Film review: At The Circus (1939)

 The Marx Brothers' movies are leaving the Criterion Channel on June 30th (hey, that's today) so we watched the one that we hadn't seen that was highest rated, and it was pretty good!  The boys are a decade on from their film debut, and have bounced around various studios, but they've got a formula and by god they're going to stick to it.  It's got a Chico piano-sequence!  It's got a Harpo harp sequence (which, following the lead of Day at the Races has him interacting with an all-black musical ensemble who suddenly appear as if from nowhere just for this sequence and then vanish again.  This time, instead of calling him "Gabriel" they call him "Svengali" - the reason for both escapes me).  But best of all, it has Groucho (as lawyer J. Cheever Loophole, and in this film wearing a rather distracting wig) singing one of the best Marx Bros. songs ever, "Lydia, the Tattooed Lady" (which, coincidentally, also features in the next year's The Philadelphia Story)  As I said, the plot is familiar.  In a lot of their movies, somebody (not one of the brothers) is in charge of something that they're in danger of losing, nefarious outsiders try to ensure that they do lose it, and the brothers conspire to save them.  In this case, it's Jeff Wilson, a scion of a rich family who has renounced his wealth to run the circus.  He's borrowed $10,000 from John Carter, who is obviously a bad 'un, in league with Peerless Pauline (Eve Arden) the acrobat.  

Their motives are unclear, but Carter calls in the debt early, expecting Jeff not to be able to pay it, in which case he gets to take over the circus, but is surprised to hear Jeff say he can pay it that night, on the train taking the circus from town to town.  Meanwhile, Chico, who in this movie is "Antonio," a general dogsbody for the circus, who contacts Groucho for help, knowing that Jeff is in trouble.  Harpo is "Punchy," 

an assistant to the strongman ("Goliath") 

who is also in league with the bad guys, and who, besides being mean to Punchy (presumably because he accidentally hits in in the ass with a cannonball), along with the tiny "Little Professor Atom," he clonks Jeff on the head and steals the $10,000.  It's now up to the boys to get it back.  Key scenes involve Groucho walking on the ceiling in special shoes with Peerless Pauline, 

whom he knows has his wallet stuffed in her cleavage (he looks straight at the camera and wonders if there's a way to retrieve it without violating the Hayes code).  As is his plan, the wallet falls out when she's on the ceiling, but he's stuck there (until Harpo comes and unlaces his shoes) while she escapes; all three brothers visiting Professor Atom in his tiny home and trying to discover if the cigar found at the scene of Jeff's mugging is Atom's (an attempt repeated foiled by Chico - every time Groucho says to Atom "do you have a cigar?" Chico jumps in and offers his; and Harpo and Chico trying to search Goliath's room without waking him up.  Finally, Margaret Dumont, who plays Jeff's rich aunt, appears.  Groucho hits on the idea of getting the $10,000 from her, and arrives at her mansion to seduce her, as is his wont.  She has asked the French conductor Jardinet to bring his orchestra over to play for her and has promised him $7,500.  Harpo raises it to $10,000 and tries to divert Jardinet so that Jeff's circus will replace him as the entertainment at the aunt's big soirée.  The climax features a wild chase featuring a "gorilla" and just about everyone, Dumont included, swinging from the trapeze.  Very satisfying.  Except for Groucho's wig.

 

Film review: Shaft (1971)

 

We've been watching the Rockford Files' first couple of seasons ('75-6) recently and it struck me that Shaft would've made a good TV series of that era.  There are a lot of parallels - both are private eyes (or private "dicks," to quote the immortal Isaac Hayes (who, by strange coincidence, guest starred in a Rockford episode) theme song, which so far transcends the rest of the movie it's not fair) and both have a love-hate relationship with a cop (Dennis Becker for Rockford and Vic Androzzi for Shaft), and both have friends of all kinds at all levels of society scattered here and there.  But it has to be said that the production values of most Rockford episodes, along with the level of acting, not to mention the star power (we've seen episodes that had Joseph Cotton and Jackie Cooper in them), far exceeds Shaft.  And add to that the writing.  But you can't beat the gritty winter-in-New-York-in-the-early-70s setting of Shaft, 

