Joan Crawford

This Woman Is Dangerous (1952)

This Woman Is Dangerous (1952)

(On Cable TV, November 2020) I don’t particularly like Joan Crawford-the-person, but as an actress she could have her moments in even the most average films, and it’s a quirk of characterization that makes her the star of This Woman is Dangerous. Trying out permutations on a familiar theme of a gangster eyeing a mundane life, the script makes showcases a woman as the head of a crime gang, and Crawford tears into the role with relish, living up to the title of the film before settling down with a tale of progressive blindness and falling in love with her surgeon. The complications come up when her ex-lover comes back to get her, although the interest of the film diminishes the closer it gets back to a standard crime thriller. By far the best part of the film is the opening, during which Crawford barks orders to her gang and proves that she is not to be trifled with. Her character softens and becomes less interesting as it goes by, although as a quasi-noir crime film, This Woman is Dangerous does have basic watchability.

Johnny Guitar (1954)

Johnny Guitar (1954)

(On Cable TV, October 2020) I don’t normally like Joan Crawford (Mommy Dearest didn’t help), but she is a force of nature in Johnny Guitar, a film that, despite its title, actually revolves around her. The titular Johnny (played by Sterling Hayden) initially gives us the impression that he’s going to be one of those singing cowboys matinee idols as he enters a saloon in the middle of nowhere and starts strumming and crooning. But the drama quickly displaces the music, as Crawford’s character (the owner of the saloon) comes in and sets the plot in motion. Her saloon is not built in the middle of nowhere as much as on the path of a future railway; nearby townspeople are insanely envious, and she has close ties to one of the local hoodlums. Our guitar-toting hero is also an ex-flame, and when the local bank is robbed in her presence, everything goes up in flames. A somewhat unpredictable screenplay and a steady descent into heavier and heavier drama do help make the most out of Johnny Guitar’s western elements. Crawford finds an equally impressive opponent in Mercedes McCambridge’s vengeful antagonist (a somewhat unusual case of a female antagonist in western films, if I’m not mistaken)—it’s said that the two women wouldn’t stand each other off the set as well. Nice outdoors colour cinematography also helps in wrapping up a package that’s far more interesting than your usual western.

Humoresque (1946)

Humoresque (1946)

(On Cable TV, October 2020) I’m not a big Joan Crawford fan, but she’s the single best element of Humoresque, a dour and dark romantic drama that rests on her performance as a damaged woman dragging a young and inexperienced violinist (John Garfield, fine but no more) in her self-destructive spiral. In many ways, this is an old-fashioned weepie, with characters fated to bad ends through their own flaws. There are not a lot of opportunities for levity or jokes here (placing supporting actor Oscar Levant at a disadvantage, as his later roles would demonstrate), reinforcing the all-orchestral swell of melodramatic intensity that goes with the ending. There’s a little more to it than just a melodrama in how the film delves, especially in the first half, in the universe of classical music performance. This enables the film to spend a lot of time featuring good music (and for Levant to play a bit of piano), lending additional respectability to the result. Humoresque is not exactly a good movie, but Crawford is compelling here as a woman who knows she can’t be redeemed, and if the result is overlong, it’s not to be dismissed easily.

Dancing Lady (1933)

Dancing Lady (1933)

(On Cable TV, June 2020) While Dancing Lady is technically the first of Fred Astaire’s movie musicals, his fans should keep in mind that it took him a few movies’ worth of scene-stealing appearances before getting his first lead role, and so this film sees him relegated to a climactic showcase number, as himself, dancing with Joan Crawford. Not that he’s the only one making early appearances here that now overshadow the leads of the film—An early iteration of The Three Stooges also shows up, plus later star Nelson Eddy, making this film’s supporting cast far more remarkable than nominal leads Franchot Tone and Clark Gable. (I would add “…and Crawford” except that she looks absolutely spectacular here—although not much of a dancer, especially around Astaire.) As an early Pre-Code musical of the early sound era, Dancing Lady is still quite rough around the edges: even the narrative doesn’t go too far away from its Broadway inspiration by featuring a making of a musical as its narrative foundation. It feels a bit short at 92 minutes, but that’s probably because we’re expecting more Astaire. While Dancing Lady is perfectly watchable, it’s probably more of interest to Astaire fans and cinephiles tracking the evolution of the early musicals… although the Pre-Code attitude does make it more interesting than most.

