June 2024

 

KLUTE (1971) and DON’T LOOK NOW (1973)

      It’s somewhat alarming to realize that most of the young movie stars who served as my introduction to serious cinema—Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall, Jane Fonda, Warren Beatty, Robert Redford, Clint Eastwood—are all over 80 years old. This fact hit me as Donald Sutherland, maybe the most underrated of this group of performers who dominated the 1970s, was remembered following his death at age 88.

      After spending most of the 1960s working in television, the Canadian-born actor’s career took off after being cast as one of “The Dirty Dozen” (1967), among the last of the old-style war films. A very different type of war picture made him a star, Robert Altman’s “M*A*S*H” (1970).

    As Korean War field surgeon Hawkeye Pierce, equally comfortable with a martini or a scalpel, Sutherland and co-star Elliott Gould (as Trapper John) capture the iconoclastic attitudes of the Vietnam era despite the film’s 1950s timeframe. It’s disappointing that the crazy-quilt style of the movie has been eclipsed by the popularity of the memorable but mainstream television series.

     While making two or three films a year during his peak of 1970-1981, thrillers “Klute” and “Don’t Look Now” stand out as the most adventurous, both offering challenging roles that show the actor at his best even as he works in support of his female co-stars.

      John Klute is a taciturn, somewhat naïve small-town cop who ventures into the sex industry of New York City in search of his friend who has gone missing after being connected to call girl Bree Daniels (Oscar-winning Jane Fonda). He eventually convinces Bree to help him track down the person who connected her with his missing friend, but it’s really just an excuse to explore the city’s underbelly and the traps that led Bree into this world.

      Director Alan J. Pakula (“All the President’s Men”) and cinematographer Gordon Willis (“The Godfather”) create a dark, muted palate in which Klute and Daniels encircle one another, uncovering the truth and changing their lives. The sharp, uncompromising script by Andy and David E. Lewis, brothers who mostly wrote for television, is a coming-of-age story for Klute, who grows emotionally into a man strong enough to save Bree.

       “Klute,” despite the title, will always be remembered as Fonda’s film—maybe her greatest performance—but Sutherland holds his own, revealing a depth not seen in his previous work. (A romance developed between Sutherland and Fonda that lasted for a few years, as both were active in anti-war protests.)

      If the sex trade looked dangerous in “Klute,” it’s nothing compared to the creepy world director Nicholas Roeg creates along the narrow, unlit alleys and murky canals of Venice in “Don’t Look Now.” 

     The film, based on a Daphne du Maurier story, opens with a devastating scene of John Baxter (Sutherland) pulling his young daughter from a backyard pond. The death hangs heavy over him and wife Laura (Julie Christie) as the story takes them to Venice, where he is supervising the restoration of a 16^th Century church. The situation grows intense when a blind woman with “second sight” claims she sees their dead daughter and foresees danger for John.

    Sutherland gives a perfectly measured performance as a down-to-earth man, whose descent into confusion leads him headfirst into the unknown. “Don’t Look Now” is also infamous for its realistic sex scene; an intricately edited sequence that mirrors the changing norms of 1970s Hollywood.    

      The actor continued his string of superb performances as a sad-sack denizen of 1930s Hollywood who falls for a wannabe actress in “The Day of the Locust” (1975), a sadistic Fascist in Bernardo Bertolucci’s epic “1900” (1976), the too-cool Faber College professor in “National Lampoon’s Animal House” (1978), an ordinary man facing extraordinary circumstances in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1978), as the soft-spoken grieving father caught between his wife and son in “Ordinary People” (1980) and a German spy who falls for a Scottish woman in “Eye of the Needle” (1981). Sutherland even starred for Federico Fellini in the very theatrical “Casanova” (1976)

     While he found fewer choice roles for the rest of his career, a few memorable performances stand out: his riveting turn as Mr. X, explaining the deep state conspiracy in “JFK” (1991); a reunion with Christie in “The Railway Station Man” (1992); as the naïve, wealthy New Yorker in “Six Degrees of Separation” (1993); as Steve Prefontaine’s track coach in “Without Limits” (1998); and as the wise Mr. Bennet in “Pride & Prejudice” (2005).

     Most recently, Sutherland became a familiar face for another generation as the diabolical President Snow in “The Hunger Games” trilogy.

      Sutherland, with his large ears, droopy eyelids and razor-thin built, looked more like a fourth-billed supporting player than leading man material, but he maintained his marquee-name status for more than half a century, anchoring some of the best American films of his era.

