Watchingwell 

                                                                              

                                                             Curated classic films

Discoveries and

Rediscoveries

There's no denying that I watch movies over and over again, even mediocre movies.  There is something I find comforting about watching a world that existed in the past and in the imagination of the filmmakers. But, occasionally, after seeing hundreds and hundreds of films, I run across one that I haven't seen, and not a "B" picture, but one with major stars. I've collected a few of them and I think they're worth viewing.

Being a film person, I’d heard of silent star, Theda Bara – seen pictures, and thanks to TCM, heard about her touching friendship with actor, Gilbert Roland. Although a bit skeptical about her in talkies, I watched the recently aired Call Her Savage from 1932, where her great screen appeal is exhibited. This pre-code, sometimes raunchy, rags to riches to rags adventure is made convincing by the vitality of Bara’s performance.  Her wild-child character exhibits a good-natured resilience for whatever life throws her way. It is easy to see why she was such a big deal in her short career. Directed by John Francis Dillon, it costars Gilbert Roland and Thelma Todd.  If you ever have the opportunity, definitely see it.

 

Claudette Colbert stars in a recent discovery, Midnight, from 1939 (How could they have made so many good films in one year?) with costars, Don Ameche, John Barrymore, and Mary Astor.  Ameche, a Parisian taxi driver, runs across Colbert, dressed in a smashing evening gown, somehow broke and soaking wet from the pouring rain.  Naturally, he ‘befriends’ her, but she turns out to be quite capable of taking care of herself. An affluent John Barrymore ‘befriends’ her as well, but, as it turns out, just to make his wife, Mary Astor, jealous, but everyone involved gets very confused about it.  This makes for good comedy. Directed with his usual panache by Mitchell Leisen with a very funny script by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett.

 

While we’re on the subject of Claudette Colbert, this discovery is even more surprising. A film with Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert! How could I have missed it? The film is called Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife from 1938, and is directed by Ernst Lubitsch, well-known for his comic touch and written by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, also with great comedy credentials. The story involves what we would call today a prenuptial agreement that playboy Cooper requires each time he marries.  Although a generous one, potential bride, Colbert, rejects the idea and thinks he makes marriage too business-like.  She presents her own plan, which Cooper accepts and they marry and then the arrangements start to get under Cooper’s skin. Well, that’s the comedy part, in the screwball category. David Niven and Edward Everett Horton costar.

 

Believe it or not, I recently discovered another Claudette Colbert film, this one with James Stewart called It’s a Wonderful World from 1939.  Directed by W.S. Van Dyke and written by Ben Hecht and Herman J. Mankiewicz, this film should be better known. It has a few problems, but it is fast-paced and the script has some funny supporting characters played by Nat Pendleton and Edgar Kennedy. The problems are that James Stewart plays an unusually hard-boiled guy and Colbert plays a poet and the plot really strains to get them together. Not to mention that the title has nothing to do with the plot which is about escaped prisoner, Stewart, kidnapping Colbert, in the course of trying to prove his innocence, and captive, Colbert, deciding to help him.

 

This film is not a recent discovery, but I saw it for the first time only a couple of years ago, which is surprising because by then I thought I had seen all the MGM productions of the 1940s, especially one that has five of its major stars. The film, When Ladies Meet from 1941 stars Joan Crawford, an author in love with her married publisher, played by Herbert Marshall, although she has a faithful boyfriend who pursues her with offers of marriage.  He’s played by young and handsome Robert Taylor. (Okay, some suspension of disbelief is needed here.) They all gather at a wonderfully designed country house of friend, Spring Byington, and guess who shows up?  Herbert Marshall’s wife, played by Greer Garson, who looks great and sounds great and steals the picture. Well directed by Robert Z. Leonard, this is a very entertaining film.