even if (as with Rockford, actually - was this a problem with the film stock?) it's sometimes hard to see it in the night scenes.  And, even though the dialogue, including in-your-face racial jibes can be a bit cringeworthy at times, the movie is undeniably hip, baby.  The basic plot is standard hard-boiled stuff: the private eye is a loner, distrusted by all the factions in town, which include not just the cops but the local black mob (led by "Bumpy" Jones) and the young Black Power activists (led by Ben Buford), and that's before the actual Mafia moves in to the picture.  But, distrusted as he is by all, he is also the only guy who knows and can work with all factions.  Shaft himself is, to be honest, a bit of a jerk.  He's got nothing but insults for Androzzi, despite the fact that Androzzi protects him from the higher-ups who want his license pulled, and while he has a girl who loves him (to whose profession that she loves him he replies "I know") it doesn't stop him banging the white chick with "titillating boobs" who hits on him in a bar (who later complains that, while he's "great in the sack," he's "shitty afterwards").  

But on the flipside, he is shown being nice to all of society's early-70s downtrodden, from the blind newspaper vendor, 

to the flagrantly gay bartender (who used the phrase "titillating boobs"), to the nice young mother who provides a place for Ben to hide out at a key point in the proceedings.  He doesn't care that the Black Mob and the young Pathers think of him as "being in whitey's pocket," but he doesn't back down from anybody, including Bumpy's thugs.  The basic outline of the plot is that Bumpy hires him ostensibly to find his daughter, who has sympathies for the black radicals, but when Shaft tracks down Ben, his building is surrounded and everyone at the meeting he was having is shot, except for Ben, whom Shaft helps escape (hence the need to have Ben hide out at his friend's place).  But then Shaft takes Ben to Bumpy to clear the air, 

and Bumpy asks for Ben's people's help in fighting the Mafia who are the real people who have Bumpy's daughter.  Meanwhile, Vic is left cleaning up all the bodies that pile up (starting with one of Bumpy's men that gets thrown through Shaft's office window (it's on at least the third floor) before Bumpy even gets to meet Shaft the first time).  It all ends in a very satisfying raid on the hotel that the Mafia have the daughter holed up in, which features the scene on the poster, which is Shaft swinging through the hotel window, blazing away.  

A period piece, let's say, but a not un-entertaining one.

Frederick the fish

 Taken last week with my underwater camera:

Here he is today.  It's been rainy all week so we haven't been swimming, but today it was ungodly hot as well, so we went to Metamora-Hadley.  There is a shallow spot in the middle of the lake which we discovered:

Film review: Tombstone (1993)

We had not seen this film before, but I was aware of it because I had seen this gif of Powers Boothe (who I knew as an incredibly evil bad guy in Deadwood) before, as it has, as you can imagine, wide application:

This film has a lot going for it besides that awesome moment and in general, is a very solid modern western, but somehow it's a bit disappointing.  Not because of its cast, which is packed to the rafters with familiar faces (usually sporting natty facial hair, in the case of the men at least): Kurt Russell is excellent as Wyatt Earp, Bill Paxton is his usual reliable self as Morgan Earp, and the impossibly-voiced Sam Elliot (who just has to wear his usual huge mustache) rounds out the Earps as Virgil.  But that's just the start.  Stephen "Avatar" Lang is the cowardly Ike Clanton, Thomas Hayden "Sideways" Church as his brother Billy, the ubiquitous Michael Rooker as a McMasters brother who starts out bad but comes over to the Earps in disgust at his side's dishonorable ways, Michael "Terminator" Biehn as Boothe's Curly Bill Brocius's right-hand pistoleer, Johnny Ringo

