Rock Hudson

  • Embryo (1976)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) Once, just once, I’d like to see a film about the artificial creation of humans that wouldn’t result in the creation turning homicidal. But Embryo is largely a blunt-force horror film and that’s what creatures do in horror films. Rock Hudson (!) stars as a grieving veterinarian who, through the first act, comes to manipulate a human embryo with a fast growth serum. Moments later, here grows a young woman played by Barbara Carrera, not only a beauty but also a genius-level intellect beating chess champions and a psychopath willing to kill in order to prevent her cellular decay. It predictably escalates from there. It’s all quite familiar, although there it has a 1970s atmosphere that almost makes it interesting. I could easily see a triple bill of this, Coma and Demon Seed for a 1970s medical science fiction/horror marathon. Hudson is not bad and neither is Carrera — with small roles for Diane Ladd and Roddy McDowall as a bonus. Embryo’s turn to horror is cheap and predictable, though, and the “don’t play God” moralism is as basic as it comes.

  • Ruba al prossimo tuo [A Fine Pair] (1968)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) Film comedy is harder than many people think — it’s not enough to write a lighthearted script when you also have to make sure that the acting, cinematography and direction are up to the task of presenting the comedy on the page. If nothing else, A Fine Pair is an exemplary case of what happens when no one in the film’s production seems to be trying for comedy. The premise has Rock Hudson as a NYPD detective being more or less seduced (by Claudia Cardinale, one of the film’s few highlights) into becoming an international jewel thief. You can already think of a few other films of that era with similar premises (most notably How to Steal a Million), but if you’re expecting something along those lines from A Fine Pair, you’re going to be solely disappointed. Where to begin? We can start with Rock Hudson — often presented as the successor to Cary Grant, except that Grant would mumble and wiggle his way into more laughs than Hudson even could. He’s not exactly wrong as the humourless police officer, but as with many of his comedies, he’s asked to deliver more than he can. I’m not going to ding Claudia Cardinale as the jewel-stealing temptress — although I’ll note that she seems to be playing a broad take on similar roles that often dips into national stereotypes. But by far the biggest problem with A Fine Pair is that if you watched the film without sound, you would swear you’d be watching a grimy depressing 1970s crime thriller. The cinematography is in cold black and blue (far more black than blue), with wintertime NYC looking sinister and the rest of the European jaunt not being much better with its decrepit sets and naturalistic lighting. We are a long way from bright Hollywood cinematography and lighting, making the entire thing feel lugubrious at best. Further technical problems keep sucking all the fun out of the final film: ADR dialogue with terrible sound editing and hard cuts between samples, laborious staging of dialogue that feels more painful than amusing, and bad set design that makes everything feel claustrophobic. It’s almost amazing how the film mishandles an easy comic premise in order to deliver something that looks and feels like the most depressing film in the world. Cardinale is, fortunately, not that bad (I’d rather watch her than Doris Day) but that’s not enough when the image is dark enough that we can barely make the outline of her face even at the best of times. Hudson (or Cardinale) completists will eventually make their way to A Fine Pair — I’m told that the film’s long-time unavailability created pent-up interest — but all will agree that this ranks low in the lowest tier of both actors’ filmography.

  • Twilight for the Gods (1958)

    Twilight for the Gods (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) I like Cyd Charisse a lot, but let’s face it — it’s more for her beauty and dancing performances than for her limited acting skills, which barely budge from icy to reserved. Still, she does really well in late-career entry Twilight for the Gods, stuck onboard a slowly sinking steamship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, with Rock Hudson and a motley crew of passengers who all have a secret to hide. There’s an admirably theatrical concision to how the action remains limited to the damaged ship, even as the cinematography makes the most out of its oceanic surroundings and sustains the film’s noticeable atmosphere. The gradual revelations about the passengers make for steady dramatic fuel, and the ending does cap off a nice harrowing journey. This being said: Twilight for the Gods is dramatic but not all that exciting, which does hint at ways the result could have been improved… if it wasn’t being so slavishly faithful to its literary origin. Despite the danger of the ongoing degradation of the ship, the film can’t quite bring danger to top off the excitement. There’s also a notable lack of action from the characters (primary and supporting) that annoys a bit — the tension of the film seems to be in waiting to see if they will outlast their trials, not which action they take to fight against the danger. Still, by the end of the film, it does feel like a journey completed. For Charisse, it’s one of her better dramatic roles — by the time this film was completed, it was clear that the classic MGM musical was losing steam (ooh, there’s a parallel) and that she needed to branch out even as she was aging out of the job. (Indeed, looking at her filmography, I can’t find any full-blown musical role after this film — Party Girl is an edge case, and her presence in Black Tights is only for a segment of the film.)  Twilight for the Gods is a decent movie — it could have been better, but nothing is worth complaining about too much.