 

While we’re on the subject of Robert Taylor, an older, but still handsome, version of the actor, plays a rather unsympathetic character in the 1946 Undercurrent. I consider this a discovery because I can’t recall seeing it all the way through, even though I must have seen parts. Taylor plays a rich industrialist who is negotiating to buy a process developed by scientist, Edmund Gwenn. While visiting, Taylor is smitten by Gwenn’s daughter, Ann, played by Katherine Hepburn, and he proposes marriage.  Having accepted that at her age, she would remain unmarried, she is swept off her feet by Taylor’s attention. She accepts his proposal, in spite of knowing very little about him. This proves to be a mistake, as it turns out he is obsessively mysterious about his (maybe) dead brother, Michael. This frightens her but she is determined to investigate anyway.  Robert Mitchum, in a significant role with very little screen time, plays Michael. Jayne Meadows makes an impressive debut, and Vincente Minnelli, in a departure of sorts, directs a dark and suspenseful story.

 

Katherine Hepburn, again, is in a similar role in Keeper of the Flame from 1942. In fact, I must have confused the two films, which is why it is also a discovery, having recently watched them both. Hepburn plays the widow of a successful businessman turned politician who was killed in an automobile accident before he won office. A reporter, played by Spencer Tracy, is doing a story on the man everyone considers a great hero. The two come into conflict when Tracy starts uncovering some unpleasant truths about the great man. All the associates and family members contrive to keep Tracy’s reporter character from getting too close to anything that would diminish his memory.  The slow exposure of the great man’s attraction to fascism was a powerful story in 1942, soon after America’s entry into the war. Forrest Tucker and Richard Whorf costar, along with Margaret Wycherley as the dead man’s elderly, slightly demented mother.  Directed by George Cukor.

 

Speaking of widows in mysterious households and dark dramas, I recently discovered Cry Wolf from 1947, where Barbara Stanwyck is the widow seeking the truth about her in-laws.  It is easy to come across a Barbara Stanwyck film that one hasn’t seen before because she made so many films, it’s not hard to have missed one or two. Her antagonist is her dead husband’s uncle, Erroll Flynn, in a very serious, almost sinister role.  Like the new wife in Undercurrent, Stanwyck is determined to investigate the mystery surrounding her husband’s death, even when Flynn’s character seems menacing. The difference here is that the Stanwyck character is a tough cookie and doesn’t let anyone push her around. Her daring attempts to uncover the truth make a suspenseful film which keeps your interest until the resolution at the very end.  Costarring Richard Basehart and Geraldine Brooks and directed by Peter Godfrey.

In 1946, Errol Flynn made another “un-swashbuckling” film that I recently discovered. Never Say Goodbye, costarring a lovely Eleanor Parker as his ex-wife, concerns their eight-year-old daughter, Flip, who lives six months with her mother and six months with her father, and is not happy with the situation.  She tries to get her parents back together by promoting a rival, a marine on leave, played by Forrest Tucker.  Flynn had a real talent for comedy, but obviously was more drawn to the swashbuckling genre. Although the script is kind of silly, it is completely watchable, even charming, thanks to the fine supporting cast of Patti Brady as Phillippa (Flip), Lucille Watson as the inevitable mother-in-law, and Hattie McDaniel as the nanny who helps Flip write to the marine, and send her mother’s picture along to guarantee comedy confusion. Marvelous costume design by Leah Rhodes gives the film an expensive look. Directed by James V. Kern.

 

A film from 1947 that I recently saw for the first time is rather unusual for the time that it devotes to composing music.  Night Song starring Dana Andrews and Merle Oberon, with Hoagy Carmichael and Ethel Barrymore, sounds like a soap opera on paper, but the actors are up to the task of selling the story.  Andrews is a blind composer, Oberon is a wealthy socialite who wants to help, but Andrews is not receptive, to say the least. So she decides to pretend she is blind to get close to him. What could go wrong? She enlists the help of Carmichael, the roommate and best friend of Andrews (who, by the way, gets the best lines) and Andrews gets to finish his concerto. Then he gets it introduced at Carnegie Hall under the baton of Eugene Ormandy and guess who plays it? Artur Rubenstein! Lucky, huh?  Okay, but the film actually lets you listen to it for a long time before they start talking again.  Imagine that happening today. It’s an odd film, but it’s enjoyable. Directed by John Cromwell.

Aah, discoveries!

 

 

Watchingwell 

                                                                              

                                                             Curated classic films

VOICES

   Everyone’s (well, almost everyone) favorite movie musical Singing in the Rain (1952) is all about how the transition from silent to talking films spelled the end of many film acting careers whose voices were not good enough for the big screen. In the first decade of talkies, Hollywood studios thought the most pleasant voices were aristocratic British types. Ladies and gentlemen in evening clothes populated many dramas speaking with refined British vowels, dropping the “R” at the end of words.

