Tag: Joan Bennett

Adventures on Criterion: Joan Bennett

January’s “star of the month” on Criterion is Joan Bennett, and I’ve spent the month catching up with all the films in the collection I hadn’t already seen, which was a substantial chunk! I like Bennett, but somehow even though I KNOW it, I always manage to forget that the blonde vixen of the Pre-Codes is the same person as the brunette femme fatale of the noirs (not to mention the motherly figure of Father of the Bride)! Bennett had range, and this collection covers it nicely. To be utterly fair, my first exposure to Bennett was her role as Amy in the 1933 version of Little Women, which doesn’t fit neatly into any of the previously mentioned categories!

I didn’t rewatch the two Fritz Lang noir films, The Woman in the Window and Scarlet Street, but I recommend both – I specifically think Scarlet Street is one of the best noir films ever made, and while true noir fans know this, it doesn’t seem to ever crack the echelon of best-known noir films (Double Indemnity, Out of the Past, etc), which is unjust. This month’s viewing for me was largely Pre-Code plus the few later films I had missed. I watched my last unseen this morning, which may be the first time I have fully completed a Criterion Channel collection!

Big Brown Eyes (1936)

I love being able to check off films from other major filmographies while watching these star-focused Criterion collections, and this was a Cary Grant film I didn’t even know about! This is a breezy mystery comedy with Grant as a detective trying to bust up a jewel thief gang, with intermittent help from Joan Bennett, who starts off as a manicurist, then briefly becomes a journalist, and then gets drummed out and goes back to being a manicurist. It’s a roller-coaster. Also a roller-coaster: her feelings for Grant, which careen wildly from love to jealousy to disregard and back to love. It’s a little too much, to be honest, and her character isn’t very believable, though Bennett does what she can with what the script forces her into. That said, the film is fun, and the jewel thief subplot gives a duplicitous Walter Pidgeon some fun.

Me and My Gal (1932)

I had heard of this before, although mostly in context of not getting it confused with the Gene Kelly-Judy Garland For Me and My Gal. This one has Spencer Tracy as a policeman in a wharf district cleaning up the place and chatting up diner waitress Joan Bennett. The script is better than Big Brown Eyes, though there are still some relationship back and forths that don’t make total sense. That said, the scene where he tries to make the moves on her and she refuses is more subtle than it seems. The main story plot actually involves Bennett’s sister, who used to be romantically involved with a gangster – she’s now getting married to someone else, but when the gangster turns back up, she falls back into her old ways, even harboring him when he’s on the run. Given Bennett’s blossoming relationship with cop Tracy, this is problematic. There are a ton of really cool little things here – especially the plot point of the sister’s father-in-law, a veteran with lock-in syndrome. I’ve never seen this condition in an old movie and it’s used quite well. There’s also a hilarious scene involving fish-slapping, which is totally random but I loved it.

Wild Girl (1932)

I rather expected this to be the wild card of the bunch, and I was not wrong. You know you’re in for something when there’s one of those opening credit sequences where the actors introduce themselves as the characters and Joan Bennett says “I’m Salomy Jane, and I like trees better than men – they’re straight!” The film was shot on location in Sequoia National Park, which is really awesome – almost all of it takes place outdoors among the redwoods. Salomy Jane is hounded by the man who’s trying to become mayor and touts his founding of some kind of Virtue League or something, but he’s anything but virtuous when trying to get Salomy Jane’s attention (she means “on the level” when she says “straight” in that intro). She can’t get anyone to believe her, though. Meanwhile, a stranger in town knows about the mayoral candidate’s bad actions (he had also seduced the stranger’s sister), and is there to kill him. This endears him immediately to Salomy Jane. MEANWHILE, a lazy neighbor with a brood of children robs the stagecoach and everyone sets out after him. It’s all incredibly melodramatic, and yet somehow quite watchable if you let it be what it is. A talent Raoul Walsh seems to have, as you notice he directed all three of the 1930s Bennett films.

Man Hunt (1941)

With this one we move from Raoul Walsh directing to Fritz Lang directing, and as much as I do genuinely love Raoul Walsh films…yeah. Lang is in another league. This one immediately makes a stylistic impact with the camera following a man’s footsteps going to the edge of a cliff, only then revealing Walter Pidgeon with a sniper rifle. He soon has Hitler in his sights. He pulls the trigger but the gun isn’t loaded. He then puts in a bullet but gets collared by a Nazi officer (George Sanders!) and has to explain how he’s a big game hunter and just into the thrill of the hunt and wouldn’t have pulled the trigger etc etc etc. The officer understandably does not believe him, but he escapes and sets off the titular manhunt across Europe and Britain. It’s a fairly small movie despite the premise, and I’m not sure I ENTIRELY bought Bennett’s Cockney accent, but the film is very solid and very stylish, as you’d expect from Lang.