Mommie Dearest (1981)

Mommie Dearest (1981)

(In French, On Cable TV, February 2020) Even though I’m moderately knowledgeable about movies, I’m still often surprised by the stories that I unlock in researching movies prior to these capsule reviews. Obviously, I knew of Joan Crawford, and her relatively small modern profile (especially when compared to Bette Davis, with whom she legendarily feuded), and the tarnishing of the Golden Age of Hollywood idols, and Faye Dunaway’s decline as an actress throughout the 1980s. But prior to watching and reading about Mommie Dearest, I was certainly missing on a piece of the puzzle that linked all of these things together. To put it simply: Mommie Dearest is an adaptation of a biography by Crawford’s adopted daughter, in which she revealed that her “mommie dearest” was a cold-hearted parent, a child abuser, and an overall wreck. In film history, Mommie Dearest was the first landmark in a series of books by children of Classic Hollywood stars that unbolted their saintlike public image. Many followed, but Mommie Dearest had a bigger impact than most in that much of it was corroborated, and it led to a movie whose execution, to put it charitably, maximized the tragic arc of the story. Faye Dunaway here plays Crawford as a quasi-caricatural monster, and the first half-hour of the film is the depiction of one episode of child abuse after another, as the mom terrifies her daughter in ways that are actively unpleasant to watch. (The famous “Wire Hanger” scene is one for the history books even in its French dubbed version: my cat, who can normally tolerate the worst horror movies with supreme feline detachment, had her ears pointed sideways in alarm at the screaming in the sequence… and I wasn’t necessarily any more detached.) I’m told that the film earned an unplanned reputation as an over-the-top camp classic of unintentional hilarity, but I’m not subscribing to that viewpoint. While some sequences do attain a certain comic level of scenery-chewing, there’s only so much outright child abuse that anyone can tolerate, and despite Dunaway’s unhinged performance, the character she plays is an out-and-out harridan who clearly should not have any kids. It’s that character portrait that still makes Mommie Dearest ghastly intriguing to watch today: the raw mother/daughter feud, and how it fed into the falsity of their public appearances at the time. It’s hard to say whether the book or the movie had a bigger impact on Crawford’s reputation, but I note with some interest that Crawford’s star was considerably dimmed compared to some better-behaved contemporaries. Everyone has taken sides for Bette Davis in the Davis/Crawford feud, and Crawford is now seldom mentioned without sideways glances at her personal life. I suppose that Crawford’s lesser body of work may have something to do with it (She’s distinctive in her Oscar-winning performance in Mildred Pierce and not much else), but comparing the way she’s discussed to that of comparable stars of the same period is instructive. There’s an argument to be made that Faye Dunaway’s performance here was too good for her own good: While she was a superstar in the 1970s, her filmography dimmed significantly in the 1980s following the acid reception of this film. That’s quite a lot of material for a film to touch upon, but only a few other films so clearly attack the reputation of a former Hollywood icon as savagely as this one. (Have a look at The Lives and Deaths of Peter Sellers and The Girl for further examples.)

The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929)

The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929)

(On Cable TV, September 2019) Now this is a curio on several levels. Keep in mind that The Hollywood Revue of 1929 was made at a time when sound cinema was just getting started: It was still considered a novelty, and it’s fair to say that Hollywood didn’t quite know what to do with it exactly. A natural idea was to transpose a Broadway revue on-screen: let’s just have the stars walk in, do a bit of music, dance or comedy, record everything and string them along in a plotless experience. Why not? Such a thing would be strikingly inappropriate for the theatrical experience today now that televised variety shows and streaming options can bring the best of the world to our screens at any time, but back in 1929 it wasn’t just a good idea—the result was seriously considered for the first Academy Awards. Of course, there’s quite a cliff from concept to execution: what survives of The Hollywood Revue of 1929 ninety years later is very rough on a technical level: the top of the image seems cut off, the special effects are laughable, the muddy image is of low quality, low contrast and poor sound quality. The dance choreography has little of the polish that we’d see from Busby Berkeley even a few years later. But that it has survived at all is amazing—many movies of that time never made it to this day. It’s quite an experience to see what were, at the time, the studio’s biggest stars—while we still remember Joan Crawford, Buster Keaton (very funny in a small part), and the Laurel and Hardy duo, many of the other people on-screen have faded away in obscurity, known only to early-cinema aficionados. There are a few highlights: Jack Benny’s emceeing routines have their moments. There are a few funny comic routines (including one featuring Lon Chaney). Of the good musical numbers, one number featuring Queen’s Guards dancers is rather good. There’s an early version of “Singin’ in the Rain” (later quoted in the That’s Entertainment! series). Perhaps more strikingly, three very primitive colour sequences mark, I think, the first use of colour I’ve seen in a Hollywood film and it does add an extra dimension in the film. There’s something to be said about the value of such a document travelling through the ages, now available for endless digital copies. In many ways, The Hollywood Revue of 1929 is a primitive form of time travel—what if you were sitting in the middle of the front row at the time’s hottest theatrical entertainment show?

The Unknown (1927)

The Unknown (1927)

(On Cable TV, March 2019) Contemporary viewers may decry the violence, vulgarity and provocativeness of today’s cinema, but the truth is that the frontier between moviemaking and sensational freak-show has never been all that clear, even during the first decades of the medium. In The Unknown, for instance, we can recognize the huckster’s instinct to show audiences something they may never admit they crave. Consider this: Lon Chaney stars as a circus attraction: a man without arms, who can throw knives and shoot a rifle with his feet. Except that he does have arms, tightly bound behind him: his characteristic double-thumb would easily identify him as a wanted criminal. Working at the circus is a good way to fly under the watch of police authorities … that is, until he falls for another circus worker (played by Joan Crawford) who cannot bear a man’s touch yet is desired by another man. More murder and terrible ironies abound in the rest of the picture. The story is simplistic, with much of the ending telegraphed well in advance, but there is one unnerving plot development midway through, and even the expected twists and turns help in making this an essential silent melodrama. Yes, The Unknown is lurid … but audiences then and now willingly paid to see this stuff.

