Film review: Picture Snatcher (1933)

 

We're always up for a Jimmy Cagney in our house, and this is pretty much the archetypal early-30s Cagney.  You can tell it's early 30s because it begins with a section where it introduces the main actors with the names over snippets of the film that feature them, something that seems to have been common in that era.  (I wonder when they stopped doing that?  It seems very sitcom-y.)  Anyway, the film proper begins with Cagney's Danny Kean being discharged from prison. Apparently he was a model prisoner, because everyone there is very chummy, until, that is, he walks out the door and bumps into a chunky Irish (and not Irish American, actual Irish, like all the cops are in Warner Brothers cartoons) cop who was apparently the one who put him away in the first place (and shot him, it emerges six times!  And the "slugs" are still in him!  And this becomes even more incredible as the events of the film unfold, as you will see), who sneers at him that he'll put him back inside again soon (to which Danny, who has a fine line in archaic-sounding slang, calls him "vinegar puss").  Danny is picked up by a huge fancy car and (in a phenomenon that is repeated often) a woman in the car throws herself at him.  

Danny seems wary of the attention he's getting, and it emerges that this is his gang, in that he was their leader before he was incarcerated, and they are keen to have him back running things again.  But (after being treated to a nice bath complete with perfumed bath salts) 

he is not so keen.  It turns out that he has seen the light in jail and, after giving his former second-in-command (Jerry "the Mug") 

what for for allowing him to take the fall, and scooping up the huge wodge of cash that they say was "his share" of the last job they did before he got arrested "plus interest," he exits, to their frank amazement.  Apparently he has always wanted to be a journalist, and was visited while in prison by J.R. "Al" or "Mac" McLean (played by Ralph Bellamy, who towers over Cagney, although he was only 6'1", so that illustrates just how tiny Cagney was - apparently the actor that Cagney thought would be best suited to play him in a biopic was Michael J. Fox, so that tracks) who, he discovers, is now editor at the disreputable tabloid rag Graphic News.  McLean doesn't think Danny should get a job there (he's only there himself because he's been kicked out of every reputable paper in town, presumably because he's a raging alcoholic, as we see early on) and is trying to let him down gently when the paper's owner or executive editor, who lacks any moral qualms at all demands that a picture be got of the fireman who is currently holding police at bay in the charred wreck of his own house that he came to save only to discover his wife in bed with another man, and the aforementioned wife (hard to do, you'd think, given she's a cinder).  Danny, seeing his "in", volunteers, and manages to steal in the back window, convinced the shotgun-wielding fireman that he's an insurance appraiser who's out to get him the most money he can ($3000, he arrives at) and when the fireman's back is turned, steals a picture of the fireman and his wife (in happier times) that is framed on the wall.  The big boss is delighted, and Danny is hired (at $20 a week).  (Once the picture is used as the cover of the Graphic News, the fireman storms into the office intending to shoot Danny (how is he allowed to walk around? with a gun?) and Danny hides in the women's toilets.  In general, Danny comes across as pretty much a lowlife, and if he was played by anyone other than Cagney it would be hard to root for him in any way.  

He does seem to feel sorry, but claims not to have seen the harm in what he was doing (because it was part of him earning "an honest living") which is hard to give credence to.  While he is in there, the second woman to throw himself at him does so, Allison, 

the most interesting female actor in the movie (Alice White) who is a blonde who knows what she is and what she wants and will take it, even though she's officially Mac's girl, something that seems to mean a lot more to Danny than it does to her.)

So Danny settles in, but is still the low guy on the totem pole when the newsroom gets its annual visit from a group of students from the local university keen to be shown the ropes.  Nobody else wants the job, but because 3 out of the 4 are attractive young women (the other is a very young Sterling "Winnie the Pooh" Holloway, 

playing an insufferable nerd) Danny doesn't mind.  In fact, he is particularly drawn to one young woman - Pat Nolan - 

and, in a clever little scene, asks her out while in the deafening room where the type is set by two older gents by yelling in the ear of one, so he types on his special keyboard and the type drops into a little tray, whence it can be removed and, when pressed onto an ink pad, used to proposition the girl.  She is amused and responds "why not tonight?"  Cut to him taking her home at 3 AM where she is nervous because her father is coming home soon.  And come home he does, and... he's the cop who shot Danny -  Lieutenant Casey Nolan!  Danny has to leg it, and the cop shoots after him!  This is clearly a trigger-happy policeman (plus ça change)!  Pat is still interested, but Nolan sr. will have none of it, and even seeks Danny out at the newsroom.  Mac tells Danny to hide (men's toilets this time) and sweet talks Nolan to such an extent (calling a more reputable newspaper and urging them to do a flattering portrait of Nolan, that ends up getting him promoted to Captain) that Nolan shakes hands happily with Danny, and Danny and Pat are allowed to court.  However, Danny feels a little stuck at the Graphic News and wants his big break.  The chance at this arrives when a woman is being given the chair and a select group of newsmen (none from the Graphic News) are invited to witness it.  Nobody is allowed to photograph it, however, and the top dog at the News says he'd give his eye and $1000 for a picture.  So, of course, Danny contrives to get the photo.  Again this does not reflect well on Danny's character - all the other newsmen dread this part of the job and flinch and turn away, but Danny is only nervous that his ankle camera will be found.  Also, he is happy to have Nolan vouch for him to get him into the prison and is somehow amazed that this ends up getting Nolan demoted back down to Lieutenant.  Also there is a general hunt out for Danny (it starts right after he walks out of the prison and drops the camera for all to see which leads to a car chase and then a train chase) 

so he has to lie low in Allison's apartment.  She's supposed to be off on a story at Niagara Falls, but comes home to try to seduce him.  

