Movie review - "Quo Vadis" (1951) ****1/2

Most reviews I've read of this film in recent years have tended to dismiss this epic - some writers complain that it was not as good as the original inception (from director John Huston who wanted to make a Nazi-Jew parallel between Rome and Christians), just another epic, not as good as Ben Hur or the silent original, with an inappropriate star. I found it terrific, a real top-quality spectacle, MGM showing they still had what it took.

The main strength is the story, which personalises a big issue (i.e. the early days of Christianity in Rome) and gives fleshed out characters: Robert Taylor as the returning nasty centurion whose pursuit of a Christian girl (Deborah Kerr) leads him to the Christian underground, Kerr as the beautiful girl who is attracted to Taylor but wants to hang on to her faith (its an early cinematic example of the "flirt to convert"), Leo Genn as the cynical Roman politician who acts as though he's seen it all but is eventually repelled by Nero into acts of humanity (or, rather, quitting humanity), the Roman aristocracy who have become Christians, the beautiful and cruel Poppea who wants to torment Taylor (what happened to Patricia Laffin, the actor who played her?), and most of all Nero (Peter Ustinov) - the aspiring artiste, who, as George MacDonald Fraser points out, searches for praise but secretly never believes it because he has a secret furtive intelligence that keeps sneaking through. It's a terrific role and Ustinov totally shines in every moment - and yes he sings while Rome burns (he plays the harp - fiddles hadn't been invented).

There are showy support roles, too: Kerr's devoted bodyguard, the slave who loves Genn (perhaps a bit of wish fulfillment here - a beautiful slave girl who thinks her owner is wonderful), Nero's former mistress who returns to haunt him. Historically the film is quite respectable - the female Roman aristocrat who dies was based on a real person, ditto the nasty head of the Pretorian Guard.

There are three show stopping spectacle sequences: Taylor's triumphant arrival in Rome (complete with wreath-bearer whispering "you are nothing" into his ear), the fire, and most of all the climactic scene of the Christians going into the arena. The latter is a brilliant sequence - incredibly moving and horrifying (not that the film rubs our faces in it - but the quick cuts of lions attacking people and screams are effective enough). Interestingly, the finale gives the big action to Kerr's minder, Buddy Baer, while Taylor looks on, helpless (it's a heart-rending sequence, how you hate the Romans for inflicting it - but our hero is passive - although he does jump free and into the arena at the end).

There are flaws - the rise against Nero at the end by the crowd isn't very convincing, nor is the length of Genn's speech after he's killed himself. But there are so many strengths; I was particularly impressed with the confidence in allowing two long monologues, one a sermon from St Peter (Finlay Currie), the other a speech from Nero (Ustinov) - both of which work very well, with good scripting and excellent actors showing that an epic can handle long speeches.

Kerr is pretty and believable in what is a not-as-thankless-as-it-might-appear role (she does try to lure Taylor into Christianity - sort of a godly femme fetale) (NB when she and Taylor get married in the dungeon before she goes out to face the lions - do they give them some privacy for a honeymoon?). Robert Taylor was a surprise - after watching him in Ivanhoe and Knights of the Round Table I was prepared for the worst, but he's very effective here. 

 

I agree he's not as good as other candidates would have been (eg Gregory Peck, who was meant to star in the Huston version), but he's still good - he is very American but its not as jarring in an Ancient Rome story as it would have been in a medieval Britain story (even though it was historically earlier, there's something more contemporary-seeming about Ancient Rome); he looks the part in that armour and also he has a real character to play, whereas he didn't as Ivanhoe and Sir Lancelot. While Taylor owed his stardom to his looks rather than talent, he was never a "personality" in the way say Errol Flynn was - he couldn't play himself because he was so boring, he needed something to hang on to. In Ivanhoe and Knights he had to play himself but here he plays a character and the film and his presence are much the better for it.

G M Fraser thought the film would not work today because martyrdom no longer strikes a chord in the Western world; I wouldn't necessarily agree, because here the Christians don't go willingly - they are just persecuted for their faith, they are not given the chance to get out of it (i.e. it's not like the Inquisition, McCarthyism or suicide bombers - it's more like Jews in WW2, so I think a remake would work today).

