Film review: The Ghost Goes West (1935)

As far as I'm aware, Robert Donat can do no wrong (well, anyone associated with The 39 Steps, really), and this film is certainly no evidence to the contrary.  Plus he gets to play two roles.  It's also a bit more fun than the marital bickering of Blithe Spirit, if we're comparing ghost films.  The film opens in some fictionalized 18th Century version of Scotland, where the clan Glourie and the clan McLaggen are supposed to put aside their mutual loathing to fight the English.  A problem is that the scion of the Glourie clan (Murdoch, played by Donat) is much more interested in getting the local wenches to play his riddle-guessing-that-turns-into-a-kissing game than he is in fighting.  That's not to say he's cowardly, just easily distracted.  On one fateful day, however, the head of the clan Glourie drops dead (you can tell he must be because he drops his whisky) just before Murdoch is killed while hiding behind a barrel of gunpowder that gets hit by a poorly-directed Scottish cannonball (we never even get to see any English).  Father makes it to Heaven, but has to explain to son that his fate is to haunt their castle until such time as the Glourie honor is restored by forcing a member of the McLaggens to admit that one Glourie could whip 50 McLaggens.  Sadly, however, as no McLaggens visit the castle, poor Murdoch is consigned to purgatory for the next 200 years.  The scene switches to a decidedly dilapidated Castle Glourie in the modern day (well, 1930s), and a young woman driving up to it in her natty little roadster.  She is Peggy Martin (played by a charmingly perky (a hard combination to pull off) Jean Parker), the daughter of an American millionaire.  On touring the castle, she encounters a crowd of angry local merchants, who are kept at bay by a fearsome housekeeper, but are determined to extract the vast (for those days) sums they are owed by the current Lord of the Manor.  When we finally see Donald Glourie, he is of course also played by Robert Donat, but, while charming, he is a more diffident version than his rakish ancestor.  He is very interested in both Peggy and her offer to buy the castle, and is happy to hear that she will return that night with her parents.  The housekeeper immediately whips all the merchants into preparing a slap up feed with food also provided by them, with the promise that if all goes well they'll finally get paid.  They all know about the Glourie Ghost, however, so are all keen to get out before his nightly haunting begins at midnight.  Donald is keen to end the party too, because Peggy's mother has announced that she's deathly afraid of ghosts and the sale will be off.  But Peggy, conversely, wants to stay as late as possible.  Eventually the clock hands creep past midnight and we expect the ghost to appear, but he doesn't.  The parents are hustled into their car and Peggy follows in his, and Donald thanks Murdoch aloud for holding off.  But it turns out that the real reason he didn't show is that the canny housekeeper set the clock forward an hour, so it's not yet midnight.  And Peggy decides she really wants to stay the night (she's sassy!  She's a girl who knows what she wants, as we see repeatedly).  Peggy of course bumps into Murdoch, who still can't resist a pretty face and tries to get her to play his riddle game.  However, after he's reveal the forfeit, but before he can collect, his heavenly dad scolds him for getting distracted again and Peggy is left to pay the forfeit to a stunned Donald (whom, of course, she thinks it was) the next day. Anyway, Peggy's father reaches a price with Donald (he is prepared to pay 10 thousand pounds, but Donald, not knowing this, just insists it be more than the slightly-more-than two thousand that he owes the merchants.  But then the father (who is played by the marvelously croaky-voiced Eugene Pallette, who plays an almost identical role in Heaven Can Wait) announces that the castle is to be moved to Florida, and Donald's Scottish pride takes over.  However, Peggy's influence gets him to cave and they're off.  Cut to the boat going over, and Murdoch manifests mid-Atlantic, and Peggy gets to see him try his riddle game on other fair maids and is disgusted in Donald.  But fairly quickly she and her father realizes this is the real deal, and suddenly the press get word and the opening of the re-assembled-in-Florida castle becomes a huge event.  (Donald is not so happy with Mr. Martin's "embellishments" (like converting a suit of armor into a radio) (there are a couple of "radio" jokes, from which one can infer that it was viewed as kind of a crass fad by the filmmakers) but he's also miserable about Peggy's distance.  Anyway, we get a satisfactory resolution when it emerges that Mr. Martin's rival in business and large-European-building purchasing is a McLaggen descendant, and Murdoch manages to fulfill his mission and get Peggy and Donald reunited.  All in all definitely the frothy entertainment I had promised with Blithe Spirits, with a couple of genuine laugh-out-loud moments (provided mainly by Mr. Martin's taste or lack thereof).  Very satisfactory.

