There is no substitute for seeing a movie for the first time all over again, but watching a film you’ve only seen at home in a theater is as close as any.
I have watched Stanley Kubrick’s great noir The Killing multiple times on Bluray. It is a sharp, punchy heist film executed with gorgeous monochrome visuals and Kubrick’s usual dark humor. While Kubrick had made several short films and two features before The Killing, it’s not hard to categorize his third feature effort as his first truly great film or at the very least, the first one to show his full promise as a filmmaker. I got to see The Killing in a theater last week. The combination of the large screen and engaged crowd brought out The Killing’s many strengths anew for me.
The story revolves around a group of criminals out to rob two million dollars from a race track. The ringleader is recently released convict Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden), hoping this big score will allow him to live a comfortable life with his girlfriend Fay (Coleen Gray). The rest of the team is comprised of the race track’s mousy cashier George Peatty (Elisa Cook Jr.), the race track’s bar tender Mike O’Reilly (Joe Sawyer), crooked cop Randy Kennan (Ted de Corsia), Johnny’s partner-in-crime Marvin Unger (Jay C. Flippen), philosophically-minded wrestler Maurice Oboukhoff (Kola Kwariani), and eccentric sharpshooter Nikki Arcane (Timothy Carey). Each has their role to play. So long as the roles are played well and on time, nothing can go wrong.
As one expects in crime films of this type, everything goes wrong, but I won’t spoil how. The fun comes in watching it all play out. The story is told in a non-linear fashion, which increases the suspense and sense of doom over the proceedings. While this is ultimately a pulpy piece of entertainment, The Killing is suffused with a quiet sense of dread and fatalism. Things get ugly as the scheme hums along and when wrenches are thrown into the different phases of the plan, the criminals’ attempts to quickly improvise only cement their fates.
The cast assembled here is nothing short of fantastic. However, it’s Marie Windsor who steals the show as George’s duplicitous wife Sherry, the femme fatale with “a great big dollar sign… where most women have a heart.” She had the audience in the palm of her hand at my screening. What amuses me most about Windsor’s Sherry is how unlike the great femme fatales, she is so bad at lying. With the exception of her husband, she is too gleefully smug to be able to trick anyone. She’s scheming, vain, and ruthless, but oh so fun to watch.
The Killing is rarely listed near the top of any “best Kubrick movies” list, but it has been a firm fixture in my personal top five of the director’s films. Seeing it in a theater only solidified my adoration. I’m not alone in my love for The Killing. Quentin Tarantino claims The Killing as his personal favorite of Kubrick’s work. It’s not hard to spot the film’s influence on the nonlinear criminal plots in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.
I don’t rewatch the Val Lewton horror canon as often as I should. Cat People I have seen plenty of times, but everything else tends to fall by the wayside, which is a shame. The world of Lewton is a beguiling, melancholy one. The horrors within these low-budget treasures are almost cosmic. This isn’t the camp goth of the Universal Horror movies, the Victorian sensationalism of Hammer, or the sleazy blood and guts-ridden universe of slasher films. Lewton’s movies are like winter rain, clinging to your soul long after the final fadeout, the chill not fading so easily.
I had intended to rewatch all the Lewton films last October, but time did not permit. However, I was able to shove a few into my schedule. One revisit particularly intrigued me because it changed my mind on a film I didn’t care much for when I first saw it long ago. That film is I Walked with a Zombie, a transcendent and atmospheric bit of brilliance saddled with a stupid title. Zombie was conceived as a retelling of Charlotte Bronte’s Victorian classic Jane Eyre, a coming of age novel with gothic touches and romance. Lewton’s movie is not a play by play repeat of the original story, but a riff on its character types and themes.
Canadian nurse Betsy (Frances Dee) is hired by the brooding plantation owner Paul Holland (Tom Conway) to care for his invalid wife at their Caribbean estate. Betsy is at first awed by the tropical beauty of the island, but matters take a disturbing turn by degrees. The Afro-Caribbean inhabitants of the island are descended from the slaves brought there long ago, and the trauma of such bondage still haunts the population. Paul Holland is handsome but dour. His half-sibling Wesley Rand (James Ellison) is friendly and flirty with Betsy but resentful of his brother. And then Betsy’s patient Jessica Holland (Christine Gordon) is not merely sick, but basically catatonic and without willpower, though she can walk if commanded.
The Holland family is a gothic buffet of drama. Jessica became as she is due to a fever, but before that, she was a passionate woman who cuckolded her husband with Wesley. Now Betsy is caught in a love triangle between the two brothers, though she favors Paul. Realizing Jessica’s presence means she can never have Paul as a husband, Betsy decides to do her best to cure her to make Paul happy. When modern medical science doesn’t do the trick, she resorts to the Voodoo practices of the islanders after a recommendation from Alma (Theresa Harris), one of the Holland family servants. But will this actually work?
WARNING: I will be free with spoilers. If you have not seen this film but want to, please watch it first then come back to this piece.
When I first saw I Walked with a Zombie, I was disappointed that the main character seems to lose relevance as the runtime ticks down. At first, it seems the main thrust of the plot is the Betsy/Paul romance and Betsy’s desire to see her patient restored. Betsy is an active narrative force until she tries taking Jessica to a Voodoo ritual, only for her plan to seemingly end in failure. She learns Paul and Rand’s mother Mrs. Holland (Edith Barrett), a skeptical doctor’s assistant, seems to be running the Voodoo show like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain. She pretends to be possessed by spirits so the islanders will take her medical advice, making it initially appear as though the magic and rituals were a sham. But from here on, things actually become less clear and explainable– and far more disquieting.
The greatest Lewton movies lean into mystery. The worst horror of all is not in bloodshed, but in the unknown. Modern people think they are masters of nature and all understanding, but we are often controlled by forces we do not comprehend. Mrs. Holland belittles her Black patients for not being Christian or “civilized” enough, mocking their religion as nonsense. And yet, we learn Mrs. Holland participated in the Voodoo rituals and was so emotionally involved in them that she put a curse on Jessica to turn her trouble-making daughter-in-law into a zombie. She immediately felt remorse after, but the next time she laid eyes on Jessica, the woman was suffering with the fever that claimed her agency.
In addition to Jessica’s zombified state, the history of the movie’s setting also ties into ideas about free will. San Sebastian was a slave colony. The Black population there still feels the pain of that history, even as their strong community and commitment to Voodoo offers some healing. The original figurehead from the slave ship (an image of St. Sebastian writhing in torment) that brought the first Black inhabitants to the island is preserved as a memorial to the pain and humiliation of slavery. Nicknamed “Ti-Misery,” it is the film’s most potent symbol of generational trauma, even if the island’s White population tries to forget it ever happened or was as bad as described. Early in the movie, when a Black coachman taking Betsy to the Holland home shares the sad past of San Sebastian, Betsy tries putting a sugared spin on the story, saying, “[The slavers] brought you to a beautiful place, didn’t they?” The coachman warily replies, “If you say so, miss.”
Zombie boasts a shockingly anti-colonial perspective for a Hollywood product of the 1940s. In this light, the continued practice of Voodoo on the island takes on a note of cultural defiance in the face of the colonizers and their desire to make the population conform to the beliefs and customs of the likes of the Holland family– who are hardly exemplars of Christian virtue themselves, with their proclivities for adultery, drinking, and vengeance.
Ultimately, the Holland family’s sins come home to roost. Jessica’s zombified state is initially given rational explanations, but it could also be seen as an ironic punishment, not only for Jessica’s adultery but for the island’s history of Black enslavement. However, exclusive scientific assessment goes out the window when one of the Voodoo practitioners sticks a sword in Jessica’s arm and she does not bleed.
As the film goes on, it appears that the Voodoo practitioners are drawing Jessica to her death with their rituals, but she is murdered by Wesley. Still in love with Jessica, Wesley sees his act as a mercy killing. But was this a free act or something beyond Wesley’s control? (Crimes in the Lewton canon are commonly ones of passion, with the killers claiming there is a power beyond themselves that made them act as they did. See the murderer in The Leopard Man or even the tragic Irina of Cat People for earlier examples.)
The climax draws Wesley– carrying Jessica’s murdered body– to the coast as he is pursued by the haunting figure of Carrefour, the man who guards the Voodoo rituals. Carrefour appears menacing with his staring eyes and great size, but as he follows the panicked Wesley, his intentions are unclear. In her analysis of the film, film blogger Nitrate Diva observes, “…the images could be interpreted in several different ways: is Carrefour trying to save the sinners as he reaches for them… or push them into the sea?”
I Walked with a Zombie ends on a note of glooming peace. The character of Ti-Joseph does not gloat over the deaths of Jessica and Wesley, but prays that their sins be forgiven. He suggests Jessica was a zombie even in her pre-illness life because she allowed her baser impulses to drive her actions. The prayer combines both Voodoo and Christian ideas, suggesting the possibility of wholeness and harmony for the population of San Sebastian. And yet, the film’s final image is not that of reunified lovers Betsy and Paul, but of the Ti-Misery figurehead. The past lingers, unwilling to be ignored in favor of easy platitudes.
