Film review: The More The Merrier (1943)

I wrote about Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison that it was a rom com without much of either.  Well this one rectifies that by being both very funny (including at least two pratfalls that had Jami busting a gut) and swooningly romantic.  It re-pairs Jean Arthur (an acquired taste that we have certainly acquired, who gets to model amazing 40's haircuts and some surprising midriff-baring outfits) with the reliably great Charles Coburn (last seen together in The Devil and Miss Jones) and adds hunk-o-manhood Joel McRea.  It's set in wartime (because it actually was wartime) Washington DC, where, as the visiting Benjamin Dingle (Coburn) is often heard to remark, there are eight women to every man. This is illustrated in the tongue-in-cheek opening, which also reveals how ridiculously overcrowded it was at the time, something that led to a call for patriotic apartment-owners to sublet any spare rooms.  Jean Arthur's Connie Milligan has taken this on board and placed an ad, something that Dingle responds to because he is two days early for the hotel room that some senator (Dingle is a rich bigwig who has been brought in to help fix the housing crisis) rented for him.  He gets there early, but still finds a huge crowd of people waiting outside.  Taking on board the slogan he has seen on some local statuary (another thing that he repeats ad nauseam) he damns the torpedoes and goes full speed ahead, which in this case involves pretending to be the landlord and informing everybody else that the apartment has been rented.  When Connie shows up (packed in with three other young women in a very natty little roadster) 

she is alarmed to find that the person who insists he is taking her room is a man.  But Dingle is used to and adept at getting his way and bulldozes her (at least temporarily).  She does, however, insist on a very rigid breakfasting schedule, that involves an intricate back-and-forth between bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen and front door (to get the milk) and is timed to the minute.  Dingle tries gamely but cannot manage it, at least the first day.  

However, while he is convincing her to let him stay the night before, he also berates her for not being married, something that makes her bridle and retort (despite the fact that, we later find, she has been engaged for 26 months) that perhaps she doesn't want to get married.  Well, as Dingle is leaving the house the next morning, he spots a man carrying what appears to be an aeroplane propeller wrapped in brown paper towards the place.  This is, of course, Joel McCrea, who is a soldier called Joe Carter, but whom Dingle keeps calling Bill, because he once knew a soldier call Bill Carter.  At any rate, Dingle has quickly sized him up and decided that this is a man well suited for Connie, and contrives to bring them together by the means of sub-subletting his room to him.  Of course he knows that Connie would never go for it, and there is a hilarious sequence where he manages to keep each from seeing the other (Carter thinks Dingle is the only other inhabitant of the apartment) when everyone comes home and Connie and Joe each take turns in the bathroom, 

each thinking each time they are replacing Dingle in there.  Finally they do cross paths, and Connie (who at this point has a face covered with cold cream) attempts to eject both men, 

but is blocked from doing so because she can't reimburse Dingle's rent, having spent it on a hat, and he can't reimburse Joe's, having spent it on telegrams.  So we witness another morning's routine, this time even more complicated.  However, they quickly settle in, 

and in fact we get to see all three sunning themselves up on the roof, along with half of DC, it would seem.  The boys' jibes drive Connie down (she tires of them acting out the Dick Tracy cartoons from the paper) but she leaves her diary behind.  Despite Joe's warnings, Dingle reads it, and is caught doing so, which is the final straw: this time they really are ejected.  Or at least Dingle is: Joe is still packing when Connie comes home, and on hearing he's going to be posted to Africa in just two days, she relents and lets him stay.  This leads to a very fast thaw, to the extent that both are hoping that Connie's fiance (Charles J. Pendergast, owner of a truly terrible toupee, and workmate and sparring partner of Dingle in his housing role) will work late and not call at eight to take her out to dinner, so that Joe can.  It looks like they've made it and are heading out the door, when a troublesome kid neighbor of Connie's insists on buttonholing her about his quandary about whether or not to be a scout.  While talking to him, she surreptitiously removes the phone from its cradle so Charles can't call, something Joe sees with pleasure, but the annoying kid spots it, replaces it, and Charles calls.  What's more, the obnoxious brat spots Joe watching them leave out the window with his binoculars, and accuses him on spying, to which he, irritated, responds that he's a Jap and chases the kid out.  However, it turns out that the place that Dingle has invited him out to dinner is also the place that Charles and Connie are at, and Dingle takes Charles away to work to clear the path for Joe to romance Connie.  And so he does, in ways that, while chaste enough, are hot enough, one would have thought, to tiptoe to the very edge of the Hayes' Code.  

