May 2020

CASBAH (1948)

     For me, one of the positives of the stay-at-home order has been spending time inside the Cave of Forgotten Films. This amazing website offers (correction: offered) more than a thousand free films, many from the 1930s and ‘40s that are unavailable elsewhere.

      But on Friday, it was all gone. The owner of the site posted a note saying that rarefilmm.com was shutdown because of copyright complaints but that he hoped to revive it soon. I’m not surprised, but it does bother me that copyright holders keep films (or other works of art) out of the public’s reach because they can’t make any money on them. If you can monetize them, do so, but don’t keep them locked up forever.

    But it was nice while it lasted. While the quality of the prints vary wildly (some are clearly old VCR recordings digitized) and hundreds of the offerings are B-level programmers with no actors you’ve ever heard of, I’ve already seen about a dozen gems in the Cave, many featuring Oscar-nominated performances and directed by major filmmakers.

   The site also offered hundreds of foreign films, most from the 1980s and ‘90s, including many Oscar and Golden Globe nominees.

    My favorite find—going through the titles was sometimes as entertaining as viewing the films—thus far is “Casbah,” a semi-musical remake of “Algiers” (1938), the popular, but rather dull, Charles Boyer-Hedy Lamarr romance set in the Muslim quarter of Algiers.

    In this newer version, big band singer Tony Martin plays the infamous playboy-thief Pepe le Moko and newcomer to Hollywood Marta Toren (the Swedish actress was promoted as the next Ingrid Bergman) as the tourist who falls for the charming Pepe.

    What really makes this film interesting is the exceptional camera work by Irving Glassberg (“Bend in the River,” “The Tarnished Angels”)—the camera slinks through the alleys and stairways of the studio-created Casbah labyrinth—and the amusing supporting cast, led by Peter Lorre as Slimane, the sarcastic cop who is friends with but will eventually arrest Pepe, Yvonne de Carlo as the local woman who loves Pepe and Thomas Gomez as the police chief.  The songs are by Harold Arlen and Walter Scharf.     

     Director John Berry, an up-and-coming filmmaker, who made two interesting film noirs, “Tension” and “He Ran All the Way,” after “Casbah,” was a victim of fellow director Edward Dmytryk, who named Berry as a communist in testimony that allowed Dmytryk to resume his career after a jail term. Blacklisted, Berry was forced to move to Europe and didn’t make another high-profile film until 1974 with “Claudine.”

    Among other gems I’ve seen in the Cave:

    * “A Doll’s House,” a 1959 television production of Ibsen’s masterpiece with the brilliant Julie Harris as Nora, supported by Christopher Plummer and Jason Robards;

    * “Escape” (1948), a philosophical, Joseph L Mankiewicz-directed movie with Rex Harrison as a middle-class Brit who ends up in prison and Peggy Cummins as the society girl who falls for him;

    * “The Yellow Ticket” (1931), an unusually unfettered look at repressive pre-Communist Russia government and Jewish persecution that is one of Laurence Olivier’s early films;

    * “Chinatown Nights” (1929), an early talkie (that was first shot as a silent) from director William Wellman about gang warfare in Los Angeles’ Chinatown starring Wallace Beery as the white mob boss. Though filled with typical racism of the era, it’s a fascinating look at a rarely chronicled minority.

    I also was able to check off two Oscar nominated performances that I’d never seen: Monty Woolley as a stuffy Brit who leads a group of young children across Nazi-occupied France in “The Pied Piper” (1942) and Vienna-born Elizabeth Bergner, as a  free-spirited woman who can’t decide between two musical brothers in “Escape Me Never” (1935).

   Believe me, this was just the tip of the iceberg. My fingers are crossed that it comes back. Meanwhile, if you’ve looking for more recent films to stream for free, and live in Los Angeles County, check out the collection of films the county library offers, especially its rich selection of documentaries.    

PAIN AND GLORY (2019)

     At his best—“Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,” “All About My Mother,” “Talk to Her”—Pedro Almodóvar has been able to explain the often mysterious complications of human emotions and the fragile nature of love as well as any filmmaker of his generation.