Nitrate Diva calls I Walked with a Zombie modernist in its shifting perspective. My own realization of the purpose of that shifting perspective– from Betsy to the greater story of the San Sebastian population– is what made the movie’s genius finally click. Betsy is decentered because the story is bigger than her individual viewpoint. Zombie is less a tale of frustrated romance and more about Faulkner’s old adage that the past is never truly past.
We live in a time when so many horror films feature the idea that “the real monster is trauma!” but they execute this in rather blunt ways that do not stir the imagination as Lewton could with his ambiguities and willingness to pose uncomfortable questions about humanity. I Walked with a Zombie can be enjoyed as a spooky yarn, but it is so much richer when one takes into account its insinuations about free will, redemption, and the weight of colonial exploitation. I now consider it one of my top three Lewton films. If you didn’t take to it on a first watch, I recommend a revisit. It might just surprise you.
NOTE: Normally, I include screencaps from my DVD/Bluray editions of the reviewed film in my posts, but there were technical issues that prevented me from doing so today. My apologies.
Come the new year, I like to take a look back at the box office hits of a century ago (at least, box office hits in North America). Did viewers have better taste? Did they also like slop? Among the big hits, you’ll always find a mix of good, bad, and mediocre. Sometimes, beloved classics are right there. Oftentimes, you’ll find films that have been hidden in the sands of time—sometimes for good reason, sometimes not.
Nineteen-twenty-six is a kind of calm before the storm in terms of film history. As I mentioned in last year’s series on the hits of 1925, silent film never experienced much threat from the concept of sound films despite flirtations with the technology as early as 1895. Problems with amplification and image-sound synchronization made exhibition of talking pictures a pain and audiences showed little interest, so studios had no incentive to pursue further development of the talkie, as it came to be popularly known.
And then along came Warner Bros. and the Vitaphone system, soon to upend an entire industry and art form practically overnight.
New York moviegoers queued up to see John Barrymore in Don Juan, the first feature film to use the Vitaphone technology that helped usher out the silent era. Image source: Wikipedia
By 1926, the four Warner Brothers– Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack– had been in the movie business since 1910, yet their studio was not among the top tier of the industry. Matters did not seem likely to change either, as the motion picture industry was experiencing a slump. Radio made a dent in the entertainment marketplace, drawing audiences away from the theaters just as television, video games, and streaming would in the decades to follow.
Sam Warner was fascinated by radio and this interest became a gateway to a further interest in the possibility of synchronized sound on film. His brothers were less enthused, but they were willing enough to take a chance on sound if baby steps were taken. In 1926, Warner Bros. produced a series of short films of vaudevillians and musicians with the Vitaphone sound-on-disc process. This process involved the sound being recorded on a record, then played in sync with the projected images. Compared to attempts at “talking films” in the past, the Vitaphone system provided superior amplification and fidelity due to using electrical recording rather than the mechanical recording and playback of former systems.
Warners also put Vitaphone to use on a feature film, the John Barrymore vehicle Don Juan. However, the technology was only used to pre-record a musical score and sound effects, not spoken dialogue. Images and intertitles were still the order of the day in communicating vital narrative information to the audience. For the time being, this appeared to be the way “sound films” would manifest in the years to come. As Harry Warner said, “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” It was not so different from what motion pictures had been. The future was manageable… for the time being.
My usual note: It is difficult to get 100% accurate box office information from the silent era and this list is based on the top ten films offered up by Wikipedia as the big hits of 1926. Box office numbers can vary depending on the source (and here, I just stuck to the Wikipedia numbers for consistency’s sake; Wikipedia often cites research done by H. Mark Glancy on studio grosses based on studio ledgers for Warner Bros. and MGM), so just keep that in mind as we forge ahead.
Sources:
Eyman, S. (2015). The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution 1926-1930. Simon & Schuster.
Captain Ahab (John Barrymore), that hunky, charming dreamboat sailing the seven seas (no I’m not joking), is excited to reunite with his girlfriend Esther (Dolores Costello). Their relationship is challenged by Derek (George O’Hara), Ahab’s jealous brother. During an encounter with the infamous Moby Dick, a white whale that has destroyed many ships and eluded capture, Derek shoves Ahab into the sea in the hopes of eliminating romantic competition. The plan doesn’t go as planned since Ahab survives, but he loses a leg in the process. Humiliated by Esther’s horrified reaction to his disability, Ahab returns to the sea to vent his anger on the whale. Will his quest bring him inner peace or destroy him?
Hermann Melville’s 1851 novel Moby-Dick was not always the academic darling it is now. Released to poor sales and often baffled reviews, it languished in obscurity until the 1920s. Around this time, a Melville reappraisal ongoing from the 1890s culminated in rediscovery of this epic work. Naturally, such rediscovery was not lost on Hollywood, always looking to legitimize itself by adapting the classics.
The Sea Beast was the first cinematic adaptation of the novel. It should shock no one that the property was properly Hollywood-ized during the transition from page to screen. I have not read the book yet (it was assigned reading in high school, but my English teacher said it was “the one book I absolutely loathe” so she had us read something else instead), but from what I do know, there isn’t a love triangle. Here, the whale is secondary to Ahab’s romantic problems.
I admit it’s hard to properly evaluate The Sea Beast as cinema when all the copies I could find look awful and washed out. The film is begging for a proper restoration, especially since the whale hunting scenes and special effects appear to have been a big draw for audiences at the time. However, one can still appreciate Barrymore’s central performance, which is astonishing.
During this period, John Barrymore was a beloved matinee idol enjoying success on stage and screen. Aside from Rin Tin Tin, he was the biggest star asset Warner Bros. possessed. In 1926, he would appear in two movie megahits: The Sea Beast and Don Juan. Interestingly, both play with Barrymore’s romantic appeal by complicating it. Don Juan sees its hero driven to womanizing due to witnessing his mother’s infidelity and his father’s misogyny. The Sea Beast features a conventional romantic hero who becomes pathologically obsessed with avenging his sense of masculinity after he is disabled.
The film is best viewed as a reflection of post-WWI masculinity than any kind of engagement with Melville. As Dominic Lennard observes in his chapter-length analysis of The Sea Beast in Hamlet Lives in Hollywood: John Barrymore and the Acting Tradition Onscreen, Ahab is initially presented as a romantic ideal. Handsome, playful, and sensuous, it isn’t hard to see why Esther swoons over him. Their first love scene in a moonlit garden rivals anything in Valentino’s vehicles for sheer sexual charge. However, after Ahab loses a leg to Moby Dick, his relationships to Esther and society at large are challenged.
Ahab is no longer seen as a human being, but as an object of horror and pity. Even Esther recoils from him, though she tries to check her disgust with compassion. This was undoubtedly a sentiment understood by soldiers who returned from the First World War blinded or without limbs. While medical technology had evolved to make quality of life better for injured soldiers by the 1910s, society still held onto negative attitudes that painted disabled people as helpless—and disabled men in particular as emasculated.
Barrymore’s Ahab fights against the emasculation label by transforming himself into a tyrannical avenger. While he feels he has lost Esther, he reorganizes all his energies into destroying the white whale. Revenge allows him to salvage his public masculinity. The transition from dreamy youth to embittered experience goes beyond a change in make-up. Barrymore makes the character’s mental evolution feel credible, even though the difference between all the phases of Ahab’s life seem as dramatic as his turn as Jekyll and Hyde in 1920.
Unfortunately as I said, it’s hard to fully appreciate the performance when the available prints look so terrible. There are moments where Barrymore’s body language is discernible but his expressions are not, which is so frustrating. What I can see, I enjoy immensely though and I hope a restored version becomes available someday.
Sources:
Lennard, D. (2018). “Keep Back Your Pity”: The Wounded Barrymore of The Sea Beast and Moby Dick. In Murray Pomerance & Steven Rybin (eds.) Hamlet Lives in Hollywood: John Barrymore and the Acting Tradition Onscreen (pp. 59-70). Edinburg University Press.
Years after the original Sheik film, Ahmed and Diana’s adult son embarks on adventures of his own. Named for his father, the young Ahmed (Rudolph Valentino) is romancing a spunky French dancing girl, Yasmin (Vilma Banky). The relationship is imperiled by Ghabah (Monatgue Love), a bandit who desires Yasmin for himself. Seeing a lucrative payday, Ghabah uses Ahmed’s affection for Yasmin to lure him into a trap. He tortures Ahmed and holds him for ransom, but the young man manages to escape with the help of friends. Believing Yasmin to have been complicit in his kidnapping, Ahmed sets out to avenge himself on the innocent woman. But when he learns the truth, can their relationship survive his vengeance?
Sequels were not the bread and butter of Hollywood output back in the 1920s, but they could be lucrative indeed when following up on the heels of a mega-blockbuster. The Son of the Sheik was an eagerly anticipated sequel in its day. Its predecessor The Sheik was not just a box office hit, but a major touchstone for the Roaring Twenties zeitgeist. Ladies men were called sheiks, their female counterparts “shebas.” Desert romance became a hot genre on page and screen, with everyone from Norma Talmadge to Ramon Novarro trekking the silver sands of the movie screen to find adventure and eros. And of course, The Sheik became the film to catapult longtime bit and supporting player Rudolph Valentino into superstardom after he already drew massive acclaim as the lead in Rex Ingram’s WWI epic The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
While proud of his work in Ingram’s film, Valentino was embarrassed by The Sheik, which was something of the Twilight or Fifty Shades of Grey of its era. Valentino’s nostril-flaring, teeth-flashing performance is certainly far from his best and he knew it. For the next five years, Valentino tried his best to secure better roles and scripts with middling success. A two year absence from the screen due to disputes with Famous Players-Lasky (later known as Paramount) threatened to quench his screen career as soon as it began. However, by 1924, Valentino was appearing in movies again and slowly regaining steam. His appearance in Clarence Brown’s charming swashbuckler The Eagle was a hit and hopes were high that his next vehicle would be an even bigger one: The Son of the Sheik.
