Hedy Lamarr

  • Algiers (1938)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2021) Having seen French classic Pepe le Moko a few weeks ago, I was unaccountably happy to see its Hollywood remake, Algiers, show up on the TV schedule, even if it was the battered public domain version complete with low-contrast audio, washed-out video and frequent scratches. The remake sticks so closely to the original that it’s not as if I had to pay attention to follow along: Almost a scene-for-scene remake with a few accommodations for language and American censors (the biggest one being at the end of the film, although it doesn’t affect the result all that much), it very much feels like the same film. Considering how similar it is, it’s tempting to directly compare each actor in their roles:  Charles Boyer is no Jean Gabin, but the outsider’s spin he puts on Pepe Le Moko’s character was striking enough to inspire Looney Tunes lothario Pepe Le Pew. Hedy Lamarr, in her Hollywood movie debut, is a clear upgrade over the original actress in sheer sex-appeal, and matches far better with Sigrid Gurie as her romantic rival than in the original. (In Pepe le Moko, the two women are so different that it’s a dull-blonde-versus-exotic brunette scenario, whereas the American remake has them looking very similar, significantly changing the meaning of the triangle to its thematic essence.)  Then there’s Joseph Calleia, who does surprisingly well as the slimy inspector Slimane, something I would not have expected given the very specific appeal of the actor playing the character in the original film. But then again — legend has it that Algiers’ director John Cromwell showed scenes of the original film to the remake’s actors and instructed them to hit the same marks. Amazingly enough, and cinematographer James Wong Howe gets all the credit for it, the film was entirely shot in Hollywood, with a few inserts very cleverly used to give some sense of place to the studio production. The result, though, is distinctive enough in the details. Made for mass appeal rather than poetic realism, Algiers is almost as good as Pepe le Moko, but focused more on straightforward entertainment than cinematic art. The differences are slight, but they’re fascinating to study in their cumulative impact. If forced to choose one for a second viewing, I’d probably go for Algiers… but only for Lamarr and Gurie.

  • Come Live with Me (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) The casting in Come Live with Me is enough to make any classic Hollywood cinephile perk up — Hedy Lamarr and James Stewart in a romantic comedy? Well, yes — she plays a refugee with citizenship issues, and he plays a single writer in search of inspiration. It’s a match made in citizenship application heaven, and he gets enough inspiration to write a book about their non-romance. It’s all complicated by some adultery (surprisingly enough for 1941), but the key driver of the last act is Stewart saying with his usual aw-shucks “Now, it’s perfectly all right for two strangers to get married; they’ve got to know each other before they get divorced!” Blending screwball comedy of remarriage with a far lower-octane style of romance, Come Live with Me is nowhere near any top tier of film — but it has Lamarr looking beautiful, Stewart ably playing a romantic lead at the height of this romantic-premier era, and that’s more than enough to check off the essential boxes of what the film must deliver.

  • Tortilla Flat (1942)

    Tortilla Flat (1942)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) If I can chime in on the ongoing cultural appropriation debate and the necessity to let people tell their own stories, we can nod in the direction of classic Hollywood films such as Tortilla Flat as a piece of evidence to enter in the record. By 1942, I’m sure that the film was a noble endeavour, setting itself in a small fishing community to offer a portrait of a simple life, with Caucasian characters living alongside Hispanic ones and spouting the virtues of a slower, poorer, more rural existence. It even features money as the root of most of the characters’ problems. It’s from a Steinbeck novel, so the producers could even claim a literary pedigree. While the film was apparently not a big box-office hit at the time, headliners such as Spencer Tracy (echoing the work he’d later do on The Old Man and the Sea) and Hedy Lamarr (somehow cast as Hispanic), ensure that the film does retain some marquee value even today. But many things have changed in the eighty years since then, and the overwhelming impression left by Tortilla Flat today is one of overwhelming fakery. Racial miscasting doesn’t help and neither does the title, but once you get into the film itself, it’s the entire thing that feels insincere, with Hollywood types talking down and outside their experience in an attempt to deliver something manufactured to the masses. I may be overreacting, but the film’s stereotypes and condescending attitudes are overwhelming — there is simply no way that someone from that kind of background would write something like this as representative, and that is the point of cultural appropriation and filmmaking-for-all debates: Let people tell their own stories and they will be much better at it. More credible, anyway.