McCrea and Arthur have genuine chemistry, despite the characters they play being rather ill-suited to each other.  In what remains we manage to cram in a visit from the FBI (thanks, annoying neighbor kid) and a lighting trip to South Carolina, courtesy of Dingle, and some apartment modifications performed by same while the couple is away.  Some critics decry that the film lapses into sentimentality at the end, but I don't think that's fair.  It certainly accents the romance towards the end, but you never lose sight of the comedy, and Coburn is always a steadying presence.  Overall, an absolute corker.  Well done George Stevens, who also directed Shane, Giant and The Greatest Story Every Told!

Film review: Nightmare Alley (1947)

Another, very different, Joan Blondell film.  Only 6 years separate them, but she's gone from the best buddy of a 21-year-old to a washed up middle-aged carny.  And, atypically for her, there's not an iota of humor in her role.  But the film really belongs to Tyrone Power, whom I only really know from this particular Simpson's reference: Mr. Burns is running for Governor and comes to dinner with the Simpsons as a  sign that he has the common touch.  They get made up for the camera and, and Homer, on seeing the result

says "Hello handsome!" but the director says "Get that stuff off his face - We're here to have dinner with the common man, not Tyrone Power!"

Anyway, this was supposed to be a very atypical film for him, as well as shocking for its time.  The Criterion Channel describes it as "one of the most haunting and perverse film noirs of the 1940s," and it certainly has a certain sleazy grip that it exerts as it goes on.  It helps that it begins at a carny, with a very "Freaks" like atmosphere, although technically there's only a Geek, 

a pitiful alcoholic creature who is seen being fed live chickens as the film opens; in a rather heavy-handed foreshadowing, Powers' Stanton (at first just "Stan") Carlisle comments incredulously how low you would have to sink to end up like that. Stan is a fairly new arrival and a general dogsbody, in particular to Blondell's Zeena 

and her alcoholic husband/partner in her mentalism act, but Stan just loves it.  He gives a little speech to Zeena, his eyes almost glowing, that is a bit reminiscent of Uncle Charlie's "silly wives" speech at the dinner table in Shadow of a Doubt, and that reveals borderline psychopathy.  You can see Zeena realizing this, but at the same time, he's Tyrone Power (as one reviewer said of his performance, "Power uses his almost irritating handsomeness as a subversive tool"), and he's awful sweet to her.  We have by this point already seen Zeena's act, that involves Stan going into the audience and collecting written questions that Zeena supposedly burns but then reads "from the ether," but in fact, from a chalkboard written by the alcoholic husband under her floor.  But the act used to be better (before her previous infidelities (he said of her that she had a heart like an artichoke, a petal for everyone) drove him away and to the bottle, until she reformed and they reconciled) - she would be blindfold and he would ask her questions from the crowd that she would magically answer.  They did this through a secret code that would be built into the questions, and this code is such an effective act (they worked much fancier places before the separation) that it's their "nest egg" that Zeena wants to use to send hubby to rehab.  But alas it is never to be: in something that looks like it's on purpose, but is really an accident, Stan accidentally gives him a bottle of woodgrain alcohol and it kills him.  He is guilt-ridden (so he's not a total psychopath) but still gets Zeena to teach him the code.  However, he also has the beautiful young Molly 

(whom the hulking strongman Bruno regards as his girl) sit in, so that she learns the code, too.  And after those two are caught out having sex (it's not that blatant, this being 1947, but it's pretty obvious) and forced to get married (apparently carny folk have a code), Stan takes his new bride and the new act on the road.  Thus begins the true rise of the great Stanton.

