Mélo (1986), Alain Resnais, with Sabine Azéma

I'm not sure what attracted Alain Resnais to the antiquated play that provides the meat of Melo, other than perhaps he wanted to try his hand at melodrama, but in some ways he'd already done it with Last Year at Marienbad, which in its dance-like teasing way seems like a silent melodrama, whereas this 1986 talkfest is an over-verbose one. It starts unpromisingly -- with two classical musician old buddies and the wife of one of them discussing music and reminiscences over a bottle of wine in a comfy domestic courtyard under the stars. It looks like the cliche of every French art movie. The talk occurs at the home of the musician, Pierre -- a washout who has settled into comfortable domesticity and an unremarkable career -- and his wife, Romaine, and the guest is his old best friend, Marcel, an internationally successful solo classical violinist. Marcel, unlike Pierre, can't settle down and indeed seems to have soured on love after a series of trysts in which he always felt betrayed by women -- all of whom he has decided are the same. Without going into too much detail, Romaine deceptively engineers her own trysts with Marcel after being intrigued by one of his tales of romantic woe, and in the end the affair leads to tragedy. A Brahms sonata, it seems, turns her into a hyper-romantic horndog. Played with her lover, it's an aphrodisiac but when her dull husband requests the same duet (she on piano, he on violin) she can't abide the thought. Resnais pays homage to the theatrical origins of the piece in his framing segues, often joining sequences with the image of a proscenium and a closed red velvet curtain. This, and the use of intentionally artificial-looking settings remind audiences who might be less than persuaded by the histrionics to remember that this is, indeed, an old stage meller. Or it might also be Resnais dabbling in the same kind of artificiality that marked two other films of the vintage, Coppola's One From the Heart and Beineix's Moon in the Gutter. After awhile, the piece seems to become timeless -- its concerns about the complications of passion are never out of style and in fact the movie is better than its source material. Those expecting, or worrying about, Resnais' usual elliptical narrative hijinks should know that Melo is narratively straightforward. Acting, settings, direction are all fine, even though one gets the sense that Resnais is coasting a bit. That notion is dispelled when you realize that it takes hard work to do what he's done here, which is turn chicken shit into chicken salad, even if it's slightly gamey. When Romaine walks down by the river to meet her fate, one is reminded of Bresson's Une femme douce, a film I'm not fond of but which haunted me at the end. Your mileage will vary with the film. I was bored at first, admittedly, but found myself slowly being pulled into its spell and for certain effective moments, as when Romaine tries to take a clandestine phone call from Marcel during a dicey moment at home. In her guilt, with her puke green dress matching the color of a painting on the wall in the tiny foyer as she cradles and whispers into the phone, she resembles a green monster crouching in the darkness. The lack of information about the gel holding Pierre and Romaine together, as well as the dearth of detail about the development of the initial stages of the affair between Romaine and Marcel made it a bit difficult for me to care much, and yet the mood seems to compensate somewhat for the mechanics. Melo is a minor film, perhaps nothing more than a mildly accomplished diversion and yet there is something whole and pure about it; it is "of a piece," as they say. However, if you're strapped for time I'd refer you instead to either the 1936 Swedish version or the 1938 Hollywood version of Intermezzo, if classical-music-imbued three-way romantic melodramas are what you have a hankering for. Grade C