     His latest, which earned long-time collaborator Antonio Banderas a well-deserved best actor Oscar nomination, ranks with his most accomplished movies as the Spanish director explores the tentative connection between real life (as experienced by a writer-director) and the world that appears on the screen and where  these two “realities” intersect.

     A pensive Banderas plays a well-known writer-director, Salvador Mallo, who hasn’t made a film in years as he drifts through life in an existential fog. Pushed to appear at an anniversary screening of his most popular film, Salvador reconnects with the lead actor of the film, who, years ago, the director had publicly assailed for his performance in the film.

     Alberto (Asier Etxeandia) forgives him and hooks him up with his heroin supplier, making matters worse for Salvador. The actor also convinces his old friend to let him adapt a memoir Salvador has begun into a one-man play. The ramifications of the play end up changing Salvador’s life.

     The contemporary story is enriched by Salvador’s flashbacks to his childhood, centered on his close relationship with his loving mother (Penelope Cruz, another Almodóvar regular) and a friendship that awakens his sexuality.

     In an American film, Salvador’s heroin addiction—not to mention Alberto’s---and overcoming it would have been the focus of the film, rather just another symptom of deeper problems that have blocked his creativity, which is at the heart of his life.

    After Banderas made a name for himself in Almodóvar films “Labyrinth of Passion”  (1982) and “Matador” (1986), he had a brief stint as a major Hollywood star (“The Mask of Zorro,” “Original Sin”), but has done little of interest in the past 20 years. Who knows if this will lead to better roles, but it is easily the best performance of his career. His Salvador lacks any sense of celebrity or accomplishment; he looks and acts like a man beaten by life searching for a way to survive.

    Like most of Almodóvar’s characters, his salvation lies in rediscovering love.

SAINT JACK (1979)

     While Peter Bogdanovich’s career generally took a nose-dive after his pair of sentimental, black and white period pieces, “The Last Picture Show” (1971) and “Paper Moon” (1973), this character study of the ultimate cool hustler, Jack Flowers, is one of my favorite films of the era.

     The director, with Howard Sackler, succinctly adopts Paul Theroux episodical novel about Flowers (Ben Gazzara), an ex-Marine now doing a little of this and a little of that in a corrupt Singapore. Jack’s expertise is providing visiting Westerners with a good time, which leads to him running a high-end house of prostitution on the outskirts of town.

    His legit job (well, sort of) is working for a grouchy importer and it’s through him that he meets William Leigh, the head office’s accountant who makes yearly trips to check on the Singapore office’s books. Superb British character actor Denholm Elliott plays William with an earnest reserve that makes him the perfect foil for Jack.

     In one of their first conversations, as they ride into town from the airport, William asks Jack about playing squash.

    “You’re not a squash player yourself, by any chance, are you?”

    Flowers answers: “No, Bill. I drink. Do you drink?”

   “Well, I take the odd drop.”

      There is also a collection of British ex-pats who are always hanging around, drinking or scouting for women as Jack carries on his business. Bogdanovich plays a mysterious American intelligence agent---what everyone does in this film is as murky as trying to do business in the East—who eventually helps Jack set up a “resort” for American GIs on leave from the Vietnam War.

    But what the film is all about is Jack and the way he’s able to adjust and deflect while thriving in the underbelly of this shadowy city, not yet the modern capital it has become. (The director originally offered this script to his pal Orson Welles, who wanted Dean Martin as Jack. Luckily, and typically, Welles dawdled and Bogdanovich made the picture himself.)

     Gazzara, a limited but extraordinary actor, gives one of his finest performances as Jack, showing that this tough guy can also be thoughtful, humane and maintain his version of a moral compass.

     The actor first came to prominence as a twisted military cadet in “The Strange One” (1957) and then as the accused in “Anatomy of a Murder” (1959), but he worked mostly in television during the 1960s and 70s, highlighted by his brilliant performance as a novelist in the acclaimed 1974 miniseries “QB VII.”