Movie review - Ladd #47 - "The Carpetbaggers" (1964) ***

John Michael Hayes had a genius of adapting racy material to the screen with just the right amount of emphasis - so many of films from his screenplays fall into the "if it had been made a bit before it would have been too much - later not enough" category. Consider: Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, Peyton Place, The Carpetbaggers. All of them pushed it to the limit just to the right amount. His adaptations of the latter two were especially strong.

The Carpetbaggers certainly has its flaws - pompous narration that starts and ends the film, and to be honest you have to know this was based on a best seller to understand why it was made in the first place, but Hayes does as good a job as possible. Its full of interesting scenes and lines, apart from the then-obligatory "fire truck" or "Rosebud" psychological revelation (i.e. "I'm only mean because when I was young they took my toy fire truck away").

George Peppard is spot on as the hard-edged Jonas Cord - he was good playing a bastard, was Peppard, who is never considered a big 60s star but still featured in a lot of big hits. (I think he was kind of like Kurt Russell in that way).

Carroll Baker is also very good as his step mother Rita - she is exploited physically to the nth degree, is Baker - the first shot of her has her draped in a towel with a bare back, she has one scene where she dances on a chandelier (bare back again) - but you have to say she suits it, with that wonderfully throaty voice and experienced look (this film revived her career, turning her into a sex symbol - but she kind of was one earlier, even in her earlier films eg Baby Doll and Giant, she always looked as though she knew what she was doing).

Martha Hyer is quite sympathetic (if a bit too visually similar to Baker, which I guess is the point but makes it harder for her to have an impact) as a later love of Cord's - an ex hooker he turns into a star and betrays. (NB this film makes turning people into stars look very easy - Cord does it both with Baker and Hyer. If he'd made one flop it might have been more believable - Howard Hughes did strike gold with Jane Russell and Jean Harlow but don't forget Faith Domerge.)

Alan Ladd makes his final appearance, the first time (apart from cameos) he didn't play the lead ever since This Gun for Hire. He looks awful, bloated and tired, like the aging alcoholic he was - which is OK towards the end of the film when his character is supposed to be an aging alcoholic, but not at the beginning. When Baker takes off his shirt rubs his chest seductively and asks "how old are you, Nevada" and he says 43 and Baker says "you look 30" - he looks as though he's lying (he looks in his fifties) and so is she. I know cowboy actors like William Boyd made it later on in life but they didn't have that tired, washed out look that Ladd has, so you don't believe he's a star either. But as I said later on in the film he is better when he's down on his luck and has been through a bit of a battle - indeed, his scenes with Peppard towards the end are quite touching. (Ladd looked such a wreck towards the end of his life it's a shame he never got the chance to play a role that really exploited it - the way, say, Errol Flynn got to with his drunk parts in the late 50s).

Far better is Bob Cummings as a slimy Hollywood agent - there was always something inherently a little slimy about Cummings (the way there was about another "nice guy" actor, Fred MacMurray), and its exploited here effectively: he's slightly effeminate, aging, with a wicked glint in his eye. It's a terrific performance.

Martin Balsam is also good as a ruthless Hollywood type (though legal point - if he sold the studio to Peppard without telling Peppard that Baker has died, then Peppard would probably be able to have the contract ruled invalid ).

Lew Ayres is sturdy in one of those "essentially decent person" roles he was often found in. Elisabeth Ashley has the other key role, as Peppard's wife - she has voice and personality, Ashley, but she looks a little funny - bug eyes or something, not that attractive (maybe it's the hair she wears in this film), and you can understand from this why she never became the big star people were predicting of her despite clearly having ability and a warm personality - despite those things, she doesn't have Baker's on-screen va-va-voom.

Movie review - "The Man in Grey" (1943) ***

The film that launched the Gainsborogh costume cycle and deservedly so, because it still holds up well down the track. Of course at the time there were special reasons for its success - namely, the war, which made a tale of sexual rebellion, passion, oppressive societies and traumatic life all the more resonant.

They were spot on with the casting, though - Margaret Lockwood had been around for a while as a "nice" heroine, but playing a bad girl she really came alive (the black hair, the peaked nose and the eyebrows, I think); James Mason makes a glowering intense villain (Mason was one of those really unique individual actors who, like Bogart and Wallace Berry, executives seem to think are too unique and individual to be stars - but then become stars because they are so unique and individual), and Stewart Granger, all height and booming voice, also makes an impressive hero debut (he holds his own with the others). Phyllis Calvert, an Elisabeth Shue look-alike, is perhaps less memorable (I would always get her confused with Pat Roc) but she's still very good. 

