Month: September 2022

  • The Doll (1919)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) The more I dig into film history, the more I realize that there’s never anything really new. Sometimes, the precedent is much, much older than expected. Take, for instance, 1919’s The Doll, from the endlessly-talented writer-director Ernst Lubitsch (who also shows up on-screen at the very start of the film to literally “build” the world in which the film takes place). Those who know about the Lubitsch touch know how he was able to blend humour, romance and a strong dash of naughtiness that never became vulgar. So, what’s the link with modern times, here? Well, the film is about a man refusing marriage, instead opting to… buy a life-size clockwork doll for companionship. That’s right: 1919, and movie audiences were already watching naughty sex-bot comedies. The human race is truly remarkable. (The title card, translated/restored sometime since then, even specifies that the dolls are intended to be sold “to bachelors, widowers, and misogynists!”)  Anyway—the big joke here is that the doll isn’t a doll, but the dollmaker’s real-life daughter trying to cover for a mechanical malfunction. There are many of the now-familiar complications in confusing the biological for the mechanical (or vice-versa), but don’t fret: there’s authentic romance building throughout The Doll, and at a spry 57 minutes there isn’t much time to be bored. Lubitsch fans probably see this film with high expectations, but it meets all of them, even as a silent, technically-ambitious-but-rough early film. Much of the plotting would feel right at ease in a modern Silicon Valley AI romantic comedy, and that’s eloquent enough.

  • The Hitch-Hiker (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) Ida Lupino is a favourite of many classic Hollywood fans for good reasons. The actress turned writer-producer-director was one of the few female filmmakers of the classic Hollywood era, and the films she completed still stand the test of time. One of the most obvious cases in point is The Hitch-Hiker: a film noir thriller with enough crucial differences to make it stand out as something different. Leaving the dark city behind for the sun-drenched desert of Baja California, it focuses on two friends out on a road trip being taken hostage by a murderous psychopath seeking a ride. What could have been solely a plot-driven film gets the Lupino touch of focusing more on the characters, creating a tight, sweaty 71-minute thriller that feels claustrophobic despite the wide-open desert landscapes surrounding the car. It hasn’t aged much either: You could remake The Hitch-Hiker today with very little change. For Lupino, it remains an evergreen testament to her talent.

  • Europa ’51 (1952)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) I already loathe Italian neorealism, but for Europa ’51 to add a child’s suicide in the first ten minutes was almost daring me to turn off the film. Alas, this film from writer-director-producer Roberto Rossellini is a mainstay on the longer “best movies of all time” lists, and when it comes to those, my job isn’t to judge, it’s to experience. It turns out that, thanks to the film’s incredibly dim outlook on human nature, it charts a sardonic character arc for its protagonist. Ingrid Bergman plays the grieving mother of the dead child, an upper-class woman who processes her guilt by launching a one-woman crusade to help the less fortunate. Alas, Rossellini’s point is that altruism wasn’t a virtue in post-WW2 Rome—and so he sends his heroine to the asylum, judged incompetent to live in society. As far as themes go, this takes us from neorealism to harsh satire—one further point of distinction for Europa ’51 compared to many similar films of the genre and era. This doesn’t make it any more fun or entertaining to watch, but it adds a layer of interest that’s not necessarily to be found in strictly realistic films. What’s more, it carries an uncomfortable message for viewers as well—altruism is not necessarily about easy feel-good platitudes with no consequences: it can hurt, sever relationships and make one look highly suspect. Does anyone really want to become a saint?