Billy "Titanic" Zane as the Shakespearean in a troop of actors who come to town, Charlton fucking Heston as just some farmer who shows up at the end, and Robert fucking Mitchum just as the voiceover!  But wait, there's more! From TV, there's Dana Delany (China Beach) as a free-spirited actress who wins Wyatt's heart, Terry "Lost" O'Quinn as the town mayor, an unrecognizable Jason "90210" Priestly as squirrelly deputy Billy Breckinridge and as Wyatt's laudanum-addicted current wife Maddie, an actress I swore I recognized, and it must be from the Seinfeld episode "The Doodle" where she (Dana Wheeler-Nicholson) plays Jerry's girlfriend-of-the-week. While some of the faces are hard to recognize behind the facial hair (and dirt/suntans in the case of Michael Biehn), it does get a little distracting.  And some of the TV stars, notably Dana Delany, probably should've stuck with TV.  But wait, I've left the best to last.  The character that everyone most remembers from this film is Doc Holliday, played in all his tubercular dandiness by Val Kilmer, in a performance that I can't help but think had some impact on Johnny Depp's Captain Jack:

Kilmer is a lot like Depp in that both are preternaturally beautiful (sidenote: doesn't he look a lot like Michael York in the above clip?) but clearly frustrated character actors who have trouble functioning in the world.  But Kilmer simply runs away and hides with this film, in much the same way that Heath Ledger steals The Dark Night.  Holliday is a loner whose waspy putdowns get him into trouble and drive away all but Wyatt, who seems to see through his walls, and as a result wins an ever-loyal friend.  He's an inveterate gambler, but more importantly, the fastest gun in the West.  (But wait, that's Johnny Ringo!  Or is it?)  Anyway, the plot isn't that important.  In outline, at least, it tracks the true story of the Gunfight at the OK Corral, although that occurs about halfway through the movie, and a lot of the main action happens afterwards, because the gang ("the Cowboys" - known by the red sashes they wear - no really!) whose members the Earp Brothers and Doc Holliday dispatch in that shootout, take their revenge and then in turn have to be systematically eliminated.  The city of Tombstone itself does rather take center stage, because the brothers are moving there to seek their fortunes after having become somewhat legendary lawmen in Kansas.  Initially retired, they are forced back into service (Virgil first, Morgan next, and Wyatt only very reluctantly) after Curly Bill shoots the town sheriff while in an opium fog.  Meanwhile, the County Sheriff, a very slick operator who moves in on Dana Delany while Wyatt tries to stay loyal to his junkie wife, is secretly in league with the Cowboys and happy to allow the Earps be wiped out (including their wives).  Probably the best scene is the be-giffed one above, where Johnny Ringo shows off his gun-handling skills in the casino that the Earps get a stake in (by driving out a local tough who was keeping all decent folks away) trying to provoke Doc.  Doc masterfully mocks him, as seen, but Ringo will get his showdown with Doc before the film ends, as you can imagine.  And probably the best thing about the film is Doc's flowery language.  He is particularly fond of floral imagery, calling several people "Daisy," and this is how he introduces himself when he shows up to the duel with Ringo (who is expecting Wyatt):

(Explanation here.) Talking it over with Jami afterwards, we couldn't quite put our finger on why it was vaguely unsatisfactory.  The main problem was that it didn't really build tension well.  Perhaps this is because the gunfight happens in the middle of the film and then you don't really know where the film's going to go after that.  But in general, the cinematography is just workmanlike.  You really gain an appreciation of what Sergio Leone does when you see what other people don't do.  (Although at least this film is an improvement on the director's most famous movie, which is Rambo...)

Film review: The Solid Gold Cadillac (1956)

This has its charms but is definitely a step down from It Should Happen to You.  The plot is not dissimilar in that Holliday plays a plucky and stubborn young woman who does things her way and ends up making huge waves, only this time she breaks into business.  It also has a love interest, but he's rather shockingly old and dumpy: was this written by a middle-aged dumpy man?  Anyway, the film (which features voice over by George Burns - and that's his sole role in the movie) opens with a stockholders' meeting at International Projects, where the company's founder Edward L. McKeever (whom Burns reveals to be the only honest man on the board) is about to leave to go to Washington to serve in the new administration.  