  • Strange Bedfellows (1965)

    Strange Bedfellows (1965)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) As I may have mentioned before, there’s a specific tone to 1960s sex comedies that hasn’t, can’t and won’t be successfully replicated. A mixture of naughtiness but no explicitness, mid-period Technicolor cinematography, slightly more permissive audience expectations, stars moulded in the waning studio system and the optimistic exhilaration of the decade as everything was changing. Strange Bedfellows may not be a classic, but it is an illustration of that specific subgenre and the fun it can have. Rock Hudson and Gina Lollobrigida star — Lollobrigida is a good fit for the part of a flighty artist who gets married to Hudson’s suave account executive. Hudson himself is not bad, although the more I see of his performances, the more I can’t help but compare them to what Cary Grant would have done better — both, after all, looked the part of handsome leading men, but Grant had a self-deprecating streak that made his comic performances almost perfect. Hudson doesn’t quite have that, so while his performance is enjoyable, it doesn’t quite have that extra spark necessary for this kind of comedy. (To face the obvious question whenever we have a Hudson romantic comedy: Strange Bedfellows does have a surprising number of very ironic moments knowing that Hudson was gay — clearly the filmmakers knew what they were doing.)  There’s some jet-setting charm to the way the film goes from London to New York. The tone of the film shifts a bit too much toward absurdity in its last act — not that I don’t like zany humour, but it could have been zanier from the start. There are better 1960s comedies out there, but even an imperfect vehicle, such as Strange Bedfellows, is worth a few chuckles. If you like that style, you’ll like the film.

  • Lover Come Back (1961)

    Lover Come Back (1961)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2021) For such an iconic screen couple, it’s interesting to realize that Doris Day and Rock Hudson only played in three movies together. As luck and DVR scheduling would have it, I ended up seeing all three in a matter of months, with Lover Come Back being the middle instalment sandwiched between Pillow Talk (1959) and Send Me No Flower (1964). All three films feature Tony Randall in a supporting role, mismatched personalities and plenty of lies, deceptions and dirty tricks to keep things interesting until the big romantic finale. In Lover Come Back, we see both of them as competing advertising executives—she’s a workhorse, whereas he’s a showman with dodgy morals. When the conflict between them escalates, he dons a beard and glasses and (of course!) passes himself as someone else, a member of an illustrious family whose achievements grow ever more numerous and outlandish the longer he talks. It’s really not meant to be serious at all—it’s absurd, funny and naughty in the way the most progressive comedies of the early 1960s could be (which is to say rather charmingly coy by today’s standards). There are plenty of good jokes and funny moments, most notably in seeing Hudson and Randall go to Canada to face off with a moose and grow big beards. You can have objections to how Hudson deceives his way into a romantic relationship but (deep breath) those were the things that were funny at the time—but don’t spend too much time on the rather offensive ending, which should have been rewritten on the spot. Despite this noticeable problem offered as part of a conclusion, Lover Come Back is still fun, especially when it goes on a satirical riff about the advertising industry or goes through the execution of its carefully crafted comic set pieces. I still prefer Pillow Talk, but Lover Come Back has its moments—as long as you don’t think too much about its other moments.

  • Send Me No Flowers (1964)

    Send Me No Flowers (1964)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, January 2021) I did not know that Norman Jewison had directed a fluffy Doris Day/Rock Hudson romantic comedy (their last), but considering the breadth and diversity of his filmography, I’m not really surprised. Send Me No Flowers feels very much in-tune with other Day/Hudson films—it’s colourfully shot, amusingly plotted and lightly played. Hudson plays a hypochondriac that, thanks to only-in-movies contrivances, thinks he’s got a few weeks left to live and thus sets out to find a suitable replacement husband for his wife. Much of the fun of the film is seeing a husband act in highly unusual ways in trying to set up his wife with another man but never telling her what he’s up to, because of idiot plotting. Still, the film is amusing fluff, perhaps not as memorable as other Day/Hudson vehicles (my favourite still being Pillow Talk) but entertaining enough in its own right. Hudson has the right square jaw for the job, while Day is also up to her usual standards. The conclusion is perhaps a bit rushed, but Send Me No Flowers itself is an agreeable watch, and a definite curio in a filmography from a filmmaker far better known for more serious later fare.

