of the play of THE ANNIVERSARY, a highly praised black comedy by Bill Macllraith, with Mona Washbourne as the mother who used any means to control her family, which included Jack Hedley and wife Sheila Hancock, young son Michael Crawford and his girlfriend June Ritchie, and her older single son James Cossins with his fetish for ladies underwear which he steals from clothes lines, and which gets him into trouble. Mother gathers her tribe every year to celebrate her wedding anniversary, though father died some time ago .... this year things may be different. 

This was great on the stage, dear Mona had great fun with the role of the monstrous mother, and I still have the programme signed by all the cast, as I was with somebody who was able to take me backstage and meet them all ...

However, Hammer films signed Bette Davis for the film and kept most of the stage cast, apart from Michael Crawford - replaced by Christian Roberts (who was also in TO SIR WITH LOVE), and Elaine Taylor as the girlfriend who stands up to Mother's bullying tactics. Bette is the queen bee here, with her eye patch in different colours to match her outfits as she steam-rolls over her family and their ambitions. Sheila Hancock is bliss as the daughter-in-law who has her own scheme to get the better of mother .... but will her husband (Hedley) go along with it?

Bette gives it her all - she also wanted to do the film of THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE that year, for Aldrich, another hit play which became a lurid notorious film .... like those films I mentioned earlier of the Joe Orton plays LOOT and ENTERTAINING MR SLOANE, all tarted up to cope with the changing face of cinema in that 1970 era ...

THE ANNIVERSARY is still a lot of trashy fun now (my late friend Jeff loved it and had its poster on his wall), its broad comedy with a nasty touch, which Bette goes to town on. Oddly enough the play was revived a few years ago with Sheila Hancock, now one of our senior actresses, playing the mother - I really should have gone to see it. 

Other "Films & Filming" covers with Bette - they even had a whole Bette issue in 1956, right.

Lady Caroline and the Bad Lord Byron

LADY CAROLINE LAMB, A welcome tv outing for Robert Bolt’s neglected 1972 (it might have opened in 1973) labour of love for his wife Sarah Miles – as if RYAN’S DAUGHTER wasn’t enough! He directs this one as well as writing the story of the outrageous Lady Caroline who scandalises Regency society with her affairs, particularly with that rock star of the time, Lord Byron – whom Richard Chamberlain plays as to the manner born (as good as his Tchaikovsky for Ken Russell). 

That leading man of the era Jon Finch (who also toplined Polanski’s MACBETH and Hitch’s FRENZY those years) is her husband, prime minister William Lamb, who loves her unconditionally until she goes too far. Margaret Leighton (right) has another great role (after 1971’s THE GO-BETWEEN) as his mother, the formidable Lady Melbourne – who also had affairs of her own, but discreetly – who despises Caroline's indiscretions and tries to prevent their marriage, as The King (Ralph Richardson) puts it: "A statesman cannot have a notorious wife"!. She gets a great last line at the end – when told that Lady Caroline has died of a broken heart, she pauses, and retorts "wouldn't she"!

Add in Laurence Olivier enjoying himself as the powerful Duke of Wellington dispensing largesse (and good advice to Lady Caroline when they are in bed), Ralph Richardson as George IV, John Mills, Pamela Brown, Peter Bull, Sonia Dresdel and others and it’s another feast of English acting talent – I spotted Michael Wilding (Leighton’s husband) too. Bolt tells his story well as Lady Caroline falls for The Bad Lord Byron, even dressing topless as a blackamoor and following his carriage through the London streets, and finally has to separate from her husband so his career can progress. Richard Rodney Bennet provides a good score and it all looks great, shot in the real country houses and estates. 

The problem though is Lady Caroline herself – Sarah Miles is one of our favourites here, I have liked her in a lot of things, from THE SERVANT and TERM OF TRIAL to I WAS HAPPY HERE and BLOW-UP, as per labels, but she is so annoying here one feels like she deserves all she gets as she capriciously goes almost demented and tries the patience of everybody. 
Good to see it again though, 40 years later … its as fascinating a time-capsule costumer as Richardson’s CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE or Attenborough’s OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR. Costume dramas hardly get dottier or more fun ! -
 well apart from that '40s version of the story, THE BAD LORD BYRON as essayed by Dennis Price and Joan Greenwood (right), being delicious as usual as Lady Caroline. 

