The Lost and Forgotten Legacy of Helen Twelvetrees

The following is my contribution to the Gone Too Soon Blogathon at Comet Over Hollywood.

Simply for having such an unforgettable name, one would think Helen Twelvetrees' memory would live on long after the actress herself did.  Granted, she was never in what one could honestly call a hit movie, and her film career faded away long before she did, but still, back in the pre-code days of Hollywood, the woman born Helen Marie Jurgens, was always just a film or two away from becoming the breakout star that RKO contemporary Katharine Hepburn would become right before the actress's jaded eyes.  Sadly for her, and for those of us who have seen her films (the few that fit such a demographic), this breakout would never come.

Our story begins with the birth of Helen Jurgens in Brooklyn on Christmas day 1908, but since little is known about her childhood, let us jump ahead just a bit.  Helen would go on to graduate from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, where incidentally she would meet her first husband, Clark Twelvetrees, and begin a career on the stage.  As the silent era came to an end and many Hollywood stars could not or would not make the transition to sound films, the studios hit the live theaters and would restock their stable of stars with stage actors.  Among those signing contracts with Fox, was nineteen year old Mrs. Twelvetrees.  She would make her screen debut starring in the studio's second talkie, The Ghost Talks, and would fake a lisp during filming (apparently in order to help show off the new sound technology) that was so successful that a rumour went around town claiming the actress had a speech impediment.

After this, Twelvetrees would star in one of the earliest musicals, Words and Music, a relatively forgettable film that is mostly noteworthy for being the first film in which John Wayne received billing (as Duke Morrison).  Following a split with Fox, after just three films, Twelvetrees would sign with Pathé, which would soon be taken over by RKO.  At her new studio, the actress would make several respectable but ultimately failed films.  Her most notable (and my personal favourite) is a film called Millie, where Twelvetrees plays a jaded goldigging woman who must deal with her wanton life.  This film, with its sexually blatant - at least for the time - storyline, and its somewhat closer-to-the-ground moral code, is a perfect example of the pre-code era in Hollywood.

Twelvetrees, along with other RKO players like Constance Bennett, would become the face of the pre-code era, but Twelvetrees days at RKO were limited - and she knew it.  Upon the arrival of Katharine Hepburn at the studio, Twelvetrees knew her days were up and would go freelance hereafter.  Twelvetrees would make another two dozen films throughout the 1930's, but  relegated to small parts in B-Pictures, she would never become the breakout star some thought she would, and in 1939 she would announce her retirement from Hollywood, and go back to the stage she loved so much - but even this would prove mostly unsuccessful, and she would retire from acting all together, save for a well-received return as Blanche Dubois in a 1951 production of Streetcar, in the 1940's.

Twelvetrees' personal life was just as tumultuous as her zig-zag career, which helped klead to a breakdown in her career.  Divorcing her first husband in 1931 (though keeping his name) and marrying her second, stuntman Frank Woody shortly thereafter.  Between drunken feuds and public panning, Twelvetrees and Woody would divorce in 1936.  Twelvetrees would fade into obscurity after her retirement, and would commit suicide in 1958, at the age of 49, and is interred in an unmarked grave in Middletown, Pennsylvania.  The connection between Twelvetrees' death in Harrisburg, PA, and this being my hometown (for a year or so, I even lived just down the street from the very cemetery the actress now inhabits), brought this look at this mostly forgotten actress to cyber-fruition.  On a high note in this sad tale of the lady with the sad eyes, there is currently a movement to get a headstone placed on Twelvetrees' grave.  One can contribute to the fund here.  This will hopefully become a done deal before Summer hits.

Now granted, Twelvetrees was perhaps not the greatest of actresses.  Her fear of competing for roles with a young Hepburn is proof that she too knew this.  Of course, Twelvetrees' talents were never fully explored so perhaps one day, under better circumstances, she could have grown into a great actress.  In the few films I have seen her in, she did a fine job (her performance in  Millie was especially tragic and she more than held her own in a role that could have been played by someone like Barbara Stanwyck), and showed that there probably was quite a bit more than what we were allowed to see.  Sadly enough, we will never know the full extent of Twelvetrees' talents, but if this piece on the long lost actress gets even just one person to check out her films, then it is well worth the writing.  Now go out there and see these films.

The White Hell of Pitz Palü, Sturdy Pre-Hitler Leni Riefenstahl and the Strange and Fascinating Allure of the German Mountain Film

Before Adolph Hitler and his National Socialist party came to terrible power.  Before the Nuremburg Laws were heinously put into effect. Before the Third Reich's invasion of Poland and Czechoslovakia and the inevitable advent of World War II.  Before the horrors of the Holocaust.  Before the Berlin Wall split the nation in two.  Before the likes of Lang and Wilder and Sirk and Lubitsch escaped to Hollywood and (relative) artistic freedom.  Before there was ever a Fassbinder or a Herzog or Wim Wenders.  Before any of this there was the natural beauty and simple, pure pleasure of the German Mountain Film.  And the greatest of this forgotten genre was Arnold Fanck and G.W. Pabst's two and a half hour silent masterpiece, The White Hell of Pitz Palü.

This sweeping and quite harrowing film (especially harrowing for this admitted acrophobic) is used as an important and quite intriguing talking point in Quentin Tarantino's own alt-history WWII masterpiece Inglourious Basterds as poor Archie Hickox tries to get around his bad German accent by using this film and a story of growing up in the setting's valley as an excuse (it doesn't work).   Tarantino, the ever consummate cinephile plays highly with the Weimar era German cinema in his film, but given the circumstances, he only scratches the proverbial surface.   Thought of with a sense of national pride, the German mountain film, as opposed to the contemporaneous  Expressionist cinema and its own inherent avant-gardism, tried bringing the ideal of the human form, in both its physicality and spirituality, to the forefront of the film industry.  Though, again as opposed to the aforementioned German Expressionism (aka, Murnau, Lang, Weine etc), the mountain film is pretty much forgotten in this day and age.  Well, forgotten except for perhaps QT, myself and a few German film scholars.

Palü, along with films such as The Holy Mountain and The Great Leap (also directed by Fanck), could never be accused of being overly creative in their storytelling techniques - men go up a mountain, some do not come back - nor would I say they were generally greater than many of the Expresionist pieces of the day, but the sheer visual beauty of the mountains themselves (the Bernina range in the Alps) and the way Fanck filmed them (Pabst, a great director of the urban underworld of 1920's Berlin, put his directorial input in with the indoor and mountain'less' portions of the film) are something to never be forgotten.  The swift, thundering avalanches, the devastating wind swooping off the mountaintops, the monstrous vehicle that is nature, coming down upon the specks of bravado-laden humanity that dare brave these near peerless peaks.  The White Hell of Pitz Palü is a dangerous motion picture in both its epic destruction of man's hope and the redemptive nature of his resolve.  Beautiful and dangerous indeed, but there is something else in these films that make them even more beautiful, and ultimately one might say, even more dangerous.  That something is the lithe yet sturdy frame of the most famous actress in 1920's German cinema, and eventually the most despised woman in all of film history, miss Leni Riefenstahl.