Conditions were favorable during the making of the sequel. Valentino had long wanted to work with director George Fitzmaurice and now he would be directing him in Son. Delicately beautiful Hungarian actress Vilma Banky, who had played so well beside Valentino in The Eagle, returned as his leading lady. Though the desert scenes were shot in the 110 degree heat of an Arizona desert, Valentino enjoyed himself immensely, riding on horseback and performing his own stunts. The Son of the Sheik appeared as though it would be a return to form for its star. Instead it would be a swan song. Valentino died of peritonitis at age 31, just a few weeks after the movie’s premiere.
Conventional fan wisdom deems Son a superior effort to its predecessor. It’s not a hard argument to make. The sequel is better paced and laced with a more knowing sense of humor about the desert romance genre. The action is amped up considerably, taking a page from the Douglas Fairbanks playbook with chases, breezy humor, and sword fights. Son shares a production designer with Fairbanks’ Thief of Bagdad, the great William Cameron Menzies. It also cribs a few tropes from Fairbanks’ Don Q, Son of Zorro, most notably the device of the lead actor playing both father and son in a dual role.
Quite unlike Fairbanks is Son‘s sadomasochistic fantasy aspect. Despite its reputation as racy, bodice-ripping excitement, the original Sheik film had to tiptoe around all matters sexual for fear of the censor’s shears. Released as the glories of the permissive pre-code era were coming into full flower, the sequel doesn’t bother. We get a scene of Valentino tied up and whipped by the villains, and then the film’s famous “ravishment” sequence with Valentino circling Banky like a bird of prey in his tent. These are scenes that indulge the darkest fantasies of the audience and must have been like an electric shock even in the more liberated 1920s.
But what do I think of Son? I’ve seen it multiple times since I was a teenager in the 2000s and back then it was once one of my favorite films, but to be honest, my response has become more mixed. I like the breezy action and more self-aware humor. The visuals are beautiful as are Valentino and Banky. However, a few things bother me more than they did when I was a kid.
Obviously, the rampant orientalism of both films is something that bothers me as a modern viewer, though it would have been taken for granted by a 1920s audience. I also don’t care for the comic relief of Karl Dane as the young Ahmed’s confidante. There’s delightfully over the top and then there’s exhausting obnoxiousness, and I felt Dane veered more towards the latter. The film’s humor works much better when it arises from the conflict between father and son. In fact, Valentino shows off his comic chops as the older sheik, making his characterization more blustery and energetic in a manner that recalls his more histrionic characterization in the original. It’s a performance that gently kids the first film while also building upon it. I actually think this generational conflict thread is the strongest part of the movie and wish we had more of it.
In general, the plot is quite thin, even compared to the original Sheik and a runtime that barely outpaces an hour. Yasmin and Ahmed’s relationship is imperiled by simple misunderstanding, rather than the war of wills between Ahmed Sr. and the independence-minded Diana in the original. Not that The Sheik constituted Ibsen-esque drama and I must stress it is very silly, but it is a bit more robust than what we see in Son. And before anyone complains, I get it— no one in 1926 was lining up for a great story when they bought a ticket to The Son of the Sheik. They wanted adventure and sex, and they got it. Old Hollywood star vehicles were designed for particular personas and not necessarily to create high art. However, some such films happen to have good storytelling and interesting characters while also banking on a star’s image. I don’t think The Son of the Sheik does this so well. A Letterboxd review from user Lasse Galsgaard puts it like this: “Emotional arcs are underdeveloped, with characters functioning more as narrative placeholders than as fully realized individuals. The film’s dramatic momentum is driven less by evolving relationships than by the need to position Valentino within a series of expressive and visually striking situations.” Maybe if the film didn’t have its more serious dramatic moments, this would not bother me quite as much. I don’t know, but it just didn’t satisfy me as a story the way it once did.
The Son of the Sheik excels as a showcase for Valentino’s exceptional star qualities: the smoldering sensuality, the touches of self-deprecating humor, the physical action, the emotional and sexual undercurrents of sadomasochism. For these reasons, it operates well as a swan song to Valentino’s screen image, but I think Valentino appeared in better films than this one: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Blood and Sand, and The Eagle make a decent case for being such. An unpopular opinion, but you can’t like every beloved film.
Sources:
Leider, E. (2003). Dark Lover: The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino. Faber and Faber.
Bumbling but jovial British infantryman Old Bill (Sydney Chaplin) and his sidekick Alfie (Jack Ackroyd) experience and perpetuate a series of hijincks during World War One. Then they discover the major (Charles K. Gerrard) in their regiment is none other than a notorious double agent for the Germans. More hijincks ensue.
Charlie Chaplin looms so large over collective memory of the silent era that it’s easy for even silent movie geeks to forget his half-brother Syd also had a lucrative film career. Syd Chaplin is often remembered as the younger Chaplin’s supportive older sibling. The two soldiered through a hard childhood marked by poverty and the mental illness of their mother, Hannah. Following a stint at sea, Syd went into show business as an actor and music hall performer. When Charlie Chaplin became a major film star in the 1910s, Syd appeared in several of his brother’s movies, such as A Dog’s Life and Shoulder Arms. However, he was able to carve out a smaller but still successful movie career for himself as a solo performer. In the 1920s, Warner Bros. featured him in five films, the most lucrative of them being the WWI comedy The Better ‘Ole, an adaptation of a musical about popular comic strip character “Old Bill.”
Comic strips were a more significant part of the popular culture during the twentieth century. I think it’s safe to say that between the 1910s and the 1960s, most “comic adaptations” conjured up associations with newspaper funnies as opposed to superheroes. Old Bill was created by British cartoonist Bruce Bainsfather in 1914. The characters of Bill and his sidekick Alfie were enormously popular during the war years. A stage musical adaptation titled The Better ‘Ole followed in 1917. Ironically, this musical was made into two silent films, the first being a now-lost feature from 1919 and the second being the Sydney Chaplin vehicle of 1926. Old Bill would continue his onscreen existence throughout the 1920s and 1930s.
The origin of The Better ‘Ole’s title comes from this 1915 Bainsfather comic. Image source: Wikipedia
Owing to its origins in comic strips, The Better ‘Ole is an episodic lark rather than a unified narrative despite the consistent threat of a double agent. Depending on how much you take to the comedy, this is either going to be a lighthearted romp or an aimless drag. One cannot help comparing The Better ‘Ole to Shoulder Arms, a wartime comedy made by Charlie Chaplin while the conflict was ongoing but near its end. That film has a bit more bite to it and a surreal, cartoony edge that makes a fascinating juxtaposition with its portrayal of the miseries of life in the trenches. Made almost a decade later, The Better ‘Ole is more polished and reserved in its approach to wartime life– and to my mind, less interesting.
I first saw this film years ago but remembered little to nothing of it when I rewatched it for this series. On my second viewing, I found the film likable but not especially memorable. The scene that sticks out most is one where the main characters run around in a hilariously fake horse costume, evading German soldiers who have launched an attack during a camp performance. From that point forward, the film gathers steam, but the first half is so underwhelming that I think The Better ‘Ole would have been more enjoyable as a two-reeler than a feature. I feel bad that I don’t have more to say, but I suspect for all the film’s original success, its charms were best enjoyed by the 1926 filmgoing audience.
The Better ‘Ole is a significant film in other ways. It was the second feature to use Vitaphone sound technology. As with its predecessor Don Juan, the sound here is largely limited to a score and sound effects. There are no instances of spoken dialogue, though debate rages over whether or not a character says the word “coffee.” (I personally don’t hear it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.) This little bit of spoken dialogue signifies a slight advancement from the first Vitaphone feature Don Juan, which only had music and sound effects, but otherwise, The Better ‘Ole remains less in the memory than Don Juan. With or without Vitaphone, Don Juan is a rousing adventure that would still be remembered as an enjoyable silent yarn, while The Better ‘Ole sans Vitaphone would be more of a footnote than it already is.
Sources:
Eyman, S. (2015). The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution 1926-1930. Simon & Schuster.
NOTE: There are slight spoilers in the last paragraph. If you have not seen the film and that bothers you, please refrain from reading. Thank you.
It’s always nice to revisit a movie you haven’t seen in a long time and get to feel as though you’re watching it for the first time all over again. Foreign Correspondent is not the most famous Hitchcock movie, but it is among his best work in the 1940s. Not quite to the same level as Notorious nor as iconic as Rebecca, but still a worthy entry in the Hitch canon.
The film follows a reporter with the hilariously American name of John Jones (Joel McCrea) as he moves into work as a foreign correspondent in Europe. His initial assignment seems tame enough: attend a luncheon where Van Meer, a noted Dutch diplomat, plans to speak. He manages to catch a ride with the man in question, only for them to be separated when arriving at the event itself. Matters become stranger when the old man fails to appear once the luncheon begins.