  

KINDS OF KINDNESS (2024)

     Imagine if Bella Baxter, Emma Stone’s Oscar-winning role in “Poor Things,” directed a film. It would be filled with strange characters, saying and doing inappropriate things with little consideration to socially accepted manners or the consequences. That, in a nutshell, describes Yorgos Lanthimos latest picture, an absurdist look at people who long to be told how to live, divided into three short (well, not that short) stories with the same collection of actors taking different roles, like a theatrical troupe.  

      In the opening segment, up-and-coming star Jesse Plemons (“The Power of the Dog,” “Killers of the Flower Moon”) plays a weak-willed employee of the ultimate demanding boss (Willem Dafoe), who requires total obedience, determining, among other details, when he has sex with his wife (Hong Chau from “The Whale”) but blocking the couple’s plans for children. When Plemons’ character refuses to ram his car into another vehicle in an attempt to maim or kill, he’s cut off by Dafoe. His pitifully comical actions to get back into his boss’ good graces have no relation to sanity.

   In part two, Plemons is a cop whose wife (Stone), a marine biologist, is missing following an accident. When she’s rescued, he’s convinced that it’s not really her—though on her first day back she’s ready for the group sex with the couple’s best friends (Mamoudou Athie and Margaret Qualley). This segment’s only value is one of shock as Stone continues to acquiesce to her husband’s delusions. 

     The final episode probably should have been the entire film as it’s more grounded in reality. Stone plays a woman caught between a sex obsessed cult (run by Dafoe and Chau) and an abusive husband. She and Plemons, like a couple of low-rent detectives, are in search of a woman with a dead twin who can bring life to the recently deceased. Clearly, there’s a lot of David Lynch in Lantthimos’ movies.

    Plemons is an acquired taste, so low key that he often seems to be sleep walking but Stone, as usual, brings her high-strung energy to each of the segments, especially as the cult follower, But all the principals display an admirable willingness to give it all for Lanthimos. It’s hard to criticize that level of commitment, even if it seems to me to be wasted effort.

  

SADIE MCKEE (1934)

     No actress altered her looks so dramatically as Joan Crawford. I recently watched “Sally, Irene and Mary,” one of the nine films the 19-year-old appeared in during 1925, her first year in films. If I didn’t know she was one of the stars, I would never have identified this film legend I’ve seen in nearly 50 films.

      Not until the late 1920s, when she became a star, did she start looking like the Joan who became world famous, and even then she continuing to refine herself, with the help of MGM’s top-flight makeup department, in the 1930s.

      One of her best vehicles during this glamour period is “Sadie McKee,” playing the daughter of the cook for the wealthy Alderson family. Impulsively, after hearing the family berate a young man she likes, Sadie leaves with Tommy (Gene Raymond) for New York City, where he almost immediately dumps her to join a nightclub singer’s act.

        Later, working as a taxi dancer, Sadie runs into Michael Alderson (Franchot Tone), whose client Brennan (Edward Arnold), takes an instant shine to her. Sadie, still mad at the Aldersons and bitter over the actions of Tommy, ends up marrying the wealthy, but much older Brennan.

       This classic “women’s picture” is elevated by Crawford’s excellent performance and a very realistic script that offers a caustic look at the Depression era world. And it doesn’t hurt that behind the camera is Clarence Brown, who eventually would be nominated for six directing Oscars, including “Anna Christie,” “National Velvet” and “The Yearling.” Though his most memorable movies were about family dynamics (also “Wife vs. Secretary,” “The Human Comedy”) he didn’t shy away from controversial topics. That same year, Brown direct Crawford again in “Chained,” in which she keeps jumping between lovers Clark Gable and Otto Kruger.

     One of the most interesting aspects of “Sadie McKee” is how Brennan’s drinking and carousing starts as comedy and eventually becomes a central issue, a problem that Sadie faces head-on when no one else will. It’s a refreshing change from how excessive drinking is typically treated in film of the 1930s. It became almost a requirement that every film had to feature a comic drunk, in addition to showing the main characters imbibing every time they walk into the house.      

      An added attraction in “Sadie McKee” is the appearance of long-forgotten Gene Austin, one of the leading crooners of the 1920s and ‘30s, who is shown performing with his trio. His “My Blue Heaven” and “Ramona” were among the biggest hits of the era.