We next see him blindfold in a swanky Chicago club, performing the act to great acclaim.  But not total acclaim: one beautiful woman is unimpressed, and has worked out that it's a code, and the strange stresses that Molly puts on her words are the key.  (Adding to the general atmosphere of dread around the film, the woman is played by Helen Walker, last spotted in a more lighthearted role in 1946's Cluny Brown, but who can certainly pull off the femme fatale.  Between that film and this, however, was the tragic accident that essentially drove her out of the business, and if you know that's hanging over her - that she's about to be a pariah - it injects a certain frisson.)  She is psychoanalyst Dr. Lilith Ritter, and after Stanton blocks her attempt to show him up (she asks something like "how old is my mother" and he guesses rightly that she is dead), she is suitably impressed and asks him to come up and see her.  

The meeting (at her office) doesn't go particularly well: he is not as impressed by her as she perhaps wants, and is more impressed with her gadget that records all her sessions on an LP, seeing the value in the information she has on the bigwigs of this town, and she sends him on his way just as a patient of hers calls in with an emergency appointment.  However, he only pretends to leave and sneaks back into the outer office and overhears the patient, an old lady, discussing her dreams about the daughter whom she has lost.  Despite appearing morally revolted by Stanton's plans to exploit the knowledge on her LPs, she is soon collaborating, and we see the old lady patient show up at one of his shows and ask a question about her daughter.  At this point, Stanton makes a bold leap into the next phase of his planned ascent: spiritualism.  He appears to go into a trance, claiming to see a spirit version of her daughter (reciting things about her that only someone with access to the mother's dreams would know) and then collapses in a swoon.  This naturally enthralls the mother, and soon she is showering Stanton with money.  But again, this is just a stepping-stone: one of the city's true bigwigs suspects Stanton of fraud, and comes to confront him, but he too is a patient of Lilith's and almost immediately becomes Stanton's new sugar daddy.  He gives him $150K to start his new "tabernacle," but even this is peanuts.  He promises to set him up with a radio station if he can cause the girl whom as a young man he intended to marry to manifest herself.  Stanton goes to work on the pure Molly, who is disgusted by the whole affair and wants to leave him and go back to the Carny, and Zeena and Bruno (who visited a bit earlier and spooked Stanton with a repeat of the Tarot reading 

that predicted the death of Zeena's husband, only this time with Stanton as the "hanged man" - Stanton blusters that this is just flim flam for the suckers, but you can see it gets under his skin).  At this point Stanton gives a speech that smells a bit of the studio attempting to play it safe, where he insists he never insults or uses God or religion (even though he has earlier made it quite clear what he thinks of religion in recounting his treatment by the pious in the orphanage he was raised in), and somehow manages to persuade her to play along.  However, it all falls apart when the city bigwig is so obviously deeply affected that he breaks down and prays and she rushes forward and breaks the spell.  (Never mind that in the process he essentially reveals that he has done over untold people in his path to the top.)  The rest of the film is the descent of Stanton, who, despite everything (this is no Brighton Rock) loves his Molly (and, in an acknowledged piece of studio interference that echoes Zeena's attempted rescue of her husband, is (potentially) finally redeemed by her).  The most chilling part of this is when Dr. Lilith (hey - is this where Frasier got the name?), whose advances Stanton had earlier rebuffed (on the sensible grounds that they couldn't be seen together, given that he was using her LPs illegally), reveals her true colors.  (This would make a good companion piece to Blind Alley, where the protagonist uses psychoanalysis as a weapon against the villain.) We plummet towards two bookends.  One has Stanton, surrounded by winos, repeating the stock demonstration of mindreading that Zeena's husband performed on him on the night he gave him the fatal alcohol.  ("I see green hills - I see a boy running with his dog...") with one addition (the husband didn't mention a mother waiting, because it wouldn't have worked on the orphan Stanton), followed by the callback to the Geek at the start.  But then Molly reappears...