When John encounters Van Meer again at a conference, the diplomat does not appear to recognize him. Before John can try to figure out why, Van Meer is assassinated before his eyes. John spots the killer and gives chase, kickstarting his discovery of a political conspiracy and spy ring that prove all the makings of a great scoop. Aided by an intelligent peace activist (Laraine Day) and a fellow reporter (George Saunders), it’s up to John and company to foil the spies’ plot as Europe quickly descends into total war.
Foreign Correspondent is a strong, enjoyable thriller with a dash of wartime propaganda. In many ways, it feels like a spiritual successor to that most famous of Hitchcock’s British films, The 39 Steps. You have an everyman hero thrust into the rumblings of a potential war, a whirlwind romance, and plenty of political intrigue. But while the potential war in The 39 Steps is vague and ultimately thwarted, the real life stakes were all too high by the time of Foreign Correspondent‘s release in 1940. The US had yet to enter the war, as isolationist sentiments were still strong among the American public, but that would change soon.
While the fascist threat is emphasized in Foreign Correspondent (and this sense of menace would be escalated in 1942’s Saboteur), it is still a relatively lightweight adventure yarn until its final act. The casting of Joel McCrea in the lead helps that point. McCrea always had an easygoing and laconic demeanor that suited the adventure and thriller genre, and he handles both the comic and dramatic elements of the story well. His love interest is played by Laraine Day, who is charming and affable, but he has way more chemistry with George Saunders. The two banter well and their interactions are often hilarious. I actually enjoy Saunders more here than I do in the more well-regarded Rebecca. The scene where he drives a car in the most nonchalant way during a chase is pure comedy gold.
But the film ends on a note of urgency. McCrea makes a radio broadcast in London while the bombs begin to fall, hoping to make clear the stakes for his fellow Americans. It is a bold, dramatic way to end the film, allowing reality to creep out of the escapism of the movie screen, but it works brilliantly.
This post was written for the Film. Release. Repeat Blogathon hosted by Hamlette’s Soliloquy and The Midnite Drive-In. Check out their blogs for more articles on remakes both good and bad.
In 1998, filmmaker Gus Van Sant offended all that was sacred when he chose to remake Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. While shot in lurid color and set in the 1990s, the Van Sant Psycho was virtually shot for shot and line for line the same as the 1960 original. However, what resulted was not another great movie. Quite the opposite. The new actors lent different (and often awful) line readings of the same Joseph Stefano dialogue, giving the movie a distinct feel. Where the old movie inspired dread, the newer one played more like a trashy comedy.
In a 2005 interview with the New York Times, Van Sant admitted his Psycho remake was an artistic failure, but as an experiment in adaptation, the results were intriguing:
“”You can’t copy a film,” he said. “If I hold a camera, it’s different than if Irving Penn holds it. Even if it’s in the same place, it will magically take on his character. Which was part of the experiment. Our ‘Psycho’ showed that you can’t really appropriate. Or you can appropriate, but it’s not going to be the same thing.”
You probably wonder why the hell I’m starting off a review of You Can’t Run Away From It— a remake of It Happened One Night— with information about the infamous Psycho remake. That’s because the Van Sant Psycho and the 1956 musical remake You Can’t Run Away From It have more in common than you’d think.
They both illustrate the same point: even the closest remakes of a classic can never capture what made the original so special. Different directors, different actors, different eras—they all add up to something new. You Can’t Run Away From It is a perfect example of that principle. While it is close enough to the original in terms of plot beats and dialogue, it doesn’t come close to recapturing the proverbial lightning in a bottle.
Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in the immortal It Happened One Night. Image source: IMDB
It Happened One Night is one of the great popular successes of the 1930s. Despite being headed by a pair of stars who had to be forced into making it, Frank Capra’s 1934 romantic comedy was a critical and commercial darling. Not only did it rake in money and awards, it also became the Ur text of the screwball comedy genre which flourished in the ‘30s and ‘40s.
The story follows Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert in the 1934 film, June Allyson in the 1956 remake), a spoiled heiress kidnapped by her overprotective father after she elopes with a gold-digging scoundrel. Though locked up on a yacht, Ellie escapes and hits the road with the intention of reuniting with her husband. Though clever enough to evade the police her father has sent after her, Ellie has been sheltered her entire life and has a hard time dealing with life as it is experienced by working class people.
Enter Peter Warne (Clark Gable in 1934, Jack Lemmon in 1956), a down-on-his-luck reporter who sees in Ellie a chance for the hot scoop that could revive his career. He’ll help her reunite with her husband if she gives him a lucrative interview about her experiences on the road. The two become reluctant allies as they hide from police and potential informers out to turn Ellie in for the reward money from her anxious father. And of course, they fall in love along the way.
What makes It Happened One Night so special? Robert Riskin’s witty, well-paced script (based on a short story by Samuel Hopkins Adams) is certainly a major contributor to the movie’s classic status, but it isn’t alone in doing all the heavy lifting. Colbert and Gable are an iconic movie couple: funny, charismatic, and sympathetic. They’re half lovers, half mischievous partners in crime (metaphorically speaking). Capra’s characteristic populism pervades the movie’s depiction of Depression-era America, summoning up a “we’re all in this together” sentiment that is very comforting (and one you wish was more prevalent in real life). The black-and-white cinematography is luminous, emphasizing a romantic realism, as contradictory as that sounds.
You Can’t Run Away From It was not the first remake of It Happened One Night. It wasn’t even the first musical remake! Columbia cranked out a 1945 musical remake of the Capra classic under the title Eve Knew Her Apples. I have never seen that one so I cannot comment on it, though a quick look at a plot summary shows the details of the story were changed. The leading lady is no longer an heiress on the run from her meddling father, but an overworked radio star running from her manager. You Can’t Run is much closer to its source, changing very little save for updating the time period, relocating the road trip from the east coast to the west, and making Ellie the daughter of a Texas-born tycoon. Directed by Dick Powell (yes, THAT Dick Powell!) and using Robert Riskin’s original script mostly intact, what could go wrong?
You Can’t Run is part of a peculiar postwar Hollywood trend of remaking earlier, black-and-white romantic comedies as glossy, color musicals. The Philadelphia Story becomes High Society. The Women becomes The Opposite Sex. Ball of Fire becomes A Song is Born. While some of these remakes have gone on to have dedicated fanbases of their own, today’s subject is not among them, despite the star wattage before and behind the camera.
It isn’t hard to figure out why.
I don’t feel compelled to give you another plot summary because this is largely a beat for beat retelling of Capra’s original. The setting is moved to the 1950s and there we have our first big diversion from what makes It Happened One Night so special. It Happened One Night is a quintessential Depression era film. Ellie’s ridiculous wealth and her out of touch relationship with reality as it is lived by the millions of Americans impacted by the Depression contributes a great deal to the film’s poignancy. The working-class Peter Warne becomes her guide into the messy world of trailer parks, night buses, and the dusty countryside. Ellie goes from a spoiled heiress throwing an expensive steak onto the floor with nary a thought to a vagabond having to make do with raw carrots.
This “rich person gets a wake up call” quality is absent from the remake. In prosperous postwar America, Ellie having to rough it on the road doesn’t hit the same way. You don’t have the scene where a hungry mother faints on the bus as her child weeps in panic as in the 1934 movie, for instance. There is a distinct lack of the class bitterness that gives the Capra movie its bite. The sense that these characters are roughing it is also subdued. The scene with Ellie trying to cut the line for the shower is gone, as are other charming scenes, like the one where Peter teaches her how to properly dunk a donut.
Ellie is the character who generally suffers the most in this version. Claudette Colbert brought a compelling blend of aristocratic aloofness and thawing warmth to the character. She could be a spoiled brat, but she was ultimately much smarter and sweeter than she initially appeared. The adventure brought out the best in her and allowed her to grow as a person.
Allyson is just plain miscast as Ellie. For one thing, she’s not convincing as a young ingenue and as a result, when she makes poor decisions, it doesn’t come off like a sheltered young thing making mistakes. It just comes off as a mature woman being foolish. When her Ellie starts to loosen up, she doesn’t become vulnerable so much as clownishly shrill. I hate to crap on Allyson because I find her charming when she’s in the right part. Her Jo in the 1949 Little Women is a delight—and even there she was technically much too old for the role—but here, she just isn’t at her best.
Jack Lemmon acquits himself somewhat better as the down to earth Peter Warne, but even he suffers when compared to Gable. A great deal of Lemmon’s issues come from what the script cuts. Because while it is true that this film is largely just a rehash of Riskin’s script, some of Peter’s best moments are left out. I already mentioned his donut dunking lesson being axed, but the remake also cuts his imitating a gangster to scare off a potential pursuer or his extended demonstration of how to thumb a ride before Ellie flashes her leg.
When people talk about Clark Gable in the original It Happened One Night, much is made of his inherent sex appeal, but what most distinguishes his Peter Warne for me is his trickster nature. He is constantly improvising and bluffing his way through life. Anytime I see Gable in that film, I think of the part in Mel Brooks’ History of the World Part 1 when Bea Arthur calls Brooks “a bullshit artist,” because that’s what Peter is—an exquisite artiste in BS-ery. I’m sure Lemmon would have done well with this element of the Peter character, but a lot of it is cut. As a result, his Peter is rather bland in comparison to Gable.