Sarah of course went on to more notoreity with her later '70s films like THE MAN WHO LOVED CAT DANCING and THE SAILOR WHO FELL FROM GRACE WITH THE SEA, as per label.

MIA: The Company You Keep

THE COMPANY YOU KEEP, Another missing in action one here, this 2012 film directed by Robert Redford never opened here at all. How on earth could this be? It features Redford, Julie Christie, Susan Sarandon, Shia LeBeouf, Nick Nolte, Stanley Tucci, Brendan Gleeson, Sam Elliott and others in a strong drama that tries to follow in the steps and look of those classic ‘70s political thrillers (like THE PARALLAX VIEW), but is not quite up in that league. 

We follow Redford, a former political activist, going on the run (again, as he did in THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR in‘75) as he realises he is in danger when Sarandon (a terrorist who has been in hiding for decades for anti-Vietnam activities over 40 years ago) is arrested. One could carp that Redford in his 70s is too old here (particularly as he has a 11 year old daughter), but hey he was back this last year sailing single-handed in just as much peril! (in ALL IS LOST). 

Its a sympathetic look at the wrinkled radicals and survivors of the 1960s protest movements. "I grew up," asserts lawyer Jim Grant (Redford), explaining his decision to adopt a new identity, get married, have a kid, and pursue a purposeful career. Admirable, perhaps, but kind of dull; whereas his unrepentant ex-girlfriend (Christie), who's proud to be "running good honest weed" off the coast of California rather than doing something legal and bad like looting pension funds.

Obviously worth watching but it could have been so much better, perhaps that’s the usual problem with actors directing themselves as well as a large cast in a strongly-plotted story. 
It is interesting seeing those '60s icons Redford and Christie together at last - she looks better than he does! It would have been fascinating too if his BUTCH CASSIDY co-star Katharine Ross (Mrs Sam Elliott) had joined them here ...

MIA: Cloudburst - its terrific

CLOUDBURST, 2011. A lesbian couple escape from their nursing home and head up to Canada to get married. Along the way, they pick up a young, male hitchhiker. This, a hilarious love story and a touching comedy, never played here in London (apart from opening that year’s gay film festival). It features two old age lesbians who go on the run to Canada when the selfish grand-daughter of Dotty tries to put her in a nursing home (after she has an accident falling out of bed due to Stella tickling her). Stella, her partner of 31 years is not having that, so hatches their escape plan. Along the way they pick up a hitchhiker, dancer/hustler Ryan Doucette (a new discovery, he is terrific). 

It is an uplifting story of love that is universal and eternal, with great locations - I could move to Nova Scotia. Olympia (whom I enjoyed again last week in AWAY FROM HER) is a joy in vests, cowboy hats, drinking tequila and swearing like a sailor (or as we imagine sailors swear ..) and driving that red pickup truck. Brenda Fricker as sweet Dot is her equal, Dot is virtually blind but that does not bother her. OK, you will laugh, you will cry, as of course nothing is forever. There is a great comic sequence at the Canadian border, and the grand-daughter too learns a lot. This is one movie where you worry about the characters and what they will do now the movie is over ... Good too to see a movie addressing the needs of the gay elderly who are often separated when illness intervenes; not all gay themed indie movies have to be about attractive young people, do they? It reminded me a lot of BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, not least with its pick-up trucks and stunning landscapes, and a bittersweet ending. Directed and written by Thom Fitzgerald, who also did the interesting BEEFCAKE in 1998. 

 

This could well be my new favourite movie, as it is full of tender and funny moments. Indie movie-making at its best then, I have also now pre-ordered BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOUR, out on dvd here in 2 weeks, that’s 3 more hours of girl on girl action then, but from all accounts, contains the real best acting of the year …and that intriguing STRANGER BY THE LAKE is out in May. Bring them on.  

Fricker and Doucette with director Fitzergald at the London BFI LGFF premiere in 2012.

Vertigo, once again ....

It was on television again, and once again I got mesmerised watching it, particularly as on the BBC it had no commercial breaks, which always ruin the mood of a Hitchcock movie. We had that 'Hitchcock summer' in 2012, as I wrote then - Hitch label - when the BFI ran all the movies, and the BBC helped out too ... Hitch just never goes out of style, no matter how many times one has seen PSYCHO or THE BIRDS or NORTH BY NORTHWEST .... 