The rest of the board, led by unctuous Brit John T. Blessington present McKeever (who is paying more attention to his sandwich) with a leaving present of a gold key that will open any door in the building (yes, this is like the gun that you see in the first act in that it will be used in the third) as a sign that he is "always welcome." Holliday, as Laura Partridge, keeps interrupting affairs.  

It turns out she owns 10 stocks as a result of being kind to her elderly neighbor who left them to her in his will.  She is outraged at the 6 figure incomes the board members earn and grills them on what they do and how often they have to do it.  After the meeting is over, Laura and McKeever meet at a lunch counter, where she is pleased to see him ordering bicarbonate of soda, because she warned him about eating his sandwich too fast.  He ends up giving her a lift to her place (even though it's out of the way and they have to cross a bridge whose toll is a quarter) and obviously becomes a bit smitten by her.  (This is reminiscent of the car trip taken by Jean Arthur and Edward Arnold in Easy Living, an otherwise superior film (although lacking Holliday).)  

It turns out she is a struggling actress, who prefers the stage but doesn't like Shakespeare because unless you're a king, you never get to sit down.  She informs McKeever that she decided International Projects was a good company when she found out the refrigerator it makes sells for $80 more than anyone else's - that proved they knew how to make money.  Then he heads off to Washington.  She, on the other hand, has gotten a taste for rabble-rousing at the stockholders' meetings, and continues to attend each one.  This leads the board to get nervous, because, crooked as Burns warned us they are, they intend to give themselves huge bonuses and stock options and are afraid these will not escape her eagle eye.  So Blessington has a brainwave: to hire Laura to come work for the company, so they can keep her too busy to attend.  She gets an office and a secretary (whose job is to keep her from knowing too much) and a purview of looking after the small investors, a topic dear to her heart (as it had been to McKeever).  Blessington et. al. intended this just to take the form of answering their letters when they came in, but there is far too little of this to keep Laura busy, so she has the secretary (Amelia) - who quickly falls under her spell - to get her the directory of all the stockholders and she takes to writing letters to them.  Laura also immediately notices that the buttoned-up Amelia and the office manager Mark Jenkins are sweet on each other but won't admit it, so she helps kindle a romance (in part by getting Amelia to improve her hairdo).

Meanwhile, the board of directors is furious with McKeever because he isn't sending fat federal contracts and requisition orders their way, so they get him to come and visit.  When he does, he bumps into Laura and she takes him to her office and explains what she's doing.  Somehow in that visit it comes out that he wanted to be an actor too, and he gives a rendition of a speech by Spartacus that he learned as a boy that causes the ladies from the typing pool who are listening at the door to titter and Laura to smile fondly.  

MEANWHILE, the bursar tells the rest of the board that Laura is costing the company a fortune in postage and that Amelia, far from keeping her from trouble, actually got her the list of stockholders.  So they decide to fire Amelia. On finding out, Laura is about to quit in sympathy (and gets as far as packing up most of her things, including one of a pair of galoshes, that in a running joke she is never able to pair up with the other) when she opens a letter marked "urgent" from one of the stockholders she has been corresponding with to discover that the board member who was hired to replace McKeever, who is Blessington's hapless brother-in-law, drove the company (Apex clocks) that the writer's husband worked in into bankruptcy, unaware that International owned Apex.  Laura uses her knowledge of this massive blunder to get Amelia her job back and herself much more staff for writing even more letters.