Film review: Blithe Spirit (1945)

"Let's watch something light and frothy," I said, with this in mind.  Well...  Once again Rex Harrison plays the charming dispenser of bon mots, and the movie begins with him swapping them with his current wife (Ruth, played by Constance Cummings) as they lay out their history of both being on their second marriage, their former ones ending in death in each case, as they prepare for a dinner party where the redoubtable Margaret Rutherford ("Madame Arcati") will be conducting a seance.  Ruth claims not to care whether or not Charles thought his former wife, Elvira, more physically attractive than her, as theirs is a mature love.  The guests arrive (the town doctor and his gossipy wife) and then Madame Arcati, who has bicycled to Charles and Ruth's palatial home (paid for, one assumes, by the royalties from Charles' novels, as he is a writer whose purpose in having the seance is to gather material for his latest).  Well, all is going well, and Madame Arcadi is being amusingly eccentric (as only Margaret Rutherford can be) when she picks out some music to play for the seance and Charles is notably disturbed by the choice.  It's a song called "Always," and although the film never says why he dislikes the choice (showing restraint that no current screenwriter would be allowed), it's pretty obvious that it must have been a favorite of Elvira's.  Madame Arcati has to work through the intermediary of a child, who is out of sorts because she's been under the weather (the metaphysics of this film is interesting - apparently "the other side" is much the same as this one, complete with waiting in drafty corridors, filling out forms and getting colds) and eventually she even enters a trance and channels the recalcitrant child.  The seance scene is surprisingly creepy (a tribute to Margaret Rutherford's acting - she can switch from buffoonish to steely in an instant) but the person seriously disturbed is Charles, because he swears he hears Elvira's voice talking to him.  Madame Arcati passes out, and on being revived (brandy, to wash down the martinis she has already guzzled) is convinced that she has succeeded in manifesting a psychic entity, and is amazed by the party-goers' denials.  But of course she has, as as soon as she leaves, Elvira (played by a green-painted Kay Hammond) sashays in through the curtains.  Charles is the only one who can see her, and at first Ruth is convinced that he's going batty, but is eventually convinced because Elvira can move things around.  Ruth then goes to Madame Arcati to get help in getting rid of Elvira but manages to offend her so much (partly by letting slip the reason for the seance) that she won't help.  Ruth soon realizes though that Elvira's ultimate goal is to bump off Charles so that they can be together in the great beyond.  And indeed it is, but unfortunately Elvira's plan misfires, as Ruth drives off in the car that she has sabotaged for Charles and (in a twist that I did not see coming) Ruth dies first!  Then Charles tries to work with Madame Arcati to get rid of both of his ex-wives (well, they're both ex in one sense and Elvira is ex in two) as they're driving him batty.  Interspersed through this are some very sharp exchanges, especially between Elvira and Charles, as apparently neither was faithful and he hit her with a billiard cue at one point (hence Jami's one-sentence review: "Rex Harrison, yet again, plays the wife-beating scallywag for laughs."  This is a trifle unfair, as I must say Rex Harrison is a lot more likeable in this one than he is in My Fair Lady, and genuinely seems to have loved both wives, but it is enough (along with some dubious "mild" racism) to take some of the froth off this banter).  It's a bit darker than The Importance of Being Earnest, that's for sure.  Oh, and don't worry, all three are reunited at the end, although by that point I'm not sure if there are any bridges left unburnt. Still, I do recommend it, because the mots are certainly bon (thank you Noel Coward), the performances pitch-perfect, and it's directed by David Lean!

Film review: On Dangerous Ground (1951)

Nicholas Ray must like prepositions, what with this film and In a Lonely Place (also Rebel Without a Cause).  He also like melodrama, which this film certainly has, although its lead man, the granite-faced Robert Ryan, is certainly stoic, at least, when he's not beating the crap out of the scum of the streets, which he does a fair amount of in the first half of the movie.  He is a world-weary cop in the big city (which is probably Los Angeles, but we never see it in the daytime so it's hard to tell) whose two partners (or car-mates, as they drive around in plain clothes in an unmarked car) are getting worried about his increasingly sour mood.  At the beginning, they're searching for two cop-killing scum (one called "Mushy" the other called...Gordon) which is all the rationale our hero (Jim) needs to really work over the lowlife who has info on where they're hiding out (although he does chide the man (who certainly uses his few minutes of screen time to chew scenery) for making him do it.  Sadly, though, he ends up rupturing said lowlife's bladder, so his boss (Ed Begley Senior) tells him to cool it for a while.  Alas, the very next night he chances upon two hoods taking revenge on the dame who fingered bladder boy, and his rage takes the better of him.  So, to cool him off (literally) he is transferred "up north" to the middle of farm land, with the snow lying deep and crisp and even, to help with a man hunt for the murderer of a local farmer's daughter.  So begins the REAL movie, and the only actor in both parts is Ryan.  Turns out that the farmer is none too happy about a Big City Cop nosying into country affairs with his notions of not-just-summarily-executing the fugitive.  They pair up and very quickly get into a hot pursuit along icy roads in a snowstorm.  Both cars crash and they stumble out to find that there is just one house nearby... and the REAL film begins.  Because in the house is Ida Lupino (who is listed as co-director, and went on to be a pioneering female director of a string of film noirs) who is a very decent (melting the hard shell round our cynical hero) blind woman who is hiding something.  Oh, and you know how they say "if you see a gun in act 1 it will be used in act 3"?  Well substitute "cliff" for gun and you will get the idea.
Is this a good movie?  Well, as usual my standard is I was not bored, so I say yes.  A bit melodramatic, as I said (it's always risky when you've got a blind character - and throw in her "different" brother - oops, I've said too much), but Ryan is very good and Lupino carries off the blind role without a trace of treacle.  Plus, a happy-ish ending!  It's no In a Lonely Place, but it it's on TV you should sit down and watch it.

