What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Julian Shellhammer]

Rambling across the filmic spectrum, a hurried rehash of movie watching, here at the small house half-way up in the next block-

Cairo (1942), with Jeanette MacDonald, Robert Young, Ethel Waters, and a great many familiar faces. Directed by W. S. (One Shot Woody) Van Dyke; in the opening credits he is billed as Maj. W. S. Van Dyke. Small-town reporter Young is sent to get "the small town take" on the war. Torpedoed and cast ashore on the Egyptian coast, he becomes entangled with spies and singer MacDonald. Semi-rube that he is, he gets bad spies and good spies all-to-pieces confounded. MacDonald sings several operatic numbers, and Waters gets to sing a peppy number. Dooley Wilson, who played piano in Rick's Cafe Americain, shows up as a burnoose-wearing local who hails from LA. Look, the movie plays as if Preston Sturges wanted to make a Red Skelton movie, or if Red Skelton wanted to make a Preston Sturges movie. Buy your ticket and let yourself forget there's a global war going on.

The Steel Trap (1952), an Andrew l. Stone-helmed picture about bank embezzlement, and what crime does to regular folks. Joseph Cotton, husband to Teresa Wright and father of their daughter, falls prey to ennui and decides to steal a million dollars from the bank where he works. The heist is the first part of the story, and the bulk of the movie shows us their plan to flee the country. I won't spoil the ending, but you've got to watch to the very end to get through multiple twists and turns.

Blood on the Moon (1948) with Robert Mitchum, Barbara Bel Geddes, Robert Preston, Walter Brennan, and others. Noir western, or western noir? Director Robert Wise shoots about half the movie at night or indoors, with actors walking or riding out of the india-ink-iest shadows into geometric patches of light. Robert Preston's devious cowboy talks like Harold Hill but he's much more dangerous. Gorgeous exteriors, ascribed to Arizona but looking like John Ford's Utah, and solid acting. The fist-fight between Mitchum and Preston is one of the most brutal ever depicted in a Golden Age movie. Mitchum gets involved in a large-scale scam to cheat a local cattle rancher out of his business. Will he ignore his conscience, or will he step up and do the right thing? As he sorts things out, enjoy the visuals, the cowpoke lingo, and great big cowboy hats.

 

[Fading Fast]

Angel on the Amazon from 1948 with Vera Ralston, George Brent, Constance Bennett, Brian Aherne, and Fortunio Bonanova


There's a reason the combined "jungle story, romance, and fountain of youth" genre is a small one: it's tricky to pull it off. Angel on the Amazon doesn't quite do it, but it still offers up a thoughtful movie with a talented cast and several unexpected twists.

Since you want to see those twists fresh, just know at a high level the story is about a mysterious woman, played by Vera Ralston. We first meet her in the Amazon where she's a sphinx-like huntress who captures the heart of an American pilot, played by George Brent.

Brent is smitten, but Ralston has a "vacant eyes reflecting a deep and troubled past" mystery to her that has her bolting the jungle without first telling the pining-for-her Brent. Brent then, sometimes with his psychiatrist friend, played by Constance Bennett, goes in search of Ralston.

First, it's off to Rio for more mysterious Ralston moments. Finally, in Act Three, it's on to Pasadena and a slow reveal of the entire convoluted story that includes a honeymoon couple, a twenty-year-old safari, a feral black panther, the supernatural, a daughter, and much heartbreak.

Through it all, Brent is Brent, a stolid leading man from the less-is-more school of acting pursuing Ralston over the globe. Shot postwar, it's unfortunate that the globe hopping takes place exclusively at Republic studios as, by now, top movies required on-location verisimilitude.

At times, especially in the jungle, the picture has a low-budget Saturday-afternoon-serial feel to the production, but the sets and mise en scène get better in Rio and Pasadena.

Still, by shooting entirely on set, the film sacrificed any chance for a travelogue bonanza – leaving Bennett as the spark behind Brent’s pursuit. Carrying a secret torch for Brent, Bennett endures – repeatedly – the pain of having the man she loves confide in her about his love for another woman.

Unfortunately, this tantalizing unrequited-love storyline is never pursued, giving talented Bennett not a lot to do other than to doctor Brent and Ralston – they both injure themselves a few times – and to look lovelorn.

Rounding out the cast, Brian Aherne and Fortunio Bonanova, both acting pros, play the other men who are in some way circling Ralston. This leaves the movie on the slim shoulders of the often stone-faced Ralston.