     He was a favorite of director John Cassavetes, starring in “Husbands” (1970), “Opening Night” (1977) and “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie” (1976), a role not far from his Jack Flowers.

    Gazzara had a late career spurt in the 1990s when he gave small, but memorable performances in David Mamet’s “The Spanish Prisoner” (1997), the Coen brothers’ “The “Big Lebowski” (1998), Vincent Gallo’s “Buffalo 66” (1998) and Spike Lee’s “Summer of Sam” (1999). Just a few years before his death, he was the star of an indie picture, “Looking for Palladin” (2008), in which he plays an Oscar-winning actor now a recluse in Guatemala.

    Though he was never a star, Gazzara made any film or TV show better because of his presence. (I never understood why Coppola didn’t find a spot for him in one of “The Godfathers”—he would have been perfect as Barzini or Tessio.)

WESTERN STARS (2019) and BLINDED BY THE LIGHT (2019)

   After decades of having little to do with the film industry, Bruce Springsteen jumped in with both feet in 2019 with a feature film that revolves around his music, a concert-confessional documentary and the movie version of his Broadway show. For me, there’s no such thing as too much Bruce, but he might have considered spacing out these projects.

     This sudden interest in preserving his legacy probably has a lot to do with the singer-songwriter turning 70 last September. “Western Stars,” the album and the film, is definitely the work of a man reflecting on his life, both the mistakes and the successes. As is the Broadway show, based on his 2018 memoir, “Born to Run,” what Springsteen presents to viewers and readers is more like a visit to the therapist than tales from the rock ‘n’ roll road.

    I wasn’t a fan of “Springsteen on Broadway”—though seeing it live would have been a different matter—as his monologues on his life and introductions to songs come off as too practiced. Springsteen may be a great writer and singer, but he’s not an actor. It takes acting skills to make even your own words sound original and heartfelt when you are delivering them to an audience night after night.

    “Western Stars” can be just as preachy and crushingly sentimental in the glossy, pristinely shot segments between the songs—Springsteen comes off as a Sam Shepard wannabe as he roams around his horse farm in New Jersey and drives across the California desert—but the performance footage saves the day.

     Shot in his enormous, ancient barn with a nearly full orchestra, the 10-song set overflows with sincerity and craftsmanship. The music is a throwback to the overproduced pop-country sound of the late 1960s and early 70s that mostly appealed to adults tired of rock ‘n’ roll—you can hear Jimmy Webb in almost every song. This isn’t Springsteen the rocker; he and wife Patti Scialfa strum matching red Gibson acoustics that would be right at home at the Grand Old Opera.

     I can’t say it’s one of my favorite Springsteen albums, but he’s earned the right to do whatever he pleases musically and it continues his 35-year run of brilliant songwriting unmatched in quantity and quality by anyone this side of Bob Dylan.

     Much less high-minded is the way Springsteen’s music is utilized in the frivolous coming-of-age film “Blinded by the Light.”

     Viveik Kalra plays Javed Khan, a college-age Pakistani-Brit, struggling to emerge from his father’s oppressive shadow and the cultural pressure to play the quiet immigrant. Introduced to the Boss by Roops (Aaron Phagura), a Sikh friend at college, Javed quickly immerses himself in the music, catching up on about 15 years of Springsteen (the film is set in the late 1980s), and it becomes the center of his life. The movie can be summarized by Springsteen’s lyric from “No Surrender”: “We learned more from a three-minute record, baby/than we ever learned in school.”

     The script quickly descends into stereotypes and clichés as a teacher encourages Javed writing, his father loses his job and his best friend feels left out for not loving Springsteen.

     The father serves as the perfect straw man, offering a brick wall to everything the son wants if life, while turning a blind eye to harassment by the local whites. (The film is set during Margaret Thatcher’s rightwing reign.)

     Anyone who has seen a dozen movie in their life knows immediate that Javed will overcome the standard-issue obstacles, win over his family and achieve his dreams, all while Springsteen lyrics play the background.