  • Man’s Favorite Sport? (1964)

    Man’s Favorite Sport? (1964)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2020) Any movie that claims to be directly inspired by Bringing Up Baby gets a fast-track to my affection, and Man’s Favorite Sport has a much stronger claim than others at that distinction, having been directed by Howard Hawks – who apparently tried to get Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn to reprise their roles. He obviously wasn’t able to do so, but getting Rock Hudson and Paula Prentiss instead is really not a bad substitute. The story has to do with a fishing expert having never fished (Hudson) and the woman (Prentiss) who discovers his secret on the eve of a major competition. But the plot is really a driver for a neo-screwball comedy featuring Howard’s typical fast pace running roughshod over absurd comic situations. The film can be especially funny to those with some outdoors experience, as much of it is seeing a befuddled Hudson trying his best at becoming an outdoorsman. Prentiss is cute and vivacious enough, while Hudson is perhaps a bit uncomfortable in a zanier comic persona that was asked of him in earlier romantic comedies. (I have a hunch that Hudson was never able to completely surrender his persona to the ridiculousness of the comedy beats.) There’s a sense that the film wasn’t quite able to get the lightning pace of previous Hawks screwball comedies, but it’s not for lack of trying and the result is that Man’s Favourite Sport is merely funny rather than hilarious – which is still a success.

  • Written on the Wind (1956)

    Written on the Wind (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) I have, in past reviews, used “melodrama” as a bit of an epithet, complaining about overwrought drama as if it was a bad thing by definition. But Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind has shown me the error of my ways, as its overblown, overwrought, overdriven plotting is a spectacular demonstration of the joys of melodrama when it simply stops caring about being plausible. From the first few minutes (even discounting the very dramatic framing device that gets us to murder in less than sixty seconds), it’s obvious that this isn’t a script that plays in subtleties, as characters get married on a whim and are soon enjoying line-by-line verbal jousting. Robert Stack and Lauren Bacall play bickering couples like few others, and both amazingly tear into their dialogue without cracking up at the absurdity of it all. Things get much better (or worse) once a scheming sister (Dorothy Malone, shattering her mousy persona with a brassy blonde hairdo) and a longtime friend (Rock Hudson, in a straight—ahem: sedate—performance that became rich in subtext when his homosexuality was revealed decades later) enter the picture and also start making trouble. The love square is inherently unstable, and it becomes even wilder once infertility, money, alcoholism, lust and plain old death enter the picture. The fifth character here is heard rather than seen—the orchestral score is exceptionally aggressive here, not underscoring the action as much as overscoring it—there’s a scene with a boy riding a mechanical horse outside a restaurant that has to be heard to be believed. It’s all very broad and outrageously in-your-face, so much so that the film flips into satirical territory by pure brute force. The kicker is that there really isn’t much of a difference between Written on the Wind and later soap operas, even glorified ones such as Dallas and Dynasty—Sirk was clearly ahead of his time here, or simply repurposing pulp fiction to the big screen with a ferociousness that would set a precedent. No matter why or how, Written on the Wind remains a striking movie today, going for madcap blatant melodrama and leaving a much stronger impression than many so-called serious dramas of the time.

  • Pillow Talk (1959)