Ten (2002), Abbas Kiarostami

Abbas Kiarostami is fond of shooting people Ozu-like, back and forth, conversing in vans or SUVs, presumably because there must be something inherently interesting in doing this, or in the conversation or in the characters doing the talking. Then why, I wonder, do I often find myself more interested in the snatches of terrain outside the windows of the vehicle than what is going on inside? Wow, look at how the trees are arrayed on that sandy hill, or look at how the passengers in vehicles pulling up alongside aren't buying into the illusion that this is a film and breaking the forth wall looking straight at the cameras. Ten, as it stands, is the most interesting of the films I've seen by Kiarostami so far, but before you think I'm slowly becoming a convert to the current holder of the cinema's Emperor's New Clothes Award, think again. It is, again, a movie with people talking to each other in a vehicle. There are 10 episodes, with the driver being always the same woman and the passengers alternating in the episodes. The driver is a divorced and re-married mom played by a rather beautiful Iranian woman, Mania Akbari, and it helps that she is because otherwise it would be hard to sit through. This, of course, is the unspoken trope of art-film makers through time eternal -- make whatever you want and put a lovely person in the center of it and at least there's something to look at. Truly though I do find the examination of everyday concerns within the context of a different culture interesting. The conversation and the acting are pretty good -- mostly by nonprofessionals -- especially by the little boy cast as the driver's rebellious adolescent son. The film tries to shed light on the problems of being a woman in Iran, but during the course of things I don't think there's anything stated that we already didn't know, and as usual for Kiarostami the central character seems to be the least interesting and defined, serving more as a sounding board more than anything else. The director sometimes shoots only one character during these dialogue episodes; sometimes cuts back and forth sparingly between both. The passengers, in addition to the son, include a friend who has lost her boyfriend, an old woman who has given away everything for the good of God, a prostitute who doesn't like to be lectured about her lifestyle, and so on. Interestingly, one finds some of the philosophy or statements made by the passengers earlier in the film coming out of the mouth of the driver later. In consoling the friend whose man has left her, we find the driver using some of the same arguments as the prostitute. Family dynamics are explored, away from the home, through conversations between the mother and son. The issues of juggling visitation rights between estranged parents are universal ones, very recognizable. The universality of the issues and the realistic presentation count for something. I think for once Kiarostami has hit on something authentic. On the other hand, I again agree with Roger Ebert that this film wouldn't even have made it past the first entry round of judging had anyone else made it, much less gotten a nomination for the Palme d'Or at Cannes. It is shot on videotape, which begs the question: If Kiarostami thought it worth doing, then why not put it on film? I question the artistic judgment of someone whose best or near-best work is deemed only good enough for video while his lamest movies make it to film. So, in the end, what are we left with here: a better-than-average home video or a memorable cinematic experience? The former, I believe. Like Ebert, I still fail to grasp the greatness of Kiarostami. Luckily, I listen to myself and not to the crowd of narrative-hating critics that Ebert rather delightfully, and bravely, calls dilettantes. Grade D+

The Stranger's Return (1933), King Vidor, with Miriam Hopkins, Lionel Barrymore and Franchot Tone

It would be easy to call King Vidor's 1933 pastorale, The Stranger's Return, a kind of corn-pone Volpone, except that crochety patriarch Grampa Storr (Lionel Barrymore) feigns madness as part of his inheritance games and not death itself. That, he knows, is coming soon enough, and what remains is getting his house in order. That it's not cornpone -- despite the moral underpinnings and rural setting -- is due to the film's greater interest in the working out of unresolved issues among its characters than in its concerns about conventional right and wrong. Arming the likes of Barrymore with a long stiff beard (that makes him look as fearsome as old John Brown) as well as a cane and a chance to play a Civil War vet off his rocker might not be a great idea except that here he's paired with a great leveler, Miriam Hopkins, a screen diva herself and not inclined to let someone else steal the show. Her strategy is to slyly underplay it as New York City girl Louise Storr, the daughter of Barrymore's oldest son and estranged from her husband, seeking respite on old man Storr's farm. She's fourth generation, and in his vivacious granddaughter Storr sees a chance to get that house in order. Until that comes along, the best he's got is a drunken but good-natured farm manager played by doughy Stuart Erwin, who we know instantly cannot be an object of desire for the newcomer but rather the typical screen eunuch; although here he is not totally shorn of sexuality. His offer to strangle the girl he's dancing with at the Saturday night social allows him a kinky side that otherwise seems drowned in corn likker. Storr's battles with his live-in potential heirs--none of them directly related to him by blood---take on Fieldsian dimensions, particularly with his nattering nephew's widow, Beatrice (Beulah Bondi). Until Louise arrives, she is the most logical heir to Storr's respectable estate, and she knows it. Problem is, the old man cannot stand her or his other weaker-kneed in-house relations, including the bland lawyer (Grant Mitchell, perpetually typecast in these kinds of roles) who is married to his guileless and slow stepdaughter, Thelma. Louise's arrival sparks things in the sleepy community; her affect on Storr and the farmhands is almost magical. And she proves quickly she can hold her own with the boys. These un-ladylike tendencies in Louise seem to give Beatrice part of the ammo she needs to discredit Louise's moral values as she jockeys for position in the estate fight. So too does Beatrice have an ace in the hole when Louise falls immediately in love with Guy Crane (Franchot Tone), a gentleman farmer and semi-sophisticate who also is married. His wife Nettie, a good-hearted girl, knows she lacks the education to keep her husband engaged, and almost welcomes Louise's visits. The fierce independent streak Louise possesses almost makes her defiant to the point of heating up the affair, gossips be damned, but it's that contrarian nature that most closely bonds grandfather and granddaughter. In the end, everyone does the right and moral thing, though what happens to Beatrice seems rather harsh. I never hate her as much as the script wants me to. Hopkins' performance in this movie is highly acclaimed by a small coterie of cineastes who've managed to see this rather hard-to-find film. She is very good, but it's hardly a better performance than she'd given before in films such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Here, she does have a chance to cry, and it's an affecting moment. Recognizable is her tendency to wring her hands frequently, an affectation seen in several of her other films (every time I see her do it I think of her angry kiss-offs of "Eaglebauer!" to Edward Everett Horton in Design for Living). The movie is probably too molasses paced for most of today's viewers, which of course means shit to me. It's a lovely piece, rather unusual; deftly avoiding mawkishness when the very spectre hangs over nearly every minute. Grade B-