He is fighting her off when Mac arrives (drunk) and sees them and a massive fight breaks out and Danny realizes his journalistic career is over, as well as any chance with Pat (a point that she hammers home when he visits her, leading to him tearing up the marriage certificate he had prepared).  So, when next we see him, he is a drunken shell of his former self at a dive bar.  However, Mac has sobered up, realized that it was all Allison and quit the Graphic News, and seeks out Danny to forge a new journalistic path.  

But what will be the big story that breaks it for them?  The answer is provided when it comes across the wires that Danny's old frenemy Jerry "the Mug" has killed two cops and has gone to ground.  Danny knows that the woman who was all over him in the limo that picked him up from the prison is the key, and the final stretch of the movie is him finding Jerry and desperately trying to avoid dying in the hail of bullets as Jerry fights it out with the cops.  Will the cops think he was in cahoots with "the Mug"?  Will Nolan forgive him?  Will Pat forgive him?  Will Allison show up to screw up his chance of happiness again?  Well, it's on HBO Max, so go there and find out for yourself.  You can also watch this (very Canadian) review, which I have just discovered.

Film review: Irma la Douce (1963)

To my knowledge the first Billy Wilder film in color, and the reuniting of The Apartment stars Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine.  Based on a French farce, and Wilder didn't change the setting, but its stars don't attempt accents (well, Lemmon does an egregious English accent at one point, but for good reason).  Unquestionably a lesser Wilder, although certainly charming, and although over two hours long, it doesn't drag (mainly because there are definite "acts" to the plot and each act requires a minimum amount of time to present, so the movie never seems stuck in the mud).  My main complaint is that I rarely find farces funny (let alone French farces), closely followed by the fact that I think MacLaine is miscast as the titular Irma, who is supposed to be a good hearted prostitute (that's not a cliché), with a fondness for the color green, who is irresistible to all, and she just doesn't exude the right earthy charms.  Marilyn Monroe would have been perfect, but (a) probably Wilder wouldn't've wanted to work with her again, and (b) she died in 1962.  The Judy Holliday of Born Yesterday would also have been perfect, and I can't imagine why Holliday never worked with Wilder (although she did with Lemmon), but there you are, life is flawed.  Anyway, here are the basic "acts."

1. Nestor the policeman
Jack Lemmon is Nestor Patou, a rather naive policeman (flic), 

used to patrolling children's playgrounds, who has been promoted to patrolling the bustling market district and the red light Casanova Street that abuts it.  It takes him a while to twig that it is a red light district, 

and it only happens after he's had a pleasant chat with Irma (whom we've been introduced to as someone who always manages to milk her johns (if The Apartment must have been scandalizing for the USA of 1960, I can't imagine what this film did) of extra francs by telling fibs about various misfortunes (although the fact that her little dog has kidney stones is repeated often enough throughout the film for one to assume it to be true).  

When the centime finally drops, Nestor turns out to be surprisingly a man of resourcefulness: he activates the fire alarm at the hotel that all the girls (Lolita (Hope Holiday, whom we met in The Apartment), Amazon Annie, Kiki the Cossack, The Zebra Twins, Suzette Wong (played by Tura Satana before she was immortalized as the star of Russ Meyer's Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!), Carmen, and Mimi the Mau Mau) 

use for their liaisons and separates prostitutes and clients into two groups, arresting only the former.  He has strong words with an irascible john, whom he later meets back at the station as his chief inspector (Lefevre).  Unknown to Nestor, when he was in the local café talking to its proprietor "Moustache" (a serial fabulist of uncertain nationality, who cuts off each outrageous story with "but that's another story" and is really the star of the film), the local pimps (mecs) assumed his upturned cap on a stool beside him was left there to deposit bribes in (because it always has been for the previous cops on the beat) and when he takes off his hat in the Chief Inspector's office, all the money flutters out.  Fade to black.

2. Nestor becomes Irma's mec
Nestor shows up back at the café with nowhere to stay and witnesses Irma's pimp Hippolyte The Ox mistreat her.  

He challenges him to a fight and somehow manages to defeat the much larger man, which effectively makes him top dog and Irma rewards him by taking him back to her place (which isn't the hotel - as she explains, that's her "office") but is instead a rather nice second floor apartment nearby, and her bed (as she explains, she sleeps naked, and we catch several glimpses of naked back to confirm it).  Irma appoints Nestor her mec and that becomes his new job.  Cut to soon afterwards and we see him appropriately sharply dressed, hanging out in the café explaining to a bewildered Moustache why he is so miserable.  While Irma earns more than any two of the other girls, Nestor doesn't want her to be a prostitute.

 

3. Enter Lord X
Moustache recalls that there was a time when Irma had a client who was so wealthy that she didn't need to sleep with anyone else, but that ended when his wife left him (French humor there).  This gives Nestor an idea: he will borrow 500 francs from Moustache, pose as rich eccentric Brit Lord X who desires only companionship (they play "double solitaire" together) from Irma but pays 500 francs a visit twice a week, enabling Irma to swear off sleeping with anybody.  Cue Jack Lemmon's egregious English accent and shameless mugging of the sort that makes his antics in Some Like It Hot look like subtle minimalism.  