The board's next plot to neutralize Laura is to send her to Washington to use her wiles on McKeever (who refused all unethical behavior on his visit), with the justification that doing so will help the small investors both of them claim to love.  She is not fooled, but agrees to the trip with the plan of getting McKeever to come back and take back the company.  While in Washington she falls for McKeever, and, while nothing untoward happens, she and McKeever are seen visiting each other's rooms in their fancy hotel.  This ends up being used against them when they try to go back and get McKeever back in charge.  The Board simply says "no," and because McKeever had to give up his holdings in the company when he went to Washington (ah, the good-old pre-Trump days), he seems stymied.  But then he hits on the plan of using the fact that the board sent Laura to Washington to get him to help the company to take them to court, because that's against the law (although probably not because it violates the Mann Act, as Laura seems to think). 

HOWEVER, the board again fight back, and their ace in the hole is accusing Laura of going there because she loves McKeever, and this is where the testimony of the hotel staff comes in (and Laura admits she loves McKeever in front of the court).  And then the board fires Laura, Amelia AND Mark.  HOWEVER, the last twist is that, back at Laura's place (hiding from the press) McKeever finds out that all the small stockholders appoint Laura as their proxy with little slips inside their letters, and maybe, if they can get hold of Laura's mail, they'll have enough stocks to stage a revolt.  But the board preempts them by hiding the mail in Blessington's office!  But McKeever still has the key!  And, of course, they make it to the stockholder's meeting and get to fire the board!  And stay tuned for the last minute of the movie, which switches to color, and is the explanation for the title of the film.

Overall, charming, but slight.  Everyone in it is perfectly fine, and it whizzes past just fine, but it hasn't the inspired writing of It Should Happen to You.

Film review: It Should Happen to You (1954)

 Where has Judy Holliday been all my life?  Thanks to (what else) a Criterion Channel collection of her films, we have been introduced to her charms, and they are manifold.  As the film unfolded we found ourselves speculating what she would have been like in, for example, Some Like It Hot, and what a crime it was that she never made a film with Cary Grant.  While she's not the sex-bomb that Marilyn is (and is hampered by some seriously silly hairdos in this movie), she has superior comic delivery (and Marilyn's no slouch, certainly in SLIH) and is just a unique presence.  She also has very expressive eyes and a smile that is radiant.  I thought that maybe it would be fair to call her somewhere between Marilyn and Lucille Ball, but in this film she's a bit more like the Gracie of George-Burns-and- fame: in some respect happily oblivious.  However, she's not ditsy so much as slightly off-kilter.  It took a little bit of the film to get accustomed to her oddness, but once you do, you find yourself captivated.  And there are some great lines that she delivers perfectly.  It's a measure of her star power that she completely overshadows Jack Lemmon (in his first major film role) - no easy feat.  Anyway, on to the plot summary.  The film opens in Central Park where Lemmon is a documentary filmmaker (an independent one, judging by his apparent relative poverty) shooting scenes of the park goers suffering slightly in the summer heat.  His eye is caught by one of these who is a woman who is walking around in her stockinged feet, looking dreamy and throwing peanuts to the pigeons.  She plops down next to a man lying on the grass trying to listen to a ball game on his radio and tries to strike up a conversation with him, but he gets peevish and then accuses her of trying to hit on him (patently ridiculous as she is out of his league) and they part in a huff.  Lemmon ("Pete Sheppard") introduces himself and they chat, in the course of which she reveals that she's just lost her job as a girdle model because the girdle wasn't fitting and her boss bet with the designer that it was the girdle's fault, but the designer measured her and she was 3/4 of an inch larger than usual, and because he'd lost $50 in the bet, her boss got mad at her and fired her.  She also reveals that she came to New York City trying to make a name for herself, and also that her name is "Gladys Glover," a name she's not too fond of.  Pete tries to cheer her up and assures her that things will work out, but that he has to get going.  However, he gets her address so that he can show her the finished documentary in which she features.  Pete leaves Gladys with a rather confusing self-coined aphorism: "where there's a will there's a way, and where there's a way there's a will." 

Then, as she's leaving the park, Gladys sees a big billboard for rent in Columbus Circle and gets an idea.  