Report (1967), Bruce Conner

This is not a report. And that's OK, and most appropriate, because neither is Report, by Bruce Conner. More specifically, this is not a review because, after one viewing, I'm still absorbing and processing what I've seen and heard. But I wanted to get something down in writing, something that captures my first impressions; the raw and awkward effusions of the neophyte contemplating Guernica for the first time. Moved, but not entirely sure why. Baffled, unsettled -- partly wondering what the fuss is about while understanding very well. Conner's 13-minute avant-garde, film poem /essay /documentary /montage /hodgepodge /stream-of-consciousness assemblage of found footage on the Kennedy assassination along with more banal moving imagery that puts that event into a topical and larger context is a movie more written about than seen, more sought out than found. This movie composed of found footage is, ironically and frustratingly, one of the most difficult cinematic works to find. Indeed, it seems to be one of the most closely guarded art objects on Earth. There's plenty of back story on the net about why this is; how closely it was held to the vest under Conner and subsequently -- after his death -- by his widow and estate. Conner did not want the film to be viewed via any format other than projected film itself, so finding it in a video form has been impossible. One has to resort to Richard Nixon-like tactics to see it, and, like Tricky Dick, I invoke culpable deniability. I have seen it, but how and where I know not, and neither will you. Just keep digging buckos; it is out there. That it should get to this point with films like Report is a shame, because there's no reason that well-intentioned cineastes who would love to see and appreciate it should see it and similar obscurities listed in sadomasochistically torturing tomes such as 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die and realize they will go to their death having no chance of seeing it. In fact, the effect of Report is a powerful one regardless of whether it is seen with light projected through celluloid -- even while conceding that, yes, ideally that is the preferred way. But we're dealing with roughed-up newsreel footage; stuff taped off a TV with a Super 8 and such; it's not a luminously glowing original nitrate print of, say, Sunrise by F.W. Murnau. The visual textures aren't sophisticated enough to justify the stubborn clinging to an anti-video pesentational stance -- especially with DVD and Blu-Ray and HDTV out there. And I'm not sure why Report remains standoffishly hidden, when such Conner films as Marilyn Times Five and A Movie appear to be available on legitimate videos at the public library.

Finally having the chance to watch it immediately dispels myths about what is actually in it. First of all, it does not riff on footage from the Zapruder film as so many commentators have written. It's understandable that they might say this, having likely not been able to see it themselves. Secrecy always begets misinformation. The central image of Report is the passing of the president's motorcade filmed from a TV news report by Conner. It, like the entire film, is in black and white. It is not the Zapruder film. This passing becomes a stretched-out moment in time as Jackie and John perched in their limo pass closely by a TV camera, smiling at it, and us; JFK offering up a salute of greeting. This passing of the motorcade is brilliantly cut by Conner. It represents just a few seconds of real time; a moment that is itself just a few moments before the fatal shots. Conner stretches this passing of the motorcade out for about a minute; with the car advancing only so far, repeating the cut, then allowing the film to advance slightly more, repeating that snippet several times, and so on, until the backs of John and Jackie face us and slip away. It's mesmerizing and haunting, and in some ways more disturbing than the violent shock of the color Zapruder footage. This is a contemplation, of time, of fleetingness, of life, of death. A tiny moment extended for our greater consideration. Conner privileges us by finding a way to let us drink in the moment, but also to dread what is coming. It's as if he is giving JFK a few more seconds of life. I couldn't believe it when I found myself muttering, "No, John, stop the car, go back."