But his disguise is pretty effective, I will concede, although he does forget which eye the eye patch goes over.  However, this of course means that Nestor has to find an alternative source of income to pay back Moustache (particularly as he has other expenses, like paying for champagne when he gets elected King of the mecs, and also to replace the entire day's wages that Irma has to contribute to the new mecs' retirement fund) and this he finds in working all night in the next door market, lugging entire sides of cow around among other thankless tasks.  This means that the situations are reversed: where previously Nestor's complaint was that Irma was always too tired, now Nestor (who creeps out of bed after Irma drops off (wearing nothing but her sleep mask) and crawls back in at dawn) is perpetually exhausted and irritable, and Irma, who now has time on her hands, becomes disgruntled (to the extent that she reneges on her promise to give up smoking (MacLaine is as unconvincing a smoker as she is a sexpot)).

4. Exit Lord X
Finally Irma wakes up before Nestor returns and, on catching him, becomes convinced he's having an affair with "Lolita" (there are constant references to all kinds of movies released around this time - not only does Lolita wear the iconic heart-shaped sunglasses, Lord X makes references to films like Lawrence of Arabia and Bridge on the River Kwai) and resolves to run away with Lord X.  In fact she seduces Lord X disproving his claimed impotence, a fact that outrages Nestor, who rants to the bemused Moustache about how Irma is being unfaithful to him.  So Nestor decides to get rid of Lord X and, dressed as Lord X, walks to the River Seine, changes to himself and dumps the costume in the river, yelling invectives after it.  Unbeknownst to him, however, Hippolyte had been following Lord X intending to rob him, was momentarily distracted by a cop and so missed the change of clothes, but witnessed Nestor leaving and Lord X's eyepatch and stick float to the surface.  Of course he has always hated Nestor, so is happy to have him arrested.  Nestor is about to explain everything to the cops when Moustache appoints himself Nestor's lawyer, takes him aside and tells him that the actual story sounds insane and no jury would believe it, so he should instead plead guilty and explain it as motivated by lover's jealousy.  While this wins over Irma, it does not win over the jury, and it's off to prison for Nestor.

5. Lord X lives!
Cut to the prison yard nine months later and a guard collects Nestor because he has a visitor.  Nestor is none too pleased to see Moustache (given his bad advice), but Moustache tells him that Irma is about to give birth and gives him enough of her ribbons to make an escape rope.  Escape he does and reunites with Irma, 

only for Inspector Lefevre and a bunch of cops to show up looking for him.  He avoids capture by donning his old police uniform and joining with them pretending to look for Nestor.  

This is a well-executed farcical scene, I will concede.  But even after they leave, Nestor knows he can't dodge them for long.  Nonetheless he promises Irma a big wedding so that the child is not born illegitimate.  How is this going to be possible?  Cut to the café where Moustache is revealing to Hippolyte that Nestor is hiding out at the scene of the crime, under the bridge, but that he Hippolyte must not reveal this.  So of course Hippolyte runs to a phone and we see him and Lefevre and a bunch of cops show up by the Seine looking for Nestor.  What they instead witness, however, is Lord X emerging from the Seine with no memory of how he got there.  So, with no victim, Nestor can't be a murderer, and is free to get married.  This he manages to do just in time before Irma has to be rushed to a back room of the cathedral where Moustache reveals his midwifery skills (but that's another story) and a daughter is born.  Irma tearfully reveals that it is not really Nestor's child, it is Lord X's, but he promises to raise it as his own.  And Lefevre gives him his old job back, because he wants him to help solve the mystery of Lord X, but Nestor demands he be allowed the children's playground beat again.  Moustache leaves and wanders into the cathedral, where one guest remains sitting in the pews.  It is... Lord X!

As you can see, it doesn't lack for plot or for set pieces, it's just all a bit more-smiley-than-laughy, like watching a panto or something.  Still, everyone is game, you can't lose with Jack Lemmon, and if you pay very close attention, you will spot a young James Caan as a soldier listening to baseball on the radio.

 

Not To Be Taken by Anthony Berkeley

This is an unusual story for Berkeley when compared with the other books of his I've read. (So far, that is, since he was a prolific author and I've barely made a dent in his collection.) It was published in serial form in John o' London's Weekly (whatever THAT was) and when it first came out, it did not include the ending.  Instead, readers could mail in their solutions and their reasoning (which clues they relied on to get to their solution) and if they got the right answer for the right reason, they would win money.  A lot of money, actually: first prize was £200, second prize was £100 and third prize was £50.  This book included  not only the ending but the author's analysis of all the submissions he had to read, his reason for picking the winners, and the winners' answers and reasoning--and a very bright collection of readers they were, I thought: they all got closer to getting it right than I did. [Interestingly, Berkeley wrote that he feared his story was too easy and that everyone would guess it. Not a chance. As usual, he not only had a twist followed by a double twist, he also added a triple and then a quadruple twist was tossed in for good measure.] In fact, no one got it all right for all the right reasons.  (The submissions that got tossed out completely were those that invented "clues"--which is what I would have done.)  Two people got closest--Mrs. Susan M. Gilruth and Mr. L. J. Kastner, so they had to split the first prize. Second prize was split between three people, Mr. E. C. Allport, Mr. Charles Harding and Mr..A. H. C. Rawson.  (I was really hoping to see a name of someone I knew, but that didn't happen.) Third prize was split between Miss Helen Bourne, Mr. W. G. Fergusson, and Miss Jessie Grave.  Even though they had to share, the winners and the runner-ups did all right.