     Of course, Crawford wasn’t done changing her looks and image: Her Oscar-winning turn as “Mildred Pierce” introduced a harder, tougher woman (though she wasn’t yet 40), which led to an impressive run of crime pictures into the 1950s and, arguably, her best performances.

  

THELMA (2024)

     There’s really only one reason to see this outlandish, geriatric road film. June Squibb, the 94-year-old Oscar nominee (for “Nebraska” in 2013), plays Thelma, an alternately confused and feisty grandmother who refuses to sit still after she gets scammed.

    Thelma falls for the classic con—a call from her “grandson” in need of $10,000 for bail. She quickly gathers the money and mails it off to the address given to her by “the lawyer.”

    After the police brush off her and her family, Thelma begins to plot her mission (inspired by Tom Cruise), eventually with the help of old friend and assisted living tenant Ben (1970s legend Richard Roundtree).

     Despite about a dozen too many old-folks clichés, it’s impossible not to root for Thelma—what could be more heartless than ripping off easily duped seniors? Writer-director Josh Margolin (in his directing debut) mixes legitimate issues faced by seniors while soliciting laughs with the usual foibles. But he fails to prop up the creaky plot, instead foisting on viewers Thelma’s irritating family and their issues.

     Her daughter and son-in-law (Parker Posey and Clark Gregg) and her slacker grandson (Fred Hechinger), who has a special bond with grandma, are stock sitcom characters who add nothing of interest to the film. I was ready to scream if I had to listen to yet another heart-to-heart between the clueless parents and their childish son Daniel.

      But as long as the focus is on Thelma and Ben and their clumsy attempts at justice, the film has a winning formula.

     Roundtree, who died last October at age 81, was best known for his hipster private eye John Shaft in “Shaft” (1971), but never stopped working in film and television.

      Squibb, who was a stage actor from an early age, didn’t make her film debut until she was 61, in Woody Allen’s “Alice” (1990), and has worked steadily since, most notably as Jack Nicholson’s wife in “About Schmidt” (2002) and then as Bruce Dern’s wife in “Nebraska,” both directed by Alexander Payne. Since her Oscar nod at age 84, she has mostly worked in television. This year, she had a key role in the remake of “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.” 

  

HIT MAN (2024)

     The central idea of director Richard Linklater’s latest—a college philosophy professor and part-time tech guy for the police finds his niche ensnaring ordinary people seeking to hire a contract killer—had the potential to be turned into a caustically clever comedy.

     Yet for a variety of reasons, including its leisurely pacing, off-handed acting and soft-hearted script (all of which could be seen as positives in the right story), the film didn’t work for me. It plays more like a calling card for up-and-coming leading man Glen Powell as the movie veers from comedy to romance to thriller. The production needed the “touch” of the Coen Brothers.

     Powell plays Gary Johnson, a rather ordinary man whose life turns into a Bond-like adventure when he fills in for an undercover detective and poses as a hitman to entrap a man soliciting murder. Without losing a beat, he pulls it off, improvising as if he just spent five years acting at Second City. Not only does he continue this gig, creating a variety of personalities to suit the circumstances, but his real-life persona changes, gaining confidence and presence.

     After persuading an attractive young woman (Adria Arjona from the recent “Father of the Bride”’ remake) to not hire him to kill her husband, Gary—now the cool hitman--pursues a relationship.

    Powell, who played “Hangman” in “Top Gun: Maverick” (2022) and John Glenn in “Hidden Figures” (2016) and possesses an audience-friendly screen persona in the Jon Hamm-Ryan Reynolds mold, makes the most of this colorful role.

     Linklater has failed as often as he’s succeeded in his 30-year, prodigious career; starting, of course, with the classic 1993 high school tale, “Dazed and Confused.” His bittersweet romantic French trilogy with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy---"Before Sunrise,” “Before Sunset,” “Before Midnight” stands with the great New Wave films of Truffaut and Rohmer and his “School of Rock” (2003) gave Jack Black his best vehicle. The director’s animated “Apollo 10 ½” was among the better films of 2022, but he also made “Tape” (2001), “A Scanner Darkly” (2006), “Where’d You Go, Bernadette” (2019) and, inexplicitly, the remake of “Bad News Bears” (2005).

       I wasn’t a fan of his most acclaimed picture, “Boyhood” (2014), which earned Oscar nominations for picture and direction, more for his process (he filmed it over many years) than the resulting film.