    The film isn’t a musical, but it does include a few dance numbers that are clumsily choreographed and do nothing to advance the story. It was somewhat embarrassing to watch an amateurish staged dance to my favorite song, “Thunder Road.”

     All that aside, the film utilizes very few of the eight albums of songs Springsteen had recorded by that point; “The Promised Land” plays in about four scenes. For all its flaws, a film like “Across the Universe” made much better use of the Beatles’ catalog.

     “E Street Channel,” the SiriusXM radio station that plays Springsteen 24/7, promoted the film nonstop for weeks. Apparently, Springsteen enjoyed Sarfraz Manzoor’s memoir on which the film is based and, for the first time, gave a filmmaker the rights to his music (for a nice chunk of change, I’m sure). Despite the sincerity of the writer, the film fails to match the emotional and insightful storytelling that can be found in most of Springsteen’s work.

     The obvious climax of “Blinded by the Light” should have been Javed attending a Springsteen concert—listening to the music is one thing; seeing the E Street Band live is a life-altering experience (trust me)—but it doesn’t happen. There are many missed opportunities in “Blinded by the Light,” directed and co-written by “Bend It Like Beckhan” director Gurinder Chadha.

      Maybe in ten years or so, Springsteen will agree to a biopic and his rich collection of music will receive the big-screen presentation it deserves.    

ALL NIGHT LONG (1962)

     One of the oddest pictures I’ve seen in awhile is this interracial British melodrama centered on London’s happening jazz scene.

    The film opens with Rod (Richard Attenborough) being driven from his luxurious home to a warehouse district across town. One almost expects some industrial hideaway for a gang of thieves. Instead he walks up stairs and opens the door to an elaborate, multi-floored swinging 60s pad with a large stage area, where Charles Mingus stands plucking on his bass and smoking on a pipe. Rod greets him as if it’s normal to have one the greatest musicians of the 20^th Century standing in his living room.

     Later, a dozen musicians, including pianist-composer Dave Brubeck and British saxophonist John Dankworth (he later did the music for the TV show “The Avengers”), arrive to perform at an anniversary party for band leader Aurelius Rex (Paul Harris) and his wife Delia (Marti Stevens), a retired jazz singer. (His name is the overwrought script’s way of signaling weighty symbolism.)

    Throwing a wrench into the festive atmosphere is Johnny Cousins (Patrick McGoohan, who went on to star as “Secret Agent” and “The Prisoner”), a drummer and bandleader who wants Delia to come out of retirement and thinks breaking up her marriage will make that happen. It’s all very “Othello”-like as Rex is black and Delia is white.

    The film is entirely set inside Rod’s sprawling loft, which makes the machinations by Johnny to split the happy couple even more strained. It’s somewhat amazing that 60 years later, a film about an interracial couple would still be unusual.

     But it’s the jazz that makes this film worth the time, as veteran director Basil Dearden (“Victim,” “Khartoum”) gives the musicians plenty of screen time. Along with stars Brubeck and Mingus, the players include some well-known Brits, trumpeter Bert Courtley, saxophonist Tubby Hayes and, serving as the movie’s musical director, flutist Johnny Scott, who went on to a long career as a film composer and famously played flute on the Beatles’ “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away.”

UNDERWORLD (1927)

     Few directors of early American cinema are more fascinating than Josef von Sternberg.

     Though his name is often associated with the influx of Europeans who immigrated to Hollywood in the 1920s and ‘30s (Lubitsch, Lang, Murnau, Curtiz, Wilder), he was plain Jonas Sternberg, age 8, when his family moved to New York from Vienna. He moved back a few years later, but by age 14 he was in America for good.

     He entered the industry as a teenager working for a film stock restorer, which led to a variety of behind-the-scenes jobs throughout his 20s (interrupted by service in World War I during which he photographed training exercises).

