The Grouchy Editor

I interviewed actress Beverly Garland one day back in the 1980s.  Garland was best known for playing Barbara Douglas, second wife of Fred MacMurray’s character on the 1960s sitcom My Three Sons.  Garland was reminiscing about the show when I asked her what it was like working with MacMurray.  She hesitated, her tone changed, and she said something noncommittal about MacMurray’s not being on the set very much.  While the other cast members were working, she said, MacMurray was usually off playing golf, or vacationing in Europe. Apparently, the veteran actor’s contract stipulated that he receive a 10-week hiatus every year – right in the middle of the TV show’s shooting schedule.  This arrangement did not sit well with some of MacMurray’s co-stars.

I think about Garland’s comments whenever I watch The Apartment, director Billy Wilder’s classic comedy-drama about a corporate nobody (Jack Lemmon) who lends his apartment to bosses for their adulterous trysts. MacMurray — forever identified with good guy Steve Douglas on My Three Sons — plays one of filmdom’s most memorable heels, the arrogant Mr. Sheldrake.  I wonder, was Fred MacMurray, nicknamed “the thrifty multimillionaire” by some colleagues, typecast in the role?

MacMurray’s slimeball executive is pivotal to The Apartment, but the film really belongs to Wilder, Lemmon, and Shirley MacLaine.  All three pull off the trickiest job in cinema:  juggling comedy and pathos and doing it right.

Although it opened to mixed reviews in 1960, the movie is now considered one of Wilder’s best.  The crusty Austrian-American filmmaker described The Apartment’s main theme as corruption of The American Dream.  That’s a depressing thought.  Sort of like finding out that Steve Douglas wasn’t such a great guy, after all.         Grade:  A

Director:  Billy Wilder  Cast:  Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Edie Adams, Ray Walston, Jack Kruschen  Release:  1960

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Thirty minutes into the notorious art-porn movie Caligula, distinguished actor John Gielgud plays a suicide scene.  As Gielgud fades away, he turns to fellow thespians Peter O’Toole and Malcolm McDowell and declares, “From evils past and evils yet to come, I now choose to escape.”

It’s a tough call whether the old actor was referring to ancient Rome or to the daily rushes he might have been privy to on the set of Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione’s chronicle of the depraved Roman emperor, Caligula.  Guccione had a point to make with Caligula, and his message came through loud and clear:  People can be pigs. The only question is whether the pigs were in Rome A.D. 40, or behind the cameras on a soundstage in 1979.

Nothing is implied in this movie, not when grotesque and graphic footage can be used.  Why hint that some poor slave has been castrated, when the actual snipping and gushing can be filmed in living color?  Why suggest sex is afoot when it can be shown in gynecological detail?  If there’s a bodily fluid or secretion with which you are unfamiliar, it’s all here for your edification.

It’s easy, maybe too easy, to trash a film like Caligula, particularly when so many people involved in it have distanced themselves from the production (along with Gielgud, O’Toole, and McDowell, astute viewers will spot young Helen Mirren).  You could argue that this kind of depravity exists in human nature and we all need reminders lest we fall from grace.  Look what happened, you could point out, when the survivors of Auschwitz and Treblinka began to die off — a lot of people went into denial about the reality of the Holocaust.

But there is a point where you say, “OK.  I get it.  Enough is enough.”  Guccione assembled big stars, a renowned writer (Gore Vidal), expensive and admittedly gorgeous sets (the budget was $22 million – a fortune in 1979).  All that talent, and yet Guccione’s “lesson” is no different from what I learned in kindergarten as I watched kids torment other kids:  People can be pigs.          Grade:  D+

Director:  Tinto Brass  Cast:  Malcolm McDowell, Teresa Ann Savoy, John Gielgud, Peter O’Toole, Helen Mirren, Adriana Asti, Mirella D’Angelo, Guido Mannari  Release:  1979

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Arthur Laurents, the screenwriter for Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, said that the famous director had no desire to make a film about homosexuality.  Hitchcock, Laurents said, also had no interest in filming yet another story about garden-variety murder.  What the genius filmmaker wanted to do was more problematic — especially back in 1948.  Hitchcock wanted to make a movie about homosexual killers.