  • Experiment Perilous (1944)

    Experiment Perilous (1944)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) With Jacques Tourneur at the helm and Hedy Lamarr in the lead, you can go confidently in Experiment Perilous knowing two things: it’s going to be a thrilling ride and she’s going to look great. The film does fulfill its initial promises on both counts: As a psychologist drawn to the dysfunctional lifestyle of a reclusive couple, George Brent plays the role of an amateur investigator uncovering the troubling truth in a way expertly drawn out by Tourneur and the script he’s working from. Ever-beautiful Lamarr shows up quite late in the film, but remains an object of fascination throughout. The result is very much a domestic thriller à la Gaslight (released almost at the same time), with strong touches of gothic romance and even a whiff of noir. Experiment Perilous eventually escalates into a spectacular aquarium-shattering drapes-burning action-packed confrontation in a Manhattan brownstone for a result that should leave anyone at least moderately entertained. (Amazingly enough, there’s even a title drop of “Experiment Perilous” midway through the film.)

  • The Conspirators (1944)

    The Conspirators (1944)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) I’m not sure why it took me so long to discover this, but Warner Brothers turned out a slew of Casablanca-light movies in the mid-1940s. Most of them took place in Europe, dealt with a combination of often-fictionalized European politics and romance, often featured Nazis as villains, and Casablanca performers as players. The Peter Lorre/Sydney Greenstreet duo alone is a good way to identify the half-dozen films in that sub-sub-sub-genre, and here they are indeed in The Conspirators, a film that sticks far closer to Casablanca than the other films in the same vein. Here, the Lorre/Greenstreet pairing is supplemented by Paul Heinreid and the beautiful Hedy Lamarr as members of a Portuguese anti-Nazi resistance group trying to root out a traitor among them. It’s all fairly familiar stuff, but the cast knows what it’s doing, and so does the Warner Brothers apparatus surrounding them. Lamarr is close to her most glamorous here, and the Greenstreet/Lorre combo is a known quantity as well. Churned out quickly to take advantage of topical events and the American public’s appetite for anti-Nazi material, The Conspirators is, in some ways, an ordinary wartime thriller, but the combination of some above-average elements does make the result more interesting even when it’s clearly trying to repeat a much-better film.

  • H. M. Pulham, Esq. (1941)

    H. M. Pulham, Esq. (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) I have now seen just enough of King Vidor’s movies to expect more than the usual Hollywood formula from him, and in this regard H. M. Pulham, Esq. does not disappoint: The story of a middle-aged businessman trying to reconnect with a former flame, it’s a film that defies the usual conventions of romance, settling for wistful drama instead. While Robert Young is a rock in the lead role, there’s perhaps more to appreciate in the performance of Van Heflin as a friend, and especially Hedy Lamarr as the former flame of the protagonist, a free-spirited woman who offers an alluring distraction from his conservative lifestyle. Lamarr has more to do here than in many of her other movies, and she delivers an interesting character in the middle of an unusual story. As with other romances in which the characters recognize that they cannot have a happy ending together, it’s a film that plays in minor chords — interesting but not spectacular, quiet rather than bombastic. Even the ending, giving some solace to the main character, is a small victory rather than an outright triumph. It makes sense that H. M. Pulham, Esq. may be fondly remembered among the connoisseurs but a bit too esoteric to be a crowd favourite — it’s in this area that Vidor excelled, rather than trying to make outright crowd-pleasers.

  • Her Highness and the Bellboy (1945)

    Her Highness and the Bellboy (1945)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) As far as old-school Hollywood romantic fantasies go, Her Highness and the Bellboy is both typical and innocuous, as it embraces the very American notion of class mobility in the core of its narrative. It features a princess falling for a bellboy already pining for a bedridden invalid, but don’t worry given that everything is going to turn out all right for everyone. The casting is perhaps more interesting than the premise, as the role is the Highness is held by none other than Hedy Lamarr (in a relatively rare comic role), while the Bellboy is played by a very likable Robert Walker — while June Allyson transforms the role of a crippled ex-dancer into more than just clichés. (Don’t worry — there’s eventually another man to round up this love triangle.)  Production values for the film are fine without being spectacular — after all, this is mostly a studio-set film featuring a small number of characters: no need to go all-out on the Manhattan location shooting. It gives Her Highness and the Bellboy perhaps more of a sitcom feeling than it should, but that’s the nature of the story: a straightforward narrative, enough time for comic subplots and a big romantic finale upholding anti-monarchic ideals. It’s pretty much exactly what anyone would expect, and that’s its biggest strength.