The Women (1939)

The Women (1939)

(On Cable TV, January 2019) It’s not clear to me when George Cukor got a reputation for being a “woman’s director”, but there’s got to be a link between that and The Women, a film renowned for having an all-female cast … down to the extras and gender of the animals shown on-screen. That’s not the only reason why it has endured, however: the script is a master class in delightful bitchiness between its major characters, all the way to a memorable catfight at the beginning of its third act. The acerbic script has several witty things to say about marriage from the point of view of an ensemble of women having similar but complementary problems with their husband and lovers. Set in the Manhattan upper-class, The Women is Hollywood glitz escapist wish fulfillment, but also a bit of a pure exploration of gender tension freed from the shackles of money. There is a distinctive “fashion show” sequence that was shot in colour, adding a dash of style to the movie. The cast is solid, with a number of the era’s most famous actresses taking part—and, of course, the antagonist is played by Joan Crawford. The beginning of the film can be a sink-or-swim experience, as the script moves fast and it can be difficult to distinguish between half a dozen very similar brunettes … but it gets much better as the subplots unfold, and as the solid dialogue keeps drawing us in. The Women may have a bland title, but it’s a hard film to forget.

Mildred Pierce (1945)

Mildred Pierce (1945)

(On Cable TV, May 2018) As a family drama that drives steadily toward becoming a crime thriller, Mildred Pierce has something for everyone: family conflict, rags-to-riches development and a plunge into noir as a final act, bringing us back to the opening framing device. Joan Crawford holds the film together as the titular Mildred, a woman who gets over her first marriage by working hard and establishing a chain of restaurants, only to be held back by a spoiled daughter, a loafing second husband and a terrible family tragedy. That Mildred Pierce ends in murder is no spoiler (that’s how it begins), although the killer may surprise you. The black-and-white cinematography is top-notch, and Michael Curtiz’s direction impressively brings together the sunny domesticity of toxic family life with the harder shadows of criminal noir. The intersection between independent-woman drama and murder mystery is unusual, and makes Mildred Pierce stand out even when slotted in the noir tradition.

Grand Hotel (1932)

Grand Hotel (1932)

(On Cable TV, March 2018)  The thirties were a decade when Hollywood perfected the grammar and sales pitch of cinema, with Grand Hotel earning a minor place in history for two innovations: on an artistic level, pioneering the use of a 360-degree lobby set that allowed the camera to be pointed in any direction, and commercially for bringing together as many movie stars as the (comparatively large) budget would allow. It netted Grand Hotel a Best Picture Oscar back in 1933, but today the result has visibly aged. While the script still holds some interest by bringing together a bunch of vignettes that sometimes interact, much of the film is shot as a theatre piece, the lobby sequences being an exception that highlight the more traditional nature of the rest of the film. As far as star power is concerned, modern viewers can still enjoy the presences of Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford as well as Lionel and John Barrymore—even as reminders of why they were or became superstars. While the Berlin setting of the film may strike some as odd considering Hollywood’s insularity and the whole World War II unpleasantness a few years later, it’s worth noting that at the time, Hollywood was filled with German expats, that Berlin was a world-class city and the best-selling source novel spoke for itself. Also: this was the depression, and a bit of gentle European exoticism couldn’t hurt the movie-watching masses. Grand Hotel will forever live on as a Best Picture winner, and as a representative of the Hollywood machine as it was revving up in the early thirties, it’s a master class in itself.

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

(On Cable TV, February 2018) I enjoy reading Wikipedia pages of films I’ve just seen, and from What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? I learn about the delightful expression “psycho-biddy,” a forgotten subgenre of horror thrillers featuring older women spawned by the success of this film. I also learned about the ongoing feud between co-stars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, which does add quite a dimension to the end result as two sisters come to possibly fatal conflict in a film presented as hard-edged thriller. Saddled with two useless prologues, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? really gets going fifteen minutes in, as the situation becomes clear: A disabled former actress, practically held hostage by her sister, a bitter and resentful former child star who escalates the horrible actions required to keep control over the situation. Joan Crawford has the likable role, but it’s Bette Davis who sticks in mind as the psychotic Baby Jane, layers of caked makeup not concealing a complete breakdown. The black-and-white cinematography is pretty good, although the ending is one or two whiskers away from satisfaction. The film feels a bit too long and scattered with half-hearted subplots, but it still has an impact—Fifty-five years later, aged actresses seldom get roles as interesting as those in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, and the plot is still nasty enough to resonate even today.