  • La bête humaine [The Human Beast] (1938)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) For Hollywood film noir fans, La bête humaine’s main attraction is that it’s the film that inspired Human Desire, a pretty good 1954 Fritz Lang effort. As such, the original film is part of that group of French movies that led to film noir, the rough romantic crime poetry filtered through later post-war American sensibilities. Of course, compared to the slick cinematography of latter-day Hollywood, La bête humaine is coarser and blander. But writer-director Jean Renoir turns in a perfectly enjoyable effort, inspired but not beholden to the source Émile Zola novel—the biggest change being the focus of the film on a genre thriller narrative blended with romantic fatalism. It’s really not a feel-good film—and when you combine the film’s sentimental but merciless ending with Jean Gabin’s lead performance, you end up with something that would make a splendid double-feature with Pepe le Moko. That, or pair it with Human Desire—both are well worth watching together, if only to appreciate the subtle shifts in tone and atmosphere.

  • The Bellboy (1960)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) Considering the unusual circumstances that led to The Bellboy, it’s perfectly understandable if the film is almost unlike any other. At the time of its production, Jerry Lewis was transitioning to a solo film career after the break-up of his duo with Dean Martin and trying to meet both movie and live performance commitments. Accordingly, The Bellboy (his first film as a director) was conceived as a project he could complete while holding a daily show at Miami Beach’s Fontainebleau Hotel—moviemaking by day, nightclub performances by night. All done in 28 days, with Lewis inventing the video assist technique along the way. The film, unsurprisingly, revolves around a bellboy protagonist getting involved at various hijinks at and around the Fontainebleau Hotel. But if you think that’s lazy, consider the added difficulties that Lewis, as a writer-director-producer-star, placed upon himself: He plays a mostly silent role, explodes the film’s plot in separate comic vignettes, shifts between various comic styles, pays homage to past comic masters, self-insert in the film as a visiting Jerry Lewis, and keeps the energy of an anarchic film going through 72 minutes. The individual gags themselves can be as short as a few seconds. Pay attention, and you’ll spot cameos from Milton Berle, a Stanley Laurel impersonator, and a glimpse at the circa 1960 Miami Beach lifestyle. The humour can be intensely absurd at times, feeling surprisingly timeless. The opening moments of The Bellboy, featuring a “movie studio executive” warning us about the plotless nature of the film to come, are arguably funnier upon re-watch. It still fells like a very unconventional comedy—almost daring, in fact: the kind of thing only a writer-director-producer-star with remarkable pull could bring to fruition. Not all of it is good, but what works usually compensates for the rest. Even those who are lukewarm on Lewis’ style of comedy will find something interesting in The Bellboy.

  • We’re No Angels (1955)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) Humphrey Bogart doing comedy is already a tough sell, so it makes sense that that any comedy featuring him needed to be led by a director with a clear vision. I’m sure that the idea of Michael Curtiz reuniting with Bogart thirteen years after Casablanca must have had mid-1950s audiences interested. Alas, We’re No Angels shows little convincing demonstration of comic skills from anyone involved. Oh, sure, the script is light-hearted enough, with three escaped convicts trying to go straight but being tempted to use their very specific skills for the betterment of a small village. But the one laugh in the entire picture comes at the very last second, and is a visual gag that is in a markedly different tone than the rest of the film’s humour. The leading cast is good for a pause, what with Bogart, Aldo Ray and Peter Ustinov—but again not all of them are known for comedy and the film seems uninterested in going for big laughs anyway. It’s amiable, mind you… but slow-paced, a bit morally confused (even within the confines of having ex-convicts as heroes), too-theatrically staged (not a surprise, considering its origins) and not really compelling on a moment-to-moment basis. I was, however, a bit surprised in comparing it with the 1989 film of the same name: Aside from some quasi-tangential premises, the remake and the original are almost entirely different and discourage any kind of one-to-one comparison. I’m left unimpressed by We’re No Angels—not a bad movie per se, but nothing really worth remembering either.