     In 1924, now pretentiously renamed Josef von—inspired, no doubt, by already established filmmaker Erich von Stroheim—he directed his first film, a low-budget psychological study of two young drifters and an orphan child, “The Salvation Hunters.” A parable that critics hailed as a visual masterpiece, it drew little attention and closed quickly.

       Mary Pickford, then one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, chose von Sternberg to direct her next film, based on the reputation built by this debut. That never happened and a few other projects collapsed in part because of von Sternberg’s high hopes for what could be achieved through the cinema.

    “A Woman of the Sea,” made for producer Charlie Chapin—a comeback film for Edna Purviance, the female lead in most of Chapin’s short films—was never released and destroyed. Despite von Sternberg’s dismal rate of success as a filmmaker, he was regularly cited as among Hollywood’s finest directors. His next project finally delivered on his promise.

    The first credited screenplay of Chicago newsman Ben Hecht, “Underworld,” based on a pair of real-life rival mobsters, focuses on a love triangle between Bull Weed (George Bancroft), a brazen, egotistical gangster, his moll Feathers (Evelyn Brent) and Bull’s protege Rolls Royce (Clive Brook).

    What’s most impressive about this silent is the economical, ahead-of-its-time construction—no scene lasts longer than needed with von Sternberg completely trusting his audience to understand action without showing every detail. He provides little transition between scenes and often reduces what could be long sequences to a couple of perfectly chosen shots.

      In about four shots, he depicts a jewelry store robbery by Bull Weed. Later, when Bull kills Buck Mulligan (Fred Kohler), the rival criminal, von Sternberg cuts from Bull laughing at the dead man to him sitting in the court docket about to be sentenced to hang.

       The acting is superb throughout, with little of the melodramatics one expected (and often excuses) in silents. Clive, who most famously was the star of the 1932-33 best picture winner “Cavalcade,” was never better than as this recovering alcoholic who becomes a “gentleman” criminal after Bull pulls him off the street.

     Not surprisingly, von Sternberg and Hecht fought over the ending, with the director creating a finale that emphasizes the humanity of Bull. The film serves as a model for the slew of gangster pictures in the early 1930s.

    Paramount didn’t give “Underworld” much of a chance at the box office, but it drew record crowds, forcing one New York theater to stay open all night to accommodate the audience.

    Von Sternberg made two more memorable silents, “The Last Command,” with Emil Jannings and William Powell and “The Docks of New York” with Bancroft, before his career changed forever when he accepted an invitation to direct a German film.

     “The Blue Angel,” about a respected teacher (Jannings) who is ruined by his dalliance with a nightclub performer, not only became an international hit (it was simultaneously filmed in English), but the director decision to cast an unknown German actress, Marlene Dietrich, as the alluring Lola Lola forever linked their future.

   Dietrich was brought to Hollywood, where she insisted that von Sternberg direct her films. Their partnership lasted six more films, all of which pushed the boundaries of sexuality in American films and are among the most visually audacious pictures made in the sound era.

     Von Sternberg’s post-Dietrich career was less interesting as he became more of a traditional director for hire than a true iconoclast. In 1965, he wrote his autobiography, “Fun in a Chinese Laundry,” which offers an unusually critical assessment of Hollywood and the idea of the cinema as art. He is especially tough on film acting, explaining that, at least in the silent era, most performers were clueless as to what the film was even about.

   But mostly the book serves as a counter argument to claims that he was a superficial filmmaker who treated everyone with distain. But as he defends himself, he never stops explaining that the director (especially on his films) is the only person doing anything important on a movie set.

     In the foreword to the book, Gary Cooper, who starred in von Sternberg’s “Morocco,” writes that he “looked on us all as puppets, with himself pulling the strings.”

     “[William] Powell told me that von Sternberg was arrogant, callous and quite unable to motivate an actor, let alone respect him,” Cooper continues.       

     The director’s reputation, since his death in 1969, has improved steadily, with his work with Dietrich viewed as among the most accomplished pictures of the 1930s. But the lavish camerawork and flashy direction of his later works never matched his silent films, led by the compelling “Underworld.”