The story is set in a teeny weeny backwater town, Anneypenney. This actually isn't a locked room or a closed circle story, which is a nice change. In fact, the murder mystery (is it even murder?) doesn't seem much of a mystery at all at the start since it seems only one person could possibly have done it.  But, then, the circle widens and a few more suspects are discovered. And, then, more information is found and the circle widens more...then again, and then again.. and pretty soon we get to the point that everyone involved in this story could have been killed the victim...if, that is, it was actually murder. True to form, the story is so complicated, it is impossible to retell it without either giving too much away or not making any sense of the events.  It's easier to describe the characters and let that be good enough:

Douglas Sewell: Here is our narrator so we learn as Douglas learns.  When not musing about murder, suicide and accidents, Douglas is a small time fruit farmer who spends all of his time grafting bits of trees onto each other, trying to find the perfect balance between good flavor and pest resistance.  And, of course, he has access to pounds and pounds of arsenic powder as that is a crucial ingredient in pesticide dusts that are sprayed onto fruit trees. (The main thing I learned from this book is that arsenic featured promiently in an English person's life in the 30s and 40s--lots of discussion of dumping arsenic solutions down the drains, into rivers and onto the ground.  I have concluded that there must have been a LOT of cancer and cardiovascular problems that resulted from long term exposure to low levels of arsenic in England in the 50s and 60s.  Read this book and all becomes clear.) Douglas has a solid moral compass and is a slow but steady reasoner.  And, unlike anyone else he solves the mystery in the end.  (He has one of those monologuing conversations with the murderer in the last chapter--the one published AFTER the contest has been settled--and I was pretty certain that that was going to be the end of Douglas.  But not so--the murderer got the better of Douglas but didn't need to resort to a second murder. More about that below.)

Frances Sewell: Frances is married to Douglas.  I'm not sure what she does. She doesn't work but she is always busy.  The Sewells do not have children but Frances is heavily involved in the community.  Her primary feature is that she does what she wants, regardless of what Douglas thinks, and is generally a bit quicker that Douglas is in anticipating the moves of a murderer.  She does her bit to hide evidence, not to interfere with justice but help justice along--but in fact ends up interfering with justice a LOT. I do not get the impression she learned any lessons.

Glen Brougham: The local brilliant surgeon who is not a brilliant physician.  In fact, it's generally acknowledged that he's a bit slap dash and indifferent to diagnosing people and mixing up prescriptions. He lives in this backwater town because his father was a physician (a very good one, everyone reminds Glen) who died and left his practice to Glen. Glen is lazy and so sort of fell into living in this place.  He doesn't even sit in chairs properly but sort of flops into them and allows his limbs to be flung about in all directions.  He's beyond cynical and can't even be bothered to wonder if there was a murder at all. And, of course, he has access to arsenic because, apparently, it's something his father would have used in mixing up medicine and, though totally out of fashion now, Glen can't be bothered to dispose of it properly so it sits in his dispensery, not even locked up.

Rona Brougham: A thoroughly modern (for 1938) woman with a brilliant mind.  She went to Oxford and got a degree in socio-psychology but also dabbled in chemistry. It's generally acknowledged that she could have gone on to do whatever she wanted.  What she ends up doing is living in the old family home with her brother, Glen, spending her evenings with the Sewells and the Waterhouses (more about them in a minute), playing cards and philosophizing. One evening, when it gets very late, Rona lets out that she is a bit of a eugenicist--much to the shock and horror of the others sipping their cocktails.  She insists she isn't "fanatical," but she can't be convinced that all persons have worth and that the world wouldn't be a better place if a few particularly useless ones were eliminated for the good of all.  So why is she hanging out in this one horse town, letting her brain go soft as she fanticizes about culling the human herd?  Well, unbeknowst to anyone until much father along in the book, she is madly in love with a brilliant engineer who lives in this town and she's biding time until his useless wife drops dead so she can swoop in and they can travel the world and be brilliant together. Meanwhile, she's the one who mixes up the medicines for her brother because he really can't be arsed.

Charles Waterhouse: Our resident brilliant engineer who causes Rona's cheeks to turn pink when their hands innocently brush against each other. Charles is older--only in his late 40s but that's geriatric in those days--and has made a name for himself.  And a massive pile of money.  He's spent his early adulthood traveling anywhere that England had a foothold, and engineered massive electrical systems in those places. One system in particular made him a 1930s version of a billionaire, and that involved designing and overseeing the building of a hydroelectrical system attached to the Amazon River that delivered electrical power to most of South America.  He doesn't talk much about his earlier exploits, but does occasionally get wistful when he considers all the offers he's had recently but has had to turn down because his useless (ahem!) wife is too ill to leave the house.  He amuses himself by playing with various substances to create the perfect cement--a pastime that sounds pedestrian enough but, if he cracks the mystery, will do no end of good for the British Government.  

Angela Waterhouse:  The tiresome and useless wife who spends 95% of her time in bed taking medicine (almost all of which turns out to be placebos that have been swapped out by Charles), and complaining about her maladies.  If someone else has a pain, hers is 100 times worse. She cannot abide by anyone else being the center of attention and "ailments" are her ticket to the center of everyone's attention.  She's very much younger than Charles but it is generally well known (though only spoken on in veiled language) that she refuses to have sex with Charles because she doesn't have the strength.(!!)  If all that wasn't enough, Angela is brutal to her staff, constantly harranging them for failing to do things to her eccentric standards. 

[The Sewells, Frances in particular, is very scornful of Angela and Frances explains to her somewhat shocked husband, our narrator, that she firmly believes that a wife is OBLIGATED to have sex with her husband on a regular basis as, according to her, a wife is "30% friendly companion, 30% household manager, 30% seductress and 10%..." at this point she has to recalculate to get to 100% but Douglas is too shocked to hear anymore and begins to wonder if their marriage boils down to Frances simply doing her duty.  Of course, she'd say, no, he muses, but that could be she's doing her job as "companion"....See what horrors are revealed when sudden deaths happen?]