  • Blast of Silence (1961)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) I watch a lot of noir movies expecting, well, more of the same—the urban setting, the cynical attitude, the doomed characters, all wrapped up in classic Hollywood style. Blast of Silence is clearly a noir, but it doesn’t give the same feeling. Maybe calling it a noir is overstating it—coming from 1961, past the prime two decades of film noir, it could almost qualify as a neo-noir clearly aware of the genre’s characteristics and maybe trying to do something different in reaction to them. Executed on an ultra-low budget outside the studio system by writer-director-star Allen Baron, Blast of Silence deals with familiar noir archetypes—the quiet killer in town for a job, but who encounters complications that make it all even more dangerous. But the fundamental difference here is inherent in the execution: there’s nothing slick or polished about Blast of Silence. It’s competent, but the roughness follows the film everywhere—the actors aren’t marquee names, the cinematography often feels accidental (it’s not, but it’s clearly from a rushed production) and the ending is incredibly bleak. Despite noir’s reputation for not being a feel-good genre, its standard bearers usually leave viewers satisfied. This is not necessarily the case here, although the sting is somewhat lessened by having the characters almost all being reprehensible in some ways. It’s a tougher watch than you’d expect—with its world-weary narration and refusal to coddle viewers, it’s almost noirer than noir itself.

  • When the Bough Breaks (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, September 2022) Frankly, I’ve seen enough BET original movies that the only surprising thing about When the Bough Breaks is that I didn’t see it on BET. Otherwise, it scrupulously follows one of their formulas—or is it one of the Lifetime channel formulas? Suffice to say that the story starts when a married couple hires a surrogate to have a baby and, well, you can probably see where this is going: the surrogate falls in love with the male lead, reveals her psychotic nature and it’s up to our married leads to deal with the situation. (Although you really won’t be surprised to learn that it’s the woman who definitely deals with it.)  Plot-wise, this is really a mild made-for-TV potboiler (not too disturbing, though, considering the target audience) that benefits from better actors and more budget for production values. It doesn’t exactly work: as much as I like Regina Hall and Morris Chestnut, and even if Jaz Sinclair is a beauty, the film plods along intensely predictable lines, with the antagonist being nothing more than a bunch of screenwriting clichés without an inner life. But it also approaches distaste in revolving around surrogate pregnancy—When the Bough Breaks is simply not good enough, smart enough or worthy enough to play around with complex issues such as that one, and feels increasingly cheap as it raises the stakes through threatened abortion or infanticide. (And that’s before we get into unpleasant implications of seeing a wealthy lead couple fighting against a markedly less fortunate surrogate.)  In doing so, it also becomes decidedly un-fun, which is not insignificant in terms of made-for-TV movies: Part of why they work on preposterous premises, low budgets and dubious production values is that they’re essentially meaningless—you can simply enjoy them without really worrying about the characters. The more When the Bough Breaks tries for real suspense (not that it actually succeeds), the less fun it becomes, at which point we’re left to ask—why bother? Maybe BET understood that in not broadcasting this one.

  • Gen (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, September 2022) Look, if you’re going to set a horror movie in an insane asylum—there’s only a limited number of plots made to take advantage of such a setting, and it’s not a low-budget, low-imagination genre entry like Gen that’s going to get away from the clichés. This Turkish entry doesn’t waste time going to the expected places, as it focuses on a mountainous psychiatric hospital and then cuts it off from the world thanks to a snowstorm. Then the corpses start piling up as a killer gets busy, and more clichés accumulate on the ground. Director Togan Gökbakar’s work has odd flashes of style and some kind of narrative twist at the end—but it all feels dreary and unoriginal. There’s not much to say here because there’s not a whole lot there—Gen is about as bland as can be given its setting and genre.