Has any film ever launched four stars with one stroke and prompted a whole genre?

Although it feel a bit short on plot, the whole construction of the film is very clever: the really good girl and the bad girl (Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny characters) to give the female audience an option to decide who they want to relate to: beautiful, cheery Calvert who everyone likes and whom Granger loves, but who nonetheless has a horrible life and dies miserable, and Lockwood, who is born poor and resents and fights her way to almost the top only to be denied the love of a man who loves her because of society.

It's good how Lockwood isn't totally evil, she is totally empathetic (you understand why Clavery wants to be her friend, too - she simply has more life than other girls at the time) and I think a lot of the audience would have identified with her. You've got James Mason for the Bad Boy, but also Granger as a bit of a bad boy, too (kicked off his slave plantation in the West Indies by the locals who were encouraged to riot by those pesky French). 

 On the topic of race relations, a key character is a little boy Toby - with black boot polish painted on his face - who is Calvert's servant. No wonder this film is beloved by academics - you can look at it in terms of relations between the sexes, the war, race, British cinema, stardom, etc. Its done with flourish and sincerity, with a great climax.

Movie review - His Majesty O'Keefe (1953) **

As a star, Burt Lancaster was very good at employing the "one for the Pope, one for me" method i.e. he would alternate artier fare such as Come Back, Little Sheba with genre pics like this.

This was one of two south sea movies he made (the other was South Sea Woman) - he also did pirate movies, westerns, a Foreign Legion film, etc. Here he plays an adventurer who in the 19th century arrives on the island of Yap and tries to make money from copra.

Even in 1953 this story has got very uncomfortable colonial overtones - the film is aware of it and sort-of tries to deal with it by having O'Keefe initially a cynical adventurer who then finds heart through his love for a nearby half-caste native girl (Joan Rice) and who then comes to realise that he shouldn't encourage the locals to retrieve a religiously important rock in a more efficient way. Or something.
 

 The script is also careful to emphasise that the locals come to love O'Keefe and ask him to stay on as their king, and that he fights off nasty pirate Bully Hayes. Oh and he has the de riguer scene for liberal Hollywood films of the 50s - a white character says a racist comment about a character (in this case his wife) and O'Keefe smacks him one.

 

It's still a bit dodgy, especially considering the island of Yap is shown to be quite happy and content when O'Keefe arrives i.e. he doesn't bring anything to the party and really we know they'd be better off had he never come along. Also O'Keefe doesn't really suffer for the nasty things he does except to have his wife yell at him (you can handle someone being a scamp and unscrupulous provided (a) they're funny and (b) they go through a really hard time - look at the Flashman novels).

 

In The Screenwriter Looks at the Screenwriter there's an interview with Borden Chase, one of the writers, who said that the making of the film is a bit of a mess and you can tell.

 

The colour photography is stunning as are the locations - it looks wonderful. Part of pre-production took place in Australia, where director Byron Haskin hired a number of Aussie actors who appear in the film - Muriel Steinbeck, Grant Taylor (blink and you'll miss him as a German), Guy Doleman, Lloyd Berrell - though there's only one Aussie character. So it only has a tentative connection, really, to Australia. NB even though Lancaster was stacked with muscles at this point in his life he still seems to suck in his gut.

Movie review - "Son of Dracula" (1943) ***

Actually not the son but the man himself, whose moved to America to start a new life. Although Bela Lugosi was still around Universal decided to cast Lon Chaney Jnr, who they were building as a star - although Chaney was a brilliant wolfman and an OK Frankenstein's monster he's a very poor Dracula, this chubby mid-Westerner looking ill at ease as a suave European.

That's a shame since this film as so much else going for it: vampires totally fit in with the "world" of the American south where most of the action takes place (swamps, black servants, plantations, bayous, rich old men in wheelchairs), the central story is a good idea (Louise Allbritton wants to marry Dracula so he'll turn her into a vampire and can spend all eternity with her real boyfriend, Robert Paige), there's a great scene where Paige shoots at Dracula but the bullets go through him and his his fiancee, the Robert Paige character is pretty much emotionally destroyed by all the stuff he goes through in the film, Frank Craven and J Edgar Bromberg offer good character support.