    Pillow Talk (1959)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2020) Doris Day may now be known better for her late-career chaste and demure roles, but she was a feminist icon in many of her earlier movies—independent, feisty, with a good job, and not willing to compromise on her choices of romantic partners. Pillow Talk is somewhere between those poles, but closer to the female-empowerment side. Naughty then but almost wholesome now, it’s the story of a Manhattan career girl who falls in love with a fellow user of a telephone party line—an early precursor to the gentle sex comedies of the early 1960s. (If you liked Mad Men, there’s a bit of this in here.) The technological limitations of a party line clearly date this, but the Oscar-winning script remains compelling, with plenty of well-used voiceovers reinforcing the comedy of the plot. Pillow Talk’s biggest assets remain its lead actors, with Doris Day and Rock Hudson sharing the screen for the first of three times (you’ll understand why the fuss after watching the film), and supported by notables such as Thelma Ritter (nominated for an Academy Award) and Tony Randall in a very Tony Randallish role. Perry Blackwell is also a bit of a highlight as a sassy lounge singer. Pillow Talk also works well as a glorious Eastmancolor time capsule through comfortable-class late-1950s Manhattan apartments, with three-way split screens to further enliven things. There’s some uncomfortable irony in having Hudson’s character insinuate (with malice) that someone else is gay. Other than this slip-up, Pillow Talk is quite entertaining and its familiarity with various tropes certainly helps spruce things up. Meanwhile, Day gets a bit of a glow-up over previous roles and makes it work to her advantage.

  • Ice Station Zebra (1968)

    Ice Station Zebra (1968)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2019) Some movies pass into legend solely based on their fandom, and so one of the most interesting facts about Ice Station Zebra is how it was billionaire Howard Hugues’s favourite movie when he was in his reclusive phase—so much so that he took advantage of owning a local TV station by calling them to request that the film be shown in a loop all night long. (Later, he set himself up a private movie theatre and reportedly ran the film 150 times in the final months before his death.) Crazily enough, you can see in the film some of what may have attracted him to it. Adapted from an Alistair MacLean novel, Ice Station Zebra could justifiably be called a forerunner of the modern techno-thriller genre: Predicated on a high-tech plot device (a top-secret capsule from a satellite having crash-landed in the Arctic) and bolstered by good old-fashioned cold-war thriller elements (Americans vs. the Soviets, racing in submarines to retrieve the capsule), it blends the environmental hazards of polar conditions with human traitors and time-ticking suspense. It’s a high-octane thriller even by modern standards, and having a cast of big names (Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine and Patrick McGoohan) as headliners only helps. Shot in luscious 70 mm with then-terrific special effects, there’s a crispness to the cinematography (even on TV!) that does betray is studio-bound production. It’s hard to avoid thinking that if Howard Hugues had stayed in the movie business without going crazy, he probably would have gravitated to engineering-heavy big-thrill films such as Ice Station Zebra. Would an elderly Hugues have enjoyed things like The Hunt for Red October? Almost certainly. And while the movie will never attract as famous a fan again, you can have a look and see what the fuss was about.

  • Giant (1956)

    Giant (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2018) As a swan song for James Dean, Giant is a fitting statement. A vast family generational drama set in the vast expanses of oil-rich Texas, Giant begins as our newlywed heroine (the ever-captivating Elizabeth Taylor) moves from the East Coast to arid Texas, and befriends a ranch hand (Dean). One semi-accidental death later, the ranch hand inherits some land that proves to be soaked with oil. Over the next few decades, he develops an empire, leading to a climactic confrontation at the opening of his grand hotel where long-held feuds are detonated. Dean manages to play both a young cowboy and an aging industrialist, holding his own not only against Taylor, but also Rock Hudson as the ranch owner who ends up butting heads with his ex-employee. If Giant has a flaw, it’s that it’s a really, really long movie at three hours and twenty-one minutes. I don’t mind the multi-decade scope as much as the length of each individual scene—time and time again, the film takes forever to make a point that could have been made far more efficiently. Surprisingly enough, I don’t quite dislike Dean’s performance—he’s mopey in the film’s first half, but rural mopey rather than urban mopey or suburban mopey such as in his other two films and as such sidesteps his caricatures that have emerged since then. In the film’s last half, he effectively becomes a drunken unhappy industrialist and actually sells the role rather well despite playing decades older than he was at the time. My other issue with Giant is how it doesn’t reach a climax as much as it blows up over a lengthy period at the hotel, then moves to a roadside diner for a moral climax that actually makes the film’s conclusion feel far smaller. That’s what you get from working from a novel as source material, though—whether you have the guts to change what doesn’t make sense on the screen, or you get criticized for it. The film has endured rather well—its anti-racism streak is still surprisingly relevant, and its anti-sexism message also comes across. The film also shows with a decent amount of detail the transition from Texas’ ranching heritage to its more modern oil extraction boom. I may not like Giant all that much, but I respect it a lot, and I frankly find it disappointing that it got beaten by as frothy a spectacle as Around the World in 80 Days for the Best Picture Oscar.