 

VERTIGO, now of course "Sight & Sound"'s new Number One Best Film Of all Time, having dislodged CITIZEN KANE, is the most dreamlike movie that turns cinema on its head. San Francisco in 1958 looks marvellous as Scottie (Stewart) drives around following Madeline.

And how do we feel about VERTIGO now? Some do not even regard it as the best Hitchcock. VERTIGO went missing for a long time in the '70s when it and a handful of other Hitch's were out of circulation (in that pre-video age) until he cannily re-released them to cinemas. People didn't see VERTIGO, they remembered it, as Robin Wood said. I love some elements of it - the dreamlike mesmerising early sections as Scottie follows Madeline around that ideal San Francisco, and that stunning transformation scene when Madeline comes back to Scottie, and that spellbinding music score,  its pure cinema obviously but for me NOTORIOUS, REAR WINDOW, PSYCHO, THE BIRDS and NORTH BY NORTHWEST are equally as good, and of course STRANGERS ON A TRAIN.  

One moment in VERTIGO jars for me though - Scottie follows Judy in the street and knocks at her hotel room door, she shows no reaction at all to see the man she had loved and duped suddenly at her door ....  Also, as so often with Hitchcock, the second lead female is often as fascinating as the heroine, think Barbara Bel Geddes's Midge, here, plus Suzanne Pleshette, Diane Baker, Vera Miles ....

I never bothered with THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY much, and in fact not seen it since I was a kid, but its on again this Saturday, so we may appreciate it more, after a programme on the various interviews Hitch did for the BBC over the years, at least Hitchcock always gave good interview. 

RIP: Alain Resnais

Alain Resnais - 1922-2014, aged 91. One of the most acclaimed French directors .... some of his titles suffice:

HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR, 1959

LAST YEAR IN MARIENBAD, 1961 - below

PROVIDENCE, 1977, script by David Mercer, featuring John Gielgud, Dirk Bogarde, David Warner, Ellen Burstyn, Elaine Stritch. Its endlessly fascinating as we ponder what is real or imaginary ....

STAVISKY, 1984

I shall be finally catching his 1955 32-minute NIGHT AND FOG before too  long ....

Blues on Sunday ...

It looks like Cate Blanchett will be collecting her Best Actress Award tonight - middle of the night here in the UK, so I will know in the morning. It was obvious back in August when I saw BLUE JASMINE that she would be unstoppable, just like Dame Helen (Mirren) was that year it was her turn ... 

It seems though that the girl from that three hour French explicit lesbian romance BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOUR - Adele Exarchopoulos - should also be in competition, and may be the real best actress of the year, according to newspaper pundits covering the Oscar nominations. I have just pre-ordered the film, due on dvd in 2 weeks. Tomorrow I get the  GRAVITY Blu-ray, and Pharrell's eagerly awaited new cd G I R L ... will we be "Happy" ?

We also pre-ordered the Coens' INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS, maybe the biggest movie not to have many nominations .... and also PHILOMENA, due out in a few weeks.  Maybe the cat (or cats, I understand there were 3 of them) should be up for Best Supporting Cat of the Year ? It seems the Coens best in some time, with a great subject, that folk singer who does not make it, as another steps up to the limelight ...

Nice music for a wet afternoon, watching BBC documentaries on the Chess label, that record company based in Chicago with all those great hits in the 50s and 60s - with great footage of those artists I love listening to: Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, and Bo Diddeley and Chuck Berry, and Etta James, Fontella Bass ("Rescue Me") and Sugar Pie DeSanto with her "Soulful Dress" ....  my best late pal, Stanley, loved that one. Watching Muddy and Howling and Etta at their peak is simply wonderful. I even dug that album Howling Wolf did with the likes of Clapton and Stevie Winwood in the 70s. Time to get out my Chess compilation albums.  Next music documentary coming up features the great Muscle Shoals recording studio in Alabama, where Aretha and the others did all those 60s Atlantio classics. Lovely. 

We also record VH1's Saturday night's weekly 3 hour "Saturday Night 80s Disco" and fly through it on Sunday, savouring some of the videos all over again, like Wham's "Young Guns" or Blondie's "Rapture" - bliss incarnate, along with soul clips like Chaka Khan and Shannon. How great Debbie and the guys are toplining Glastonbury this year, along with, er, Dolly.