Is this a true noir?  Well, it certainly has the hallmarks of Fate crushing us all in her grasp, and ill befalling all those who try to get ahead by cheating the system.  And add to that a cynicism about just about every sacred cow of mid-century America that is almost breathtaking, and you can see why this was not a huge popular success at its release, and equally why it has become a revered cult movie.  It is indeed, unforgettable.  Beautifully shot on a lot that had real circus performers, in the stark expressionistic lighting that typified noirs, and with a mesmerizing (no pun intended) central performance, surrounded by excellent support acts.  Yes, it's a bit pulpy, but so was the tawdry bestseller on which it was based, and which this film is widely regarded to transcend.  See it now before Guillermo Del Toro releases his remake!

 

Film review: Topper Returns (1941)

This is a sequel to the original Topper, which starred Cary Grant, but which is pretty much unavailable anywhere.  This one was viewable for free (with adverts) via Roku, so we watched it.  No Cary, but it does have Joan Blondell, of whom we are very fond in our household (as was Jimmy Cagney, a frequent co-star), playing her usual sassy type.  This one has a lot of story getting in the way of the plot, so quick summary.  Topper is actually an older, rather meek gentleman (played by Roland Young) who discovered he had the ability to see ghosts in the original (Grant and his wife were jet-set types who died young and sought to help him out).  In this version he only appears after the first five minutes or so, when he is stopped in the road by Joan Blondell's Gail and Carole Landis's Ann Carrington, who are without transport because a shadowy figure shot out the tire of the taxi they were taking to Ann's father's estate.  The taxi driver went to get help, but the girls decide to hitchhike, and after causing an accident when Gail hikes up Ann's skirt a bit (shades of Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night), they simply sit on their suitcases in the road.  Along comes Cosmo Topper, driven by his chauffeur, Eddie Anderson who is most famous for being Jack Benny's valet Rochester in his long-running show (he even says he's going back to "Mr. Benny" at one point in the film).  The girls climb in, Gail sitting on Topper's lap (much to his consternation), and they get driven to the Carrington place, much to Eddie's discomfort, as it looks haunted.  As they drive past Topper's house, his wife, played by Billie "Glinda in Wizard of Oz" (her voice is unmistakeable) Burke spies Gail sitting on his lap and is seized with jealousy for most of the rest of the movie (when she isn't being humorously ditzy).  Anyway, the Carrington place is amazing, but Ann's father, whom she hasn't seen since she was very little (her mother died in a mine accident (!) but wanted her to be raised in China) appears very frail (and is so, according to the sinister doctor who attends him) but tells her that tomorrow, when she becomes 21, all this will be hers.  Then she and Gail (who is a friend who was also living in China, but you wouldn't know it) are shown to their rooms.  Gail fancies Ann's, though, and they swap.  This proves fatal for Gail (this is not a spoiler - this happens very early on) and she is killed in the night by the same shadowy figure who shot out their tire.  At this, she floats out of the window and sails over to Topper's house nearby.  

This calls for an aside on this film's view of ghosts.  1. I assume that Topper is special in being able to see ghosts, but it might just be that he's the only one that they want to appear to, because not only can Eddie hear Gail, he can see her too.  2. After this one flight that Gail takes, she is ground-bound.  Not only that, but she can't go through walls, and if she's under a blanket, you can see her shape.  However, she can make herself invisible or visible at will.  This includes any clothes that she puts on, because, once she forces Cosmo to drive her back to the Carrington house, the rest of the movie is spent there, attempting to solve her murder, and she uses the opportunity to change out of the nightgown she died in and into some sensible sleuthing gear.  Other characters in the film: besides the sinister doctor, there is a sinister housekeeper (whose fate is strikingly unresolved at the end of the film - you'll see what I mean) whom the bumbling but loud-mouthed inspector who arrives midway through the film calls "Rebecca," no doubt in reference to the creepy housekeeper Mrs. Danvers in the Hitchcock film of the previous year.  Oh, and there is also the taxi-driver, who shows up later that night wanting to get his cab fare, 

and wondering why the girls didn't wait for him.  Well, Cosmo finds Gail's corpse, but it is gone by the time the household catches him trying to phone the police and he tells them about it.  