There’s Always Tomorrow (1955)

Definitely the odd one out of this series in terms of Bennett roles; here she’s the wife and mother in a typical suburban family, as her husband toys with a dalliance. Fred MacMurray is the husband, who keeps planning outings and events and having his wife too caught up in the duties of motherhood/homemaking to do them. She encourages him to go alone on what was meant to be a couples getaway for them, and he does but lo and behold meets a former flame. I’m not particularly into domestic melodramas, but I will admit that Douglas Sirk is a master of them. This one is solid if nothing particularly special. I mostly just wanted to keep yelling at MacMurray’s character that you need to check in with your family before you plan stuff, this is like marriage and family 101. Don’t get mad they made other plans when you didn’t even tell them your plans until five minutes before they were happening.

Scorecard: August 2011

A long time ago I used to do a monthly round-up of films I saw during the month. I stopped doing it when I started writing for Row Three, but I don’t really have time to write up full reviews for everything over there. Some capsules go into our joint Movies We Watched series, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to do a quick little overview of everything I watched over here as well, if only because so many films seem to be getting by without me voicing my opinion on them at all, and I don’t like that. Note that if I DID write a capsule in Movies We Watched, I’ll likely copy it over here with only slight modifications.

So here’s everything I saw in August – not a very long list; I’ve been missing my 15-movies-a-month goal lately, but film festival months (in which I often watch 25 or more) make up for it. You can always see the latest films I’ve watched listed on my Watching page, and my running Best list on my Best of This Year page.

What I Loved

Attack the Block

After hearing about this film from all the geek and fanboy blogs for months, I went into it interested, but wary; these things get overhyped easily. But all the praise for Attack the Block is fully warranted. In a summer of costumed superheroes, this movie has hoodie thugs from South London. In a summer of flashy CGI, this movie has barely-seen yet terrifying alien creatures. In a summer of fun but relatively shallow action films, this movie has a raft of fully-developed characters, each with their own arc. It manages to successfully blend high-octane thrills with social commentary, the way good sci-fi/horror should, without ever condescending. I had a great time with this film, and it’ll stick with me for a while.
2011 UK. Director: Joe Cornish. Starring: John Bogeya, Jodie Whittaker, Luke Treadaway, Nick Frost.
Seen August 13 at an AMC multiplex.

The Grapes of Wrath

This is one that has been on my List of Shame (great films that I SHOULD’VE seen by now) for ten or fifteen years now. Literally. I’m not sure why I’ve put it off so long, other than it rather seemed like a film that would be more message-y and depressing than I prefer. I should’ve known better. Photographed by Gregg Toland, the low light, high-contrast look of the film makes it almost a proto-noir. That Expressionist surrealism lends an unearthly quality to the otherwise very earthy and mundane story of Oklahoma farmers pushed off their land in the Dust Bowl. The journey is at times excruciating, but in grand Old Hollywood style, it never fails to be gripping, and the suspense surrounding Fonda’s fugitive status was a welcome surprise for me. That said, it’s definitely Darwell who steals the show, getting the most poignant moments of all as Fonda’s long-suffering mother.
1940 USA. Director: John Ford. Starring: Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine.
Seen August 6 on Netflix Instant Watch.

Batman: The Movie

From The Grapes of Wrath to Batman, eh? That’s how I roll. Look, this movie is ridiculous. It has a ridiculous script, filled with preposterous circumstances, idiotic line readings, he most inscrutable riddles ever, and not just one, but THREE villains after Batman and Robin. Oh, and an exploding shark. It’s at least five times campier even than the Adam West TV show. And I loved every second of it.
1966 USA. Director: Leslie H. Martinson. Starring: Adam West, Burt Ward, Frank Gorshin, Lee Meriwether, Cesar Romero.
Seen August 29 on Netflix Instant Watch.

What I Liked

For a Few Dollars More

I finally finished Leone’s Man With No Name trilogy this month, having watched them all out of order. Thankfully, it’s only a loose trilogy, so it doesn’t much matter what order you see them in. This middle chapter takes a robbery/revenge plot involving Lee van Cleef, a bounty hunter who competes with laconic Clint Eastwood for a bounty on a notorious outlaw in the midst of a plan to rob a bank. The central robbery itself is pretty cool to watch in planning and execution, and it’s interesting for a western to spend so much time with both the “good guys” and “bad guys”. The audacity of the daylight robbery fits right in with the visual flair of the film in general and the (as always) epic score from Ennio Morricone. Perhaps most interesting is how much of a side seat Eastwood takes to the main drive of the plot, even standing aside while van Cleef stands off with his lifelong nemesis.
1965 Italy. Director: Sergio Leone. Starring: Clint Eastwood, Lee van Cleef, Gian Maria Volonté.
Seen August 20 on Blu-ray.

Aliens

And another from my List of Shame, one that many many people have been nagging me to watch for a very long time. I had put it off after being less than enthused with the first film when I saw it ages ago (but I do want to rewatch it now), but I ended up quite enjoying it. It’s a great example of how to build a good and suspenseful action story; it stays full throttle for most of the time, but it never loses sight of Ripley, and it allows her to gradually build into the action heroine she is at the end by using traits and skills established early on. The emotional throughline involving Newt is predictable, but effective. My one complaint with the film is the over-determined machismo of the marines – I got the point, but some of those early boasting scenes went on far too long. Overall, though, a more than solid film that more sci-fi actioners should learn from.
1986 USA. Director: James Cameron. Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Paul Resier, Bill Paxton.
Seen August 27 on DVD.