Movie review - "Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman" (1942) ***1/2

The first of Universal's sequels to combine the monsters takes the two most logical: Lon Chaney Jnr is revived from his tomb and goes looking for a doctor who might be able to solve his problem, namely Dr Frankenstein - which, you know, I totally buy - and would make rich fodder for a television series: all the weird monsters turning up at the Frankenstein's for medical treatment (Dracula, mummies, invisible men).

However, there is no mad Frankenstein doctor in this one - just a Baronness (I think she's meant to be Colin Clive's granddaughter and the daughter of Basil Rathbone or Cedric Hardwicke - you'd think the latter because Evelyn Ankers played that role in the previous film but Ilona Massey who plays here here has a European accent).

Massey's character is disappointingly normal - so, too, is that of charisma by-pass Patric Knowles, who plays Chaney's doctor who has enough spare money and time on his hands to follow Chaney to Transylvania. When Knowles eventually finds himself at the operating table, as all good doctors do in these films, he doesn't really get into it - you find yourself wishing that Lionel Atwill, who plays the town's mayor, had that part. And the final act is a bit of a mess.

Still, there are many delights: Roy William Neil directed and Curt Siodmark wrote the script so it is full of atmosphere, Chaney's return as the Wolf Man (he's very good, oh so tragic), ditto Maria Ouspensaka has the gypsy woman, Dennis Hoey's inspector (as if he had a free day from the Sherlock Holmes films), we see Bela Lugosi's version of the monster (not bad but OK - just like Lon Chaney Jnr's really and certainly not one to make you go "ah if only he'd played the role in 1931 - missing this role didn't stuff Lugosi's career, he got plenty of chances after, lousy script selection, his own addictions, poor agents and Universal executive's attitudes did), there's a totally random production number in the middle of the film sung by gypsies, and most of all the Monster and Wolf Man have a brawl at the finale.

Alright! Apparently the film as originally shot had Frankenstein talking in Lugosi's voice like he did at the end of Ghost but preview audiences laughed - I can understand that, what made an effective moment in the previous film might seem odd.

Movie review - "The Ghost of Frankenstein" (1942) ***1/2

Think that Frankenstein's Monster is an easy role to play? Just walk round with bolts on the side of yourhead and make grunts? Well, that's what Lon Chaney Jnr does with the fourth entry to the series - and he still doesn't bring what Boris Karloff did to the role. It's all in the eyes, you see, and Boris could do it whereas Lon doesn't - which surprised me, I have to admit, because he has such an expressive face in The Wolf Man. Maybe his face simply didn't "fit" with Jack Pierce's make up. Or maybe Karloff made too strong an impression. They do try - even throwing in a bunch of scenes with a cute little girl, but it never does work.

At least Bela Lugosi is back, the bullets didn't kill him, dragging the monster to see another son of Frankenstein, played by Cedric Hardwicke (Colin Clive was dead and Rathbone too busy as Sherlock Holmes - "quick, we need someone English and classy..."). I get Hardwicke mixed up at times with Lionel Atwill (useful thing: Atwill is slightly chubbier) which makes it tricky since they both play doctors who are friends in this movie and frequently wear the same white coat.

Hardwicke like most Frankensteins makes a vague attempt at being decent and not revive the monster but is influenced by another doctor, in this case Atwill, as well as Lugosi pressure. Atwill looks on to proceedings most of the time with a glint in his eye as if to say "if I were the lead I'd really cut loose" but he never does really, which is a shame, though his presence always keeps things lively (his essentially kinkiness always sneaked through the camera, somehow, did it, Atwill).

Lending class to the film is Evelyn Ankers (as Hardwicke's daughter - granddaughter of Frankenstein) and Ralph Bellamy as her prosecutor boyfriend (even in his male juvenile leads, Bellamy seems as if he's playing the Ralph Bellamy part and we're waiting for some other bloke to come and sweep Ankers off her feet).

This film gets off to a creaky start with yet another mob burning down a castle and the funny sight of Ygor and the monster just strolling into town up the main street passing ducks and a girl in pigtails (surely Ygor would have realised by now that discretion was the better part of valor), then improves with Hardwicke and Atwill come along, sogs down again, but really perks for a rousing finale, with a whole bunch of great brain transplant stuff - the Monster wants a little girls brain, Hardwicke wants to put in a scientists, Lugosi wants his in there (was ever a body so popular) - great moment when its Lugosi and a very satisfying explosive finale. The "ghost" bit comes from when Hardwick talks to the ghost of his dad, who hear is not played by Clive but Hardwicke.