Movie Review

  • A Damsel in Distress (1937)

    A Damsel in Distress (1937)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) One of the lesser Fred Astaire musicals of the 1930s, A Damsel in Distress takes us to England, where Astaire plays (as usual) a renowned entertainer trying to find love. He eventually finds it in the character of an English lady, although not without the complications that usually follow such narratives. The cast does offer some interest, with Joan Fontaine at the female lead, and comic characters played by none other than George Burns and Gracie Allen, the later being progressively funnier as a squeaky-voiced airhead. There’s the usual number and variety of dance numbers from Astaire, and while there’s nothing truly anthology-worthy here, two or three sequences still work really well: “Stiff Upper Lip” leads to a showpiece funhouse dance number, while “Nice Work If You Can Get It” leads to an Astaire drum solo played with a variety of appendages. Nearly everything about the film is perfunctory by Astaire’s high standards—Fontaine is not a particularly good dancer, the comedy is slight (aside from Burns and Allen) and the premise is a bit dull compared to other movies of the era. Those who keep a wearied eye on Astaire’s romantic persona (boiled down to “no means try again later”) will note an explicit statement of the persistence credo late in the film, where a character calls out Astaire for being too passive and to Go Get It. Modern audiences will groan at that moment—what works for Astaire would mean a restraining order and social media denunciations in real life twenty-first century. Still, A Damsel in Distress itself is not too bad, even though it is frankly one of the more easily disposable of Astaire’s black-and-white films.

  • Laugh and Get Rich (1931)

    Laugh and Get Rich (1931)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) By the high standards of the 1930s comedies that survive today, Laugh and Get Rich is not that good—Oh, it’s pleasant enough in its depiction of an eccentric family running a Depression-era boarding house, but it doesn’t have the supercharged dialogue and plotting of the era’s best work. This being said, it is from early in the decade, barely four years after the introduction of sound movies and before the development of the genre throughout the 1930s. As such, it does have its charms; it credibly pokes at the obsessions of the time (such as oil exploitation) and it does have an early leading role for character actress Edna May Oliver, even as Dorothy Lee provides sex appeal as her daughter. The story has to do with the daughter picking the right prospect for the cash-starved family, but the conclusion is right out of those Victorian morality plays—in which being virtuous invites chance and fortune. (Heck, it’s even in the title.) The conclusion works because it’s a happy one, but it does feel a bit cheap. Still, Laugh and Get Rich can be watched easily enough—it’s not riotous but pleasant, and that’s often good enough.

  • Red-Headed Woman (1932)

    Red-Headed Woman (1932)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) If you want a full-blown illustration of where Hollywood cinema was headed in the pre-Code era, go no farther than Red-Headed Woman, a salacious drama in which our heroine systematically goes about improving her social position by seducing increasingly important men, all the way to a climax where she tries to gun down the man she once seduced because he dared reconcile with his ex-wife. Jean Harlow is ferocious in the title role, clearly announcing her bombshell status of later years. There is a little bit of comedy to the proceedings, but Red-Headed Woman really is about shocking mainstream audiences, and it still does—despite some much-harsher material in the intervening years.

  • Reveille with Beverly (1943)

    Reveille with Beverly (1943)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) I won’t try to hide that I watched Reveille with Beverly solely because of Ann Miller—and while the film itself is now almost obscure for understandable reasons, it’s quite a delight for her fans. Here Miller, barely twenty years old (and possibly even nineteen when the film was shot—she played loose with her age early in her career), plays a radio station assistant with dream of having her own show. Opportunity presents itself when the stuffy host of a morning classical music show goes on vacation, leaving her free to shake things up with more modern music. Since Reveille with Beverly was designed as a home-front wartime propaganda film, it’s no surprise if her program is picked up by the local army training camp and then by the wider military forces. There are a few romantic shenanigans between her and two soldiers (resolved by shipping both of them to the front), but the film is primarily an excuse to showcase musical numbers. As the titular Beverly spins the tunes, the camera zooms in on the record and an optical effect takes us to what is essentially a music video of the performance. What’s noteworthy here is the unusually heavy percentage of black artists in the mix—from Count Basie to The Mills Brothers, to Duke Ellington. Musically, there’s some interesting material here—acting as an anthology of 1943 pop music, there are a few classics (“Take the A Train,” and “Night and Day” as sung by Frank Sinatra), plus a few fun surprises: “Cow-Cow Boogie” is fun (sung by Ella Mae Morse), but my favourite is probably “Sweet Lucy Brown.” Non-musically, the film does feature one of Miller’s relatively rare leading roles—and while much of the character is about non-dancing, non-singing comedy, she gets a very brief tap number at the start that foreshadows her climactic tap-dancing singing number. It’s not a great film, and we can understand how the thin plot, sometimes-dated material (including a comedy routine that’s maybe a fourth intelligible to modern audiences given how heavy it is on contemporary references) and wartime nature have made it a bit of a forgotten curio today. But fans of Ann Miller will get quite a kick out of it, and so will students of circa-1943 American pop music.