Between an irritating June Allyson and a tepid Jack Lemmon, there is no chemistry to speak of. Capra’s film sizzled with the tension between Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable. It was apparent in every scene, especially when “the walls of Jericho” divided their pajama clad bodies to different ends of a cabin. These same scenes feel so prim and sexless in the remake, partly because there is no spark between the leads and partly because the direction and staging are so impersonal, as though director Powell was at a loss at how to compose an interesting shot in widescreen.
Oh, and then there’s the music. Almost forgot I was reviewing a musical, didn’t you? So was I because there are only a handful of songs and they are all utterly forgettable, both melodically and lyrically. I cannot remember the melody from any of them.
Let’s go back to the walls of Jericho scene I was just discussing. A musical number called “Temporarily” occurs during this scene, illustrating how annoyed Peter is that he has to share space with this spoiled, snotty heiress and how aghast Ellie is that she has to pretend to be the wife of this boorish newspaper man she thinks may just take advantage of her at night. Her only comfort is that the charade is temporary. Oh, and apparently they’re kind of physically attracted to each other too, I guess.
Powell’s blocking of the scene has the actors circling the “walls” as they each undress and then having to constantly readjust their placement as they go about their nighttime routines. There is the occasional saucy bit of business, like Ellie throwing her stockings over the wall and the nylons hitting Peter’s head, but the two actors don’t seem all that flustered by each other. The palpable tension between Colbert and Gable is gone, replaced by a mechanical sense of just going through the motions of budding tension.
“Nitrate Glow, you’re being unfair! You need to judge the remake on its own terms!” I hear a hypothetical voice shout.
The issue is even if I could wipe the original from my mind, You Can’t Run Away From It is still a forgettable experience. It’s a mediocre musical and romantic comedy that would be even more of a footnote than it is if it weren’t connected to a classic. Nothing about You Can’t Run Away From It is an improvement on It Happened One Night. It just feels mechanical and perfunctory, the kind of remake that gives remakes a bad name. I wouldn’t call it the worst movie I have ever seen as it’s competent enough, but it is a pointless exercise. I can only recommend it as a curiosity for classic film fans.
Has something ever made you laugh so hard you doubled over as your lungs screamed in agonizing mirth? Only a handful of films have ever done that to me, chief among them The Fatal Glass of Beer.
What is The Fatal Glass of Beer? It is a WC Fields short film lampooning all sorts of melodramatic tropes from the past century’s worth of popular culture. Set in the wintry north, it involves WC Fields recounting the tragedy of his wayward son Chester, who left for the city and subsequently became an alcoholic criminal jailed for theft. The prodigal returns to his parents weeping contrite tears. At first sympathetic to the boy, Fields asks if he still has the money he stole and when he says no–and that he plans on living off his parents for the rest of his life– Fields approaches the situation with something less than parental charity.
The Yukon setting was a popular choice for stage and film in the 1910s and 1920s, from romantic adventures like Tiger Rose to comedies like The Gold Rush to sensational dramas like The Trail of ’98. The anti-drink messaging and Christian moralizing was common in temperance melodramas of the Victorian era like The Drunkard. However, when you pair such sentimental, ripe material with the misanthropic world of WC Fields, the result is comedy gold.
Comedy is hard to analyze without sounding like a pretentious killjoy. All I can say is that The Fatal Glass of Beer is hilarious to me because it portrays its melodramatic parody in such a nonchalant way. The sets feel half-assed as though the merest nudge from any of the cheaply costumed performers onscreen would send them toppling over. Fields’ repeated cry that, “T’ain’t a fit night out FOR MAN OR BEAST!” is constantly greeted with a handful of fake snow to the face. Obvious phony stock footage makes repeated appearances. There is a meta quality to the whole short that makes it seem very modern.
Can’t really say much more than that. Gotta go milk the elk.
Twenty-twenty-five has been an INSANE year. Every time I think my life will settle down, it throws me a curveball. In 2023, it was my grandfather dying. In 2024, it was a new job. In 2025, it was falling in love– so it’s been a good kind of insane at least!
It’s often tough fitting blogging into my schedule, but I wouldn’t give it up for the world. I love old films. I love researching them. I love sharing my thoughts with the online classic film community. I appreciate reading everyone else’s discoveries and insights throughout the year.
Here is my year-end review. What new discoveries thrilled me? What posts am I proudest of? What are my blogging plans for the year to come?
Top five favorite classic film discoveries
Selected films of Roberto Rossellini
I cheated for this first slot by making it multiple films, but I cannot help it. I never expected to be bowled over by Rossellini. I am not especially enamored of Italian Neorealism and so expected any pleasure I’d gain from his work would be academic. I saw Journey to Italy a year or so ago, and it took some ruminating for its brilliance to dawn upon me. Rossellini’s work does not indulge in stylish razzle dazzle. There is an unvarnished simplicity to these films that can be deceptive because beneath the surface, there is so much going on.
While Rome Open City is the most famous of the Rossellini films I saw for the first time this year, it was not my favorite of the lot. Rome Open City features beautiful performances from Anna Magnani and Aldo Fabrizi as an unmarried mother and Catholic priest caught up in the anti-Nazi resistance, but I was more taken by Germany Year Zero. That film mixes melodrama and realism in a fascinating way as it explores lingering traces of Nazi ideology in the ruins of postwar Germany and from the perspective of a child. I won’t spoil the ending of that film, but it devastated me for hours afterward. And then there is the television series The Age of the Medici, which slavishly recreates a Europe emerging from the middle ages into the more secular, more commercial early modern era.
My two top favorite Rossellini discoveries were The Flowers of St. Francis and The Taking of Power by Louis XIV. Both are biopics in a sense, though not of the cradle to grave variety. Each focuses on a specific chapter in the lives of their subjects. Flowers is more episodic, retelling tales of Francis of Assisi and his followers as they strive to embody the Christian virtues of poverty, humility, and grace. I am rather disillusioned when it comes to religion, but this film is a great example of how faith can ennoble the human spirit. My favorite scene relates the story of St. Francis and a leper he encounters in the countryside. Overcoming his revulsion, Francis embraces the stranger in a showcase of solidarity with “the least of these”– those shunned by society but beloved by God. It’s a beautiful, touching movie that makes the viewer want to live life in the same joyful, merciful way as Francis.
The Taking of Power by Louis XIV takes place in the realm of seventeenth-century politics, covering how a young Louis XIV became “the Sun King,” history’s most famous absolute monarch. In a court that expects Louis to be little more than a puppet, the young monarch instead manipulates the vanity and ambitions of his nobles, turning himself and his newly built palace of Versailles into the center of France’s political universe. It is a Pyrrhic victory: while Louis gains absolute power, he also isolates himself from other human beings. In public, he must always play the role of the all-powerful, invulnerable king. When the massive wig and fancy fashions come off, who is he really? There is no rest from palace intrigue and this is the awful price of power. Whereas Francis found freedom in poverty, Louis has built himself a gilded prison.
All of these films fascinated me and I cannot wait to discover more of Rossellini’s filmography. I’m excited to revisit Journey to Italy as well.
Ikiru(dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1951)
I knew Ikiru was going to make me cry. That was no surprise at all. The film is about a middle-aged man forced to reflect on his wasted life after he’s diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer. Many stories have mined such material for obvious pathos and easy sentimentality. However, Akira Kurosawa was no ordinary filmmaker and he uses this tale to shake the audience awake from the autopilot of their lives.
It is rare for a movie to genuinely challenge you the way Ikiru does. I did not merely want to hug my loved ones or make a one-time donation to a food bank because of Ikiru. This film made me want to re-examine every little interaction I have with others, from strangers to coworkers to those closest to me. And what really sells the film’s message is its unconventional last act, where Kurosawa shows how without resolve the immediate desire to do good can fizzle out into complacency once more.
As a silent film fanatic, I am ashamed to confess it took me so long to finally get to Fantomas. This isn’t my first foray into Feuillade: I tried watching Judex a long time ago and while it is not bad, I could not muster up enough enthusiasm to get beyond three episodes. (Admittedly, I have a bad track record of finishing series of any kind, be they movie serials or TV shows. I just prefer feature films, sorry!) However, Fantomas is a thrilling pulp adventure. It follows the cat and mouse game between master criminal Fantomas and the dedicated Inspector Juve.
What makes Fantomas so special is the way it dips into surrealism. At times, its imagery feels like it comes out of a nightmare, such as a scene where blood and jewels rain down from a church bell. Fantomas himself is a chilling villain. I imagined he’d be a trickster figure or an Arsene Lupin type, but he often comes off like all the evil in the world incarnated into one man. His elusive nature makes him a vivid symbol of the ever presence of evil. That quality makes the film’s conclusion all the more disquieting. It does not wrap matters up in a neat little bow.
The Best Years of Our Lives (dir. William Wyler, 1946)
William Wyler’s postwar drama had been on my watchlist for over a decade, but its length always inspired me to put off a viewing. I finally made the time to watch it and was deeply touched. The film follows a group of soldiers as they try to re assimilate to civilian life. However, they not only need to deal with the physical and psychological trauma that lingers after combat, but the subtle ways America is changing in the postwar world (a significant detail involves a small mom and pop pharmacy being swallowed up by a larger conglomerate). There is no syrup or schmaltz in the writing or direction, and The Best Years of Our Lives comes out all the stronger for it.