“Rope is obviously about homosexuals [although] the word was never mentioned,” Laurents says in a DVD interview.  “It [homosexuality] was referred to as ‘it.’  They were going to do a picture about ‘it.’  And the actors were ‘it.’”

Rope is loosely based on the thrill killing of a 14-year-old boy in 1924 by Leopold and Loeb, two wealthy young Chicagoans.  The movie is best known for an innovative filming technique.  Hitchcock chose to photograph the story in real time, in a series of approximately ten-minute takes.  Thus, there are less than a dozen cuts in the entire film – something not done before and not done since.  “It was a gigantic trick,” Laurents says, “and that’s what interested him.”  Hitchcock was so gifted that no gimmick (he also used 3-D in Dial M for Murder) could prevent him from doing with Rope what he did so often:  create another cinematic classic.

Amusingly, the Jimmy Stewart character — a former teacher of the two young killers — was also intended to be homosexual.   But Stewart was just too darn hetero for that idea to fly.  As a result, Laurents claims, “The picture was curiously off-focus and didn’t have the sexual center it should have.”  Maybe so, but Rope remains Hitchcock’s most fascinating experiment.      Grade:  B+

Director:  Alfred Hitchcock  Cast:  James Stewart, John Dall, Farley Granger, Cedric Hardwicke, Constance Collier, Douglas Dick, Edith Evanson  Release:  1948

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The other night I happened upon a little Australian thriller called Black Water.  I thought it was pretty good, but I’d never heard of it, so when it was over I looked up some reviews.  Although most reviewers were positive, there were two recurring criticisms from the naysayers:  the movie’s low budget, and its “unlikable” characters.  If that’s the criteria to go by, I reckoned, then we’d might as well dismiss The Godfather (all those unlikable mobsters) and gems like Paranormal Activity (which probably cost less to produce than Rupert Murdoch’s breakfast).

Black Water will never be hailed as a cinematic milestone, but it is deserving of comparison to a film like Jaws – especially when you consider that piddling budget.  That’s high praise for the movie’s directors, who manage to achieve and sustain high tension from a simple story, supposedly based on true events, about three people trapped by a ravenous crocodile in a secluded mangrove swamp.

I recently yawned through the big-budget remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street.  God knows how much money was spent on the production, distribution, and marketing of that rehash.  And then I found an unheralded Aussie flick on TV that kept me riveted – low budget, “unlikable” characters and all.      Grade:  B+

Directors:  David Nerlich, Andrew Traucki  Cast:  Diana Glenn, Maeve Dermody, Andy Rodoreda, Ben Oxenbould  Release:  2007

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During the Great Depression, filmgoers could depend on William Powell and Myrna Loy to deliver some of Hollywood’s best lines.  Here are a few examples of dialogue from 1934’s The Thin Man:

Nora (Loy):  I read where you were shot five times, in the tabloids.
Nick (Powell):  It’s not true.  He didn’t come anywhere near my tabloids.

Cop to Nora:  Ever heard of the Solomon Act?
Nora:  Oh, that’s all right.  We’re married.

Man to Reporter:  You see, my father was a sexagenarian.
Reporter:  He was?
Man:  Yes, he admitted it.
Reporter (shaking his head):  Sexagenarian, eh?  But we can’t put that in the paper.

Hollywood’s Nick and Nora Charles, based on novelist Dashiell Hammett’s creations, offered audiences sophisticated wit as escapism when it was badly needed, and nowhere is this charm on better display than in the original The Thin Man (there were five sequels).  Nick was a hard-drinking, “retired” detective, and Nora was his ditzy-like-a-fox heiress wife.  Together, they drank, partied, and solved crimes too baffling for the police.  Always along for the ride was Asta, the Charles’s pet terrier whose name, to this day, is a crossword-puzzle staple.

