Rained out

We drove all the way to Shiawassee Flats (40 mins drive), dressed light for the warm weather (nearly 70 F)... and the heavens opened

Frederick thought it was funny, as you can hear:
So we gave up and drove home.

Sunny personalities

Glorious sunshine around Wildwood Lake

Film review: Mr. Roberts (1955)

I'd never heard of this one but it showed up in some list of great Jack Lemmon films (he won an Oscar for it!) and look at the rest of the cast!  And it was directed by John Ford (at least, until he got sick and somebody else took over and finished it).  So we gave it a shot.  Verdict: pretty good!  It's a bit more comedic than The Caine Mutiny and a bit more down-to-Earth than Operation Petticoat (and other 50's films set in the Pacific in WWII like Father Goose and Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison), but it ends on a more sombre note than any of them.  Essentially, it's based on a picaresque memoir published in 1946, which was first turned into a play (also starring Henry Fonda) and then this.  Fonda's Mr. Roberts is the cargo officer on a ship whose job it is to supply other ships, and who is champing at the bit (silly man) to see real action.  Powell is his friend the ship's doctor, Lemmon is the young chancer Ensign Pulver, who tells Walter Mitty-esque stories and never gets anything done, but of whom Roberts is nonetheless fond, and Cagney plays out-of-character as the martinet (slightly cracked) captain, who resents Roberts because he is a "college boy" and also because all the crew love him (because he doesn't really seem to care about rank, but also understands about esprit de corps).  Roberts writes weekly letters 

demanding a transfer, which the captain forwards to the relevant authorities (only because this is required by naval regulations), but always marked "unapproved".  Pulver details all kinds of revenge plots against the Captain (who actually doesn't know who he is - he sees him for the first time (as far as he knows) and is astonished to discover that Pulver has been aboard for 14 months), such as marbles 

in the ceiling above his bed and a home-made firecracker under it.  All the captain seems to love is his palm tree, 

which, for some reason, was an award for something (largely won by Roberts' competence) and which nobody is allowed to touch.  There are the usual escapades involving female nurses 

(and binoculars) and Roberts conniving to get the ship sent to a particularly nice harbor where the captain should allow the crew "liberty" after over a year being confined to the ship.  He manipulates Roberts into agreeing to stop writing letters and backtalking him in front of the crew by making that a condition of allowing the crew ashore.  

The crew predictably go wild, to such an extent that they are "kicked out" of the port, something that infuriates the captain further.  However, after this, Roberts is noticeably different (because he can't break his agreement) and the crew starts to think he's gone over to the bad side.  And to make matters worse for Roberts (at this point it's very difficult to empathize), the end of the war in Europe is announced, and he's scared the war in the Pacific will end without him getting the transfer.  However, the celebrations for this momentous event include Pulver demonstrating that his homemade firecracker packed a real punch (the funniest moment in the film), and Roberts having a "The Chief at the end of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" moment with the Captain's palm.  This in turn leads to a series of events that culminate in the crew's reconciling with Roberts and taking it upon themselves to see he gets the transfer he wants.  To his horror, Culver is appointed his replacement, proving to be a big disappointment in the "standing up to the captain" department - at least, until the final twist.  Definitely of its time, and, like most of the films mentioned, very much in the enlisted men's camp vs. the officers (albeit with a savior officer).  Made everything look insufferably hot, though, and reminded me a bit of Porridge, what with all the home-made alcohol they kept making on the sly. (A scene where they fake up some "scotch" out of Coca Cola, grain alcohol, iodine and hair tonic, 

in an attempt to win over a nurse, is quease-inducing.)

Film review: Man Hunt (1941)

 

I think I would have enjoyed this more if I weren't familiar with the source material, which is the novel Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household, which I just (re-)read fairly recently.  It's a rip-snorter, and I actually wondered why it hadn't been made into a film.  Well it had, and this is it, and... it's a bit of a disappointment, particularly as the director is the great Fritz Lang, whose M is the godfather of all serial killer thrillers. It should be a killer combination, but outside a couple of good set pieces, this is a bit draggy and talky, and I couldn't help wonder what a better job Hitchcock might have done with it.  Actually, one of the changes that I didn't like was a bit Hitchcockian (see: The 39 Steps): the insertion of a female love interest.  Part of what drives the novel is the sense that this is one man, alone against a hostile world, forced to keep running and hiding.  When (what certainly seems like) more than half the movie is him hanging around the flat of a woman he meets in London, it slows the pace somewhat.  To be fair, I can see why they did it, because it provides a key piece of motivation for the ending (which is faithful to the book).