The cast is packed with memorable performances, but Harold Russell is the standout. While working as an Army instructor during WWII, Russell lost his hands in a demolition training exercise. Wyler became aware of Russell after seeing him feature in a documentary film titled Diary of a Sergeant. Russell was not a professional actor but his acting possesses a naturalness and honesty any trained thespian would envy. He was discouraged from pursuing a movie career because he would be pigeonholed into disabled veteran roles. The ableism of the movie industry deprived the world of a fine actor, though Russell did make a few film and television appearances later in life. However, his character will always be the one that I remember from The Best Years of Our Lives and considering how all the characters are so touching and memorable, that is saying a lot.
The Man Between(dir. Carol Reed, 1953)
Every cinephile has their share of unpopular opinions. One of my most egregious is that I have little enthusiasm for The Third Man, a film others rhapsodize about constantly. I have seen it three times over the years and it’s– fine. Like there’s nothing wrong with it: the cinematography is gorgeous, the atmosphere is moody, the postwar Vienna setting is compelling, and Orson Welles is iconic. I just don’t adore it like everyone else.
But you know what Carol Reed film my crazy self DOES adore? The Man Between, a noirish melodrama critics see as the underwhelming end of Reed’s postwar trilogy (which also includes Odd Man Out). Claire Bloom is an innocent British woman caught up in Cold War intrigue and a tender love affair with a haunted, handsome smuggler played by James Mason. While it lacks the bite of The Third Man and the spiritual torment of Odd Man Out, it has a bittersweetness I find appealing. The winter setting lends a melancholy romanticism to the atmosphere, and Clarie Bloom and James Mason make a touching pair of doomed lovers.
I chose The Man Between as my movie of the month in May, so if you want a more in-depth review, I’ll direct you there.
I have long wanted to do a deep dive into the Rouben Mamoulian Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, one of the most ambitious and technically brilliant movies of the early sound era. Due to its uncompromising presentation of sexual repression, class hierarchies, and domestic abuse, the film remains every bit as horrifying ninety-plus years later.
Revisiting a movie you saw in childhood can sometimes be a magical experience. Other times, it’s damn horrific, as was the case when I rewatched Brigadoon for the first time in over two decades. The result was that I feel A24 could probably make a decent horror flick out of this musical.
I thoroughly enjoyed creating an audio commentary for Wait Until Dark back in 2022, but it took me three years to do a follow up. This commentary about Buster Keaton’s Battling Butler was the result. I couldn’t find as many behind the scenes anecdotes as I wanted, but I had a great time breaking down why I think Battling Butler is Keaton’s most underrated feature.
Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, and Greer Garson represent different faces of MGM royalty between 1929 and 1951. All three actresses played the lead in different adaptations of the melodramatic stage hit The Last of Mrs. Cheyney, a tale of a shopgirl who robs the rich in the guise of a respectable society widow. Each version represents the cultural milieu in which it was created in interesting ways and each woman puts her own unique stamp on the role.
Lois Weber’s 1916 epic is a fascinating and tragic exploration of class warfare. While Hypocrites is Weber’s most celebrated film, I actually love this one the most and urge anyone fascinated by early film to check it out.
Future blog post ideas
Julie Harris as cinema’s first Sally Bowles in I Am A Camera, alongside Laurence Harvey. Image source:IMDB
In the first few months of the new year, I plan on continuing my yearly tradition of examining the top hits of the American box office from one hundred years ago. So get ready for some swamp melodrama with Mary Pickford, desert romance with Rudolph Valentino, swashbuckling with Douglas Fairbanks, and tons of war-themed pictures riding on the success of The Big Parade.
I’ll also be participating in the Film. Release. Repeat. Blogathan hosted by Hamlette’s Soliloquy and The Midnite Drive-In. My entry will be about You Can’t Run Away From It, a musical remake of It Happened One Night starring June Allyson and Jack Lemon.
I’m hoping to record another commentary next year for The Heiress, which features my favorite Olivia de Havilland performance, but I can’t make promises. Both the research and recording take a lot of time, and between my personal life and my job, time is not always a commodity I’ve got in abundance. But we shall see.
As for other blog ideas, what I’m most enthused about right now is a post about I Am A Camera, a 1955 British film based on the same source material as the much better-remembered musical Cabaret. I love exploring more obscure films and revisiting more famous ones I have not seen in years, and this subject allows me to do both!
Happy holidays to those who celebrate and here’s to happy blogging in the year to come!
I don’t know when American culture suddenly decided we needed to start celebrating Christmas by October. Halloween not even over and stores are rolling out the red and green. The people around me often follow suit, playing the usual cinematic suspects on holiday rotation: A Christmas Story, The Polar Express, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Elf, The Santa Clause trilogy, and an eternal avalanche of Hallmark romcoms caked in sentiment and tinsel.
The result is that I’ve been thoroughly burned out on most mainstream Christmas films. The 24-hour marathon attached to A Christmas Story has not made me fonder of that movie, but developed in me an allergic reaction to what is otherwise a charming, funny piece of my childhood. Without realizing it at first, I’ve been compiling an alternative holiday viewing list over the years. Today’s example: Cash on Demand.
I first discovered Cash on Demand last year due to the novelty of it being a non-horror Hammer production. It’s a riff on A Christmas Carol: Peter Cushing plays Fordyce, an uptight, coldhearted bank manager who micromanages his employees to hell and back. His emotional world is encompassed in his wife and son (a photograph of the two on his desk manages to coax a spontaneous smile), as he has no friends in or out of work. As his employees prepare for Christmas, he keeps himself at a distance, as though holiday cheer will give him pneumonia.
Fordyce’s carefully organized tyranny is challenged by the appearance of one Gore-Hepburn (Andre Morrell), a smooth-talking bank robber masquerading as an insurance investigator. Gore-Hepburn isolates Fordyce in his office and informs him that he’s going to help rob his own bank, or else his wife and child will be tortured and killed. A phone call to his house convinces Fordyce this is so and he is forced to abandon the pride he takes in being the world’s most efficient manager. Worst of all, his employees are unaware of the crime being enacted and helping Gore-Hepburn deceive them becomes part of the deal to keep his family safe.
Two cuts of Cash on Demand exist: an 84-minute American release and a 67-minute British version. I tried watching the shorter cut out of curiosity, but the cuts work against the film’s strengths. Much of the first act is shorn and because of that the character work established there is missing. What makes Cash on Demand so special is not the clever mechanics of the robbery itself, but the characters.
It is a testament to both the writers and Peter Cushing’s acting ability that Fordyce comes off sympathetic at all. For the first twenty minutes, there is some schadenfreude in seeing him taken down a peg by the charming Gore-Hepburn, who uses the dislike Fordyce engendered in his employees against the hapless manager. But as the story progresses, we see hidden layers to both Fordyce and Gore-Hepburn. The bank robber is a total sadist, relishing any bit of psychological or even physical abuse he can heap on Fordyce. He comes off less like a man than a scourge of God.
As for Fordyce, much like the version of Scrooge played by Alastair Sim, his coldness is not born of malice, but of desperate loneliness. As he admits to his assistant manager late in the film, his family is “all I’ve got.” Losing them means losing all connection to his humanity. So, it’s not just his job or loved ones’ lives at stake. It’s Fordyce’s entire emotional life hanging in the balance. And there is no going back to the man he used to be. Like Scrooge, Fordyce experiences a spiritual regeneration as the result of his ordeal, making Cash on Demand not just a nail-biting thriller, but a nuanced character piece and perfect bit of optimism for the Christmas season.
Hello readers! It’s been a hectic November to say the least. I worked hard on my entry for the CMBA Early Shadows and Pre-Code Horror blogathon and have been prepping for a vacation I’m going to take at the end of this week. My significant other and I are going to be in the mountains, so there’s quite a bit to do before we leave.
In the meantime, I’ve been nominated for a Sunshine Blogger Award by the lovely Virginie of The Wonderful World of Cinema. Thanks Virginie!
Here are the rules for the uninitiated (I’m just copying Virginie’s description over with a few tweaks since she was answering two sets of Sunshine questions at once):
Include the Sunshine Blogger Awards somewhere on your blog and/or in the article.
Thank the person who nominated you.
Share the link to this person’s blog.
Answer the 11 questions asked by the blogger who nominated you.
Nominate 11 bloggers yourself.
Ask 11 questions to these bloggers.
Notify the bloggers by commenting on their blogs.
1- You can only watch Cary Grant films or James Stewart films for the rest of your life. Which actor do you choose? Of course, The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940) applies in both cases!
Hmm, a hard decision. As much as I would mourn losing Charade, Notorious, and Arsenic and Old Lace, I gotta go with Jimmy. Vertigo, Rear Window, and It’s A Wonderful Life are three of my all-time favorites, and then there are so many others: Winchester ’73, The Mortal Storm, Harvey, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Rope, Anatomy of a Murder, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance are all fantastic. Not to slight Grant, but I just connect more with Stewart’s work and screen persona.
2- You have to learn a choreography from a film for a talent show. Which choreography do you choose to learn?