Before this, the film is largely a sonic experiment, a black screen punctuated by fast strobe-like flickering, reminiscent of the hypnotic (and possibly epilepsy inducing) experimental short, The Flicker, by Tony Conrad (from 1965 and thus of the same vintage). The informational aspects of the film at this point are aural, police radio and news resports manically essaying the chaos ensuing from the assassination.

The motorcade portion is followed by a seemingly interminable section that lasts about two minutes in which film leader counts backward from 10 to 3 and repeats without ever completing the countdown to two or one. It's a contemplation of time and its suspension, only possible with film, and very much reminding us of the previous scene in which the motorcade procession seems to pass eternally. Oddly, the crosshairs in the middle of the circled numbers begin to remind us of the crosshairs of the high-powered rifle that Oswald used during what must have been his own countdown to the fatal moment.

Following this, Conner lets loose with a plethora of found images: TV commercials for Tappan refrigerators, the violence of a bullfight, scenes of war, both real and cinematic, moments of Dr. Frankenstein and his life apparatus cobbled from Bride of Frankenstein, a repeated image of a bullet piercing a light bulb in super slow motion, etc. Some of this is crude symbolism; some of it a commentary in the violence of the 20th century that seems to make JFK's fate inevitable. It all comes fast and furious in the last few minutes, and because of that it's hard to consider it fully with one viewing. The final image is of a secretary sitting operating a piece of office equipment, with a cutaway to a hand which through the montage of movies is suggested to be hers but likely is not, pushing a button marked "sell." Clearly, selling out is not what motivated Conner, and that helps to partly explain the scarcity of this movie in the marketplace of ideas. The selling of the image of the Kennedy assassination, which is something Zapruder did well by, is the stuff for a deeper analysis than I'm inclined to tackle now.

While watching Report I often said to myself that it wasn't impressing me as much as Conner's humorous 1958 found-footage short, A Movie. It's in retrospect that the much darker Report surpasses. Interestingly, even when it is outrageous and transgressive, Report seems ultimately to be a most tasteful and honorable remembrance, mourning not just JFK but the passing of a more innocent age -- even while criticizing it. Grade: B??

Tom Sutpen over at the Illusion Travels By Streetcar blog has much more interesting things to say about this movie than I do.

-E

Joy of Living (1938), Tay Garnett, with Irene Dunne and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.

There's a moment about halfway through Tay Garnett's 1938 screwball comedy, Joy of Living, when Irene Dunne, as the harried workaholic stage star Maggie Garret is handed a message that causes her to speed up her singing during a radio performance, driving the conductor (the eternally prissy screen pansy, Franklin Pangborn) into a flying armed tizzy. It's as if Dunne is commanding the movie to finally get going. This acceleration, perhaps unintentionally, marks the approximate moment where Joy of Living morphs from a mechanical and lumpy minor screwball comedy into a first-rate one for the next half hour. Preceding this is the first really good laugh in the movie, when Garret and her free-spirited stalker, Dan Brewster (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.), become caught in a revolving door, with the result that only short bursts of their argumentative chatter are heard as the door spins. Up till then, the movie is reminiscent of, but inferior to others of its vintage ilk; the presence of Alice Brady, again the annoying matriarch, continually brings to mind My Man Godfrey. The patriarch is Guy Kibbee, whose main sin seems to be sneaking whiskey into his tea with the help of his conspiratorial butler, played as in countless 30's comedies by another queenly stalwart, Eric Blore. The family is a bit of a drudge, mooching off the fame and fortune of Maggie, not unlike the brood in 1933's Bombshell, that marvelous vehicle for Jean Harlow and Lee Tracy. As is de rigueur for populist screwball an uptight character obsessed by work, money and status will eventually be freed of those concerns by a carefree one, and gain romance in the bargain. Joy of Living was a flop in 1938, but it can now be seen as a worthy if imperfect example of its type. The most delightful moments take place in a lower class eatery run by a blusterer of indeterminate Slavic accent played by the omnipresent Billy Gilbert. Dan marks the number of tall beers consumed by Maggie by throwing pretzels onto an overhead candlelight. By the time the stack is as tall as the candle, the snockered Maggie is no longer too worried about the beer stein lid continually clamping down on her hat veil and she starts drinking straight through the veil. Dunne is luminous in this film; her performance is every bit as fine as in the previous year's comedy masterpiece, The Awful Truth. Fairbanks is game as well; one wonders why he wasn't cast in more screwball films. After some slapstick hijinks in a roller rink, where Maggie's "yuk yuks" seem to channel Curly from the Three Stooges, the film winds down to more conventional genre concerns before a wonderful finale of barefoot sloshing in the rain. If you can get through the uneven first half, Joy of Living lives up to its title. Grade B-