Highland Recreation Area

I went here a few times when Thomas was going to school round the corner at White Lake, but never found this particular trail.  It's luvverly.

Film review: L'assassin habite... au 21 (1942)

Henri-Georges Clouzot is the closest thing to the French Hitchcock.  He directed Diabolique and The Wages of Fear, two films that can stand proudly next to the very best of the master himself.  This one is an early one, actually filmed when the Nazis were occupying France, and while not a classic, is certainly great entertainment.  It's very Thin Man-esque, in that it's comedy-crime and a married (?) couple are the protagonists, but it's also very French (references to breasts, prostitution and squeezing blackheads(!) abound). The basic plot is that a murderer who leaves the calling card "Monsieur Durant" on his victims is terrorizing a district of Paris and it falls to our hero, a detective whose first name is "Wenceslas" but whose wife/partner calls him "Wens", to find the murderer or be fired (there's a humorous early scene where the buck is passed down the line of command, where at each exchange the superior gives his inferior less time to catch the murderer, until Wens foresees he is next and his boss just finds a note on his desk saying "I get it - I have 2 days to catch the killer or lose my job").  The film actually opens with a man getting drunk in a bar and paying in huge banknotes because he won the lottery (because he held a door open for another man and he had nothing to tip him with by his lottery ticket).  After a woman tries to pick him up ("Do you want a nanny?" She asks, and alludes to her bosom (as if she actually means wet nurse) at which point he makes a comment to the effect that he's been weaned, because he can tell she's after his money).  He staggers off into the night, at which point we take the point of view of the killer who is following him until, a la Peeping Tom, we stare into his eyes as he is stabbed to death.  And remember, this is a comedy!
Anyway, Wens catches a break when an old lag he once put behind bars but who now owns a junk shop reveals that he cleaned out an old dresser from a boarding house attic and found a set of "Monsieur Durand" cards in it, so he figures the murderer must live there (you guessed it - it's Number 21).  Thus Wens decides to go undercover in the boarding house - disguised as a priest.  There he meets a very odd assortment.  A general dogsbody who can whistle like any bird - or train, or in general any vehicle, an ex-army doctor (or so he claims - but when Wens asks him which regiment he becomes very cagy) who got into trouble for performing an abortion and who has a limp, a fake fakir who does magic tricks, a doll-maker, who makes dolls with no faces that can stab, to represent Monsieur Durand, a blind ex-boxer and his sexy nurse and an old maid who writes novels that are always rejected.  And this is before his own partner shows up, determined to follow him on his stake-out (she finds out where he is by steaming open the letter he left for the police if he didn't make it back alive).  She's more of the comic relief, as in reality she is a singer/actress who can't catch a break but is told by a promoter that if she can get in the papers (say, by catching Durand) she will get a gig.  Anyway, they team up and eventually do catch the murderer - only there's a twist... that I won't reveal, because everyone should see this film, as it's top entertainment and more modern than a lot of films made in the '80s.

Before they close Shiawassee Reserve for hunting season...

 Frog

 GIANT snapping turtle

Last lake swim of the season?

It's still shorts weather here in Michigan, and today it was pretty sultry - pushing 90 degrees.  So time for the first swim in a while and also probably the last for a much longer while.

 

Green Point

Green Point Environmental Learning Center is on the Northern edge of the Shiawassee Reserve - the opposite side from the place we normally go, and actually falls within the boundaries of the city of Saginaw.  In search of variety, I drove us there for a walk today.  First, some shots of Saginaw, which, like Detroit and Flint is full of memories of better times but oddly empty of people:

Now the hike and the center, which you get to by driving through a neighborhood and down a road marked "dead end".  The gate was locked when we got there but a car came behind us and opened it (even though it was well within opening hours).  We were the only people there otherwise:

They were nice enough trails, but nothing spectacular.  It's Saginaw's For-Mar, only not quite as nice.