  • Ziegfeld Girl (1941)

    Ziegfeld Girl (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) In some ways, you can see Ziegfeld Girl as the second of an informal trilogy of MGM movies about Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. —or more specifically the Ziegfeld Follies revue productions that he created for Broadway. Their appeal could be summed up in a word: Girls. 1945’s Ziegfeld Follies was MGM’s attempt to re-create his shows with lavish means and the biggest stars in the business. Before that, 1936’s Academy-Award-winning biopic The Great Ziegfeld showed us the man’s life, and produced some of the most stunning musical numbers of 1930s American cinema along the way. Some of those set-pieces are reused in 1941’s Ziegfeld Girls, which foregoes the man himself to focus on the fictional story of three girls who become part of the show. That, in itself, would be a decent-enough backstage musical, but that’s before taking a look at the cast. Not only do you have James Stewart playing a vaguely disreputable truck driver getting annoyed at his girlfriend’s greater fame (a role somewhat less sympathetic than usual for Stewart, who doesn’t sing a line), you also have the girls themselves being played by none other than Judy Garland, Hedy Lamarr and Lana Turner — a ridiculously stacked cast, if you’ll pardon the expression. Garland is at her youthful best here, not yet showing the strains of studio life — her “Minnie From Trinidad” is the film’s standout number, as long as you put aside the unfortunate cultural issue of having her perform as a darker-skinned girl. Lamarr and Turner don’t sing, but their roles as still good showcases, and the combined impact of all three is not bad — and I’m saying this a someone who’s usually indifferent to Turner and often unimpressed with Garland. Ziegfeld Girl doesn’t manage to be a great musical, but it does have enough running for it to distinguish itself from the crowded arena of Broadway backstage musicals. Reusing some of the lavish numbers from The Great Ziegfeld must have been great for MGM’s bottom line, and it does add visual impact (as well as the gravitas associated with the earlier prestige production) to Ziegfeld Girl. It’s a nice-enough film, although I suspect that some modern viewers (as I nearly did) may run the risk of thinking they’ve seen it already due to its title being very similar to the two other films in MGM’s informal trilogy.

  • Boom Town (1940)

    Boom Town (1940)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) There’s something fun in seeing Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy play frenemies on-screen in Boom Town, each of them bringing their usual persona to the fore in a tale of duelling oil tycoons throughout the years. The story spans more than a decade, and sees them make a large fortune at a time when oil madness was sweeping the United States. Women, business deals and even revenge tie their characters as much as it compels them to competition, and if the film has a narrative backbone, it had to be the character played by Claudette Colbert who becomes a prize for them. (Meanwhile, Hedy Lamarr gets an early good role as the temptress that comes in between the lead trio.) Boom Town gets a while to get going, something that is not at all helped by a cyclical structure that keeps getting back to familiar ground, suggesting an unsatisfactory lack of growth for the characters. Both Gable and Tracy are good at being themselves and playing off each other (this was their third collaboration after San Francisco and Jet Pilot, and perhaps the best) while Lamarr is striking in a limited role, but Colbert is wasted in a role that barely touches upon her comic talents. The result is not bad, but it misses being better than good by a wide margin—not enough development, a repetitive structure and a disappointing ending. I still liked the look at the wild oil fields of the early twentieth century and the character interplay (Gable had worked with his father on such fields, so he had a better than average understanding of how that worked), but Boom Town could have been better.

  • The Heavenly Body (1944)

    The Heavenly Body (1944)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2020) Star vehicles have been a feature of Hollywood forever, and for all of the flak they can get, they’re often a direct delivery vehicle to see likable actors doing what they do best. Taking this into account, there are two reasons to watch The Heavenly Body, and they’re Hedy Lamarr and William Powell. They play a disaffected couple – he, an astronomer, spends far too much time at the observatory, making her feel neglected. When an astrologer portends that she will find happiness with someone else, she loudly declares her intention to leave the marriage, leaving him frantic to resolve matters. Things are complicated by the arrival of a handsome air-raid warden, hastening his efforts just as the culmination of his professional career is coming fast. Powell is in a class of his own as the protagonist, his obvious gift for sophisticated comedy outstripping the somewhat loose script. There’s some fun in exploring astronomy as a plot driver — there’s even a nice special effect shot featuring a comet crashing into the moon. The rest of The Heavenly Body is a bit of a paint-by-number production, although it does harken to the late-1930s comedies of remarriage in pulling apart a couple only to have them reunite at the end. Not a great movie by any means, but a good show for Powell and Lamarr fans.