Pretty Poison (1968), Noel Black, with Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld

Whenever I read a critic of the professional or armchair variety condemn a film for being “dated,” my response is typically to condemn him or her for having a pea-brained critical acumen. I say this as preface because Pretty Poison does not date at all; it seems trapped in a timeless universe, and yet there are elements that trap it within the time of its making. The most prominent of these, and really the only one that sticks out sorely, is the generic made-for-TV style musical score. Shorn of that, we might not be pulled out of our trance. Pretty Poison is entrancing, even if the directorial style is sometimes flat. This film and I have a long history. I saw it on television as an adolescent in the early 70’s — at which time it blew me away — and not at all in three decades since. Seeing it again at such remove was a rare and intriguing chance to see how far (or how little) my critical sensibilities have grown and changed. Impossible to see for so many years, the film only premiered officially in a video format, on DVD, in 2006 and until then had developed the kind of legend that affixes itself to long-unseen curios. The film thus haunted me for years, and I don’t think that would have been the case had it not been for the casting of Tuesday Weld, the kittenish high-schooler from 1965’s Lord Love a Duck again cast as a high-schooler in this, though perhaps less convincingly. Oddly, thinking about both films, Weld’s channeling of both innocent and cynical manipulator is a hallmark of each. Whereas, the former film was a slapsticky, gaudy black comedy, Pretty Poison is much more subtle, both dark comedy and tragedy. Of the many pretty poisons in the film, she is doubtlessly the prettiest, and perhaps the deadliest. We first see Weld in the film marching across a verdant field with her classmates in her high school majorette uniform. This, obviously was powerful stuff when I was 12. Perhaps not surprisingly, in that I have not changed. That’s how Anthony Perkins, as Dennis Pitt, first sees her in this; far from the prison mental hospital from which he was just released and casting about for a new life — something we know is doomed right off, partly because, well shit, it’s Tony Perkins for chrissakes and second because his counselor/probation officer (John Randolph) has just told him the real world does not tolerate fantasy and he’s already begun to spin fanciful lies. Part of it is meant to hide his past; a tragic mistake borne of adolescent anger and resulting in arson and manslaughter that put him in the crazy house. Now “cured” he puts his skills at fantastic creation and re-creation of his identity to work on the ostensibly innocent 17-year-old blonde, Sue Ann Stepanek. Perkins seems to be a tad old to be the youngish man the script seems to want us to believe — since part of its aim is to make him a 60s symbol of discontented youth — but once paired with Weld the two form a convincing core unit of youthful rebellion. Thus, the anti-establishment, anti-parent, anti-corporate shenanigans begin in earnest. Walking up the gangplank to the chemical factory in the podunk town (work is freedom but looks awfully like a return to prison), he already shows signs of deep trouble, snapping clandestine photos with a tiny spy camera of the factory operations as its pipes spew blue and red toxins into the river. It’s as if he’s the only one in the world who sees or cares. Snatches of red punctuate Pitt’s world throughout, in the bottle of red acid, a lizard, and flashbacks of the arson fire. Already we’re on his side, even though we’re not quite sure where he’s taking us. His seemingly imperturbable face hides very little; he’s an oddball, everyone knows it and hates him instantly. Pitt’s fanciful inner life externalizes: He’s a CIA man on a mission, and immediately young Sue Ann is drawn into the game. Eventually the game, and Sue Ann, make things all too real for Pitt and he damned near becomes infantile in his powerlessness. An act of industrial sabotage, as Perkins seems to regress to his arsonist past, not only succeeds too well but spurs on the bloodlust in Sue Ann. Bad news, because it turns out that Sue Ann has a past too, one of abuse, the depth of which is never spelled out, but the violence that finally comes of it gives us more than enough of a hint. The question is: does Sue Ann transform from one thing to another during the course of the picture or is her innocence a front all along? It’s hard to talk about plot points in Pretty Poison without giving too much away, so I’m choosing to leave a lot of detail vague. If the film were better known I’d have less of a problem with that, but as it stands the film remains a relatively (and unjustly) unknown cult item. The ending is a real beauty, operating at several levels: Pitt’s self-sacrifice and Stepanek’s pettiness form a mutually necessary harmony. One of the funniest jokes in the film comes at the end, when Weld, obviously by this point far from a great representative of the “Pepsi Generation,” is very pointedly handed a Pepsi by a policeman. If Pepsico had paid for that product placement company reps might very well have been pissed at how director Noel Black and his writer twisted it into a sort of kiss off. Happily, my enthusiasm for the film remains strong, so much so that I’m not moving it off my top list for 1968. Its place is secure. Grade B+