  • The Benny Goodman Story (1956)

    The Benny Goodman Story (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2020) I never expected to have watched so many movies about American band leaders, even less having an opinion on them, but we’re in the middle of a pandemic and weirder things are happening. There aren’t many clearer illustrations of how American pop culture has evolved as how band leaders have been replaced by other kinds of stars (usually lead singers of musical groups) in the popular imagination. Now, I’ve had a soft spot for Benny Goodman for plenty of reasons—Goodman was image-conscious, he regularly showed up in Hollywood movies between 1937 and 1948 and as luck would have it, I ended up watching his only featured role in Sweet and Low-Down a few weeks before The Benny Goodman Story. Here, Steve Allen (who would go on to become an exemplary talk-show host) has a credible take on Goodman, round glasses and general bonhomie included. The film is clearly in the Hollywood biopic mould, focused on his long-running romance with Alice Hammond (Donna Reed), whose character comes to exemplify the acceptance of Goodman’s brand of “hot” jazz by the American mainstream. There’s plenty of music to go along, and his classic cover of “Sing, Sing, Sing” is kept for the very end of the film. The Benny Goodman Story is an enjoyable film (and it’s just as good as something you listen to while doing other things) and a decent immortalization of Goodman. There’s some illustrative value here for jazz enthusiasts in depicting the transition of the art form into a more modern form, as well as a modest message of integration along the way.

  • Waltz of the Toreadors (1962)

    Waltz of the Toreadors (1962)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) There are movies for which the only payoff is realizing, in the end, what could have been. Such is the case with Waltz of the Toreador, which stars Peter Sellers for his character work, but seems more interested in a blend of not-quite-slapstick, not-quite-serious tone. I tried staying interested in the film and failed more often than not, only seeing toward the end what could have been. The core seems solid enough, what with a retired military officer reflecting on his life and us seeing the results of choices made in flashbacks. But there are many ways in which such a movie can end in a disappointment, whether it’s in adapting source material that may not be suitably for the big screen (in this case, a theatrical play), squabbling between producers and directors as to what exactly is to be delivered, an actor’s ego getting in the way (a real possibility in the Sellers’ case) or simply the movie moving out of touch with time—Waltz of the Toreador may have been a commercial success back then, but it’s been mostly forgotten today even for Sellers completists. The result is a mess, neither going for the typical Sellers comedy nor achieving something along the lines of the not-dissimilar The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. No matter the reason, Waltz of the Toreadors falls flat, and it’s more trying than you’d expect to make it all the way to the end, even if the end does tie it back together.

  • One Hour with You (1932)

    One Hour with You (1932)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) It’s easy to see in One Hour with You why Maurice Chevalier was Hollywood’s Favourite Frenchman in the early 1930s—It’s not just about the really charming accent, it’s about the congenial bonhomie, the joie de vivre and the almost irresistible charm of the man. This may not be a great movie, but it’s a lot of fun and it allows Chevalier to do what he does best, up to speaking (and singing) directly to the audience in an attempt to explain himself. The story, slight as it is, has to do with a happily married couple being tempted by adultery—and while, in the freewheeling pre-Code era, our heroes do succumb to “temptation” by kissing, modern audiences may want to fill out more salacious details in their minds. Still, the plot isn’t nearly as interesting as seeing Chevalier (and Jeanette MacDonald as his wife) sing and deliver some great monologues, along with some witty repartee and sophisticated European attitude toward marriage, love and courtship. Amazingly enough, the film can be said to have been directed by Ernest Lubitsch and George Cukor thanks to some production shenanigans, although the Lubitsch touch is more obvious. Clocking in at a tightly tuned 80 minutes, the film earns a few laughs and leaves us with a big smile on our faces (which, considering that I watched it in close proximity with other tales of adultery through the decades, is no mean feat). A great script filled with witty dialogue and sophisticated comedy wraps up the rest. A clear star vehicle that delivers, One Hour With You is a shining example of Pre-Code romantic comedy, funny, daring and still incredibly effective ninety years later.

  • The Long Voyage Home (1940)

    The Long Voyage Home (1940)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) Hailing from that strange period in history where Hollywood was egging an isolationist United States to support England’s WW2 efforts but not quite yet under fire, The Long Voyage Home adapts and updates four Eugene O’Neill plays to contemporary times, following a team of sailors aboard a British steamer during the early days of World War II. This being said, it’s not quite a war movie despite a number of battle sequences and a glum conclusion: it’s far more focused on the characters and their relationship in the face of world events. As a result (plus the presence of John Wayne, annoying at the best of times), I don’t think too highly of the result—the film does feel overlong due to its lack of narrative density. The fairly grim narrative also contributes to the feeling of being stuck in the film longer than strictly necessary: this is not a fun ride, and while you can recognize director John Ford’s Western-ish touch, the setting does not lend itself to the same tone. It’s easy to see why The Long Voyage Home was nominated for a few Academy Awards (including Best Picture), and it does offer a drama of unusual scope when most war movies of the time were more restrained, but it’s not really a film you’ll watch more than once.