Throughout the following decades, voices of American actors, particularly through the preponderance of westerns and gangster films, gradually changed to allow a more natural American sound. But since British actors were frequently working in Hollywood, audiences seemed not to be confused by hearing both Gary Cooper and Brian Aherne in a double feature. Or Clark Gable and Ray Milland. Or Robert Taylor and Robert Donat. There were still American actors who tried to affect that slightly British tone to their speech (Joan Crawford comes to mind), but for the most part, the voices one heard in the films of the Golden Age were American.

So, occasionally, I am struck by the sound of voices so elegant and mellifluous, the enunciation so exact, that it is worth recommending. The most recent experience of this was in the film Lost Horizon, from 1937, which I saw again last night. The star, Ronald Colman, had such a voice. It was a pleasure to hear him as Robert Conway, an important man of the world who finds himself out of the world in a valley in the Himalayas. Adapted from the novel by James Hilton, it had been a while since I had seen the film, and I appreciated the lure of this Utopia even more. It’s a lovely story costarring a young and pretty Jane Wyatt. She is certainly an enticement to renounce the world and fame and fortune to stay in Shangri La, but the main reason is that he has been chosen to replace the High Lama. The wonderful set design and score by Dimitri Tiomkin give credibility to the other worldly valley in which the English plane-crash survivors find themselves. Edward Everett Horton and Thomas Mitchell play two of the survivors who find new value for life in Shangri La, whereas John Howard, who plays Ronald Colman’s brother, is unable to appreciate the peace and tranquility, and essentially obligates his brother to leave with him. Admirably directed by Frank Capra.

No actor could be counted on to bring the classic figures of literature to the screen as well as Colman.  His portrayal of two characters who bear an uncanny resemblance to another character move the plots in both stories.  Colman as Sidney Carton in the 1935 adaptation of the Dickens novel, A Tale of Two Cities, directed by Jack Conway, is the voice one hears saying the novel’s famous lines, “It is a far, far better thing I do…”

In the 1937 The Prisoner of Zenda, Colman again plays lookalikes: a touring Englishman and an endangered king, who he must impersonate in order to prevent the evil Prince Michael (Raymond Massey) from taking the throne.  Along the way, he falls in love with the king’s betrothed, Princess Flavia (the lovely Madeleine Carroll) and finishes with a spectacular sword fight with Douglas Fairbanks Jr.  Directed by John Cromwell, with a great score by Alfred Newman and beautiful black and white photography by James Wong Howe.

My favorite Ronald Colman film is the one where his voice is perfectly matched by the voice of his costar, Greer Garson. In the 1942 adaptation of another James Hilton novel, Random Harvest, Colman plays a World War I amnesiac who is helped by Garson’s character until an accident separates them and restores the memory of his earlier life.  I can’t help but think of Carol Burnett’s comedy version of the amnesia plot device, because on paper it does sound ridiculous. But on the screen, the reappearance of Garson into his new life produces real suspense as to whether he will ever remember her. The two actors play well together in one of the great love stories and the elegant sound of their voices make the two hours seem like a concert. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy.

 

A different kind of precise diction is heard in the voice of James Mason. The remarkable thing about James Mason is that he pronounced every letter in the words he spoke.  This is not the norm even for the actors mentioned here, who might occasionally slur one letter into the next if that is the way they were taught.

The following films are a few highlights of Mason’s career of interesting roles. But he seemed very comfortable playing the ever-so-articulate villain, the imperfect man, or the outsider.  

In 1949, Mason starred as a successful businessman who strays from wife, Barbara Stanwyck, to hang around with Ava Gardner in the  adaptation of Marcia Davenport’s novel, East Side, West Side. He is tortured by it and repents too late.  Also starring Van Heflin and Cyd Charisse and directed by Mervyn LeRoy.

Many people will remember him as the cold-blooded nemesis of Cary Grant in North by Northwest, the 1959 Alfred Hitchcock thriller, costarring Eva Marie Saint and Martin Landau.