The “Moses Supposes” number from Singin’ in the Rain. (I always felt so bad for the poor elocution teacher though!)
3- Do you consider yourself to be some film’s number one fan? If yes, which film and why?
Nobody on the planet loves Wait Until Dark more than me. No one who ever breathed loves or loved Wait Until Dark more than me. I am obsessed with that movie and have probably watched it close to 100 times. I probably have most of the dialogue committed to memory. I know reams of trivia about the production. I am nothing short of obsessed.
4- You are put in solitary confinement with the main character of the last film you watched. Who is it and how does it go?
Image source: Wikipedia
John Barrymore’s Don Juan. That sounds really exhausting since he spends most of that movie bouncing off the walls like a gremlin on coke. Might also need a spray bottle since his whole thing is being horny as hell too.
5- You have the power to go back in time and release in colour a film that is currently in black and white. (For example, you decide that The Shop Around the Corner should be in colour). Which film do you choose?
I generally prefer my films in black and white. If anything, there are some color films that would have benefited from monochrome. However, I’ll pick one black and white film that was originally intended for color but ultimately wasn’t shot that way due to budget problems– Marie Antoinette. Those opulent costumes are begging to be seen in color.
6- Which film do you think actually deserves a sequel?
It would have been nice to have a sequel to The Bride of Frankenstein that actually had the Bride as the central character. She gets so little screen time! And Elsa Lanchester does so much with that character with only a few minutes to make an impression.
7- How do you spend your ideal movie night?
I have two conditions: lights out as much as possible and two-three hours of no interruptions. Oh, and my phone needs to be as far from me as possible. I like being immersed. So three conditions.
8- A film character is invited as a guest writer on your blog. Who is this character, and what would he or she be writing about? Yes, I was a bit inspired by one of Sally’s questions for that one!
Whatever entity does the voiceover narration in Blast of Silence. So if you haven’t seen that film, it has a second-person perspective (“You were born with the hate and anger built in…”) voiceover narration read by Lionel Stander, who sounds like a chain-smoking mobster. I always thought it was interesting that this character clearly isn’t the film’s protagonist– is it a projection of his missing father? The voice of God? I don’t know, all I know is his cynical, doom-laden lines are gold. I feel like any blog post on any subject filtered through this voice would be amusing.
9- Film noir debate time. Who had the best hair: Rita Hayworth or Veronica Lake?
Rita. I guess hair-quality wise they’re both the same, but no one knew how to toss their hair like Rita.
10- You are travelling abroad on your birthday, but get the chance to celebrate with three movie directors of your choosing. Who do you choose, and what gifts do you think you would receive from them?
To be honest, I would pick Lois Weber, Buster Keaton, and Alice Guy Blache, and the only gifts I want would be to hear about their experiences as filmmakers in the silent era, especially Weber and Blache. Also I’d want Buster to play the ukulele.
11- Finally, is there a certain meal or food from a film you would like to taste?
This is a cliched answer, but the food in so many Ghibli films looks AMAZING. I really want all the bread in Kiki’s Delivery Service.
Okay, here are my questions!
1 – Do you like any of the new wave movements of the ’50s and ’60s? (ex. French New Wave, Japanese New Wave, etc.)
2 – Do you like audio commentaries? If so, name some of your favorites.
3 – Favorite Old Hollywood-related biography?
4 – Do you watch foreign films? If so, name some of your favorites.
5 – The worst Old Hollywood related book you’ve ever read.
6 – Does faithfulness to source material matter to you with adaptations?
7 – What is the movie you’ve rewatched the most?
8 – Are there any film scholars or film critics you’re fond of reading?
9 – Any film podcasts or YouTube channels you would recommend?
10 – What filmmaker/actor/other film creative (OR genre/film movement) have you recently discovered and want to delve more into?
11 – Do you have any interests that tie into your interest in classic film? (For me, it’s an interest in historical popular culture and history in general.)
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” – The Gospel of Thomas
Rouben Mamoulian’s 1931 adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is usually celebrated as the ultimate in pre-code horror. The Universal monster classics might be more iconic, but Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is by far more frank in its depictions of sexuality and violence than any of them. For film historians, the movie’s technical achievements are remarkable for its era. While many filmmakers in the early talkie period were cowed by the demands of sound and kept their camerawork conservative, Mamoulian managed to retain the visual fluidity of the late silent era.
As a teenager falling in love with Old Hollywood for the first time, I was enamored with Mamoulian’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Time has not eroded my passion but intensified it. This film is not just a shining example of the permissive pre-code era, a gem of classic horror, or a technical pinnacle of the early talkie period. It is among the most psychologically sophisticated movies to ever come out of Hollywood in its century-plus history. Further acquaintance makes its genius more apparent.
NOTE: This is basically a commentary on the entire film, so there will be spoilers.
Dr. Jekyll (Frederic March) is a young, brilliant scientist living in late Victorian London. This version begins from Jekyll’s perspective—literally. The first scene is shot from first-person point of view, as though the audience were inhabiting Jekyll’s body. In a series of impressive shots, we see Jekyll play the organ, primp himself in the mirror, and go for a carriage ride to the lecture hall. These shots seem like mere technical bravura, but they establish something important: that the audience does not view Jekyll as some tragic freak separate from themselves, but as a mirror of something universal about human nature. Basically, we shouldn’t feel too morally superior to him as the story unfolds.
Jekyll theorizes that people have two sides to their personality: one virtuous and noble, and the other base and animalistic. His stodgy peers view this idea as crackpot nonsense, but it enthralls his students, who throng the lecture halls. For his part, Jekyll is adamant about his ideas and resolves to find chemical means to separate the “good” and “bad” sides of human nature.
Beyond his unorthodox theories, Jekyll is something of a rebel in upper class Victorian society, shirking punctuality and polite manners at every turn. He also dedicates time to operating on impoverished patients in the charity ward free of charge, a seeming generosity that baffles others but enchants his fiancée, Muriel (Rose Hobart).
Muriel and science are the two great obsessions of Jekyll’s life. Jekyll and Muriel are passionately in love, but Muriel’s father Brigadier General Carew (Halliwell Hobbes) insists on delaying the nuptials for almost a year. The old gentleman thinks Jekyll is TOO eager to get to the wedding night and that is just “indecent.” He keeps postponing the wedding date and, despite Jekyll’s suggestion that they just elope, the ever-dutiful Muriel will not go against her father’s wishes.
These early scenes portray Jekyll as an appealing character, certainly more appealing than the rather nondescript middle-aged Victorian gentleman of Stevenson’s text. He’s charismatic, intelligent, romantic, and witty. He cares for the socially disadvantaged. He shuns arbitrary social rules. He’s saddled with an irritating father-in-law-to-be anyone would find punchable. What’s not to like?
However, it soon becomes clear that Jekyll can also be selfish. For all his declarations of love for Muriel, he’s not a model of fidelity. Strolling through the streets with his friend Lanyon one night, Jekyll intercedes in a fight between a sex worker and a customer. The former is a woman named Ivy (Miriam Hopkins), who sees in the handsome Jekyll a lucrative payday and potentially fun evening at work. The two characters flirt mercilessly while she strips down to nothing under the pretense of Jekyll examining her injuries.
Jekyll has no compunctions about kissing Ivy when she pulls him to her. Had he not been interrupted, there is little doubt that Jekyll would have consummated his infidelity. His excuse? “A man dying of thirst needs water.” No image better illustrates Jekyll’s headspace than that of Ivy’s bare leg swinging off the edge of the bed as she calls for him to return soon. This visual ends the scene of Jekyll’s near-conquest, then slowly dissolves into Jekyll and Lanyon walking home. However, the dissolve lasts a long time, with Ivy’s leg superimposed over the next scene as it plays. So, Jekyll’s rebelliousness isn’t as subversive as it seems. He likes thumbing his nose at high class squares while still enjoying the privileges inherent to living as an upper-class man in that society, at least to a point.
Let’s talk about Muriel and Ivy for a moment. Though in many ways they embody the reductive Madonna-Whore dichotomy, they also share key similarities. Both women embrace their sexual desires to differing extents. Ivy undresses Jekyll with her eyes from the moment they meet, while Muriel, though a dutiful Victorian daughter, has no compunctions sneaking out to the garden with Jekyll for some late-night smooching. The main difference between them is that Muriel postpones consummating her physical relationship with Jekyll out of reverence for how things are done in proper society, and Ivy makes no bones about enjoying sex.
Surprisingly, the film never condemns Ivy for her profession or her sensuality, even as it shows how it makes her vulnerable in a patriarchal world. If audience reactions over 90 years have shown anything, she is the film’s most sympathetic and loved figure. She is also the one character who does not need to wrestle with herself, as opposed to Jekyll or even Muriel. She isn’t repressed and she isn’t hiding anything.
Interestingly, Muriel undergoes an arc throughout the film because she does wrestle with how her erotic longings are at odds with the obedient, desexualized woman society demands she embody. In the early scenes, she is often in white, representing innocence, the perfect Victorian girl-woman…
By the time she returns from her long sojourn to the continent, she wears white and black, representing her growth as she starts bucking her father’s demands a little and even convinces him to let her marry Jekyll sooner than first planned…
By the end, she wears dark colors, representing a sober maturity. Though Jekyll screwed up again by missing their engagement party (too busy committing murder), Muriel is even more staunch in fighting for Jekyll and hearing him out, whatever her father thinks…
So arguably, Muriel and Ivy are healthier people psychologically than Jekyll. Ivy accepts the parts of her that society says a “good woman” shouldn’t, and Muriel overcomes her excessive attachment to her father and his uncompromising demand for obedience.
