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-

Beyond the Forest (1949), King Vidor, with Bette Davis and Joseph Cotten

It has been 10 days since I saw this and am working on the fly here, so there won’t be anything in-depth to say. The gist is that for years I ignored this movie due to its universal critical dismissal; Bette Davis herself mocked it for the rest of her life as did her co-star Joseph Cotten, which I gathered from recently reading his entertaining name-dropping autobiography, Vanity Will Get You Somewhere. Cotten did note the film’s cult status, and shortly thereafter I saw that Ed Gonzalez over at Slant had placed it at numero uno on his top 10 list for 1949. I had to scoff and think him trying to be an uber-hipster provocateur in placing a campy turd in first place in a year filled with so many “real” classics. Oh, how wrong I have been. Beyond the Forest is a full-on masterpiece. Tremendously moving, wickedly funny, operatically majestic, deeply sad and defiantly subversive — a throwback to pre-Code sensibilities in many ways. Bette Davis plays a Mexican girl in a ridiculous black wig and with no Latin accent at all, and pretty soon that’s part of the effectiveness; she’s a fish out of water in more ways than one. Hanging out at the train station, situated at the far edge of the frame going nowhere, or foregrounded against the hellish blast furnace of the mill chugging out choking fire and brimstone toxins and noise day and night, reminding her where she is and that she can never leave. It’s impossible not to feel for her, no matter how wicked she is, or wants to be. Then, when she does get to the big city, Chicago, it’s just more Hell — she can’t wait to get back to the godforsaken podunk logging town with its square dances and square neighbors — all of whom chatter behind her back (and she knows it). She pussy whips poor Joe Cotten, a doctor apparently unable to get it up and who prefers to go hunting with the boys (the sarcasm is not lost in Davis’ remark about his “nice gun”); thus necessitating her running to an old flame. The film makes it pretty clear they’re fucking around and that she’s pregnant with his illegitimate child. It’s remarkable how much of this stuff made it on the screen in ‘49. A comeuppance of course is due, therefore, but here it’s not so much one of divine or earthly punishment, but rather a kind of tragic personal choice. As Davis limps and crawls to the train in the finale, I was fucking crying I tell you. Dammit, I’m doing it now. Grade: A+

Man of the World (1931), Richard Wallace, with William Powell and Carole Lombard

The Carole Lombard "Glamour Collection" 6-film set from Universal (bought used but pristine for an unbeatable $12.98 at Half Price Books) starts off with an obscurity, 1931's Man of the World, directed by the reliable Richard Wallace, who was responsible for one of the decade's best deco comedies, the charming The Young in Heart (1938). Lombard's hair is close cropped in the early 30's manner and she's almost unrecognizable and quite tame as the second billed lead here. This is really a vehicle for William Powell (more than compensatory). He's a debonair American blackmailer aliasing as a novelist in Paris who's (predictably) having second thoughts about his profession when he falls for the niece, Mary, (Lombard) of his most recent, and clueless victim, a butterball butter-and-egg-man American middle-ager (Guy Kibbee) who pretty much makes it clear that he's in Paris not for the culture but for the snatch. It's a nice glimpse of what Kibbee's performance might have been like in the notorious lost 1933 pre-Code comedy, Convention City. Of course, Powell becomes torn between his loyalty to his cronies in crime, including a viper girlfriend, and his budding love for lil Miss Mary. It's predictable until the end, which is surprisingly downbeat; it's impossible to think of any film after 1934 with romantic comedy elements allowing for an ending like this one, and that goes for today's movies. It's a "moral" ending, yet not in the audience-pandering sense, and it seems to have more poetic gravitas than usual. There's a lovely "doubling" narrative effect as the two couples return across the Atlantic. And I'm a sucker for things being scattered over the sea. The movie is full of diverting detail and the kind of style and pacing that I love in '30s film. On the basis of this and The Young in Heart, Richard Wallace seems to have been an exceptional director of actors. In both films the performances are keyed down and natural, and verbal mistakes are allowed to stay in the picture. In all, a well-modulated, if minor and forgettable, '30s entertainment, which of course, is not at all a drawback for me. Grade: C