The next day, she plucks up courage and heads to the Pfeiffer advertising company and plops down her savings to rent the billboard for 3 months, just to have her name on it.  Things start to get complicated when the head of the company that usually rents the billboard, the Adams Soap Company, discovers that the billboard his father always insisted on renting when he ran the company has already been taken.  (The man at Pfeiffer tried to contact him several times, but Evan Adams III, it is clear, is a bit of a playboy.)  They call Gladys in, expecting to buy her off very easily, but she loves her billboard (seriously: she gazes at it in rapt adoration) and refuses.  Adams comes up with a solution: he offers her six other billboards, one of them outside Grand Central Station in exchange.  Gladys is very pleased.  Meanwhile, Pete has taken an apartment in her building and she is happily hanging out with him, 

but he is bewildered and in fact rather enraged by her billboard fixation.  He gives her a little speech about how better that your name stand for something and be known by nobody than for nothing and be known by everyone.  She is not to be discouraged, however, and while taking him to see one of her signs, they pop into Macy's opposite to buy towels, and when she gives her name to the saleslady, she is besieged by autograph-hunters.  Then a man comes on the TV later wondering who this Gladys Glover is ("some relative of Killroy?") she phones in and gets invited on.  She is initially stiff, just reading off the teleprompter (at increasing speeds as they chivvy her along), but then when she is asked a question (something like "are you glad to be on the show?") she grins hugely and says something to the effect of yes, especially as they're paying her).  The crowd thinks she's great, although it's not clear if they're laughing at her or with her.  She goes from strength to strength, and Adams Soap hires her as its endorser - "the average American girl" - and she is plastered everywhere, doing everything from posing in the bath to posing on skis.  Meanwhile Evan Adams becomes increasingly intrigued by her and pursues her (his following her up her stairs after dropping her off after a night of dancing, as she tries to lose him repeatedly manages the difficult task of being very funny rather than creepy,  something that is entirely down to Holliday's substantial comic gifts). And Adams keeps up his pursuit, used as he is to his charms (and wealth) ensuring conquests.

Of course Pete is watching all this and decides that he's lost her, and leaves her with a little film conveying his feelings for her called "Goodbye Gladys".  

 Will she end up with the rich charmer Adams or will she find Pete again?  Will she remember his speech about how it's okay to be one of the crowd and how your name should stand for something?  I think you can guess.  But it's not clear that she ever does lose her love of billboards.

 

Film review: Love and Monsters (2020)

 This is indeed as schlocky as its poster suggests.  It's not bad, but it could've been better.  I think it wants to be Zombieland, which hits the sweet spot of almost PG-13 Horror comedy with heart, and like that film, it looks like it was a pilot for a TV series at one point.  But I'm not sure of its audience - it was too young for me but it also has sex references, so...  All right, now I describe it, the audience is obviously teenagers.  But it could stand a bit more grit - it's too shiny-surfaced.  Actually, I've thought of the perfect comparison for it: Tremors.  It's nowhere near as good as Tremors (what film could be?) but it's in the same niche, only playing up the romance a bit, and trying to add some heartfelt lessons about community, which is never a good idea.  From Zombieland it takes the "post-apocalyptic road trip" idea, where you meet strangers along the way and talk about the loved ones you've lost, and from Tremors it takes the big-ass monsters, and a couple of cases, they come up from underground, too.  These monsters are CGI, though, which always takes away a bit from the fun.