Riefenstahl, who would go on to become a director herself (1932's The Blue Light, one of the last mountain films, was her debut behind the camera) and later one of the most infamous people in the world as Hitler's favourite filmmaker (and some refuted sources, his lover) and the woman behind the supposedly propagandist Triumph of the Will and Olympia, was merely a girl who wanted to climb mountains with the man she loved.  Strangely attractive, Riefenstahl was the standard bearer of the female form in both pre-Hitler and post-Hitler Germany.  Shapely and athletic, she was a true nature girl.  Her eyes were set ever so slightly too close to one another, but this just gave her a sort of otherwordly beauty.  Her brown hair and broad yet feminine shoulders, her muscular legs and strangely pristine feet (she would climb mountains, the non-iced ones, barefoot!?), her narrow European nose, her wide exuberant smile, her inset eyes that could work wonders on a young man's soul, her seemingly endless energy.

These are the qualities that made the young Riefenstahl such the perfect figure to play these mountain-climbing heroines of yore.  These are also the qualities that would eventually bring the sexy budding director to the notice of one Adolph Hitler, and hitherto, the most hated woman in film history.  Whether this infamous moniker is deserved or not really depends on one's thoughts on whether an artist is responsible for how their art is used.  I am not really going to get into such a debate here and now, for this is the story of Riefenstahl as an actor and not the director she would become, other than to say that her work is some of the most vibrant and most visually groundbreaking in cinematic history and she should be held accountable for the aesthetic value of such, and nothing that may have been out of her own hands.   Did she know the breadth of Hitler's plans?  His antisemitism?  His final solution?  Riefenstahl was just trying to make the best, the most beautiful film she could.   If nothing else, Riefenstahl was a director of perfection and thus showed that ideal through her camera.  Needless to say, Hitler and Goebbels (who incidentally was not fond of the uncontrollable director) also held to this ideal of perfection and therefore would use these films as propaganda.  But I digress.

Recently, Germany produced a new mountain film with 2008's North Face (directed by Philipp Stötzl), whose plot was rather similar to The Holy Mountain, and though its modern day style lacks something of the artistry of the silent era (or perhaps that is just my own sense of classic film snobbery) it does play out as a surprisingly well-honed homage.  When all is said and done it is the mostly forgotten mountain films of Weimar Era Germany that even within their rather restrictive storylines - again, men  (and women) go up a mountain, some do not come back down - when seen on a big screen, which I have been lucky enough to have seen just that way, are giant creatures of cinematic bravura that deserve more than a bit more recognition than what they normally receive.  The chilling agonies of those trapped on the mountain make our hearts race unlike any cheap action flick of today (there's that film snobbery again).  These are not studio films.  These are movies not only set in the mountains but also filmed there.  Riefenstahl laughed about how Fanck had brought down an avalanche upon her, only to do it a second take.  Harrowing is indeed the perfect word to describe such brilliantly naturalistic subversive films as these, and especially of that apex of them all, The White Hell of Pitz Palü.

My 25 (or so) Favourite Classic Films First Seen in 2011

Inspired by the always charming, always enjoyable and always cinematically knowledgeable (and always alliterative, nomenclaturally speaking) Self-Styled Siren, I send forth a list of my 25 favourite classic films seen for the first time in 2011.  Classic, of course, being any movie made prior to 1960.  And in keeping with the Siren's choice of keeping the descriptions to a bare bones minimum (actually inspired in turn by Clara at Via Margutta 51) I will try to hold my typically long-winded ramblings to a relative bare bones minimum as well.  So without further ado, here are my favourite classic films seen for the first time in 2011.

Oh wait!   I do have some further ado to put forth - and possibly some rambling (see, I have already begun breaking promises).  In order to keep this list to a nice and tidy twenty-five (yeah, right) I would like to preface said list with a pair of special mentions.  

Powell/Pressburger: It is a rather sad fact but before this past year I had only seen three films by this brilliant British filmmaking duo known collectively as the Archers (Black Narcissus, Tales of Hoffman & of course The Red Shoes - my all-time favourite film if one wishes to keep track of such things).    In 2011, I almost doubled my Powell/Pressburger film viewing prowess, by seeing five of their films for the very first time.   These five films (in order of preference) are The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, A Canterbury Tale, Gone to Earth, A Matter of Life and Death & Oh...Rosalinda!!.  Any one of these films could feasibly take the top spot on the below list, so since they are so many and so superior (at least mostly), I have decided to put them in a class all their own.   In actuality this is merely a ploy (a clever ruse if you will) to make more room on the list for even more films since I could not narrow my list down very easily.  The other special mention (just below) is another ploy to do the same damn thing.

Douglas Sirk:  Believe it or not, prior to 2011, I had never seen a film directed by Herr Sirk.  This sad fact was remedied last year by seeing five of his great melodramas (again, in order of preference) - Imitation of Life, Written on the Wind, All That Heaven Allows, Magnificent Obsession & A Time to Live and a Time to Die.  Again, I believe these to be the proverbial head and shoulders above most of the films I saw in 2011, so they too will get a class all their own.  And again, this is merely part of the aforementioned ploy.  But enough of this.  I promised not to ramble on, so now, (really) without further ado, I give you my 25 favourite classic films seen for the first time in 2011.  I have tried to list these films in relative preferential order, but I think we all know how that ends up, so take the numbering order in any manner you see fit.  Now here they are.

1) Leave Her to Heaven (John Stahl, 1945) - Beautiful and sinister as hell, and with the sexiest overbite in the history of Hollywood, this is Gene Tierney at her wicked best - and the glorious Technicolor (wonderfully and appropriately artificial) looks almost as good as she does.  If you do not believe me, just check out that look she is giving you right now.

2) Cairo Station (Youssef Chahine, 1958) - Very possibly the least known film on this list, this Egyptian film noir(ish) masterpiece (yeah!  I called it that!) is like having Hawks, Hitchcock, Welles, Curtiz and Antonioni all rolled into one.

3) Rififi (Jules Dassin, 1955) - Taking its place as my new favourite crime caper movie (my new second favourite of the genre can be seen in the number eight spot below), this French heist film is , to borrow an attitude from Mae West, great when it is loud but even greater when it doesn't say a word.

4) Rancho Notorious (Fritz Lang, 1952) - The best thing to come out of Lang's Hollywood years, and a campy deeelight full of Marlene mayhem (looking a bit older than what she wanted to) and Mel Ferrer and his toothy, snarky grin.  Fun stuff indeed.  My review can be read here.

5) The Last Flight (William Dieterle, 1931) - If the Siren can wax poetic about Edmund Goulding then I can turn critical cartwheels over William Dieterle.  What a great forgotten film (a loving piece in Film Comment made me seek it out), highlighting the equally forgotten (sad as that may be) Richard Barthelmess, David Manners, John Mack Brown and Helen Chandler.  My review can be read here.