The Thin Man films hold up remarkably well because of  their breakneck pacing and something all too rare in the movies:  genuine chemistry between the stars.          Grade:  A

Director:  W.S. Van Dyke  Cast:  William Powell, Myrna Loy, Maureen O’Sullivan, Nat Pendleton, Minna Gombell, Porter Hall, Henry Wadsworth, William Henry, Cesar Romero  Release:  1934

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Director Nagisa Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses was – and remains – controversial because it tramples just about every taboo imaginable.  Stars Eiko Matsuda and Tatsuya Fuji  have unsimulated sex and fellatio; a little girl exposes an old man’s genitals; there is sadomasochism, castration, rape and graphic violence.  It’s hard to imagine, for example, an American studio approving a scene in which Matsuda torments a little boy by grabbing and refusing to let go of his penis.  It’s also no surprise the film was banned in Oshima’s native Japan in 1976, and that to this day it triggers debate over “art versus pornography” (most critics feel it is the former, although Oshima himself called it “pornographic” in an interview).

I don’t believe the film is political, as some critics maintain, unless you are discussing gender politics (the man starts out on top, literally and figuratively, but winds up on the bottom).  And it isn’t photographed in a titillating manner.  I’d say Realm is simply a tale of sexual obsession gone horribly wrong.

Aside from the oddly mesmerizing quality of the film itself, there is a fascinating back story to the script.  All of the unhealthiness depicted on-screen is based on the true story of Sada Abe, a Japanese woman who in 1936 was convicted for asphyxiating her lover, severing his organ, and then carrying it around for days before she was finally arrested.  Abe became the Lorena Bobbitt of her day, a folk hero to some Japanese, and she was sentenced to just six years in prison.

In the Realm of the Senses is the kind of movie that demands you be “in the mood” to appreciate it.  If you are in the mood for a twisted tale of obsessive love, Realm is darkly compelling.        Grade:  B

Director:  Nagisa Oshima  Cast:  Eiko Matsuda, Tatsuya Fuji, Aio Nakajima, Meika Seri  Release:  1976

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It almost feels like heresy to say anything negative about Guillermo del Toro’s 2006 movie, Pan’s Labyrinth, but why do I get the feeling it will fail to go down in film history as, say, a darker, more adult, The Wizard of Oz?

Not because of the dazzling visuals, which deservedly won Oscars.  Not because of del Toro’s direction, which is stylish and well-paced.  I think it’s not quite a masterpiece because of its story, which weaves two threads that don’t quite mesh.  Story A concerns young Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) in post-Civil War Spain, 1944.  Ofelia’s widowed mother has remarried the ogre-like Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez), who is bent on ridding the Spanish hillsides of rebel guerrillas.  Captain Vidal is dismissive of Ofelia and her mother and cruel to everyone else.  And so, in time-honored fairytale fashion, we have a young heroine and her evil stepfather.

Story B concerns Ofelia’s imaginary escape from her misery, into a labyrinth where she meets fantastic characters small and big, good and bad.  She is told that she will become princess of this magical realm and be reunited with her true father, but first she must accomplish several tasks.

This dream world, which del Toro details superbly, does not connect all that well with Story A.  It does so at the end of the movie, but prior to that Ofelia’s excursions into the labyrinth seem more like a fanciful diversion from Story A than a smooth connection to it.            Grade:  B+

Director:  Guillermo del Toro  Cast:  Ivana Baquero, Doug Jones, Sergi Lopez, Maribel Verdu, Ariadna Gil  Release:  2006

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James Whale, British filmmaker and subject of the excellent 1998 film, Gods and Monsters, is best remembered as a director of classic horror movies, including Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein.  But Whale had a sly wit that is nowhere on better display than in 1932’s The Old Dark House, which is an absolute hoot.

Whale reteams with fellow British expatriates Boris Karloff and Ernest Thesiger, both of Frankenstein fame, in this madcap “dark and stormy night” flick in which five unfortunate travelers must take refuge at the gloomy home of the Femm family.  Movies this old are often filled with unintentional humor, but Whale’s story is black comedy par excellence, and he’s assembled a cast that winks at the audience while keeping a straight face.