  • Fitzwilly (1967)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) There’s at least a conceptual chuckle in Fitzwilly’s premise—the idea of a butler engaged in larceny in order to keep his eccentric charge living in luxury despite a non-existent trust fund. Things get more amusing when a too-smart college-assistant joins the household, uncovers the various illegal machinations and falls in love with the devious butler. The charmingly amusing swindles grow alongside the lead’s growing concerns that the charade is coming to an end, which sets up a nicely droll finale. With Dick Van Dyke in the lead role, Fitzwilly is never less than pleasant. (Barbara Felton is also remarkable in glasses and turtleneck, but I digress.)  But I’m not sure I laughed at any point in the film—it’s all quite cute and charming, but not exactly as funny as it could be. The one thing it has in its favour is being dressed up in peak 1960s style: sets, fashions and even attitude seem to exist in a very narrow band of years. Otherwise, though, Fitzwilly struggles to be anything more than adequate—it’s certainly watchable, but there’s little here that would justify a rewatch even a few years later. Maybe Delbert Mann’s direction just isn’t flashy enough to take advantage of Van Dyke’s skills or premise’s possibilities—or maybe it’s just a low-key comedy content with just being what it is.

  • The Unsuspected (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) As far as classic noir goes, The Unsuspected does the job—we’ve got Manhattan socialites plotting murder, a devious plan, some twists and turns and a good climactic sequence making use of radio. Michael Curtiz directs with a veteran’s skill, while Claude Rains is fun as a perfidious radio host whose passion for murder goes from narration to execution. Meanwhile, Joan Caufield and Audrey Totter are in danger throughout the picture. (Don’t look for a femme fatale, though—this is a noir mystery rather than a thriller.)  It all works well, with just enough style to patch over a few rough spots and slower moments along the way. It recalls better films (Laura being the first of them) but the convoluted plot keeps viewers involved and lets Curtiz showcase more stylistic highlights. The Unsuspected may not be straightforward enough to be iconic, but it’s still a nice time in film-noir land.

  • Madam Satan (1930)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) While the title and the Pre-Code date may get you salivating, Madam Satan proves to be weirder and yet more disappointing than you may expect. For one thing, it’s a Cecil B. DeMille musical comedy, which is an odd-enough combination to make one intrigued and suspicious—DeMille was never known as a particularly light-hearted director, so how would he fare on an early sound-era musical comedy? Well, it turns out that he goes for the whole maximalist approach even there—while the film starts amiably enough in the 1930 upper-crust Manhattan milieu, it ends with people parachuting out of a lightning-struck zeppelin, which is weird enough by itself and (amusingly enough) an intrusion of big-budget spectacle in a genre that can usually dispense with such showcase sequences. The film is, at least, on firmer ground when it comes to plotting—much of it revolves around a mousy woman (Kay Johnson) reinventing herself as a mysterious outspoken vamp to regain the affection of her wayward husband. There’s the Pre-Code premise right there, and DeMille’s maximalist execution goes for scantily-dressed actresses, suggestive dialogue and loose morals aplenty. Things get better once you see the film evolve from bedroom comedy to musical numbers to disaster film—it’s a memorable film all right. The problem is that while the set-pieces may feel like a lot of fun, their assembly is lacking: the lulls are too long, the dialogue inconsistent, the songs insipid and the transition between the various genres is clunky. It’s also a bit hypocritical in faking outrage while getting salacious at the same time—other films of the era would be far more aware and aligned with their own material. (It would also be more enjoyable if we liked both of the married characters, but the male lead is given a huge in-universe pass on what would be unforgivable behaviour for roughly 90 of the 92 years since then.)  While Madam Satan was a flop at the time of its release (not helped along by a glut of then-remarkable musical comedies this early in the sound era), it has aged quite well as a period piece more distinct than most other 1930 films. The crashing Zeppelin? Try fitting that in a musical comedy at any time since then. But while you can sense Madam Satan’s potential—if only for the costume budget—the result only meets a fraction of what could have been done. DeMille wisely went to paternalistic disaster films afterwards, leaving this rather endearing oddity in his wake.