Ivan the Terrible, Part II (made 1946; released 1958), Sergei Eisenstein, with Nikolai Cherkassov

I saw the first film of this opus in college two decades ago and was deeply impressed by the visual design but was unable to accept the eye-rolling histrionics. That’s why it’s taken me so long to watch the second part; in fact, I’ve dreaded it. But curiosity finally won out. Clearly I was ready for it this time because …Part II is balls-on fun, much livelier than I remember part one being. The plot is simplistic to the max, but there’s something mysterious about the whole thing: the dire death plotting and power plays conducted in such close quarters — close to the vest yet obvious to all, and all players oblivious to the larger world outside. Apart from the fancy baubles and raiments this crew could just as well be wielding knotty clubs and grunting in a cave. Appropriately, the whole feel is cavernous. In Eisenstein, every shot and movement counts, so the eye is always engaged. What has happened to me as a filmgoer in the intervening years since seeing …Part I is my acceptance of flamboyance and camp in the cinema: a more thoroughgoing appreciation for the likes of Sternberg and Sirk and their spawn. After awhile, the heightened movements and bellowing seem normal. And, who knows, this might very well have been the way that self-important nobles in Russia acted in the Middle Ages. Unfortunately, I viewed a poor quality videotape with the much-vaunted Agfacolor banquet scene — a wild and manic delight — rendered in black and white, giving the scene an unintentionally eerie quality that washes out lines and details and darkens all but the most prominent whites (in ensuing days I was able to see the scene in proper color). The scene, in which the Boyars’ plot is revealed by the Tsar’s weak-kneed nephew, bursts with crazy Russian mania and the way in which Ivan turns the tables on his would-be assassins is hilarious. And anything that was banned by Stalin for being too much a reflection on his own modus operandi has to be worth a look. Grade: B

Fat Man and Little Boy (1989), Roland Joffe, with Paul Newman, Dwight Schultz, Bonnie Bedelia, John Cusack

Roland Joffe and Regis Wargnier should form some kind of club for directors who are repeatedly given large budgets to make sweeping historical epics that suck the soul out of otherwise interesting events. I give credit to each for making at least one watchable film in their careers, The Killing Fields (Joffe) and Indochine (Wargnier). Each shows a certain flair for logistical handling and a modicum of passion. This attempt at reconstructing the story of the Manhattan Project is so banal and rife with miscues, misfires and baffling editorial selection that one doesn’t even know where to begin. It’s one of those films where there seems to be a lot of ostensible detail, and yet when it’s over you feel like you’ve learned absolutely nothing about the history, the people and the issues involved. The actor cast to play J. Robert Oppenheimer is nondescript and bears no resemblance to him and tries his damndest with what he has to work with, ineffectually. As General Groves, Paul Newman makes his most embarrassing appearance onscreen since The Silver Chalice, and yet his gruff bluster at least makes his parts watchable. DP Vilmos Zsigmond shoots it "shru zee brown feeltair, cause vee know dat the vurld looked like brown doost back in the '30s und '40s" -- or so Hollywood in the '70s and '80s would have us believe. The movie is about engineers and seems to have been constructed by one. Most engineers I know lack an artistic soul. Grade: F

The Bishop’s Wife (1947) Henry Koster, with Cary Grant, Loretta Young and David Niven