Karloff, who by this time in his career must have been wondering if he’d ever get an actual speaking part, is all glowering menace as Morgan the mute butler — until he utters a bizarre, guttural growl, at which point I challenge you not to laugh.  Thesiger and Eva Moore, as the bickering Femm siblings, are English eccentricity personified.

When Whale isn’t busy subverting our horror-movie expectations, he’s thumbing his nose at the soon-to-be Hollywood Hays Code, particularly in a weirdly erotic scene between dowdy Moore and comely Gloria Stuart.  Moore looks on as Stuart strips down to her satin underwear, and then hisses:  “You’re wicked, too.  Young and handsome, silly and wicked.  You think of nothing but your long, straight legs, and your white body, and how to please your man.  You revel in the joys of fleshly love, don’t you?”  Those lines are illustrative of the film as a whole:  bizarre, creepy, and hilarious.        Grade:  A-

Director:  James Whale  Cast:  Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, Lilian Bond, Ernest Thesiger, Eva Moore, Raymond Massey, Gloria Stuart, John (Elspeth) Dudgeon, Brember Wills  Release:  1932

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I have an idea for a movie.  We’ll cast the two romantic leads from today’s biggest film, Zoe Saldana and Sam Worthington of Avatar, as an attractive young couple.  We’ll follow them through a cute courtship, then veer into their squabbles over money, child-rearing, and sex.  For good measure, we’ll have them cheat on each other.  Sound like something you’d like to see?  No?

It’s a tribute to old-time star power that Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney pull off this scenario so effortlessly in Two for the Road, director Stanley Donen’s 1967 comic drama.  And yes, there is a lot of humor in the movie. 

Donen uses flashbacks and flash-forwards to chronicle 12 years in the lives of Mark and Joanna Wallace, allowing us to see up close how even an apparent match-made-in-heaven can falter.  With the wrong actors, this wouldn’t work, but hey, we are talking Hepburn and Finney here.  Hepburn, as she so often played in her career, is physically frail yet deceptively tough.  Finney is all gruff and bravado, yet deceptively soft.

The lush cinematography is a bonus as the Wallaces embark on a series of road trips in Europe — many of them quite funny.  And once again, I find myself praising the musical talent of the film’s scorer, Henry Mancini.

So do the Wallaces have a happy ending?  I won’t say, but I will say I’ve thought about which ending — split up or stay together — would make for a more satisfying film, and that’s a very tough call.      Grade:  A-

Director:  Stanley Donen  Cast:  Audrey Hepburn, Albert Finney, Eleanor Bron, William Daniels, Claude Dauphin, Nadia Gray  Release:  1967

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Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the most beautiful star of all?

Could it be a woman so stunning she can make a man fall hopelessly in love with her portrait?  Or possibly an actress who — 65 years after her signature role and 30 years after her death — still mesmerizes audiences as Laura Hunt, the heroine of director Otto Preminger’s classic mystery, Laura?

Gene Tierney is perfectly cast as the unattainable Laura, but the film might be as impenetrable as Laura’s veneer were it not for a couple of standout male performances.  Dana Andrews is nearly as enigmatic as Tierney in his portrayal of a lovelorn homicide detective, a man who avoids eye contact with the people he interrogates, yet who can’t stop staring at that portrait of an apparently murdered woman.  And Clifton Webb, as the sardonic Waldo Lydecker, proves that no Hollywood actor was as adept at the witty putdown.

But the movie belongs to Tierney, the inspiration for both the painting (in reality a touched-up photo) and the memorable title song.   Said David Raksin, composer of “Laura”:  “When I was working on the score, I kept looking at her all the time.  There’s this fabulous creature.  You come across something marvelous and it inspires you.”      Grade:  A

Director:  Otto Preminger  Cast:  Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, Vincent Price, Judith Anderson  Release:  1944

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