6) Partie de campagne (Jean Renoir, 1936) - How could it not be gorgeous - it's Renoir - but even by Renoir standards this forty minute film, based on a short story by Guy de Maupassant, and centered around the drop dead gorgeous Sylvia Bataille as an objet d'art, is a complete stunner.

7) Mädchen in Uniform (Leontine Sagen, 1931) - Even taking the sexy lesbian schoolgirl factor out of the mix (I am a guy after all), this early German sound film is more than well worth a look - a long look indeed.  In fact one could (and should) call this film haunting - a term that could go all cliché if one is not careful, but that is not the case here.  Seriously though, this is a very powerful film indeed.  My review can be read here.

8) The Killing (Stanley Kubrick, 1956) - Kubrick's rather demanding style has always appealed to me, and in this early work (his third) you can see that style hidden inside a more classic style.  A great crime caper movie (my second favourite of the genre - see number 3 above) and easy to see the influence on Tarantino later on.

9) The Shanghai Gesture (Josef von Sternberg, 1941) - Another Gene Tierney vehicle (I suppose I was going through a Tierney phase in 2011), this rather sleazy, giddily B-grade picture was a delight from beginning to end.  And not just Tierney (and that overbite) but also Victor Mature (I did say sleazy) and Ona Munson as Mother Gin Sling.  Great stuff indeed.

10) The Phantom Carriage (Victor Sjöström, 1921) - One of the creepiest and greatest silent films ever made.  Who knew the Swedes could pull of as much silent era intensity and visual bravura as the Germans.

11) 12 Angry Men (Sidney Lumet, 1957) - It is kind of shocking that I went through the first 43 years of my life (the first few understandably so) without ever seeing this film.  Intense and brilliant, this film is the perfect blend of writing, directing and acting.  And the scene where everyone, even the assholes in the group, turn their backs on the racist played by Ed Begley, is simply perfect.

12) The Cobweb (Vincente Minnelli, 1955) - One of the great Minnelli's lesser known works, and a film that is seen as too melodramatic by many, but I was blown away (as they say) by the damned thing.  Granted, I like pretty much anything with Richard Widmark in it, and Gloria Grahame is ooh la la great just about every time out, and I prefer the overly melodramatic, so it was probably a forgone conclusion that I would love this picture.  My review (actually more a list of my 10 favourite things about the film) can be read here.

13) Captain Blood (Michael Curtiz, 1935) - Swashbuckling at its very best.  I think I can call this the greatest pirate movie ever made and I would not get much argument.  Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland (their first of an eventual eight films together) and Basil Rathbone as the villain.  What more need be said.  Ahoy mateys, ahoy.

14) Forbidden Planet (Fred M. Wilcox, 1956) - A cool and pretty keen fifties sci-fi classic (based on The Tempest of all things) that shows a young, pre-parody, Leslie Nielsen as the heroic but somewhat hapless captain of a spacecraft trapped on the titular planet and a very highlighted, and very leggy Anne Francis as the object of the Captain's (and everyone else's) affections.  Oh yeah, and Robby the Robot too.  My review can be read here.

15) The Wild One (László Benedek, 1953) - This is the movie that has Brando in leather, with a revving, hulking machine roaring between his legs.  No, not Last Tango in Paris.  THis is the one with the motorcycles (get your mind out of the gutter).  Cool as can be - and with Lee Marvin to boot.  My review can be read here.

16) The Steel Helmet (Samuel Fuller, 1951) - Just Fuller's third film and already that growling Fullerian intensity is fully intact.  Thanx to Criterion's great Eclipse series for getting this one two me in such pristine form.  I think I would have to include this in any 10 Favourite war movies list I were to make.

17) The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel, 1956) - Seen during my summer kick of 1950's sci-fi/fantasy films, this is one of the creepiest movies I saw all year. It just goes and goes and never lets up - not even in the end.

18) Bienvenido Mr. Marshall (Luis Garcia Berlanga, 1953) - I must admit to never having heard of the director before coming across three of his films during My Quest, but I sure am glad I have finally found him.  A screwball kind of film, Berlanga can be called a Spanish Billy Wilder without much fuss.

19) Caged (John Cromwell, 1950) - Subversive and more than bordering on the exploitative, this is a harrowing film and Eleanor Parker hands in a frazzled, frenzied but oh so chilling performance as an innocent turned jaded caged bird.  My review can be read here.

20) The Ballad of Narayama (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1958) - Forget Ozu.  Forget Kurosawa.  Forget Mizoguchi and Naruse.  2011 was the year that turned Keisuke Kinoshita into my favourite classic Japanese director.  This film is just beautiful as Kinoshita does wonders with colour.

21) The Silver Chalice (Victor Saville, 1954) - Mockingly nicknamed Paul Newman and the Holy Grail, and hated by Newman himself (this debut film would be the scorn of the actor's career), I quite enjoyed this rather laughable movie just for the very fact that it is so laughable.  And at the top of this laughability - Jack Palance at his most campiest (no need to shut the closet on this performance).  My review can be read here.

22) The Hurricane (John Ford, 1937) - Aside from the fun I had watching this while an actual hurricane was raging outside (or at least the more inland version of such), this is a very fun film in and of itself.  Plus we get to see Dorothy Lamour tied to a palm tree.  My review (or at least some thoughts on the film) can be read here.

23) Fig Leaves (Howard Hawks, 1925) - Howard Hawks does The Flintstones.  This was a surprisingly fun film to watch.  Granted, it was Hawks and I am certainly what one would call a Hitchcocko-Hawksian, but I still did not expect as much out of this silent film as I got.  Seriously, did Hanna and Barbara see this film before creating The Flintstones?  And if you watch, you will see that Howard Hawks invented the snooze alarm.  My review can be read here.

24) The Outlaw (Howard Hughes, 1943) - I think the fact that Howard Hughes invented the underwire bra specifically for Jane Russell (in her film debut) to wear, makes this a very interesting behind-the-scenes tale.  The movie itself is rather simple (Hughes is not a great director), but Russell makes it her own with her very own pair of great assets.

25) My Favorite Wife (Garson Kanin, 1940) - I think the most fun about watching this screwball comedy is watching how nervous the muscled, mostly naked body of Randolph Scott seems to make Cary Grant - especially considering the real life relationship between the two.  It doesn't hurt that Leo McCarey wrote the thing as well.

I could easily keep this list going with such first time fun as Designing Woman, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, Blessed Event, Criminal Code, So Young So Bad, Detour, The Miracle Woman, Run For Cover, Untamed, Crossfire, The Egyptian, Ceiling Zero, Girls of the Road, The Hitch-Hiker, The Medium, East of Borneo, Land of the Pharaohs, Side Street, Stranger on the Third Floor and both versions of Dawn Patrol. 