The stone-face fits the role here, but it is Ralston's go-to move whenever she steps out of her acting depth, which she does in this one. Her best scenes are early on in the jungle when she's establishing her "mysterious" vibe; later, though, she struggles to open up when it's called for.

One can only imagine what a contemporary actress like Gene Tierney, with her naturally mysterious face, but expansive emotional range could have done with a role like this, but in truth, Tierney had stronger material to choose from at the time.

That is somewhat the answer, as this in-between-an-A-and-B picture is not supposed to be great, but more experimental or unusual. On that score it succeeds as it mainly keeps you interested early on until the mystery is revealed amidst a lot of melodrama toward the end.

Angel on the Amazon is one of those Hollywood oddities – a quirky mix up of genres with an atypical leading lady and a constraining budget – whose reach exceeds its grasp, but it still has enough interesting themes, ideas, and scenes to make it worth viewing.

 

[Trenchfriend]

1984 (1984), original tone, Dominic Muldowney soundtrack

 

[Fading Fast]

The White Sister from 1933 with Helen Hayes, Clark Gable, Edward Arnold, Louise Closser Hale, and Lewis Stone


MGM spent lavishly on this attempt at an epic romance, but much of its drama feels undermined today by modern values and norms. It likely went over better in 1934, but even then, audiences were probably thinking the story could have moved along at a faster pace.

Most pre-codes zip through their stories like a hot knife through butter, but The White Sister takes its time with everything. Set in pre-WWI Italy, Helen Hayes plays the daughter of a prince, played by Lewis Stone, who has arranged for her to marry a wealthy Italian banker.

Hayes, in a compliant, almost Stepford Wife-like haze, is willing to marry the staid and boring banker until, at a carnival, she has a chance encounter with a dashing young pilot played by Clark Gable. It's Hollywood-style love at first sight for these two, but Hayes wants to honor her engagement.

Gable, however, is having none of that, so – true to his screen persona – he keeps pushing himself on Hayes. A lot of soap opera drama follows – clandestine meetings, parental threats, a car accident, an untimely death, guilt, and a reunion of sorts – but even more melodrama is coming.

But we’re only at the end of Act One in this three-act story, and the reunited lovers are soon separated when Gable goes off to war after he and Hayes pledge their undying love. He, though, is shot down, reported missing, and then reported dead. Grief-stricken, Hayes turns to the Church.

We then learn – though Hayes doesn’t – that Gable, after recuperating in hiding at a kind German family’s farm, has been captured and sent to a German POW camp. This gives Hayes time to complete her novitiate before becoming a nun.

Every viewer of this movie ever knows what’s coming next: Gable escapes, returns to Italy, and tries to reunite with Hayes, who has now taken her vows – in an elaborate and solemn ceremony where she is “wed” to Christ.

Modern audiences, accustomed to values like "pursue your own path to happiness," and a more understanding church, will struggle to appreciate the anguish Hayes feels as love and passion pull her toward Gable, while her spiritual vows and honor pull her toward the Church.

None of this is helped by a miscast Gable. His cocky confidence doesn't fit the temperament of Hayes' dilemma. He's too rah-rah with his "of course you'll give up this 'church stuff' now that I'm back" attitude. The role called for the thoughtful perspective an actor like Spencer Tracy could have given.

Gable does, though, fit well in the early scenes where his boyish charm wins Hayes over, but the star of this one is Hayes, who gives an impressively nuanced performance. She goes from dutiful daughter to young lover to faithful vessel of Christ – all convincingly, in less than two hours.

Every step of the way, Hayes draws you into her internal struggle. When she fights falling in love with Gable, so as not to hurt her father, and later, when she fights returning to Gable, as she wants to honor her vows, you feel her anguish in her facial expressions and body English.

She is supported by strong performances from Edward Arnold, playing an ahead-of-his-time understanding priest, and Louise Closser Hale as a faithful governess. Both help guide Hayes through the many buffeting twists and turns her life takes in a few short years.

Despite covering all that ground, the movie often feels slow as there is only so much time viewers want to spend watching Hayes and Gable stare lovingly at each other in scenes that feel like a throwback to the silent era of filmmaking. Unusual for a precode, the movie simply needed to be sped up.

Done almost exclusively on elaborate but obvious sets, MGM's magic is engaging in a "Golden Era Hollywood creates romantic fantasy" way. While notionally set in Italy, The White Sister feels set in a timeless Tinseltown version of "Europe," where great romances take place.

The picture itself is a throwback to the Romantic Era of literature where love is the highest ideal, so men and women in love will overcome any obstacle to be together. This is another reason the movie may struggle to connect with modern audiences more accustomed to a transactional view of romance.