Anyway, for those not familiar with the book, a quick summary.  The film starts with a man (Captain Alan Thorndike, an Englishman rather unfortunately played by Walter Pidgeon, a Canadian (they try to make this more plausible when his brother says during the film that he is often off on his ranch in Canada)) lying among some shrubs on top of a cliff, sighting his rifle at something we can't see.  Then we cut to the view down the sight of the gun and it's... Adolph Hitler!  

(In the book he's never actually named, but he's on the cover of my edition, so it's not that subtle, and Household said the book, published in 1939, was motivated by his hatred of Hitler.)  He squeezes the trigger and...click!  He smiles wryly to himself, then frowns a bit and gets out a bullet, chambers it, and re-aims the gun.  But at that point a patrolling guard spies him and leaps on him and wrestles him...  The next thing we know, we're inside the castle (or whatever it is) and the chief villain of the piece, a German who is also able to impersonate an Englishman (he calls himself "Quive-Smith") impeccably later in the film (no surprise, because he's played with trademark silky menace by George Sanders - that's him behind Hitler above), who recognizes Thorndike as the legendary Great White Hunter he is because he is also an aficionado of animal slaughter.  (To his credit, Thorndike insists he no longer actually shoots the game (and claims he wasn't going to shoot Hitler), he just likes to see if he can sneak within range.)  What this German wants from Thorndike, however, is for him to sign a "confession" that he was an assassin acting at the behest of the British government.  This Thorndike refuses to do (recognizing it for what it would be: an excuse for all kinds of Nazi shenanigans - an analog of the "false flag" operation the Russians are so fond of these days) and is tortured for his pains (no pun intended).  Eventually they give up, but face the problem of how to dispose of him without triggering an international incident that they cannot exploit to their advantage.  They settle on throwing him off the very cliff he was on before and calling it an accident.  Of course, he survives the fall and manages to escape to a port where he is smuggled by a helpful British cabin boy (played, in what must be his first role, by a very young (but still instantly recognizable) Roddy McDowall), 

and unbeknownst to him, a sinister passenger is also aboard - played by a very creepy-looking John Carradine - and claiming to be... Captain Alan Thorndike (because he has all of Thorndike's papers).  The real Thorndike is initially very cocky when they reach London, thinking he's on safe ground, but it turns out that London is pullulating with German spies, and, after narrowly escaping being dragged into a cab by fake Thorndike, he goes to ground in a young woman's apartment.  This young woman is the unlikelily-named Jerry Stokes (played by the American Joan Bennett, who is excellent in Lang's later film noir Scarlet Street, but here has an execrable Cockerny accent to rival Dick Van Dyke's), and the turgid relationship digression begins.  She (born in New Jersey) regards him (born in New Brunswick) as a "gentleman," while he, in fact only about 13 years older than her but looking at least 20, keeps referring to her as a child, even as he affectionately buys her a hat pin shaped like an arrow, of which Chekhov would definitely have approved (if you know what I mean).  While they are entangled, before he goes to ground in Dorset, we do get to have the best scene in the whole film, where real Thorndike entangles with fake Thorndike in a tunnel in the underground.  The visuals are pure German expressionism.  

But after the passport of an Alan Thorndike is found on a badly mangled ("incident on the line") corpse, that's when the real Thorndike, who is described as having been seen leaving the scene, has to go on the run (their parting is actually very well handled, and features more noir-esque visuals.)  

The Dorset-based part of the book is the most vivid, but it's woefully abbreviated here (although, thankfully, the cat does not feature) but it does reveal (spoiler) a terrible fate for poor Jerry, before "Quive-Smith" meets an even worse one, and the film ends with our hero parachuting back into Germany to finish the job.  (I have just discovered that, in the '80s, Household published a sequel called Rogue Justice that picks up what happens to him, and now I need to track that down!)  Anyway, a more downbeat ending that Hitch would have had, but also the film drags a lot more than Hitch would have allowed.  Some terrible accents but a few (not enough!) beautiful visuals.  Frustrating - should have been better!

Cold again (how many False Springs is that?)

Walking round Lake Minnawanna in the sun and rain

April Skies