     I do appreciate that you never know what to expect from a Linklater film—he remains little known despite numerous high-profile pictures—but “Hit Man” isn’t among his best.

  

EZRA (2024) and RED LIGHTS (2012)

        Another industry already has “first, do no harm” as its oath, but the movie business might consider incorporating the idea into whatever checklist it uses to greenlight pictures.

      The filmmakers of “Ezra,” in their enthusiasm to portray a parent’s support of his autistic son, seems to be siding with parents over health professionals about who knows best how to treat the effected child. In fact, whatever crazy thing Max (Bobby Cannavale) does in the course of the film is shown as pure love while doctors and law enforcement are the problem. Even young Ezra’s mother (Rose Byrne) is written as clinging, overly protective parent.

     The relationship between Max, a struggling standup comic (at 50something?), and son Ezra (an impressive debut by William A. Fitzgerald) feels sincere, very believable even as the plot veers into crazy territory. 

      The reason I went to the theater and sat through 10 trailers was because 80-year-old Robert De Niro plays Max’s father, Ezra’s grandfather. As always, the great actor enlivens every scene he’s in, mostly in confrontations with Cannavale.            

      Tony Goldwyn, another veteran actor who has a role in the film, also directs. Unbeknownst to me, he’s been directing, primarily on television, since 1999; his debut was “A Walk on the Moon.” Not sure when he has time, as he’s constantly working on episodical television, including taking over for Sam Waterston as the DA on “Law & Order.”

       Since De Niro became eligible for Medicare in 2008, he’s appeared in 36 movies—that’s an entire career for most actors. For every “Silver Linings Playbook,” “Killers of the Flower Moon” (earning Oscar nominations for both), “The Irishman,” “The Intern” and “The Comedian” (maybe his most underrated performance), there are three films like “Savage Salvation,” “Dirty Grandpa” and “The Bag Man.”

    I caught up one of those “other” films, “Red Lights,” featuring a cast that belies its forgotten status. Last year’s best actor Oscar winner Cillian Murphy plays Tom Buckley, the teaching assistant to psychologist professor Margaret Matheson (Sigourney Weaver) and her partner in debunking claims of paranormal activity. One of their students, played by Elizabeth Olsen, eventually joins their team.

    Also in the cast is Toby Jones as a rival professor and Joely Richardson as the assistant to Simon Silver (De Niro), a world-famous blind psychic who has just emerged from a decades-long hiatus, becoming the focus of Matheson’s and Buckley’s sophisticated efforts to prove him a fraud.

     The film, well directed by Spanish filmmaker Rodrigo Cortés, falls apart about halfway through, growing overly melodramatic and taking characters in rather incredulous directions. De Niro, who chews scenery with the best of them, doesn’t hold back as this conceited madman.

 

 

PHOTOS:

 Donald Sutherland and Jane Fonda in “Klute.”  (Warner Bros.)

 Joan Crawford in “Sadie McKee.”  (MGM)

 June Squibb and Fred Hechinger in “Thelma.”  (Magnolia Pictures)

 Robert De Niro and Bobby Cannavale in “Ezra.” (Bleecker Street Media)

 

 

 

 

April 2024

 

KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (2024)

      Following the entertaining trilogy that chronicled the life of Caesar, one of the great cinematic characters of the 21^st Century, the latest chapter, seven years after “War for the Planet of the Apes,” more than holds its own without the charismatic ape.

      The new film sends Noa (stop-action actor Owen Teague), the son of a tribal leader, on a coming-of-age journey during which the wisdom of the long-dead and almost forgotten Caesar—the movie is set a few hundred years after his time—plays a big role.

     After a brutal attack by a more technically advanced tribe of apes for the purpose of collecting slaves, Noa escapes and then pursues the warriors in hopes of saving the villagers.

     Along the way, he encounters Raka (Peter Macon), an orangutan who is a disciple of Caesar, and Mae (Freya Allan), a human on her own mission. The pair help Noa gain a better understanding of the planet’s complicated history and what that might mean for the future. The action-adventure culminates at the headquarters of Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand), who has twisted the founding ape’s words for his own maniacal plans.

     There’s no discerning what’s actual cinematography and what’s computer generated, but, for the most part, every scene, except for a few incredible cliff-climbing sequences, looked very real.

      Screenwriter Josh Friedman, following the work of trilogy creators Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, does his best to make this age-old story seem fresh and creating distinct personalities for the various apes.