Mitzi, Maria and Pilchard: A series of maids and housekeepers in the Waterhouse household. Both Mitzi and Maria were professed Nazi Germans. Maria repeated to anyone who would listen that she wouldn't work for "The Chews". Both were incompetent cooks and both had connections with a Pro-German Society in London. And both were WAY TOO interested in Mr. Waterhouse's work. Pilchard was an ordinary, useless, easily flustered English housekeeper who only remembered significant details weeks later when nobody cared anymore.

Ok, before introducing any more people, let's get into The Mystery. One evening when our six pals are together, Charles starts complaining of indigestion. Glen, bored, tells him that this is hardly surprising given that Charles eats too much, smokes too much and exercises too little.  But the pains in his gut build to the point that this is no ordinary upset tummy. Then the symptoms become worse: Charles is barfing his brains out and in so much pain, he can't even talk sensibly. Rona decides this is no upset tummy and races to get the appropriate chemicals from her brother's dispensary to treat arsenic poisoning.  She doses Charles up but it's too late: he dies hours later after suffering the worse possible pains imaginable. Glen still isn't convinced it's anything other than an ulcer coupled with "summer diarhea" (a thing, apparently, that causes GI distress in summer that occasionally leads to death--I suspect heavy metal poisoning caused by everyone dumping toxic waste into their drains). Beloved by all, everyone is devastated by Charles's death and everyone claims to believe it is a natural albeit unfortunate death.

Until, that is, Charles' brother Cyril shows up and demands an autopsy.  Everyone, but particularly Angela, is shocked--why is he doing this to her?  (Angela has retreated to her bedroom at this point and only communicates through her lawyer, and is not to be seen again until the second to last chapter of the book.) And, astonishingly (or not, given how much arsenic is laying about), Cyril's suspicions are correct: Charles' organs are soaked in arsenic--a condition that is not the result of long term arsenic poisoning, but the result of a single, large dose of arsenic. And then a will is found in Charles's desk which states that Angela is the sole beneficiary of Charles' vast wealth and Cyril gets nothing.  So, did Angela do it to get rid of Charles so she could have his money?  But she had access to all his money anyway...what would she gain?  In fact, she'd have to work harder now that he is gone as he did everything to run the house.  Did Glen accidentally kill Charles by mixing up medicines so inattentively that he didn't even notice he was giving Charles arsenic insted of magnesium to sooth his troublesome tum tum? 

An inquest is scheduled and everyone we have so far met is going to be called up as a witness plus a few more characters we haven't yet met, but are surprise witnesses who unleash all sorts of shocks:

1. Frances: She confesses she stole a medicine bottle from Charles' bathroom. (Charles and Angela slept in separate bedrooms and had their own bathrooms with their own medicine cabinets.)  She did it to shield Glen because she was convinced he accidentally poisoned Charles.  ("Nice wife," he mutters peevishly to Douglas, who is sitting next to him.)

2. Maurice: A young, dashing medical student who is Angela's lover (so she has energy for sex with HIM!), they are engaged!, and plan to run away together!, as soon as this "bloody inquest" is over. He had written countless compromising letters to Angela which Charles recently discovered and confronted Angela over.  According to Maurice, Charles "gave Angela permission" to continue her relationship, as long as she was discreet.  Is this plausible?  The townsfolk of Anneypenney are dubious but Angela--in another letter delivered by her lawyer--corroborates Maurice's testimony.  Also, interestingly, Angela is no longer plagues by ailments, and is up and about, packing, getting ready to move to Italy.

3. Charles's attorney: He testified that Charles had recently had a new will drawn up, one that leaves far less money to Angela than the previous but also leaves a substantial pile of money to a certain Miss Upcott. No, as far as he knew, Angela did not know of this new will. But, he feels he must add, Charles was not nearly as wealthy as he led everyone to believe since he had been "investing" in a mysterious project lately that had been eating up all his finances. No, the lawyer didn't know more about the mystery project than that.

4. Miss Upcott: A "bonny faced" young gal who lives in Torminster, and who "receives" Charles every Tuesday and Thursday for a "bit of fun."  ("I miss him ever so much," she declares dozens of times with dry eyes.) She didn't love Charles, but she did feel sorry for him.  She's actually engaged to Bert, her "young man," who works at a chemists in London and, naturally, has access to arsenic. Miss Upcott makes homemade caramel for Charles every Thursday morning so he can take a box of chews home with him. (Yes, Bert knew of Charles's candy habit.) On the last Thursday that Miss Upcott saw Charles, Bert arrived at her apartment mid-morning and was alone with the box of candies while Miss Upcott was in her bedroom getting herself ready for Charles. Miss Upcott admitted that she knew Charles had changed his will and she also testified that she had told Bert that she would marry him (Bert), but that he had to wait as she couldn't stop seeing Charles as that would just crush him.

5. Alec: A distant cousin of Douglas's who works for Military Intelligence.  He arrives at the inquest to show the coronor a letter that the head office received from Charles two days after Charles's death.  The letter outlines Charles's account of how he ingested arsenic accidentally.  He describes in detail a secret cupboard in his study that contains all sorts of identical bottles with all sorts of chemicals in them--and the bottles look just like his medicine bottles. (Well, that's silly.) He didn't intend to take the arsenic, but infers that he must have, once he realizes that he is dying of arsenic poisoning.  Why is he writing Military Intelligence? Because it turns out that all his "engineering work'" was really spy work! But that's not all--that letter was for the public. ANOTHER letter is included in the same envelope, also from Charles, and it states that (a) this letter is for Military Intelligence only, (b) the other letter was for the public so the inquest could end but is a tissue of lies, (c) he thinks he WAS poisoned by a German spy ring who were using the German cooks as a way to get into his house, his office, and his papers.  Well, didn't see THAT coming, did we?