Also, I suppose a special mention should be made for a great double feature I saw for the first time in 2011.  The Girl Can't Help It and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, both directed by Frank Tashlin and the first two starring roles for Jayne Mansfield, are a great pair of self-referential comedies - and I do love self-referential comedies.

One last thing before I shuffle off.  As I made mention to above, I spent a lot of film-watching hours this past summer in the genre of 1950's Sci-fi - most of which I had never seen.  Some of these were really good (The Man From Planet X, Invaders From Mars, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers) while some were pretty laughable (The Monolith Monsters, Robot Monster, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman) but they were all pretty darn fun - even if in the cheesiest kind of way.  In fact I liked these films so much that I even did a 10 Best 1950's Sci-Fi list for them over at Anomalous Material.

Once again I would like to thank the Self-Styled Siren for her inspiration in making this list.  I hope to do it again next year, and that may include some of the films I have gleaned off of the Siren's list, and will watch for the first time in 2012.

Some Random Thoughts On Carole Lombard

Thursday, October 6, 2011 marks the 103rd anniversary of the birth of Jane Alice Peters of Fort Wayne, Indiana.  Sadly, this great screwball beauty, who we have come to know and love as Carole Lombard, never made it past her 33rd birthday, having died in a plane crash on the way back from a war bond rally in 1942.  In the 1930's this petite actress (she was 5' 2") would become known as the queen of the screwball comedy, and though her career was truncated as it were, the films she did leave behind all share that rare mark of an actress with both pinpoint comic timing and stunning beauty.  Graham Greene praised the "heartbreaking and nostalgic melodies" of her faster-than-thought delivery. "Platinum blonde, with a heart-shaped face, delicate, impish features and a figure made to be swathed in silver lamé, she wriggled expressively through such classics of hysteria as Twentieth Century and My Man Godfrey."

The fine folks over at Carole & Co. are hosting a blogathon in honour of Ms. Lombard's (or Mrs. Lombard Gable's as her epitaph reads) birthday.  Said blogathon has the wonderful title of Carole-tennial(+3).   In lieu of a review of one of Lombard's films or an overview of her career, as I have done in many a past blogathon piece, I have chosen to create a potpourri-like post, filled with random trivia, thoughts, quotes, photos and anecdotes on the sublime comedienne.  And of course, as anyone who knows me will not be surprised by, a Best of list will be tossed in there as well.  So without further ado...

• Carole was the second cousin of directing legend Howard Hawks, who said of the lady, "Marvelous girl.  Crazy as a bedbug." 

• After her death, a WWI Liberty ship was named in the actress's honour.  

• On January 18, 1942, Jack Benny did not perform his usual program, both out of respect for  his dear friend Lombard and grief at her death.   Instead, he devoted his program to an all-music format.

An interesting quote from the very patriotic Ms. Lombard goes a little something like this: "I enjoy this country. I like the parks and the highways and the good schools and everything that this government does. After all, every cent anybody pays in taxes is spent to benefit him. I don't need $465,000 a year for myself, so why not give what I don't need to the government for improvements of the country. There's no better place to spend it."  Ah, what a simpler time it must have been.

One of my favourite Carole Lombard anecdotes is this one:  Around the time the actress's relationship with stud Clark Gable was beginning (1936ish), Carole had just read the book "Gone With the Wind" (a new release best seller at the time).   Loving it, she sent a copy of the book to Gable, with a note attached reading "Let's do it!".   Gable, of course, assumed the young actress was making a sexual advance to him, and quickly called Carole to organize a date for said mistaken rendezvous. When he found out Carole wanted to make a film of the book, with him as Rhett Butler and herself as Scarlett, he flat-out refused (probably cheekily so, considering he was in the mood for other things at the time).  Gable would thereafter keep the copy of the book she had given him in his bathroom (out of spite or shame, who knows).  We all know how the story ends - Lombard being one of thousands of actresses turned down for the so coveted part.

• Carole Lombard had a little dachshund named Commissioner that ignored hubby Clark Gable completely.   After her death in 1942, the dog would not leave Gable's side.

• Her good looks combined with her abundant use of profanity (Lombard had a sailor's mouth and a siren's face and body) made many dub her the "Profane Angel."

• Lombard's favourite movie, of those she made, is 1937's Nothing Sacred, directed by William A. Wellman and co-starring Fredric March.

Another quote from the lovely and acerbic actress on the subject of marriage (a thing she did twice):  "I think marriage is dangerous. The idea of two people trying to possess each other is wrong. I don't think the flare of love lasts. Your mind rather than your emotions must answer for the success of matrimony. It must be friendship -- a calm companionship which can last through the years."

I remember the first time I saw Carole Lombard.  It was in the 1934 screwball comedy Twentieth Century.  The reason I watched the film had nothing to do with Ms. Lombard though.  It was shortly after seeing both Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday for the first time (the latter of which, Lombard had turned down the role that would then go to Rosalind Russell) and the beginnings of my obsession with all things Howard Hawks.  Considered the vanguard of the screwball genre, the film is an appropriately fast-talking, witty and quite hip comedy, full of lying, backstabbing and general bad behaviour.  Much of this bad behaviour comes courtesy of the man known as "The Profile", the great bard John Barrymore.   The aforementioned wit comes from Carole Lombard, as she more than holds her own against the great actor of stage and screen (playing an aging alcoholic egomaniac - basically himself), but bests him quip for quip and lunge for lunge.

As far as Lombard's romantic life goes (which you can guess at from the quote above) she had two very notable relationships.  The first was with William Powell.  The two were married in 1931 and divorced just two years later, but would remain close friends for the rest of the actress's life.   Powell and Lombard would actually go on to star in a film together a year after their divorce.  My Man Godfrey was a big hit and would garner Carole her one and only Academy Award nomination (she would lose, wrongly if you ask me, to Luise Rainer for The Great Zeiegfeld).  The big love of her life though, was Clark Gable.  On March 29, 1939, during a break in production on Gone with the Wind, Gable and Lombard would drive to Kingman, Arizona and get married in a quiet ceremony with only Gable's press agent, Otto Winkler, in attendance. They bought a ranch, previously owned by director Raoul Walsh, in Encino, California and lived a happy, unpretentious life, calling each other "Ma" and "Pa" and raising chickens and horses.  Even though Gable would eventually remarry, he is interred next to his great love in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

My 5 Favourite Carole Lombard Performances:

1. Maria Tura in To Be or Not To Be - Lombard's final film (she sadly never saw its release), is the sometimes hilarious, sometimes harrowing story of a troupe of actors in Nazi-occupied Warsaw who use their acting abilities to fool the occupying troops and hide their Jewish compatriots.  Starring with Jack Benny (with whom, like the aforementioned Mr. Barrymore, the actress was able to go toe to toe), Lombard was at her comic peak in this film.   A fitting comic finale to a still budding Hollywood career.

2. Irene Bullock in My Man Godfrey - Made with her ex-husband, William Powell, this hilarious screwball comedy is about a somewhat snarky socialite who hires a homeless man (Powell) to be her family's butler, only to find herself falling in love with him. 