Mason was a strong but slightly menacing Captain Nemo in the adaptation of the Jules Verne classic, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1954) directed by Richard Fletcher. The film, costarring Kirk Douglas, Paul Lukas, and Peter Lorre, is considered a great adaptation of the Verne novel, with sets that were faithful to Verne’s descriptions with great special effects.

A completely different type of man was the character, Norman Maine, in the second (in my opinion, the best} version of A Star is Born (1954).  Directed by George Cukor, who agreed to direct because Judy Garland was in the lead role. Mason gives a poignant portrayal of an actor at the end of his career who realizes that he is a drag on his wife’s success.

One of my favorites, A Touch of Larceny from 1960, directed by Guy Hamilton, has Mason playing a British Navy Commander, who pretends to defect in order to get money to woo Vera Miles.  But the best part is that George Sanders is his other costar and Sanders rivals Mason here as the best English-speaking voice.  George Sanders, also a rival for Vera Miles in the film, doesn’t believe James Mason is a defector and works against him.  A great-sounding film!

While we’re on the subject, George Sanders appears in one of my all-time favorites, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir from 1947.  The stars are Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison, but Sanders plays the role of a charming cad, which he does rather well, as in All About Eve, from 1950 except that we are glad he’s a cad because Eve is so ruthless. Joseph L. Mankiewicz directed both films.

Sanders always sounded like a scoundrel even when he was playing a mostly good guy, as he did in the series of “Saint” films based on the Leslie Charteris books. The Saint Strikes Back from 1939, was the first, directed by John Farrow, and like the rest of the series, is entertaining because Sanders uses his cultured voice to express a humorous disregard for the lowly criminals he encounters.

 

In The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) directed by Albert Lewin, Sanders has the perfect voice for pronouncing Oscar Wilde’s witticisms in the dark fable of the young gentleman whose soul becomes decayed from a life of sin.

In 1940, Sanders tones down the disdainful attitude to be one of the good guys with costar Joel McCrea, in the excellent World War II spy thriller, Foreign Correspondent. Also starring Herbert Marshall and Larraine Day, it is directed by Alfred Hitchcock. In another Hitchcock thriller from 1940, Rebecca, Sanders is back to being a cad.

 

While we’re on the subject of Rebecca, I next turn your attention to its star, Laurence Olivier, whose voice is also quite remarkable in its elegance. But Olivier’s acting voice has a quality besides precision. He uses meter or rhythm.  He is able to convey real feeling to the lines by structuring the rhythm of the words. In the revelatory scene with costar, Joan Fontaine, the way he says “You think I loved Rebecca?  You think that? I hated her.” (oh, spoiler alert) is so memorable that I can hear it in my head.

His diction is even more pronounced in Wuthering Heights, the 1939 William Wyler version of the Emily Bronte novel. In the story, Olivier as the mistreated orphan, Heathcliffe, eventually runs away and comes back some years later as a cultured gentleman, where he has acquired a gentleman’s way of speaking, much to the resentment of the David Niven character who has married Cathy, Heathcliffe’s love.  His reaction to Cathy’s betrayal which is played out as cold revenge throughout the rest of the story, begins here in this scene where his diction is even more clipped and excessively polite.  The line “It occurs to me that I have not yet congratulated you on your marriage” has so many syllables that when he speaks it with such fluidity, we can’t help being impressed.

A special treat is the film that pairs Olivier with his wife, Vivien Leigh, who also has a lovely speaking voice. That Hamilton Woman from 1941, the story of the love affair of Lady Hamilton, an ambassador’s wife, with the married Lord Nelson, the naval hero who defeated Napoleon.  The scandalous, but doomed, affair, nevertheless is a great love story.  Directed by Alexander Korda.

 

But my favorite costar who matches Olivier’s voice in elegance is, once again, Greer Garson in the 1940 production of Pride and Prejudice . It is quite magical to hear them together reciting Jane Austen’s words. Directed by Robert Z. Leonard, there were cinematic alterations of the novel, but the overall quality of the cast and production puts this above most of the subsequent remakes.  But even Jane Austen purists will take great pleasure in listening to Olivier as Mr. Darcy and Garson as Elizabeth Bennet.