The White Sister is a movie for hardcore old movie fans with a bent for classic Romantic Era themed stories, especially slow-moving ones. It’s also a chance to see Helen Hayes in full screen stardom before she returned to her true love: the theater.

 

[Fading Fast]

Dead End from 1937 with Sylvia Sidney, Joel McCrea, Humphrey Bogart, Claire Trevor, Wendy Barrie, Marjorie Maine, and what would become the Dead End Kids


Some movies are more powerful because you can see the craftsmanship behind them. Dead End is filmed on an elaborate but unmistakable set, with a story obviously constructed to make several points, yet the result is close to art on film.

The set is one block of a New York City Depression-era east-river slum adjacent to a new luxury high-rise. Building luxury high-rises in some slums was a thing then, as the rich wanted the river views where certain slums were located – think of it as an early slant rhyme to gentrification.

That set-up serves to highlight the income disparity as the poor live in filthy tenements and their kids spend their days in gangs getting into trouble as they see little hope. Conversely, the contiguous rich are cosseted in safe, clean buildings and attended to by obeisant servants.

It's notable in film history that the kids in the gang – who look like very healthy kids dressed in rags – are played by actors who would go on to fame playing the same or similar roles in future movies branded as the Dead End Kids, the East Side Kids, and The Bowery Boys.

Away from those kids, one storyline here involves a good kid – now a young man – played by Joel McCrea. He tried hard to get out. He worked and studied to become an architect, but can't find a job in his field, so he's painting the outside of the building of a local business instead.

McCrea is also pulled – literally and symbolically – between two women: Sylvia Sidney, playing a garment worker on strike, and Wendy Barrie, playing a kept woman of a wealthy man.

It's the big story writ small with the wrinkle that Barrie herself was poor, but chose being a kept woman over remaining in poverty. Sidney wants to get out in a more respectable way, but parentless, she's caring for her teenage brother, who leads one of the neighborhood gangs.

Sidney, in one of the major roles, symbolizes the best the slums have to offer: a sincere woman of strong moral fiber who wants to do right and better honestly. Her performance moves you as the actress can convey hurt and hope with just subtle inflections of her facial features.

Also in the mix is Humphrey Bogart, playing a notorious gangster returning incognito to his old neighborhood to try to make amends with his mother and to see his old girlfriend. His "reunion" scenes are so powerful they become the heart and soul of the movie, despite both being brief.

His mother, played by Marjorie Main, rejects him completely because he's become a killer. Bogie wants his mother to love him, but she cannot forgive what he's done. Today, we might not appreciate her, but in the 1930s, her values were highly respected.

Still smarting from that body blow, Bogie then finds that his former girlfriend, played by Claire Trevor, is now not only a prostitute, but one who is, reading between the lines, sick with syphilis. It's a powerful and heartbreaking performance by Trevor even though it's only one scene.

All these stories and characters play out over the course of a day or so in the slum, until a big climax ties their lives together for a moment – before they scatter again.

Watch for the speech by the "rich kid's" father when, late in, he acknowledges the futility of it all – but also the risk of anarchy if law and order isn't enforced. Until then, he's a cartoon caricature of a fat cat, but in that brief moment, we realize he, like everyone else, is just trying to survive.

Director William Wyler, who wanted to film on location in slums of the east side, didn't let disappointment discourage him. Instead, he turned a constraint into a compositional opportunity that advanced the themes of his movie.

Wyler leveraged his elaborate set of a surreal "slum" of sharp angles, striking contrasts and rays of light slipping through the jagged skyline to highlight the movie's expression of class disparity, the struggles of the poor, and the integrity many maintain in challenging situations.

Today, Hollywood has so embraced "reality" and rejected artistry that many of our movies are degrading and depressing trips through the lowest common denominator. It is important and right that we are willing to show that, but art is more than just granular reality.

Art is also the good and bad in humanity and life, sometimes greatly exaggerated, sometimes greatly concentrated for the purpose of exposing and even edifying. Seeing the construct behind the art isn't a bad thing if the entirety says something honest about the human condition.

Dead End is art because it says many true things about the human condition, but through obvious artifice. Bogie breaking down in front of his mother, Trevor's shattered life, and the rich isolated in their tower are all powerful despite being "constructed."

Wyler and his cast captured a moment in New York City, a slice of the Depression, and several eternal challenges of the human condition on an obvious set in a West Hollywood studio – not a bad achievement for a medium looked down upon as just "commercial fluff" at the time.