3. Lily Garland in Twentieth Century - Playing naive Mildred Plotka, who changes her name when she becomes a star of the stage, and going head-to-head with John Barrymore's ego-maniacal Broadway producer,  Lombard is both sweet and tangy in this role that rolls down the tracks with the titular locomotive.

4. Hazel Flagg in Nothing Sacred - Playing a worrisome young woman who is mistakenly thought to have a fatal disease, Lombard's naive Miss Flagg is swept away to New York City by newspaperman Fredric March, and becomes the rather reluctant toast of the town.

5. Ann Smith in Mr. & Mrs. Smith - Directed by Alfred Hitchcock (the Master of Suspense's only pure comedy in the U.S.), Lombard co-stars with Robert Montgomery as a bickering, but not-so-secretly happy married couple who find out that due to a clerical error, are not legally married.  Another fun, fast-talking screwball from Lombard.

Lombard gave many more fine performances than just these five of course.  They include her roles in such films of varying degrees of quality (the film's qualities, not the performances) as Hands Across the Table, No Man of Her Own, Lady by Choice, Swing High Swing Low & The Gay Bride.   The great comic actress would try her hand at dramatic roles as well, but these were merely mediocre vehicles, and they did not go over well with a public that wanted to see her being funny instead.

To say something along the lines of how great a loss it was when Lombard's plane went down, is of course merely just stating the quite obvious, but it is a great loss nonetheless.  Just 33 years old, and even though she had been acting for twenty years at this point (Lombard's tomboy upbringing got her cast at the age of twelve, after Allan Dwan saw her playing baseball) the actress was just getting started on a career that was sure to go much further than what it already had.   With a salary that made the President's seem piddly in comparison (as is still the case in today's world of Hollywood stardom), Lombard was at the height of stardom when she died.  Since then, it is her legend of comedy that has lived on and on.  Even friend Lucille Ball claims to have been visited by Lombard's ghost, who supposedly talked Ball into taking a chance on a little show called I Love Lucy.  I will now leave you with a lovely image from Ms. Lombard's personal favourite.

On Watching John Ford's 1937 Classic The Hurricane While a Real One Raged (sort of) Outside My Window

So, as Hurricane Irene made her wild ride up the Atlantic Coast and people ran out to get their sandbags, eggs and milk, I thought to myself what better time to watch the classic, but oft-overlooked John Ford film The Hurricane.  What better time indeed.  As the wind blew with gale force outside my window, trees bowing and trash cans bouncing down the street, rain pelting the side of the house like machine gun fire, dogs and cats flying through the backyard (that last one may have been a bit of nonsensical hyperbole), I watched as poor helpless Dorothy Lamour was lashed to a tree in order to be saved from blowing out into the South Seas with all her fellow islanders, as cocksure Raymond Massey searched the raging seas for unfairly accused refugee Jon Hall, and as the omnipresent Tommy Mitchell acted as the stumble-drunken words of wisdom.  As the massive island-devouring storm waged war against Lamour, Hall, Massey and Mitchell, as well as motherly Mary Astor and evil-twink John Carradine, Hurricane Irene was battlesent at my very own door.

Okay, much of this story is bunk.  Yes, the much-talked-about, media-frenzied Hurricane Irene did indeed make its way up the Eastern Seaboard, but I was far enough inland to receive nothing more than some hard-slanted rain and a lot of tree debris throughout my neighbourhood (though the trash cans did bounce down the street at one point).  Those poor bastards along the coast, which include both friends and family (all safe now), did indeed receive quite a wallop, many have lost their homes, many even worse, and that is not to be taken lightly at all, but since I was relatively safe and sound and secure in my Harrisburg home (wife tentatively asleep in the bedroom, cats snuggled in various nooks and/or crannies, myself on the couch of my so-named "Cool Guy Lounge" - one does despise the word mancave), wind beginning to blow outside, I did take the opportunity to watch the aforementioned, appropriately-topical Ford classic, The Hurricane.
 

As for my take on the film, I did quite enjoy it for both its story and its technique (duh, it's John Ford!).  Seeming a bit funny at times to see the very white Jon Hall play a Pacific Islander and be told that he "should stand when told to by a white man" (typical of Old Hollywood of course and not nearly as ridiculous as other certain casting choices like John Wayne as Ghengis Khan or Brando as a Japanese man) but still quite a jolting film at times - and who doesn't like seeing Miss Lamour in island garb.  But the best thing about the film is (of course) the hurricane itself.  According to Life Magazine, special effects wizard James Basevi was given a budget of $400,000 to create his effects. He spent $150,000 to build a native village with a lagoon 200 yards long on the backlot of United Artists, and then spent $250,000 destroying it.  The look was astounding - and not just for the time period.  

New York Times critic Frank S. Nugent praised the climactic special effect by stating, "It is a hurricane to blast you from the orchestra pit to the first mezzanine. It is a hurricane to film your eyes with spin-drift, to beat at your ears with its thunder, to clutch at your heart and send your diaphragm vaulting over your floating rib into the region just south of your tonsils."  Granted, as I admitted to earlier, the brunt of Hurricane Irene never made it to my humble abode (power and even internet connection, as I was watching via my Blu-ray Netflix Instant account, never wavered), but still, the storm on the screen seemed more real than that outside.  Of course, to quote Truffaut, "I have always preferred the reflection of the life to life itself."  Perhaps both Astor and Lamour would have too but they were really tied to that tree (no stunt doubles here) as the special effects bombarded them.  Anyway, this was my experience watching John Ford's The Hurricane while one raged (sort of) outside.

My Mom Was Right - I'm A Winner!!

As many of you may already know (those of you paying enough attention to my cinematic ramblings) I had entered a classic film review contest last month - and a screwball one at that.  Our job was to write a review on a classic screwball comedy.  Easy enough.  Not wishing to be part of the popular vote, the piece I wrote for said contest was on the rather obscure screwball/mystery hybrid The Mad Miss Manton, starring the world's finest actress, Miss Barbara Stanwyck, and it was written for the fine folks over at FilmClassics.  In actuality there were just two entries in this contest (and strangely enough, both on the same rather obscure Barbara Stanwyck classic) and it was neck-and-neck during the voting process (readers voted for their favourite entry, which I believe probably came down to my friends voting against my opponent's friends).  The final results though were a 53% to 47% victory for your humble narrator.  My first place finish not only puts me in the running for the Best Review of the Year (which I assume is awarded around year's end) but also gets me the snazzy ribbon below (which will become a permanent fixture on the sidebar of this here blog).  I do want to take this time to thank the fine folks over at FilmClassics, as well as offer a hearty handshake to my aforementioned opponent, Natalie over at In The Mood.  There is another contest coming up tomorrow at FilmClassics - perhaps I will try my hand at that one too (or would that be considered greedy?).