     Director Wes Ball, best known for the “Maze Runner” trilogy, understands this is a popcorn movie first, quickly moving from character-building scenes to one intense action sequence after another.

    Noa may not cast the shadow that Caesar did over the first three films, but it’s early; he’s still growing into a leader and his encounters with those pesky humans will no doubt change him further in the next episodes of this superb franchise.

  

COUP DE CHANCE (2024)

      Woody Allen’s delightful new film, the 50^th feature in the legendary writer-director’s career, glows in the golden hues of natural light, visually and thematically. Along with the sarcasm-filled script and pitch-perfect acting, three-time Oscar winner Vittorio Storaro’s sublime cinematography makes this Allen’s best movie since “Midnight in Paris.” The City of Lights seems to recharge the writer’s imagination, this time, daringly, all in French.

     Subtitles will no doubt put off many filmgoers, but at this point in Allen’s career, so few people see his films that it hardly matters.

    Lou de Laȃge, who resembles a young Jane Fonda, plays Fanny, who works at an art auction house and is married to a wealthy money manager (Melvil Poupaud). Though happy, she remains uncomfortable by his lavish gifts and upper-class friends. Thus, there’s little mystery as to what’s in store when she runs into a high school acquaintance while walking to work. Alain (Niels Schneider) is your classic Allen romantic figure, an idealistic, struggling novelist who had long admired Fanny from afar.

    But the predictable first act quickly turns surprisingly dark, living up to the title, which translates to “Stroke of Luck.” Sparking the clever final act is Fanny’s inquisitive mother (Valerie Lemercier).

     Allen reports that all the actors understood English, making his task of directing a French film easier. (Though he does have a basic understanding of the language.) It’s such a finely crafted screenplay that it would work in any language.

     Unfortunately, Allen films receive such minimal distribution in this country that fans outside of L.A. and N.Y. will have to stream the film (through Apple or Amazon) if they are interested.

     Even at age 88, Allen hasn’t lost his skill as a screenwriter, poking fun at those who believe they are special because of their bank account and reminding audiences how much luck determines our lives.

  

BEGGARS OF LIFE (1928)

     When “Wings,” the World War I epic featuring spectacular aviation sequences, won the first Academy Award for best picture, its director, William Wellman was elevated to the first rank of filmmakers. During the next 25 years, as Hollywood moved from silents to sound, few directors delivered thoughtful and entertaining movies as regularly and in a variety of genres as Wellman.

    Among the highlights of his career include such acknowledged classics as the gangster film “The Public Enemy” (1931), the show-biz cautionary tale “A Star Is Born (1937), the newspaper comedy “Nothing Sacred” (1937), the desert action-adventure “Beau Geste” (1939), the Western “The Ox-Bow Incident” (1942) and war movies “Story of G.I. Joe” (1945) and “Battleground” (1949). 

     One of his last films released as a silent, “Beggars of Life” (available on Youtube) is an unsentimental portrait of hobos and the dangers they face on the road. This realistic tale reminded me of the heartbreaking power of the John Steinbeck-penned “The Grapes of Wrath” and “Of Mice and Men.” It also features cult actress Louise Brooks’ most substantial role in an American film.

 

     Brooks’ character, identified as The Girl, kills her step-father in defense of her virtue, forcing her to run from the law. Disguised as a man, she and The Boy (Richard Arlen, star of “Wings”) ride the rails in hopes of getting to Canada to escape authorities. They fall in with a dangerous gang of hobos led by a charismatic Oklahoma Red (Wallace Beery, at full throttle).

     Wellman doesn’t pull any punches about life on the road, never glamorizing the struggle to simply eat and stay ahead of club-wielding cops.

     Blue Washington, in a rare dignified role for a Black actor in that era, plays Black Mose, whose actions are crucial in the exciting finale. Also among the supporting cast is Mike Donlin, playing one of the hobos, He was a retired baseball player, once a star outfielder mostly for the New York Giants, who starred in the Broadway hit “Stealing Home” before going to Hollywood. He appeared in dozens of bit roles, often for Wellman, from 1917 until his death in 1933.

     This is one of Wellman’s best films—better than the similar-themed and more acclaimed “Wild Boys of the Road”—and a rare chance for Brooks to show she was more than a sex symbol. Even her trademark bob haircut is covered by a newsboy cap for most of the film. The next year, she gave up on Hollywood and went to Europe to star in G.W. Pabst’s masterpiece “Pandora’s Box” as Lulu, one of the most iconic roles of early cinema.