Much shenanigans ensue, with Eddie and Mrs. Cosmo offering most of the comic relief 

(along with the blustery late-arriving inspector), including Eddie's repeated run-ins with a seal in the underground waterway beneath the house that exits to the sea.  Meanwhile the taxi driver and Ann provide the romance, and the evil black-clad assassin, who knows all the secret passages and revolving bookcases (and trapdoors) that the house is riddled with, provides the excitement.  

You'll be pleased to know that Gail is avenged at the end, although Eddie is not so pleased to encounter both Gail and her murderer's ghostly forms.  In summary: slight, but packed with seasoned performers (forgot to mention Mrs. Cosmo's assistant/housekeeper Emily (Patsy Kelly) who I was sure I recognized (it must have been from The Cowboy and the Lady) who all do their jobs with great aplomb.
 

 

Metamora-Hadley

 

Fire, wood and smoke

 It's been a bit of a letdown of an October, the month that is usually my (Simon) favorite.  For one thing, most of it was too hot - positively steamy.  This meant that the mosquitoes were not killed off and we didn't get the leaves going those wonderful colors.  

Nonetheless, it's still time to get the chimney cleaned, so I booked well in advance, because they do tend to get booked up.  But first, they kept putting it off because their truck broke down.  Then, 3 days after they'd said they'd be there, they finally showed up, in a battered little van that was definitely not the "Stan's Fireplace" van that had shown up to clean the chimney for the past decade or so.  And it wasn't Stan.  I knew that Stan had been planning his exit for a while and had brought young apprentices with him the past few times, and I supposed that the one who seemed to be in charge, "Casey," was one of these that I'd forgotten.  But his oafish looking assistant was definitely new.  I assumed he'd be the one to climb on the roof while Casey worked the giant vacuum cleaner in the sitting-room.  Well, I cleared out of there to let them work, and after around an hour Casey had cleaned up, reported that there was a lot of dirt this year but that our chimney looked great - no brickwork needed (because he also did brickwork) and that would be $225 please.  Great, no problem.  Now I turned my mind to getting wood delivered.  This went off without a hitch - the guy I've bought from for the past three or so years was ready and able (he drives all the way from the "thumb" of Michigan with a large truckload - I have to buy a lot to make it worth his while, and I usually have some left over, so I transferred a large % of last year's remainder into our porch for burning first - and he and his girlfriend go and have a nice meal in the Big City of Flint with the $1000 I pay him).  It's always a bit fraught when he squeezes his huge truck into our narrow driveway, past our porch (complaining all the while that our bushes are scratching his paintwork) then he tips up the back and has to drive forward to unload the wood, but not so far that he gets trapped with his truck bed raised against our porch and unable to back up because of the wood.  He managed it admirably, and closer to the garage than normal, so we can squeeze both cars in the stretch of drive in front of the pile with room to spare.  

Now all I have to do is put it away.  Currently I have not done that, but I have at least covered the pile with tarpaulins, so it's ready for the snow.

Anyway, about two weeks after the chimney was "cleaned," it finally got cold enough for a fire and I tried to light one.  I set it going and wandered into the kitchen just as Jami was heading the other way.  "What's happening with the fire!?" I heard from the other room.  I returned to see this:

The worst part is the smoke escaping from the bottom (it just looks like wispy dirt on the tiles in that picture) which is supposed to be impossible.  Verdict: chimney NOT CLEANED.  I texted Casey angrily (something to the effect of "come and do it properly or give me a refund" and, unsurprisingly, didn't hear back.  And, also unsurprisingly, no response when I called.  But then I tried calling with Jami's phone, and voila - he answered!  He got a bit sulky-sounding when he realized he'd been duped into talking to me but said he might show up in a couple of days (he was convinced he'd done the job properly).  Of course he didn't.  I think I know the problem: he tried to clean the chimney from the bottom up, when you have to get on the chimney, remove the cap, and do it top-down.  And also, his brush wasn't long enough to go all the way to the top and clean the gunk that was clogging the cap.  So, it still being fairly mild, I decided to get on the roof myself.  Observe:

The result?  Well, it's still not optimal - I think I have to fiddle around and remove some firebricks in the stove, but the fire lights now.  Now I have to stack that wood.

Film review: Jimmy the Gent (1934)

 This is Jimmy Cagney at his most Jimmy Cagney-est.  Actually, it's more like Cagney playing Mo of the Three Stooges, if Mo was called Jimmy Corrigan (no, not that one) and ran a company which survived by producing fake heirs to the fortunes of dead millionaires (the film opens with a montage of rich folk meeting their abrupt ends in various ways, from falling off a horse to being on a train that collides head on with another train).  He is very much the street tough made good through unscrupulous means (quote from the Vanity Fair review of this film: "Heartily recommended for the unethical"), with the support of his loyal if much put-upon (think Larry of the Stooges) pal/employee Lou, 

and a cadre of lowlifes whom he sends out to track down plausible heirs.  (However, Jimmy has some gold in his otherwise hard heart - he sees it as "doing his bit" to keep these losers employed, it being the Depression and all.)  A competing business run by Charles Wallingham seems, on the other hand, thoroughly worthy, as well as being unbelievably swanky (one of the funniest scenes in the movie is Jimmy visiting Wallingham's office and being led by various flunkies into ante-room after ante-room, in each of which he is plied with endless cups of tea, 

until his stomach loudly rebels).  Wallingham's secretary is Bette Davis's Joan Martin, who used to work for Jimmy (and for whom Jimmy carries a torch) 

until the venality became too much for her.  The posh Wallingham seems entirely virtuous, insisting that they find the real heirs and only take a tiny percentage for their troubles.  Jimmy suspects both that Wallingham has eyes for Joan and that he is not on the level, but nonetheless loves his setup and soon converts his office into one just as highbrow.  The two offices appear to be at odds over the case of an old woman who lived off food left over by others, who meets her fate when she chews on a cyanide-laced sandwich left by somebody who committed suicide thereby.  At the coroners they discover that her clothes have $200,000 worth of stocks and bonds sewn into them.  Apparently her nearest potential inheritor is Monty Barton, who may be dead.  His daughter is found by Wallingham, and looks to inherit, until Jimmy finds an informant (who, it is strongly hinted, is a heroin addict, desperately in need of a fix) who reveals that Monty is not only alive, but is (under an assumed name) wanted for murder.  Jimmy tracks him down and suggests a scheme to him: marry the ex-lover of his victim (whom Monty swears he killed in self-defense) who is the only witness, with the promise of half the money.  That way Monty escapes the chair and ends up with $100K.  But first, Monty must get married to somebody else - in this case Mabel the bubbly airhead girlfriend of Lou (played deliciously by Alice White), albeit under an assumed name.  

This will mean that when he then marries the witness, the marriage is invalid and she can't collect.  But then when Mabel tries to collect, she can't either, because it's not her name on the marriage certificate.  (But wouldn't that make the marriage to the witness valid?  Best not to think too hard about it.)  This whole shenanigans works, and Monty walks free, while Jimmy pockets $100K.  This disgusts Joan so much she responds to Wallingham's invitation to "go away" with him with an agreement to marry him (which was not quite what he had in mind).  But Jimmy thinks he can win Joan back by exposing Wallingham...

A breezy just-over-an-hour, with some great dialogue and slapstick, but also some parts that drag a little, the pacing in these old films often being rather uneven to the modern eye.  But Cagney, as ever, is someone you can't take your eyes off.