Anyway, brief summary.  (I'm not going to name any of the actors, other than Michal "Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer" Rooker (who was significantly softened his image by being a favorite of James Gunn) because they're pretty generic and I don't foresee them going on to great things.)  Our hero, Joel, reveals in a voiceover at the beginning that he's living in an underground bunker because of the apocalypse.  In a meta-commentary on the saturation of dystopias in films and TV these days he says "everyone expected it, just not this weird"(read, stupid and contrived).  Essentially, an asteroid was going to hit Earth but (in an eventuality that the pandemic has revealed to be very implausible) Earth banded together to make rockets to blow it up, only their chemical-soaked remnants fell back to earth and caused apparently all non-mammals (or birds) to become giant monsters.  Well, it can't be all, because if every insect on the planet grew as some in this film do (notably a centipede), there would be more insect than planet.  But I digress.  In a flashback we see 17-year-old Joel making out with his girlfriend Aimee in the back of her car (for, it is implied, the first time) when the remnants start to fall and they get separated, ending up in different bunkers.  However, Joel has found her bunker over shortwave radio and he gets to talk to her a bit once in a while.  He is feeling increasingly left out in his bunker, as he's the only one who hasn't "paired up" (and it's made clear it's like being the one virgin in a frat house) and he's useless in going on raids or defending the bunker from monstrous incursions, because he "freezes up" when faced with danger.  (Later on this is traced in flashback to the moment he saw his parents squashed in their car by a giant monster foot just after they've made him get out.)  So, he decides to go in search of Aimee's bunker.  Everyone thinks he'll never make it, but, armed with a trusty crossbow and his sketchbook, wherein he collects pictures of the monsters he knows along with useful factoids about them, he's off.  Along the way he meets a dog ("Boy") 

who helps him, and an old(ish) man (Rooker) and spunky young tyke ("Minnow"), unrelated, but paired up because everyone they were related to has been killed, 

and at one point a robot, who gets him to confront his feelings about his parents' death and plays "Stand by Me" until her (her name is Mav1s) battery runs out,

and learns valuable lessons while bumping off/avoiding various monsters.  One lesson is that not all monsters are harmful, something that comes in handy in the climax of the film in an encounter with an apparently murderous giant crab.  

He does indeed make it to Aimee's bunker 

(which seems WAY better than his, because it opens on to a beach), after losing Boy (permanently???) and getting covered in leeches that pump him full of hallucinogens, only to find (a) that she's had and lost a partner in the intervening seven years and is not ready to be into him, and (b) that a yacht has anchored offshore ready to ferry off this bunker's inhabitants (who, apart from Aimee, are all geriatric - most of her job is caring for them).  Of course these sailors, led by an Australian (in American fiction never trust an Australian - Americans seem to feel as threatened by Australians as Europeans do by Americans, perhaps because Australian actors steal all the acting jobs in Hollywood) called "Cap" are not who they seem.

A not-unpleasant diversion, but (a) it seems like a pilot for a TV show, and (b) the kind of TV show you'd watch when you're just not up for thinking about anything.  In the old days, it would've been produced by Aaron Spelling.  If it's a choice between this and re-watching Tremors for the first time in ages, pick the latter.

Film review: Easy Living (1937)

This has the same director as Hands Across the Table, and a very similar plot, but is so much better.  Obviously the director (Mitchell Leisen) had perfected the formula.  Well, that and the fact that this one is written by Preston Sturges and is as good (and this is very high praise) as any of his own movies.

As with so many of Sturges' films, the American class system and the different lives of the rich and the poor in it is the backdrop.  We begin at the meal table of "The Bull of Broad Street" - vastly wealthy financier J.B. Ball (an excellent Edward Arnold), where he snipes at his son John Jr. (Ray Milland) over a receipt for a car to the extent that he storms out, intent on getting a job.  Then Ball spots an obscene receipt for a fur coat ($58,000 - and this is in 1937!) and storms up to confront his wife.  After a series of pratfalls where she tries to keep him from returning it (she has a closetful - but this one is a "Kominsky" (or something) which apparently means it's the "sablest sable that ever sabled"), they end up on the roof and in a fit of pique he throws the coat off.  It lands on Jean Arthur's Mary Smith, who is on the top floor of an open-top bus, and breaks the feather in her hat.  (Her turbanned co-passenger explains this as "kismet".)

She gets off and tries to return it, but bumps into Ball who insists she keep it, and indeed offers to buy her a replacement hat.  She reveals she doesn't have a dime for another bus, so he takes her, and in the car they get into an argument about how advisable it is to buy things in installments.  She thinks 12% interest just means 12% extra at the end of the year, and he tries to convince her otherwise, but fails miserably.  He gets very peevish to which she retorts (in that amazing Jean Arthur voice) "don't get upset - it's not my fault you're stupid!"  