  

CIVIL WAR (2024)

     With most combat films, the issues that turned the conflict deadly are either common knowledge (in the case of real-life wars) or dramatically detailed before viewers are dropped into the firefight. In British writer-director Alex Garland’s provocative and intense picture, nothing much is offered to the question of why.

    Especially in a film seen through the eyes of journalists, this felt like a gaping hole in an otherwise compelling story.

    It’s clear that the war has been raging for a while—abandoned city streets, bombed out buildings—when photojournalist Lee (Kirsten Dunst) and reporter Joel (Wagner Moura) nearly get killed by a suicide bomber. Later, in a hotel bar, they admit to veteran scribe Sammy (the always impressive Stephen McKinley Henderson) that they are headed to Washington D.C. in hopes of interviewing the embattled president (briefly, Nick Offerman). They agree to take Sammy along, then become four when neophyte photojournalist Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), a fan of Lee’s, wrangles her way into their van.

     As they traverse the battleground, through Pennsylvania and then south toward the capital (the same area where the 19^th Century Civil War was fought), the made-for-a-movie quartet encounters pockets of unaligned vigilantes, a few federal troops and an impressive staging ground for the rebels—an unlikely union of California and Texas.

     While the focus stays on the work of Lee and Jessie, I kept wondering why Joel and Sammy never took a note or recorded a single interview while they were “covering” the war. Not for a minute did Joel make me believe he was a reporter (at some point, he says they work for the wire service Reuters.)

    The gripping final act makes one forget the sluggish pace of most of the film, but the real reason to see “Civil War” is for Dunst’s performance. As Lee, she captures the world-wearing regrets of this veteran of foreign wars, now left sadden by the violence she’s photographing on U.S. soil. This underrated actress has given superb performances, after impressive work as a juvenile and then the star-making “Spiderman” role, in “Marie Antoinette,” “Melancholia,” “All Good Things,” “The Beguiled” and “Power of the Dog,” which earned her an Oscar nomination. She deserves more high-profile roles.

     Director Garland, who previously created other distressing visions of the future with “Ex Machina” and “Annihilation,” offers plenty of visceral fear in “Civil War,” but not enough rationale to make me care.

  

HE WHO GETS SLAPPED (1924)

    One hundred years ago, American movies were nearing their pre-sound peak. One could argue that the art of filmmaking never surpassed the accomplishments of the five years that began in 1924. Marking their centennial this year are Buster Keaton’s “Sherlock Jr.,” John Ford’s “The Iron Horse,” F.W. Murnau’s “The Last Laugh” and Raoul Walsh’s “The Thief of Bagdad,” starring Douglas Fairbanks at his playful best, along with this psychological melodrama featuring another mesmerizing performance by The Man of a Thousand Faces, Lon Chaney.  

       Ambitious scientist Paul Beaumont (Chaney, for once looking like a matinee idol with a mustache and goatee) has made a breakthrough in his research on the origins of man. Shockingly, his benefactor, the Baron (Marc McDermott), steals his ideas during a presentation to an academy of scientists. They laugh off Chaney’s claims that it was actually his research.

    Then, just to add salt to the wound, Paul’s wife admits she loves the Baron and helped him to take credit for her husband’s work.

     Driven mad, Paul becomes a circus clown (maybe a little extreme?), going by the pseudonym “He Who Gets Slapped.” For reasons that haven’t translated over the century, Paul becomes a famous attraction. I was baffled as to why getting slapped dozens of times by other clowns caused the audience to double over in laughter.   

       John Gilbert, on the cusp of becoming the biggest romantic figure in films, starring in “The Big Parade” (1925) and Greta Garbo’s co-star in a series of romances, plays a trick horse rider in the circus. He immediately falls for the circus’s new acrobatic rider, played by another future star Norma Shearer, who, unlike Gilbert, was embraced with the coming of sound.

      Their budding love affair is complicated by the ruthless Baron, a friend of her corrupt father (it is a small world), who sets his sights on the young performer. But the disguised clown will have none of it.

      This was one of the first American films directed by Victor Sjöström (he changed his name to Seastrom in Hollywood). Considered the father of Swedish cinema, he went on to work with Lillian Gish in two of her finest pictures, “The Scarlet Letter” (1926) and “The Wind” (1928), one of the greatest works of the silent era. He turned to acting in his later years, most famously, at age 77, as the main character in Ingmar Bergman’s “Wild Strawberries” (1957).