I counted this as a second viewing even though I’d only previously caught the film in bits and pieces over the years. I think what kept me from diving in fully in the past was the heavy religiosity, the saccharine emotional cue music and the idea that an angel would intercede in the relatively mundane problems of a priest who has lost his sense of priorities. After all, it took near suicide and a slew of personal disasters to bring Clarence from Heaven to save George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. The gravitas-laden emotionalism of the immediate post-war cinema had in just over a year given way to the easygoing pipe-smoking domesticity of Apartment for Peggy, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, and this. In any case …Peggy and ...Blandings are better films than The Bishop’s Wife; they have an airiness lacking in the somewhat stilted proceedings here. It’s a fantasy that clods around in lead shoes. The cast, especially Cary Grant, are better than what they’re in, and because of that you sometimes think the thing is better than it is. It looks smashing, beautifully lit and shot by no less than Gregg Toland, working again for Sam Goldwyn who as usual puts the money on the screen. I found it entertaining but rarely as effervescent as it should have been; one wishes for more moments like the one in which Grant as the angel, Dudley, and Loretta Young as the title character take off on a whimsical lark to ice skate with the cracker-barrel taxi driver played by the irrepressible James Gleason, another veteran of the Frank Capra stable. For a brief moment, you think that you, and he, have stepped back into something Capraesque. The idea is a clever one, but the movie never quite persuaded me. Grade: C+

Kangaroo (1987), Tim Burstall, with Judy Davis and Colin Friels

A bit of an obscurity, an Aussie movie based on a lesser regarded D.H. Lawrence book, ostensibly an autobiographical tome about Lawrence’s own stay Down Under after World War I. The film was critically pilloried as something of a mess, and Roger Ebert mused that the story seemed too inconsequential to be worth the telling. Two decades have passed and we can look at the thing afresh, and I have to say I enjoyed it. The Lawrence fictional doppelganger is played almost anonymously by Colin Friels; Judy Davis spices things up as his more clear-headed German wife. Author and wife find themselves hounded by the authorities in Cornwall during the war, he for his “pornographic” writings and socialist politics and she for being German-born. Rather naively they sail off to Australia with notions of a New World paradise but only find themselves drawn into more complex political and domestic strife during clashes between labor and right-wing fascist elements — the latter to which the author has been drawn due to his strong bisexual attraction to both his Aussie host and his wife. Male love, bonding and loyalty provide the underpinnings of his new politics, and when he can’t bring himself to pledge loyalty to the megalomaniac aristo ogre who heads the local fascisti the whole circle of his friendships fall apart. Davis, oddly at times seems to channel another Davis, Bette, as she reacts incredulously to her husband’s denial of his past and his opportunism and apparent loss of principals in trying to blend "when in Rome-style" into the new landscape. The film is episodic, but the episodes are rich in Australian history. Those looking for typical plot-driven dramatic thrusts will be disappointed. Since I wasn’t looking for those, I wasn’t. Grade: B-

The Amazing Quest of Ernest Bliss (aka, The Amazing Adventure) (1936), Alfred Zeisler, with Cary Grant and Mary Brian

Intriguingly, a Cary Grant film that even many Grant fans will not have seen or heard about. The suave one went back to England for a spell to make this, and even though it is kind of a forgettable toss-off it is nonetheless entertaining. It was written by E. Phillips Oppenheim, a hugely successful author of crime stories and such in the early 20th century who is now all but forgotten. It’s a fairly typical Depression-era populist class fantasy, vaguely reminiscent of My Man Godfrey and made in the same year. The set-up is unpersuasive: Bliss (Grant), a millionaire playboy, visits his doctor who tells him that money is causing his inner sickness. The doc bets his patient 50,000 pounds that he’ll feel better if he can live for a year on his wits alone without access to his 2-million-pound inheritance. Thus, the adventure, which sets up several cute and clever situations in which Bliss seems to skirt the edge of starvation before making good in a number of various avocations including stove salesman, and chauffeur to many of his wealthy (and baffled) friends who are not privy to the nature of the bet. And of course, there is romance won, lost, won, in the confusion. One never gets the sense though, at any point, that Bliss is really in any danger in all of this, despite his zeal in sticking to the bet. Ziesler directs this confection with little elan; in fact there seems to be no style at all to the thing, and yet the accumulation of period detail, Grant’s personality and the general fleetness make it a mildly satisfactory diversion. Grade: C-