  • The Story of Mankind (1957)

    The Story of Mankind (1957)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2020) Oh, what a mess. Any movie that punches so hard through my suspension of disbelief that I start asking why it exists has already lost. In the case of The Story of Mankind, here we have a science-fictional “alien judgment” framing device looking at the history of humanity as an excuse to have small historical sketches conveniently casting as many known actors as possible. It’s hard to resist a film that had Hedy Lamarr, three of the Marx brothers, Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Dennis Hopper (!) and Cesar Romero, but just wait until it begins and you’re served sketches that are neither funny nor profound, skipping ahead history to serve the usual bromides, with stunt casting that doesn’t really use the actors to their fullest extent – even the Marx Brothers appear in different scenes, and don’t play to their strengths. (I was waiting for the Groucho scene… I should have skipped it.) The film being directed by Irwin Allen, I half-suspect that the idea was for a grandiose statement with state-of-the-art special effects. Instead, we get sketches comparable to a high-school production, and a constant back-and-forth between trying to make a statement and trying to make jokes. The Story of Mankind is almost fascinating in its hideousness, but I really can’t recommend it as anything but a curio.

  • Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story (2017)

    Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2020) The story of how a beautiful movie star invented Wi-Fi is now well-known enough to be part legend and part truth. While Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story helps detail much of what happened, it does err a bit too much on putting the modern foundations of western civilization on Lamarr’s shoulders. Much of the film is about Lamarr becoming a movie star—her early career in Europe, immigration to the United States, success as an actress, and the legendary beauty that opened up many doors, whether they were professional or romantic. Since Bombshell is a hagiography, it doesn’t really mention how Lamarr’s films have not endured—Like Brigitte Bardot, she’s a movie star whose individual films aren’t that good, and unlike Bardot, she doesn’t have a signature film that people can point to and say, “This is what Lamarr was about.” Still, Lamarr was reasonably popular during World War II and if her life had been limited to her filmography, she still would have been an interesting topic for a film. But there’s more, obviously—thanks to contacts in the arms-dealing world (via her then-husband) and a musician friend, she co-patented a technique to hop between frequencies. This concept eventually became a building block for a host of later radio technologies, including the modern Wi-Fi protocol. Since Bombshell is all about Lamarr, it does draw a very thick, short and exaggerated line from Lamarr’s idea to modern-day Wi-Fi routers, ignoring the smorgasbord nature of technological development. The beauty-with-the-brain story is too hard to resist, though, and so is the tragically-victimized-woman narrative. In the third act of the film, we go over Lamarr’s less-than-impressive decline over the next five decades—how she married six times, wasn’t able to successfully transition away from the bombshell movie persona and how she eked a meagre living in difficult circumstances. The film definitely soft-pedals Lamarr’s increasing litigiousness and crankiness in later years, as well as her penchant for petty crimes such as shoplifting—although, amusingly, one of the targets of her lawsuits, Mel Brooks, ends up delivering one of her strongest defences when interviewed for the film. Still, Bombshell is equally dedicated to making a saint out of its oppressed heroine, blaming society-at-large for her use of drugs, her poverty, and her increasing obscurity until she and her achievements were essentially rediscovered during the 1990s. (Makes sense: I first heard about Lamarr in 1996 when her portrait won a CorelDraw contest—something that led to another lawsuit.) At the very least, Bombshell lays out the three main poles of interest in Lamarr’s life in compelling fashion, with several interviewees, including Peter Bogdanovich, Jeanine Basinger, Robert Osborne, her children and Lamarr herself in archival footage. It’s informative, compelling, emotional, somewhat authentic and filled with good archival footage. It’s, in other words, most of what you need to know about her. Where I’ll diverge from the usual good words, however, is in regretting that writer-director Alexandra Dean took the easy hagiographic way to cover the material, going for the cheap yet unarguable “genius woman underestimated because of her good looks” tragedy angle when there’s a lot of material unsaid or unexplored that would make this a more complex tale. But no—Lamarr is at the centre of the universe in Bombshell, so much so that it’s a wonder she’s not portrayed installing home routers.