Well Well...Looks Like I'm in a Contest, & a Screwball One at That

It would seem the fine folks over at FilmClassics are holding a review writing contest.  The subject is classic screwball comedy and the prizes are sure to be galore.  Hearing this, loving the screwball genre and being a rather competitive person in nature, yours truly here decided to enter said contest.  Opting to go with a lesser known work of screwball madness (everyone and their brother, sister and second cousin has written on Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday and The Lady Eve and so forth) I chose the little-seen 1938 classic The Mad Miss Manton - starring the best damn actress ever, the great Barbara Stanwyck.

Now lo and behold, it seems as if there are only two of us in this contest (c'mon people where are all those classic fans with there classic entries!?) and even stranger than that, we both decided to write on The Mad Miss Manton (apparently my competition is a huge Miss Stanwyck fan as well - as well we all should be!).  I suppose our writing on the same subject makes this particular contest a true blue contest indeed - a stone cold stand-off if you will.  Yeah yeah, I know, it's all in fun, but winning is always the most fun.

Anyway, you can read my Review Contest Entry Post and let me know what you think by clicking on the button at the end of said post, which will take you to the contest site where one can then vote.  You can also jump to FilmClassics right now (where you will find links to both mine and my adversary's reviews - and to be fair, please do read both) and vote as well.  I suppose the main point one should take away from this is to vote vote vote.  Vote early and vote often.  Actually you can only vote once per IP address, but you get the idea.

The Great Barbara Stanwyck & the Screwball Comedy/Murder Mystery Hybrid The Mad Miss Manton

The following is my humble contribution to Film Classics Screwball Comedy Review Contest.  And as fair warning, there may be spoilers ahead, for those who care about such things - ye have been warned.

Oblivious yet just a bit-too-clever-for-her-own-good society dame who is insufferable to the male lead only to have herself fallen in love with by the end?  Check.  Hapless average Joe who stumbles into path of stubborn heiress only to find himself falling in love despite being walked all over?  Check.   Somewhat incomprehensible and quite madcap hilarity full of trickery and implausible happenstance?  Check.  Bumbling secondary characters who are really only there to make the heiress look even more of a lunatic than she really is?  Check.  Fast talking dialogue full of innuendos and half-truths?  Check.  At least one character (maybe more) who regularly smack their head in frustrated disbelief at what they have gotten themselves into?  Check.

Well that does it.  It looks like we have all the makings for a classic screwball comedy.  But wait, there are some more checks to make.  One can also check check check to this being a tale full of foul play and murder as well as a sometimes dark and dangerous mystery and also a film with several dramatically daring moments at gun point for the aforementioned heroine/heiress.  So I suppose what we have here is not strictly a screwball comedy but also a murder mystery.  What we have is a genre hybrid that manages to keep the comic antics rolling while putting our protagonists in a bit of mortal danger.  What we have here is Leigh Jason's 1938 screwball comedy-cum-murder mystery The Mad Miss Manton.  But still, above all else, gun play or not, multiple murders or not, this is screwball.

Granted, this film cannot hold up to the example given by the top dogs of the screwball genre - films such as Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, The Philadelphia Story, The Awful Truth, Arsenic and Old Lace, The Lady Eve, Trouble in Paradise or many of the Marx Brothers' movies - nor does its director (ironically this little known film is probably Jason's best known work) play in the same league as some of the genre's best and brightest - auteurs such as Howard Hawks, Ernst Lubitsch, Preston Sturges and Leo McCarey - but as one of the (much) lesser known commodities of this once popular genre, it is still a fun ride to watch.  What the film does have going for it more than anything else is its leading couple.

In the first of three romantic comedies the duo would do together, the film stars Barbara Stanwyck (the best damn actress ever!) and Henry Fonda (the man who can do no wrong!) as the oblivious yet just a bit-too-clever-for-her-own-good society dame who is insufferable to the male lead only to have herself fallen in love with by the end and the hapless average Joe who stumbles into path of stubborn heiress only to find himself falling in love despite being walked all over, respectively.  It is the seemingly natural chemistry of these two stars (Missy and Hank were one of the cutest couples in Hollywood at the time) that make this otherwise rather thin film work as well as it does.

As far as the story goes (which I seem to have evaded talking about until now): At 3:00 am, upon returning from a society event, Melsa Manton (not yet deemed mad) takes her three little dogs for a walk. Near a subway construction site, she sees a fellow socialite, playboy Ronnie Belden run out of a house and quickly drive away. The house is for sale by yet another of Miss Manton's circle, Sheila Lane, the wife of George Lane, a wealthy banker.  Inside, Melsa finds a diamond brooch and Mr. Lane's dead body. As she runs for help, her cloak falls off with the brooch inside it. When the police arrive, the body, cloak, and brooch are gone. Melsa and her friends are notorious pranksters, so the detective, Lieutenant Mike Brent, played by the ever exasperated Sam Levene, does nothing to investigate the murder.  

This brings about newspaperman Peter Ames (Fonda) who writes an editorial decrying Melsa's so-called prank, after which she has him served with papers.  Of course, in typical screwball fashion, Peter instantly falls for Melsa (she's a terrible person he tells her but he loves her and is going to marry her) and grows more and more fond of her as each new conniving piece of the puzzle comes about.  Meanwhile, Melsa and her friends decide they must find the murderer in order to defend their reputation - and perhaps just have some fun.  The resulting madcap manhunt includes searches of the Lane house, Belden's apartment, Lane's business office, and all of the local beauty shops; two attempts to intimidate Melsa; two shooting attempts on her life; a charity ball; and a trap set for the murderer using Melsa as bait. Of course this is all par for the course in the genre known as screwball.

In the end, as I more than alluded to earlier, The Mad Miss Manton may not be the creme de la creme of the genre, but thanks to the great Stanwyck and the Fonda and thanks to Leigh Jason's almost film noir look to much of the film (cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca worked on many darker films from the original Cat People to Out of the Past) it is a film that more than holds its own.  I mean really, how can one not have fun watching the knockout Stanwyck flit and flutter about on madcap feet and the charming Fonda fall more and more in love with each new trick his wouldbe lover plays on him?  Screwball?  Mystery?  Who cares, let's just call it fun. 

*********

Voting has now ended for this contest.  I would like to thank all those who voted for me and my review of The Mad Miss Manton, and helped me come in first place in the contest.  Woo hoo.

The Addictively Haunting Persona of Leontine Sagan's '31 Proto-Lesbian Masterpiece Maedchen in Uniform

The following is my humble contribution to Garbo Laughs' Queer Film Blogathon.  And as fair warning, there may be spoilers ahead, for those who care about such things - ye have been warned.