  • Muscle Beach Party (1964)

    Muscle Beach Party (1964)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) What may be insufferable juvenilia to a generation may be a cultural artifact half a century later, and if contemporary reviews for Muscle Beach Party weren’t kind, I suspect that more modern takes on the film will revel in the mid-1960s California beach atmosphere. The second of the “Beach Party” series with Anette Funicello and Frankie Avalon, this sequel brings together the burgeoning surfer and bodybuilding cultures together in a comic setting, with an added dash of romantic spice as an Italian countess distracts Avalon from Funicello’s affections. Add some bouncy music (by the Beach Boys, the Del Tones and an insanely young Stevie Wonder), a late-movie cameo by Peter Lorre (with the film having the decency to literally stop in mid-frame as he makes an entrance) and you’ve got enough here for any sixties pop-culture enthusiast. Don Rickles and Buddy Hackett provide additional comedy. It’s all set against the then-newish concept of the “the teenager,” with California showing the way to the rest of the nation. Muscle Beach Party is really not sophisticated entertainment, but it is sunny fun and it’s now almost perfect as a time capsule of its time.

  • Ride the High Country (1962)

    Ride the High Country (1962)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) If you start watching Ride the High Country and see Sam Peckinpah’s name as a director, you may end up making a few unfortunate presumptions as to how the film is going to go. But seven years before The Wild Bunch made him define his own brand of ultraviolence, Peckinpah was still developing his skills as a filmmaker when he put together Ride the High Country, and while the result does show many of Peckinpah’s later trademarks, it’s also something much closer to traditional westerns. The plot has to do with two aging gunslingers taking on an assignment to transport gold from a miner’s camp back to the bank. But things get more complicated when they encounter a man with a daughter, and trouble follows them all the way to the miner’s camp. If you watch the film based on Peckinpah’s reputation, you will be surprised at some of the over-comedic touches of the film’s first half (complete with amusing musical cues), yet dreading the inevitable descent into violence that is sure to come. But while I’m no big fan of westerns, this one does things slightly differently enough, and well enough, that I found myself gradually taken by the result. By the time a rather dour finale rolls by, the film is actually quite remarkable, and we can understand those who call it Peckinpah’s first success. Former Golden-age Hollywood leading men Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott both get one last role here, with Peckinpah getting an early chance to showcase one of his predominant themes—the end of the wild west. Ride the High Country is both a representative western and an unusual one as well—the result is good enough to be worth a look even for those who don’t regard westerns with any particular affection.

  • Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)

    Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2020) I can objectively recognize that Crimes and Misdemeanors is a good movie and I can understand those who maintain that it’s one of writer-director Woody Allen’s best… but I don’t have to agree. Much of this disagreement is the overwhelming impression, sometimes left by his later movies, that we’ve seen all of this before. Taking place in Allen’s favourite upper-middle-class Manhattanite intellectual strata, it’s a film that blends witty dialogue, existential musings, comedy and drama in a mixture very much like, well, half a dozen of Allen’s other films, perhaps most closely with Manhattan Murder Mystery (which, in retrospect, can almost be called an affectionate parody), but also backward to Manhattan for the setting and character and forward to Irrational Man for the nods to existentialism. In other words, if you’ve seen the rest of Allen’s filmography, Crimes and Misdemeanors (to which I’m a late, late arrival) doesn’t hold anything new. It does not entirely help that the film abruptly gains meaning, narrative coherency and an extra star (or whatever you call a better reviewer’s grade) in its final scene, as it finally melds the twin strands of the plot into something looking like a point. Oh, I still liked it: No matter what I think of seeing Allen as a nebbish loser blowing up his marriage with extramarital longing, there’s still a comfortable atmosphere to the result, and despite what I just said, I’m not going to begrudge him another exploration of New York City intellectuals. The acting talent assembled here is, as usual, splendid: Martin Landau, Mia Farrow, Alan Alda and Anjelica Huston as a semi-hysterical mistress… yes, that does it. The comedy here is well dosed with the drama and the philosophical suspense, providing a film that neither errs too heavily on the side of ruminations nor (alas) on the side of absurd gags. It’s finely controlled, and my quip about the plots fusing only in the end scene is belied by plenty of thematic transitions between the two subplots. Still, I can’t help but feel that, given my zigzagging path through Allen’s filmography, I have come to Crimes and Misdemeanors too late to enjoy it at its fullest.

  • Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961)

    Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) If I’ve understood Creature from the Haunted Sea’s production history correctly, it was born from the mercenary mind of legendary producer/director Roger Corman when he found himself fin Puerto Rico with leftover film stock, tax credits, actors, a crew and time to spare after shooting two other movies on location. A screenwriter was given three days to adapt an existing script in Corman’s files into a comedy making use of available scenery and props, and the film itself was shot in five days. Considering this, it’s a minor miracle that Creature from the Haunted Sea, at a bare 75 minutes, has survived all the way to 2020, let alone that it still gets a few laughs. The story has something to do with a less-than-competent American spy tagging along a criminal and his hoodlums as they exfiltrate a Cuban general and plot to steal his gold, notwithstanding the local sea monster. But let’s not be too complimentary: From the very first few moments, it’s obvious that this “comedy” is going to be more incompetent than actually funny. All of the characteristics of an ultra-low-budget production are obvious from the first minutes, from the awkward dialogue, staging, acting, scenery or editing. It just gets worse afterward, with narrative and tonal zig-zags all over the place as the comedy runs out of steam and the film tries to be serious for a moment. It all falls apart quickly, and the only thing fit to help viewers make it all the way to the end is a bizarre mixture of bad-movie howlers and some genuinely funny lines and moments. You can see how, given a few more weeks, this could have become a decently entertaining comedy—but in the state it’s in, this spy/monster spoof barely makes sense: The funniest lines (and some of them do get a laugh) come from the narration, which I suspect was put together in post-production with a bit more time to polish. It’s far more entertaining than you’d suppose (the film earned a rare lowest-of-the-low “7” raking from French-Canadian reviewing authority MediaFilm), but half of it is for the wrong reason: threadbare production values, bad acting and barely coherent plotting distract rather than add to the zany concepts and a dozen funny lines.

  • Angst (1983)

    Angst (1983)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2020) If someone decided to make the film I would be most guaranteed to dislike, it would look a lot like Angst. It’s not just a non-supernatural horror movie with plenty of gore: it’s one that uses a naturalistic, borderline cinema-vérité style to follow a serial killing psychopath as he goes around his deadly business. The camera seldom flinches even as he kills and kills again, the narration (from the killer’s viewpoint) is grating and the effect is like being dragged in mud whether you like it or not. The only thing that saves the film (and I use the term loosely) is an undeniable filmmaking competency from writer-director-producer Gerald Kargl: he knows that he’s going for revulsion, and he won’t stop at anything to get it. In other words, this may be a gruesome, obnoxious, morally repulsive film, but it’s one that consciously set out to be, rather than struggling with even the basic elements of how to put a movie together. Angst is still not something to recommend: This is ugly cinema at its worst, and it’s the opposite of anything I want from a movie. Bring up a fluffy romantic comedy next, because I need to find some joy in life again.

  • Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950)

    Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) I’m always game for an Otto Preminger movie, and while Where the Sidewalk Ends doesn’t have the cachet of some of his better-known productions, it’s a perfectly fine example of a crooked-cop film noir. Dana Andrews plays a cop with a bit of a problem roughing up suspects, but things quickly turn ugly for him when a routine interrogation becomes manslaughter—covering up his traces only endangers the father of his newest flame, and much of the film consists in following him as he sees his scheme unravel and his conscience attempts one last stand. Cleanly directed, competently acted and almost perfectly following the classical noir atmosphere, this is an easy to watch, tightly-constructed film that tightens up the suspense and delivers a satisfying finale. Gene Tierney plays the love interest that ends up being the protagonist’s moral beacon, and Ruth Donnely has a small but very effective role as a bantering café owner. While twenty-first century viewers would frown at the idea of a rough cop being the hero, twenty-first century viewers would also expect his transgressions to be more extreme—in that light, there’s a curiously refreshing lower-stake approach to Where the Sidewalk Ends that almost makes it comforting viewing even when it gets into the gritty details of cop work in New York City.

  • Bride of Re-Animator (1990)

    Bride of Re-Animator (1990)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, October 2020) While Bride of Re-Animator does build up to a suitably high-energy finale, it does take a lot of time to get to the Bride of Frankenstein reprise: Much of the film is spent getting the pieces in the correct order, even flying off the face of the logic established by the first film or its aftermath. Held together once again by the over-the-top performance of Jeffrey Combs as mad scientist Herbert West, Bride of Re-Animator does idle a lot of the time, only going for broke in its last half-hour with gory effects, grotesque creatures and a heart-ripping finale. It’s certainly a letdown from the first film, even if it clearly plays in the same playground with a bit more technical polish. The not-that-serious tone does help a lot in not entirely dismissing the result—if you’re even remotely interested in comic(ish) gory horror, Bride of Re-Animator is going to be good enough even though it’s clearly a second-tier effort despite some late-film energy.