And then guess what? The night before this letter was received, Mitzi and Maria both fled back to Germany, never to be seen again. After the inquest ends by declaring the death "accidental," everyone races back to Charles's study to see if there really are secret cupboards filled with dangerous substances.  Yes there are. And others as well, all filled with engineering plans, government papers, and....letters wrapped in ribbons from Frances?!?  She claims they are innocuous, just cheerful little notes written to cheer Charles up because she felt sorry for him because he was so lonely. (Or so she thought...)  But Douglas wonders...were they innocent?  Are these letters the reason Frances stole the medicine bottle and then threw Glen under the bus?  He never gets to see the letters because Military Intelligence snaps them up. ("They belong to the government now.")

So what happened? Was Charles murdered and if so, by a resentful wife, ambitious mistress, incompetent doctor, overly affectionate neighbor, impatient boyfriend (we have two of those), or evil German spy ring? I'll just say that there's no way you saw this coming--clearly no one in England reading the serialized chapters did--and nothing is revealed until the very last paragraph. (And yet, Berkeley was right: all the information was laid out all along and everyone could have guessed it if they only paid attention...)

Film review: The Apartment (1960)

Billy Wilder may be my favorite director - one of the few where I will absolutely watch anything by him (Hitchcock is another), so it's a little surprising that we haven't watched this before now, as it is often regarded as Wilder's masterpiece.  In fact, both Jami and I thought we'd seen it before, but realized as we watched it that we hadn't.  I had a definite memory of it being a bit depressing and somewhat tawdry (I think I thought that Shirley MacLaine's character was a prostitute, and while there is a scene where she argues that she is effectively being treated like one (Fred MacMurray's odious Sheldrake couldn't think of anything to buy her for Christmas, so gives her $100) she certainly is not (apart from anything, her pugnacious cab-driving brother in law would never allow it).  Of course, there is a scene of a suicide attempt, but if you allow for that, and actually a lot of scenes of people who are lonely and desperate, it's a surprisingly light-hearted romp!  And of course Wilder brings Weimar-era sophistication to his screenplay that gives it a serious undercurrent that raises it several notches above even the best Doris Day froth of the day.

Anyway, the film, despite being two hours long, wastes no time with set up and throws you in with the premise (that Jack Lemmon (superb, as always, and just off the previous Billy Wilder film, the glorious Some Like It Hot (perhaps to exorcise some of the frustrations of working with Marilyn on that one, Wilder has a not-especially attractive character described as being "just like" Monroe, who does a very funny impersonation of her voice))'s C.C. "Bud/Buddy Boy" Baxter has been essentially dragooned by higher-ups at his massive corporation into loaning out his apartment for several evenings a week for them to conduct trysts in) without showing you how this came to be (this is briefly re-capped by Baxter when an even higher up (the afore-mentioned Sheldrake) gets suspicious).  The initial scenes of Baxter toiling at his desk call to mind Tati's Playtime, 

as visual tricks are employed to make the desks and workers vanish into the distance.  (In a voiceover as we look at the still-impressive mammoth building that houses his insurance company, Baxter announces that the workforce of the company is equivalent to the entire population of Natchez, Mississippi, and the film is a reminder of just how many jobs have been mechanized or computerized away in the intervening years (pretty soon all of them), starting with Shirley MacLaine's Fran Kubelik's job of elevator operator.

While Baxter is put out (both literally and figuratively) by his bosses using his apartment, it leads to two major promotions in quick succession (one as a result of recommendations by the already-established four apartment exploiters, Dobisch (played by Ray Walston, Spiccoli's teacher in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, among a million other things), Kirkeby, Vanderhoff and Eichelberger; 

and the other once Sheldrake gets his paws on the key (after which the others are squeezed out, to Baxter's relief and their chagrin).  At the same time, Baxter is sweet on Fran, little knowing that she's in a currently off-again relationship with Sheldrake because he won't leave his wife (and two young sons, whom we later meet when we see him playing with them and their toys on Christmas day (and one young son startles him by knowing the meaning of "propagate")).  So at one point Fran is having an assignation with Sheldrake at Baxter's apartment, not knowing it's his apartment, while he is waiting for her to show up at the Broadway show The Music Man, for which Sheldrake has given him tickets so that he's out of his apartment, so he, Sheldrake can meet Fran there.  The way Baxter finds out exactly who it is that Sheldrake is meeting is very cleverly done: he finds a compact with a broken mirror inside in his apartment and gives it to Sheldrake who says that yes, it's his girlfriend's, and that she threw it at him.  Then later, he is showing off a new bowler hat that he's bought (to go with his swank new office) to Fran and asks her how he looks and she gives him her compact so that he can use the mirror.  Of course Lemmon is masterful in showing his realization on his face 

and it's a very poignant moment, especially when he asks Fran why the mirror is broken and she says she likes it like that because she can see herself as she really is.  This is foreshadowing for the suicide attempt, which happens in Baxter's apartment on Christmas eve, after Sheldrake's secretary, Miss Olson (Edie Adams, Sid Caesar's wife in It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, in horn rimmed "Far Side" glasses) gets drunk at the Christmas Party and tells her in great detail how many women (including herself) Sheldrake has used the "I'm just about to divorce my wife" line on (ironically, she is the one to make it come true, after Sheldrake fires her for her indiscretion and her revenge is to give the same information to Mrs. Sheldrake).  Fran confronts Sheldrake 