Sure, Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel and Morocco, both starring the ever-iconic Marlene Deitrich may have come before it, and yes, there were several other bigger-named gay and lesbian themed films out in Germany prior to this, such as Dreyer's Michael, Pabst's Pandora's Box and of course William Dieterle's Sex in Chains, but still such an all-out, no hidden meanings kind of pro-lesbian movie as Leontine Sagan's Maedchen in Uniform was not exactly what one would call the norm in the Weimer Period German Cinema.  Once Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power though, such cinema, as living in the edges as it most certainly was, would be as they say, completely verboten, as the Nazi regime banned Maedchen in Uniform (and many others) as decadent.  Luckily for film lovers the world over, even though the Nazi's had destroyed all the prints they could find, several had already been sent overseas and thus would survive to be seen again.

The film was actually a groundbreaking work of cinematic art.  Sagan's use of employing an all female cast and her sympathetic views toward lesbian pedagogical eros (the name given to erotic attraction and/or love between a teacher and a pupil by German education reformer and free thinker Gustav Wyneken) revolving around the passionate love of a fourteen year old boarding school student for her teacher (and reciprocation of such so-called unspoken love) easily explain the cult following Maedchen in Uniform received in Germany, and eventually much of the world - even after Hitler's eventual banning and attempted destruction of the film (or more likely, partly because of such).

Maedchen in Uniform (or Maidens in Uniform if you will), adapted from Christa Winsloe's play Gestern und heute, is the story of a Potsdam boarding school for the daughters of poor Prussian officers who belong nevertheless to the aristocracy.  The all-girls school is run with the proverbial iron fist by its headmistress, its newest pupil, the sensitive Manuela, unable to fit into its structure as well as the other girls becoming the film's tragic heroine.  It is in this dynamic that the film takes on its most daring denunciation.  It is in this daring denunciation that we see the criticism of authoritative bevaviour by allowing us in turn, to see how such behaviour can destroy a young girl's mind.

The noted film theorist and social critic Siegfried Kracauer, in his famous (some would say infamous) book From "Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film", said of Maedchen in Uniform, "The film expresses the devastating effects of Prussianism upon a sensitive young girl." and then goes on to say that she "suffers intensely under a rule alien to her tender and imaginative nature."  It is Manuela's desire to be loved and her intense love for her teacher that is forced into suppression by this aforementioned alien rule and ends up destroying the poor, bewildered young girl.

When Manuela first arrives at the school and she hears all the girls speak of their intense love for Fraulein von Bernburg, the young girl listens with rapt attention at the possible pleasures lying ahead of her.  It is upon their first meeting and then the subsequent good night kiss the Fraulein gives to each of her girls but which becomes more intense in Manuela's case, that this innocent girl becomes rapturously consumed by the as-of-yet-unknown passion roiling up inside of her.  Yet it is not just Manuela's sudden and matter-of-fact love for her teacher (this daring love is never even questioned as odd by anyone but the aforementioned figureheads of authority) but also her teacher's just-as-sudden love for her young pupil that is at the heart of this film.

But daring storyline and social consciousness aside, it is the two lead actresses that make the film reach the intense and gothic romantic passionate ultra-realism that it most certainly does reach.  The beautiful Hertha Thiele as Manuela was described by Kracauer as a "unique compound of sweet innocence, illusory fears and confused emotions."  Her intense performance with the older but still with a twinge of lost innocence Dorothea Wieck, (her sharpened features seemingly created by God as an enticing siren song of sorts) is not only some of the bravest acting this critic has seen in film history (and yes, that is a damn bold statement!) but also some of the most tragically emotional as well.  It is this combination of bravura acting, brilliantly subtle mise-en-scene and darkly foreshadowed leitmotif that make this film one of the most memorable works of cinematic art of the early sound period.

Maedchen in Uniform is a film that was not only a sign of its times as they say, (the free-thinking Germany prior to the uprising of the Nazi Party) but also a film way ahead of said times.  To prove this timelessness in a way, the film was remade in France in 1939, in Spain in 1951, again in Germany in 1958 (probably the most well-known version) and then by the BBC in 1967 (not to mention the numerous "loosely based upon" versions throughout the years).  Beautiful and haunting, it is certainly a film this critic will never forget (subject matter or not, a stunning work of cinematic art) and a film that will always have a special place in Gay & Lesbian film history.

Wife! Be Like a Rose!

This wonderfully titled 1935 near-masterpiece of tragic longings, directed by the oft-overlooked "third" master of classic Japanese cinema Mikio Naruse, has the grand distinction of being the first ever Japanese sound film to be commercially released in the US.  This initial release (in 1937 and under the retitled name of its protagonist Kimiko) was met with an overwhelming critical disdain.  The film was called plodding and disorganized (though Mark van Doren in The Nation would hail the film as a powerful work of cinematic humanism and call it "one of the most moving films I know."), but I am here to tell you they (except for the precognitive Mr. van Doren) were wrong - dead wrong.

This is the story of Mikio, a young Japanese woman who lives in that strange world between generations, between cultures.  As was true at the time of many Japanese women Mikio's age (she is about twenty in the story) at this time of a burgeoning new society that was just then opening its proverbial doors to the west, old tradition clashed with this newer, freer society.  Dressed, as was the norm, in traditional clothes in the evening - kimono and such - but in more modern western clothing (somewhat reminiscent of Marlene Dietrich's then contemporary attire) during her days as a professional working women - something that was not the norm (and in fact was quite shocking at the time and would actually a few years later become completely forbidden as traditionalist ways were to become resurrected during Japan's imperialistic uprisings that would eventually lead to war).  

This juxtaposition of ideas - old vs. new, country vs. city, good vs. evil - would become a recurring factor in Naruse's oeuvre throughout the years.  Another recurring factor of Naruse's cinema would be that of the unfortunate woman whom tragedy would regularly make a fool of - but a woman who would make whatever she could out of these tragic circumstances.  Mikio is just this kind of strong woman character that Naruse would become famous (well, sort of famous) for championing.

Mikio, played both traditionally and modernly by the stunning actress Sachiko Chiba (the director's fiancee at the time, this would be the second of six films she would do for Naruse within a two year period), is burdened at home by a drunken, depressed mother (drinking sake and writing poetry all day) and burdened from afar by her estranged, missing father (her mother's poetry, published in the local newspaper, is nothing more than a series of lovelorn pleas to her absent husband).  Mikio wishes to marry but in order to do that (as Japanese culture insisted on at the time) she must find her father and bring him back home to act as go-between with her fiancee's family.  When Mikio tracks down her awol father, she finds he has a whole other life and a whole other family.

Naruse's use of intricate (and often subtly manipulative) camerawork combined with Sachiko's natural beauty and poise (as well as Naruse's use of western movie references - Mikio and her father play a scene out of Capra's It Happened One Night while trying to hail a cab) make Wife! Be Like a Rose! a most powerful melodrama indeed.  The final scene, in which Mikio realizes she will not (nor should she) get her so desired fairy tale resolution, is a work of art in and of itself.  Naruse's use of sudden shift changes and close-ups and the way he can make a scene pop off the screen in a way (this style already evident in the director's silent work) merely add to the already intense emotions running through the air between all the actors concerned.