  • The Vampire Bat (1933)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) I’m not going to overstate The Vampire Bat’s inherent interest, although it ends up being more than what it feels like at first—the sombre mystery of a vampire killer in a small Eastern-European village ends up being both more mundane and so more interesting than what we could have expected of a vampire film of the era. The film’s production history explains why the sets are more sumptuous than what we’d expect from a poverty row studio (i.e.: They shot in sets built by Universal for their horror productions), but the presence of Melvyn Douglas, Fay Wray and many crewmembers from bigger-budgeted production also explains why this hasn’t been forgotten along films made by other low-rent studios. This being said, this isn’t as high-octane as other horror films of the era. The resolution is decidedly non-supernatural, and if the atmosphere carries much of the film, there’s no sharp spike of interest to the proceedings. Some of the forthright dialogue carries a Pre-Code charge, but not much else. Plus, at 63 minutes, The Vampire Bat doesn’t have much time for niceties other than driving the plot forward. It’s not bad—but maybe more as a better-than-average example of horror-themed films of that time rather than being all that good by itself.

  • The Maltese Falcon (1931)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) For movies being remade, the best-case scenario is a forgettable, inferior remake that is soon forgotten and leaves the original with its original lustre. The worse case scenario is pretty much what happened with 1931’s The Maltese Falcon: The remake ended up being a genre-making classic that completely eclipsed the previous version (to the point where it’s often explicitly presented with the caveat that it’s NOT the best-known version) and whose interest is almost entirely measured in comparison to its remake. So it is that the 1931 The Maltese Falcon is… not good. Not as good, anyway. Even putting aside the extraordinary contributions of John Huston and Humphrey Bogart to the 1941 remake, there are two crucial ways in which Roy Del Ruth’s 1931 version falls short. First, obviously, is the technical polish of the production. Dating from early in the sound era and not exactly being a prestige production for the studio, this Maltese Falcon is marred by vexing technical shortcomings: frequent dead audio, incredibly rough editing, static camera shots—no wonder it seemed like a prime candidate for a remake: Even the in-between comic remake titled Satan Met a lady would greatly improve on those aspects even five years later. But the more crucial difference illustrates the importance that tone and style can make on even the same kind of narrative: 1931 was one decade too early for film noir, and so the first Maltese Falcon offers, to seasoned noir fans, the utterly bizarre spectacle of an archetypical noir story being done is rather bland mystery style—missing the added layer of shadowy cinematography, downbeat tone and urban decay that made film noir such a landmark. It does make for hypnotically bemused watching—especially if you’re familiar with the other versions. There is one important aspect, however, in which the 1931 is superior and will surprise viewers, and it’s in the Pre-Code frankness of the script: the sexual aspects of the original novel are toned down but far more obvious than the later versions of the film: it feels harsher and occasionally more honest about its own subject matter. Strike another one up for Pre-Code Hollywood. This version of The Maltese Falcon is, without many realizing it, a modern treat—as with many Pre-Code films judged too racy for the Production Code years, it was unavailable for public viewing from 1934 to 1966. Ironically, this may be why we ended up with the 1941 version—a way to remake it according to the strictures of the time, and accidentally producing a classic along the way. So rests the 1931 version of The Maltese Falcon—forever in the shadow of its successor.

  • Dead Reckoning (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) I’d like to be more positive about Dead Reckoning, but some films are just okay and that’s it. Which is unfortunate, considering that it has a lot of elements that should have worked better together: A complex film noir plot blending crime and romance, the presence of Humphrey Bogart in a period of his career where he could do little wrong in a role that was adjacent to his usual tough-guy persona; the luscious Lizabeth Scott in full husky femme fatale mode and some fine production values—it was clearly made to ape then-recent successes such as To Have and Have Not (Scott filling in for Lauren Bacall), but without the top-notch talent and magical chemistry that made those earlier films a success. We’re still left with a more-than-decent film noir in execution—Bogart does what he did best and Scott seems custom-made to play a dangerous woman. But it doesn’t make as much of an impression, nor feels all that striking once everything is said and done: The revenge plot may be just a bit too scattered and convoluted to land well (maybe due to plot holes and contrivances), while the cinematography is, again, fine without being impressive. Dead Reckoning will do for those Bogart and/or noir fans who have seen everything else and just want more of their favourites—but no more.