In the hat store, the owner realizes how valuable the coat is and finds out that it's Ball paying for everything, and becomes convinced that Mary is Ball's woman-on-the-side.  This becomes very important later, but meanwhile Mary returns to her job at The Boy's Constant Companion (a boy's magazine apparently entirely staffed by elderly ladies plus Mary) only to be thrown out because she can't give a satisfactory answer about where the coat came from, and this is apparently evidence of moral iniquity of a sort incompatible with the mission of that noble organ.  She leaves, but not before busting a portrait of the founder over the editor's head.  MEANWHILE, we meet Louis Louis (played by the amazing Spanish comic actor Luis Alberni) who used to be a chef (it's strongly implied he was Ball's personal chef) but then started up his own luxury hotel on credit (3 mortgages) from Ball, and is coming to Ball begging him for an extension.  He asks for 6 months - he gets a week.  The trouble is, nobody comes to his hotel.  But then he bumps into the hat store owner who tells him about Ball's "mistress" Mary.  So he sends a telegram inviting her to the hotel.  She sees it poking under her door as she's on the floor picking up the pieces of the piggy bank she had to smash.  He shows her round the most palatial suite it is possible (even in this day and age) to imagine 

and then ends up offering it to her for the amount she's currently paying for her digs - $7 a week, plus breakfast (1 egg), because he thinks it will help him out to have her ensconced in his place.  The suite does lack one thing, though - any food, so Mary sets out for an Automat (I love these things - are they making a comeback?) where, as chance would have it, John Jr. has got his first job.  

Seeing how little money she has, he offers to pop open the windows for her from the back, but gets caught by the store detective.  A feisty sort, he doesn't go quietly, and in the process opens all the little hatches causing the mother of all food fights to break out.  (Sturges was, by his own admission, inordinately fond of pratfalls, and there are plenty in this script.)  Eventually he makes good his escape, dragging Mary with him.  They set up joint shop in the palatial suite and a romance kindles.  MEANWHILE, rattling around in a mansion sans son and wife (who has decamped to Florida in a huff) Ball decides to go stay in the Hotel Louis, just to mess with Louis.  But of course, Louis thinks it's because Mary is there and that it confirms the mistress theory.  Word gets around (via a gossip columnist, "Wallace Whistling," played by that staple of all Sturges films, William Demarest) and suddenly the Hotel Louis is the hottest place in town.  Things are going peachy, with more and more businesses offering Mary various free samples, from a chauffeured car to king's ransoms in jewels

until a rival financier comes and asks Mary what Mr. Ball thinks about steel.  At this point Mary knows that John Jr., who indeed is in the room with her, is called Ball, but still doesn't know who her initial benefactor is.  So she asks John Jr. what will happen to steel, and as a sort of joke he says that because the weather's changing, steel will fall.  Well, this triggers a collapse in steel that has his father on the brink of bankruptcy.  And, of course, this isn't good for Louis.  Meanwhile, Mrs. Ball returns from Florida to news of her husband "stepping out"...

But don't worry, everything ends happily.  And it even has somebody new getting her hat broken by the same flying fur coat.  All-in-all, the first serious contender (with that other Sturges script, The Good Fairy, for favorite film of 2021.  I must confess, I was not at first a fan of Jean Arthur when I first encountered her in Only Angels Have Wings, but even Cary Grant wasn't very good in that, so I have to blame the director.  I am now a total convert, and she may be my favorite screwball actress.  She certainly has a wonderful way of delivering Sturges' outrageous dialogue.  And Ray Milland was so much more winning than Fred MacMurray in last night's effort.  I've already said Edward Arnold was great, and it being a Sturges film, there are any number of wonderful small parts.  A particular favorite is the droll Butler (Robert Greig - who, besides being in two of Sturges' self-directed films, was also in Animal Crackers). 

Pretty close to a perfect film!