In Noël Burch's 1979 book "To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema" he does what pretty much only Mark van Doren had done back in 1937, and praises the film as an early masterpiece of Japanese cinema.  Perhaps this has helped the film's reputation somewhat but lo and behold, there is still no DVD release of the film anywhere on the whole goddamned planet.  I suppose, especially considering the director's third class status beneath Ozu and Mizoguchi, we should just be glad at Criterion's release of Naruse five remaining silents (as part of their great Eclipse series) and leave it at that.  Personally I don't want to leave it at that and I am still hoping for a DVD (preferably through the aforementioned Criterion series) release sometime during my lifetime.

Dragnet Girl (Ozu, 1933)

It was a rare foray into the gangster genre for the master so well-known for detailing the everyday rituals of the (then) modern Japanese family, but even in this oeuvre-oddity one can clearly see the early workings of many of the signature motifs that would later come to define the great Yasujiro Ozu.  Considered the most "Japanese" of Japanese filmmakers, Ozu was still, like his younger contemporary Akira Kurosawa, influenced by western filmmakers, and that influence is not more evident that in his 1933 silent gangster movie, Dragnet Girl.

Opening with Ozu's famous "pillow shots", there is no doubt this is an Ozu film.  Rows of hats hanging on hooks, businessmen hurrying through the streets, their shadows rushing along behind them in hopes of keeping up, pans of typewriters clicking away in an anonymous office.  These quite simple yet beautiful and strangely alluring shots open Ozu's picture, and the director will go back to these shots again and again throughout, creating a mood that is both formal and soothing but also arousing and potentially dangerous in its oft-disarming fashion.  Like I said, pure Ozu.

The difference here, as opposed to the grand auteur's later, more austere works such as Late Spring, Early Summer, Tokyo Story and Autumn Afternoon, is that potential danger that lingers in the quietude of those aforementioned "pillow shots", actually does explode in Dragnet Girl.  It explodes in quick bursts (sometimes off-screen entirely!?) in the way one would expect the familial catharsis to happen in the director's later works.  There it is emotional but here it is physical.  Different but the same in many ways.  With its Jazz Age exuberance and touches of classic Hollywood, Dragnet Girl is certainly much more westernized than most of Ozu, but still very much an Ozu motion picture from start to finish.

As far as a gangster film goes, though influenced by the early precode films of Hollywood (and probably the Poetic Realism of early French sound cinema) and with a look that reputedly mirrored von Sternberg, Dragnet Girl, the story of an up and coming mobster and his titular moll, and the tragedy that ensues in this world of petty crime and romantic larceny, is much more esoteric (aka, more Ozu-like) than any of these particular influences.  Ozu's use of quiet space (and since this is a silent film, I of course mean quiet in the physical sense of the word) and his methodical pacing (and those beloved pillow shots!) make for a gangster flick with the heart of a poetic dreamer.  Perhaps the influence of Poetic Realism is stronger than I first alluded to oh so parenthetically and offhandishly.

Whatever the case, Dragnet Girl ends up being one of the earliest works of Ozu, even in a genre he so rarely (only twice that I can be sure of) went to, that shows what the great auteur would one day become.  Influenced by Film Forum's current retrospective, "5 Japanese Divas" (info can be found here) this film helps to kick off my personal proclamation of Japanese Cinema Month (a deeper explanation can be read here) and I think this very modern work of said national cinema, and the way it leads to the whole breadth of what is to come in that very same cinema, may be the perfect intro to the rest of this month full of Mizoguchi and Naruse and Kurosawa and Ichikawa and, of course, Yasujiro Ozu.

William Dieterle's Masterful But Mostly Forgotten The Last Flight

Miriam Bale, in a recent issue of Film Comment, said of William Dieterle's 1931 Lost Generation movie The Last Flight, that it is "the best film version of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises that never was."

With more than mere similarities to Hemingway's iconic post-WWI novel, Dieterle shows us a group of four pilots, all injured, in both body and soul, from the devastation of war, making their way through the bars and nightclubs of Jazz-age Paris.  "Get tight and stay tight" one character matter-of-factly states when asked what he will do after the war.  Somewhere along this parade of inebriation, these ex-flyer ex-pats, always nattily dressed, and just as nattily sauced, meet a young, near-sighted woman, who just may be even more lost than they.  She is of course taken on as their mascot, and, in this age of pre-code wanton cinematic decadence (though still seeming quite tame by today's anything-goes standards), much more, if only in allusion and/or innuendo.

The film stars Richard Barthelmess, David Manners, Johnny Mack Brown and the strange beauty, Helen Chandler as the effervescent, and quite peculiar Nikki.   "Hey, what kind of girl do you think Nikki is?" Bill (Brown) asks Cary (Barthelmess), to which he replies, "I think she's the kind that sits down on phonograph records."  I am not exactly sure what this means, but it is certainly something that makes both Nikki, and the film's dialogue in general (which is filled with seeming nonsensical, or perhaps even surrealist lines), stand out amongst the more typical fare (in both character and dialogue) of the early talkie era.  And though this is the story of these pilots and their post-war disillusionment (a rather popular subject in both film and literature at the time) it is Chandler's adorably off-kilter Nikki, with those faraway eyes and seeming oblivious nature, that acts as the proverbial glue that holds both these men and this picture together.

Risque and randy, with inevitable tragedy for these lost souls, this Lost Generation, Dieterle's film is a unique combination of both hard-hitting message moviemaking and an hypnotic sentimentalism that digs deep into the heart of this quite sentimental critic.  Dieterle, who was a typical hard-working studio director of the times, would never gain the vaunted auteur status that many of his compatriots would later garner during the 1960's revitalization of filmic history, but then again, his output, but for here or there, is probably not worth such recognition, though he is surely worth getting much more recognition than he is usually afforded - which is pretty much none at all.  

After coming over from Germany (where he worked as an actor/director and whose best known work was the homosexual-themed prison movie, Sex in Chains), in the wave of Hitler-driven emigration that brought Lang, Murnau, Lubitsch and others to the Hollywood fold, Dieterle made a career out of making solid, but rather typical pictures like The Story of Louis Pasteur, The Life of Emile Zola and Juarez.  Dieterle's Pre-Code output had an interesting international flair to it (mainly attributable to the looser artistry of European filmmaking of the 1920's) even if he did often fall flat later on in his career.   

The Last Flight is now considered one of the great forgotten masterpieces of its day (as well as giving Cary Grant the first half of his stage name, after playing the part of Cary on stage) and is easily one of the most smartly written (as well as most cock-eyed written) motion pictures of the Pre-Code era.  Even though it was a tragedy and not a comedy, the screwball ethic that was born around this same time, managed to come through in the film's great dialogue and pacing, as well as, strangely enough, in the film's melancholy dark humour and surrealist mentality.  Now, thanks to Warner Archives, The Last Flight is out on DVD, and hopefully will be able to drop the forgotten part off of that aforementioned moniker of forgotten masterpiece.