For all his outer rebellion, Jekyll still partially buys into society’s views of sex as dirty. He is disturbed by the gulf between his baser desires and high-flown ideals. His experiments come from wanting to be “clean.” When he drinks his serum for the first time and takes on the visage of Hyde, the first-person point of view returns, yet again emphasizing audience identification with Jekyll and his soon-to-appear alter ego. The old-school special effects used to portray the transformation are more engrossing than any CG metamorphosis could be. It appears so seamless and tactile.
Critics of this film find Hyde’s simian make-up too over-the-top and literal. While on the nose, the make-up illustrates a psychological point: that beneath the fine clothes and gentlemanly title, Jekyll’s baser urges, be they ego-based or sensual, are always at the forefront of his mind, whether he looks like King Kong’s cokehead younger brother or not. The make-up also evolves over the course of the story. Hyde initially appears unkempt and comical, reflecting the amiable amorality of his early scenes…
… but later on, he combs his hair back to assume a respectable wickedness as he uses his upper-class privileges to dominate Ivy…
…And then by the end, his face begins to deteriorate, as though the unchecked evil were rotting him from within in the manner of The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Unlike other versions of Jekyll and Hyde where Jekyll is just a precious little bean turned into a rampaging beast against his intentions, here Jekyll knowingly takes the plunge into Hyde territory. When he first transforms into Hyde early in the film, he is initially startled, even horrified. Soon after, he begs Muriel to marry him right away so he can indulge his sexual urges in sanctified marital bliss. When she asks him to be patient, Jekyll claims he can wait.
Guess what? He can’t wait.
Restless in his lust and goaded on by his butler to go partying (“London offers many amusements for a gentleman like you, sir!”), Jekyll takes the potion again, well aware of what it will do. It will allow him to behave without inhibitions and enjoy himself without risk to his reputation or impending marriage.
Hyde only seems distinct from Jekyll on the surface. He’s cruder, ruder, and louder to be sure. He makes bawdy jokes (like thrusting his cane beneath an old woman’s skirts), ogles all the scantily clad women at the pub, and shouts at a waiter for fishing for a tip. But is Hyde really so different from Jekyll? Jekyll is sensual and impatient with Victorian sensibilties. He is excitable and energetic. As Hyde, all he’s doing is cranking that up to eleven. And keep in mind, these traits are not all bad in and of themselves, but unanchored from any sense of moral compass, they quickly transform into negatives.
The audience might initially delight in Jekyll/Hyde’s rule-breaking, but once he forces Ivy into sexual slavery and subjects her to domestic abuse, sympathy evaporates. Hyde is not only indulging his lust but arguably lashing out at Ivy from buried psychosexual resentment. She ignores the moral code Jekyll chafes against but is too cowardly to openly defy. A Letterboxd review from user Movies With Nat puts it well:
“Ivy becomes everything [Jekyll] wants and everything he’s terrified of — desire, freedom, and guilt all tangled together. When Hyde is unleashed, he’s “free at last.” His cruelty isn’t born from evil, but from the warped morality of a society where sexuality is taboo. His violence toward Ivy carries a buried resentment — because she can live freely in ways Jekyll cannot.”
The claustrophobic mise en scene of Ivy and Hyde’s shared apartment is remarkable. Surrounded by erotic art and kitschy Victorian bric-a-brac, Ivy is reduced down to her body and imprisoned in a ghastly parody of domesticity. It’s also a basement apartment one must descend a staircase to enter, which evokes the idea of entering a grave. Ultimately, that is what this apartment will be to Ivy.
One prop in the apartment always stands out to me: a statue of Cupid and Psyche focused upon as Hyde strangles Ivy to death. For those not brushed up on their Greek mythology, the story of Cupid and Psyche is often seen as a precursor to the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale, where a hideous beast turns out to be a handsome prince. The beautiful Psyche lives in an enchanted mansion with Cupid, who keeps his divine nature and gorgeous face hidden from her. Here, the situation is flipped—Ivy is living with a monster who “Hydes” his real identity to save his reputation. Even the positioning of Ivy and Hyde’s bodies during the murder suggests the positions of the figures of the statue.
Though the film is never explicit as to how much Jekyll knows of what he does when he’s in the Hyde persona, I think he knows everything. The evidence is in the details. Jekyll fears for his immortal soul, which isn’t something a man like Jekyll would do if he felt everything he did as Hyde was beyond his control. He sends Ivy money to try to atone for torturing her. Even Hyde’s references to Jekyll as the man he hates most suggest Jekyll/Hyde’s self-loathing as the transformations between the alter egos become involuntary.
The novel offers a scientific explanation for the involuntary transformations. An impure compound in one of the ingredients of the serum’s original batch kept the transformations stable. Later brews did not have this compound and so the transformations became involuntary. Mamoulian’s film offers no rational explanation, planting this plot element more firmly in the realm of the spiritual rather than the scientific. Like Stevenson, the 1931 film implies humanity’s darker impulses are stronger than their nobler ideals if left unchecked. There is also a touch of the drug addict in Jekyll’s constant returning to his Hyde life. Moral impunity is better than any high.
With Ivy’s death, the film enters its most despairing territory. It’s the dark finale of this movie that fascinates me even more than its pre-code naughtiness or the fantastic special effects and make-up. From here on, angles and composition emphasize Jekyll’s spiritual lowness by diminishing him in the frame or posing other characters above him. (I cannot claim to have noticed this on my own. I only picked up on it after reading this excellent analysis of the movie from a blog titled And You Call Yourself a Scientist, which I heartily encourage other fans of this film to check out.)
Realizing he’s now added homicide to his arsenal of sins, Jekyll tries redeeming himself again. Throwing money at his last victim couldn’t do the trick, so he decides upon self-sacrifice instead. He will give up Muriel. Perhaps that will save his soul. He even shouts theatrically, “THIS! IS! MY! PENANCE!” after declaring their break-up. But this gesture proves as hollow as giving Ivy cash because Jekyll turns into Hyde again. Rather than stay away from Muriel, he attempts to rape her.
This is one of the most shocking moments in the movie. It suggests that even Jekyll’s love for Muriel could not overcome his inner demons. Jekyll can’t have her lawfully now, but he won’t be denied his desires, even if he has to resort to violence. He’s allowed his moral safeguards to be eroded for too long.
The general and the other men of the household thwart the assault, but Hyde responds by killing Carew. And not just quickly. He hammers the old man’s skull with a walking stick until it breaks. As the blogger behind the And You Call Yourself a Scientist website observes in their extended analysis of Mamoulian’s film: “…if anything can challenge the tormenting of Ivy for sheer horror, it is surely this moment, when we know that Jekyll’s impulse is speaking through Hyde.”
When Hyde is shot to death in his lab after a prolonged fight with the police, he reverts back to his Jekyll appearance. In profile, the deceased appears beatific, as though he has finally been expiated. But Mamoulian does not end there.
We cut to a long shot with the police and Jekyll’s butler crowded around the corpse. The camera moves behind the flames of the laboratory fireplace. From this perspective, the fire leaps and curls around Jekyll’s body, the implication plain. It is up to the viewer which image leaves the greater impression: the peaceful face of Jekyll’s corpse or the sinister dancing flames.
The sudden introduction of religious rhetoric in the film’s final third can strike one as reactionary. Like other “mad scientist” films from this era, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has been accused of being anti-science, the usual “never tamper in God’s domain” deal. This sentiment misses the point. The problem with the “mad scientist” is not that he is willing to experiment and question. It’s that he doesn’t think his projects through or take human shortcomings into account.
Jekyll assumes his dark side and socially-unsanctioned desires can be chemically removed. By trying to extricate himself from them through Hyde, all he does is make them dominate his entire person. A desire to shirk superficial Victorian manners curdles into aggression towards everyone and everything. A desire to satisfy sexual urges curdles into the dehumanization of his sexual partners. In the end, Jekyll degenerates into nothing more than a mass of appetites and rage.
I love the horror genre, but I confess few horror movies scare me in any lasting way. Being a properly desensitized millennial, blood and gore make me go “ew” at best. Most films described as “scariest of all time” like The Exorcist don’t keep me awake at night. I can count on two hands the amount of horror films that got under my skin and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is one of them, believe it or not.
It’s not any disturbing images or visceral jump scares that do it. Even in its relative frankness, it’s not the film’s depictions of domestic abuse or murder, though those scenes are upsetting. What gets me is how unsparing the story is regarding human nature. There are no comforting platitudes about good always winning out or one’s inner demons being something that can be easily overcome. There is no cheat code to moral purity, there is only the messy, complicated business of being human. I appreciate films that are optimistic and show how good and noble people can be, but you can’t truly appreciate those stories without media that shows otherwise.
This post was written for the CMBA Early Shadows and Pre-Code Horror blogathon. Please check out this link to experience more thrills and chills from my fellow CMBA members!
nitrateglow 