Taking Off

I went into this not knowing anything about it other than it was directed by Milos Forman. Turns out it was his first film in the United States, the story of a teenager “taking off” to live with her hippie friends and leaving her parents to search for her plays out in a combination of wistful musical numbers (by such up and comers as Carly Simon and Kathy Bates; Ike and Tina Turner show up for a more rousing tune) and dryly absurd scenarios involving the parents. In fact, we spend most of our time with the parents as they stumble around trying to figure out what to do and how to make sense of the changing world – a scene where they go to a meeting of parents of runaway children and learn to smoke marijuana is priceless. But infused in all the hilarity and absurdity is a very real sense of yearning, a need to connect both across generations and within your own. It’s a fascinating film – often ridiculous, but just as often genuinely moving.
1971 USA. Director: Milos Forman. Starring: Buck Henry, Lynn Carlin, Linnea Hitchcock, Georgia Engel.
Seen August 24 at Cinefamily.

Scarlet Street

I watched The Woman in the Window a few weeks ago liked it enough to want to check out this film, made the year later with the same director and lead cast. It begins with a similar setup, with Robinson as a mild-mannered middle-aged man who bonds with some peers while wondering whether he could ever be attractive to a young woman. When he saves damsel in distress Joan Bennett from an apparent attacker, it seems the answer might be yes, but Bennett somehow gathers from his discussion of the amateur art he does that he makes a lot of money from it and she and her boyfriend set out to swindle him out of it, playing on his gullible infatuation with her. The plotting in The Woman in the Window is a bit stronger overall, but this one has the advantage of not copping out the ending.
1945 USA. Director: Fritz Lang. Starring: Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, Dan Duryea.
Seen August 15 on Netflix Instant Watch.

Zazie dans le metro

I’ve been looking forward to seeing this for YEARS, ever since I first heard of it and learned that it wasn’t available in the US basically at all. The combination of New Wave era Louis Malle and playfully postmodern writer Raymond Queneau attracted me greatly, so when Criterion announced the disc, I knew it’d be a blind buy. And now that I’ve seen it, I’m not entirely sure what I make of it. I enjoyed watching it, but it is much more non-linear and absurdist than I expected, with Zazie’s trip to Paris to stay with her uncle pretty much going every which way. There are probably satirical themes under the surface that I simply didn’t get on a single viewing (or may not at all, with my almost wholly-cinematically based knowledge of the era). Yet, even superficially it’s an awfully fun ride, akin to Tati’s Playtime, but with more obscure themes.
1960 France. Director: Louis Malle. Starring: Philippe Noiret, Catherine Demongeot, Hubert Deschamps, Carla Marlier.
Seen August 13 on Blu-ray.

What I Thought Was Okay

The Barker

I didn’t realize until I saw the list of characters in the credits that this is the same story as Hoop-la, Clara Bow’s final film (1933) which I saw at the TCM Festival this year. There are some notable differences, especially that this film stays focused on the older title character, a carnival barker. The Bow film is slightly rewritten (more than slightly toward the end) to focus on her character, who is decidedly secondary here. Unfortunately, this film is pretty rote without the luminous presence of Bow, and it’s difficult to refrain from comparing them. The one major interesting thing about The Barker is that it’s right on the cusp of the sound revolution, and has several sequences in full synchronized sound, while others remain fully silent, with title cards and everything. For that bit of historical curiosity alone it’s worth checking out.
1928 USA. Director: George Fitzmaurice. Starring: Milton Sills, Dorothy Mackaill, Betty Compson, Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
Seen August 3 at Cinefamily.

Bonnie’s Kids

It’s hard to know where to put movies like this, a soft-core exploitation film from the 1970s. I tend to find these films laughably fun, and that’s pretty much where Bonnie’s Kids fell, but it’s by no means an actual good film. Tiffany Bolling and Robin Mattson are the two kids, but Bonnie has already died before the picture starts, leaving her young daughters (one in her early 20s, the other about 15) with a potentially abusive stepfather in a town of apparent statutory rapists in waiting. They skedaddle to Hollywood where their uncle lives, and get embroiled in some sort of thievery plot he’s got going on. Part crime, part T&A, not particularly memorable nor absurd enough to be up there with Batman, but a fun bad movie to watch.
1973 USA. Director: Arthur Marks. Starring: Tiffany Bolling, Steve Sandor, Robin Mattson.
Seen August 13 on DVD.

Totals:
Films seen in August: 10
Films seen in theatres in August: 3
List of Shame films seen in August: 3
2011 films seen in August: 1
1980s films seen in August: 1
1970s films seen in August: 2
1960s films seen in August: 3
1940s films seen in August: 2
1920s films seen in August: 1
American films seen in August: 7
French films seen in August: 1
British films seen in August: 1
Italian films seen in August: 1

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