at the apartment and he tries to mollify her with his "present" of $100 (after she's given him an album of the music of the piano player at the club they always meet up, showing the different amount of thought each puts into the relationship).  Meanwhile Baxter is out getting hammered at a bar, where he is picked up by the hilarious wife of a jockey who is imprisoned in Cuba (Mrs. Margie MacDougall, played to perfection by Hope Holiday, who was known for her "scratchy Brooklynese tones" [thank you IMDb]).  When they return to Baxer's apartment and he finds Fran limp with an empty bottle of sleeping pills next to her, Baxter has to throw her out, whereupon she yells indignantly that when she tells her husband he'll be so mad at how Baxter treated her.  (As you can tell, a strength of this film, as in all Wilder's comedies, is the bewildering profusion of amazing comic bit parts.)  Baxter enlists the help of the kindly middle-aged doctor and his wife (both of whom sound strongly as if they are German Jewish) who disapprove strongly of him because they have become convinced that he has a different girl every night and see the huge quantities of used liquor bottles he leaves in the trash (so that Dr. Dreyfuss insists that Baxter promise to leave his body to science).  The scene where Dreyfuss tends to Fran post-stomach-pumping involves lots of very convincing face slaps.

Anyway, Baxter stays home and tends to Fran for the next 48 hours, 

as Dreyfuss proscribes, or at least, he almost manages it, because the aforementioned pugnacious brother-in-law 

tracks her down by going to the company and having Baxter ratted out by the still-sore Dobisch (who is the one who calls him Buddy Boy).  He comes and gets Fran to take home to the house she lives in with her sister, but not before giving Baxter a shiner.  Baxter is still happy, though, because he thinks he's in with Fran, and prepares a speech for Sheldrake where he says that he will take Fran off his hands (they have communicated over Christmas about the suicide attempt and Baxter has had to pretend to Fran that Sheldrake is more concerned than he was).  However, at the meeting with Sheldrake, Sheldrake gives him the same speech, because he has left his wife and kids and now no longer needs to hide (although he admits he won't commit because he intends to exploit bachelorhood fully).  And Fran seems ready to believe him this time.  Will C.C.'s heart be broken?  Will his new job as Sheldrake's personal assistant, with adjoining office be enough compensation?  How has all of this happened in the week between Christmas and New Year's (the film ends in the wee small hours of the new year)?  Watch it and see - it truly is one of Wilder's best, which makes it one of Cinema's best.  (Shockingly modern: it alludes to so many themes that you are amazed to see touched on in an film made 65 years ago, which Wilder manages by being so subtle and witty.  (If David Lynch had made it people would say that only he could see behind the veneer of civilization to the dark underbelly of modern society and expose the rotten hearts of men.  And Wilder manages to do that and make it funny!)  The suicide attempt alone would require a trigger warning if it were in a Netflix show of today.)  Of course, you've already seen it - God knows how I managed not to all these years.  Now I need to go and study the rules of Gin Rummy.

Happy Birthday to Me (Simon)

 My present from Granny arrived in time...

...to cut the cake that I made and Jami decorated

And then I took a ride on my present from Jami!

Film review: Heart Eyes (2025)

My second in-flight movie, I expected less of this one (its reviews said at best that it was fun, whereas Strange Darling's reviews promised a masterpiece) and consequently was pleasantly surprised.  This fits with my philosophy of life: low expectations are the key.  There is a twist in this one (hint: Scream did it first) but otherwise it's one of the modern innovations on the slasher-movie genre: the rom-com slasher.  Fittingly it is set on Valentine's Day (hey, basically all the other holidays have had at least one and sometimes several slashers) and the first victims are an obnoxious couple staging their engagement at a winery for a cameraman who is the first-of-the-first victims (stabbed through his camera, but not before he catches a blurry picture of the killer).  The killer's gimmick is, you guessed it, their mask has hearts for eyes.  And they glow, and are night-vision cameras.  

As far as killing implements, they're a bit overstocked.  They use a machete a lot, but they also have a crossbow with sort of expanding bolts that can be used as hand weapons if need be.

The killer has been dispatching loving couples over a series of successive Valentine's Days, moving across the country to various cities, and the hook of the film is that our main couple are not really a couple (in fact he is her new supervisor, brought in because her advertising campaign for jewelry disastrously features reference to death-and-romance (it runs through a series of doomed couples like Bonnie and Clyde) which makes it unusable when the real murders break out) but are just kissing because she sees her ex, over whom she has not got (he's British, so you know he left a mark) and wants to make him jealous. She (a short, rather stocky blonde called Ally) wanted to be a doctor but dropped out (I can't remember which of these was triggered by her dad dying suddenly) and hates Valentine's Day because her parents were so in love that her mother was never the same after her father's death, whereas he (Mason, looks like he should be an underwear model for Calvin Klein, surprisingly good at light comedy for somebody who looks like he should just be good at pouting) 

is a romantic precisely because his parents fought tooth and nail.  Anyway, after an initial fight where he gets knocked out and the killer chases her all round a fairground 

before the police chase him off, somehow he gets accused of being Heart Eyes and gets dragged off to the clink.  She follows to try to get him out and it all gets very complicated.  There's also an older set of police partners where the man looks like he wants them to be a couple and the woman seems all business.  Oh, and in a regrettably retrograde step for 2025, she has a sassy Latina best friend who only has a very minor supporting role.  I believe she even does that head wiggle thing at one point.  I must say that I didn't see the twists coming in this one, despite the fact that unlike Strange Darling it certainly had no pretensions.  It's rated R, and one of the first kills involves essentially being exploded in a wine press 

(and there is a slow beheading at one point) but really this is Army of Darkness level of horror where it could easily be PG-13 with a couple of seconds trimmed here and there.  Nothing is played very seriously and most of the people have it coming.  A slasher with training wheels, if you will.  What with films like Terrifier and In a Violent Nature where I read descriptions of the violence therein and know that I would never be tempted to watch them, that's welcome.  Oh, and don't worry, Ally goes back to medical school in the end, so the filmmakers know that advertising is no job for a hero.