      A few years after its release, “He Who Gets Slapped,” a film about the cruelty and unfairness of life, would never have been made in Hollywood as censorship pushed the industry toward uplifting stories. Before Chaney’s death in 1930 at 47, he probably played more tragic characters than any actor in cinematic history.

     Among his memorable work, all done behind inventive makeup of his own design, include Quasimodo in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (1923), the disfigured, ghostly title character in “The Phantom of the Opera” (1925), a corrupt ventriloquist in “the Unholy Three” (1925) and the murderous Chinese lord in “Mr. Wu” (1927). To me, he’s the finest dramatic actor of the silent era, whose work remains compelling a century later.

  

LA CHIMERA (2023)

    One of the more interesting films of 2023, this Italian picture follows Arthur (Josh O’Connor, one of the stars of tennis film “Challenger”), a sullen, indifferent Englishman who makes his living selling ancient artifacts that he and his gang dig up from unmarked graves across Italy.

    He lives in a shack that sits against a steep cliff—just one step above homelessness—but spends much of his time lamenting the disappearance (death?) of his girlfriend (his chimera) with her spunky mother, amusingly portrayed by Isabella Rossellini. Even when Arthur’s dowsing turns up another centuries-old abandon tomb, he shows little excitement.

    Writer-director Alice Rohrwacher, whose “Happy as Lazzaro” won the screenplay prize at Cannes in 2018, connects the past and the present (it’s set in the 1980s) and the rich and the poor in “La Chimera,” as the lower class provides, or unearths, the collectables of and for the wealthy. In an ancient land like Italy, the past never disappears.

       There’s a thrown-together quality to the film that fits the tone of the story. Nothing goes in a straight line, be it staying a step ahead of the police or a rival, more affluent group of tomb raiders, facing off with the antiques dealers or helping out a housekeeper and single mother (Carol Duarte) survive.

      O’Connor, who portrayed the young Prince Charles in the Netflix series “The Crown,” knows how to play disaffected; his Arthur always seems one step away from throwing himself off a cliff. But memories of his lost love keep him going.

  

STOLEN FACE (1952)

     Before “Vertigo” turned sexual obsession into high art, Hammer Films, the British company later associated with glossy horror pictures, released this twisted tale of a plastic surgeon who recreates a lost love.

     Paul Henreid, a decade after his heroic performance as Victor Laszlo in “Casablanca,” plays Dr. Philip Ritter, who, in an act of goodwill, reconstructs the faces of disfigured convicts in the hope that it will help them avoid returning to the life of crime.

    Just before he’s about to apply his magic to an especially tough female con, he meets Alice, a beautiful concert pianist (the always memorable Lizabeth Scott) while on vacation. They fall in love, but soon after, Alice, who is married, slips out of town, ending the affair. When Ritter discovers she’s spoken for, he gives up on their relationship, but his obsession just begins.

     He not only reconstructs the convict Lily’s face into a duplicate for Alice (not that it’s remotely possible), but he marries her when she’s released from prison. The inevitable consequences ensue, especially once Lily hooks up with her old criminal running mates.

     Scott, as both the criminal and the refined musician, is the reason to see this 72-minute low-budget picture; she pulls off both roles convincingly, though her performance is lessened by the filmmakers’ decision to dub her voice for her “bad” character. Scott was among the essential actresses of film noir, bringing tough-girl spark to “Dead Reckoning” (1946), “I Walk Alone” (1947), “Pitfall” (1948), “Too Late for Tears” (1949) and “The Racket” (1952), just to name a few.

     Director Terence Fisher went on to make “The Curse of Frankenstein” (1957), “Horror of Dracula” (1958) and two dozen other Hammer classics, ending his career with “Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell” (1974).

    Oddly, “Stolen Face” lets the clearly disturbed doctor off the hook with a very abrupt “happy” ending. Surely, the horror instincts of Fisher could have come up with something more sinister, more Hitchcockian.

 

 PHOTOS:

 Owen Teague as Noa in “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.” (Walt Disney Studios)

 Richard Arlen and Louise Brooks in “Beggars of Life” (Paramount Pictures)

 Norma Shearer and Lon Chaney in “He Who Gets Slapped” (MGM)

Paul Henreid and Lizabeth Scott in "Stolen Face." (Hammer Films)