Oh, and before you judge me for watching (let alone being mildly entertained by) such trash, remember that everything else on offer was even worse.  Do Better, American Airlines.

Film review: Strange Darling (2024)

 There was a bewildering array of crap movies (plus some good movies that I'd already seen) on offer on my Heathrow-to-Chicago flight and after scrolling around for about half an hour I settled on this one, because I remembered it having good reviews a few months back.  Verdict? Disappointing, although not boring, and with a handful of good moments.  It's based on a gimmick (so you know there's a twist coming), specifically a re-working of what Pulp Fiction was famous for - chopping up the story and putting the pieces in non-sequential order.  In this case there are 6 "chapters" (plus an Epilogue that dragged on a bit), each with names, and you are informed what number chapter you're watching.  We start with chapter 3 (it turns out the important chapters twist-wise are 2 and 4), which, until the very end, just features the two main characters of the film who are called respectively, "The Lady" (a young, small blonde women, who when we meet her is wearing bright red (a color that is a motif of the film) scrubs and has crusted blood all down the right side of her head) 

and "The Demon" (a good-looking dark-haired, mustachioed young man).  

The Lady is driving a vintage Pinto desperately along a country road repeatedly looking behind her at a large black pickup truck, driven by the crazed-looking Demon, who snorts repeatedly from a bag of what looks like (and, we later discover, is) cocaine.  He gets close enough so that he can stop, leap onto the bed of the truck, aim his shotgun on the top of the cab and shoot out her rear window.  This causes her to crash and she runs into the nearby woods.  He stalks her, but she finds where it looks like some kids have been hanging out and (implausibly) left most of a bottle of vodka and some cigarettes.  She bites on something for the pain then alternates swigging the vodka and pouring it onto her head wound.  Then she lights a cigarette, which honestly seems inadvisable with a crazy person stalking you with a shotgun.  The chapter ends with her rushing up to the door of a farmhouse in a clearing deep in the woods and the door being answered by a middle-aged couple (one of whom is Ed Begley Jr.) and she says the title of the chapter, which is something like "Please help me!"  Anyway, we're off and running.  The film features several deaths (one by biting), drugging and mutilation with a very sharp knife, use of bear spray, use of a taser, S&M (which starts a chapter, so you are initially led to think that the choking being done is non-consensual - one of the many twists-within-twists that the chapter format allows)... you name it.  As I said, it's never boring, but you might see the twist coming, and I think the film teeters on the brink of misogyny, although I'm quite sure the filmmaker would have an argument why it doesn't fall in.  Both main actors are unknowns (to me) and acquit themselves admirably (and The Lady in particular commits 100%).  The dialogue is not great, so it's all about style over substance really.  If this film had been made in the 50s or 60s (minus some of the gore, obviously, although there's no nudity to remove) it would be something of a gonzo classic (actually the amount of smoking in the film is much more consistent with a film of that era than now), 

but it's hard to be original in the 2020s.  Still, as a first effort (as I believe it is) it's very promising, although, short as it is, it does rather outstay its welcome in the closing stages.  I would say more, but I can't really without giving anything away.  So watch it if you're bored on a flight.

Oh yeah, I've just remembered who the director is.  Fairly well-known actor Giovanni Ribisi.  Everybody's trying directing these days.

Various Harlings in Sheffield

 Owing to a miscalculation on my part (I thought I was flying back on Thursday 17 rather than Wednesday 16) my time in Sheffield was somewhat condensed.  Also the heatwave that had made sleeping uncomfortable for all my time down South was blown out like a candle (My Family and Other Animals reference) and it got rainy and almost chilly.  But not before I'd gone out for a lovely Indian meal on (I think) Eccleshall Road in Sheffield, home to students (including the young Matthew) and a bewildering variety of food, with the now-older Matthew.  And we got to see a double rainbow out of the window of the restaurant, too. Tuesday was spent driving into Sheffield on a Marks and Spencer underpant exchange mission and then sorting through all kinds of old exercise books while I shepherded my mother through a similar rationalization mission, in an effort to make the study more usable.  And then after dinner Peter and I went for a stroll as I told him about our addiction to the reality TV show "Alone".  Then a brief snooze before the 4:30 AM alarm call and the events described in the previous post.  Next time I hope Granny will be fully recovered from her heart surgery (seen below using her chairlift) and that I can stay longer.

In the field seen here apparently a deer decided it was a sheep for a few idyllic weeks before it had a "what was I thinking" moment and vanished.

Sophy-and-Karl's pride and joy - first visit!  Unfortunately they were off in Italy, so it was just pictures outside.

The Winter Gardens.

View from the landing window.  You wouldn't think this counts as in Sheffield.

Matthew off to do rescue work at a museum Down South.

Eccleshall Road before the sudden rain-and-rainbow.