Movie review - "Around the World in 80 Days" (1956) ***

 Do people still watch this movie any more? It's fun. I mean, it's long, but it gave people their money's worth in 1956. Length! Colour! Widescreen! Stars!

David Niven is a lot of fun as Fogg (the film put him back on top) and Cantiflas engaging as Passporteu. The cameos range from fun - Noel Coward, John Gielgud - to "whatever" - Fernandel, Charles Boyer.

Movie review - "Desperate Characters" (1971) **1/2

 Like a serious Woody Allen film i.e. beautifully shot Bergman-like tale of miserable, smart, highly verbal New York Jews, with money, smarts and friendly, and ennui.

Financed by lew Grade who did it to get Shirley MacLaine to sign to a TV series. Frank Gilroy, who wrote and directed, said when Grade saw it for the first time he praised the production values - "all those cars" - for its low budgt. I'm sure he didnt know what else to say.

It's smart and made with care. Feels a coehsive work.

Movie review - "The Apartment" (1960) ****1/2

 I feel guilty for writing these sort of reviews because some people are so militantly in love with this movie I feel bad going "oh yeah it's good it's fine" without being hard core about it.

The clever idea is strong and lovely, the photography is divine. Jack Lemmon and Shirley Maclaine are beautifully cast and very cute together although she show is stolen by a superb Fred MacMurray as a complete see you next Tuesday boss.

Very adult, smart, yet also romantic. It goes for a long time, over two hours, but the resolution is satisfying. I enjoyed it more on this viewing than I have in the past. I still get frustrated by Lemmon taking so much abuse why not explaining himself.

Showy support cast: Jack Kruschen the doctor (who slaps Maclaine around post suicide - I guess this was standard at the time), MacMurray's secretary, Ray Walston, Larry Keating and the other sleazy execs.

Movie review - "Irma La Douce" (1963) ***

 Billy Wilder's last box office blockbuster was based on a hit musical though he removed the songs. Considering the racy subject matter it's no surprise Wilder thought he could get away with Kiss Me Stupid - Shirley Maclaine is a prostitute, who is actually shown soliciting and seeing clients, loved by policeman Jack Lemmon. I think maybe audiences accepted this more because it takes place in France and a toy town France at that - it's set on the backlost. For all the prostitutes - and there are a lot including Tura Satana - there is an aura of unreality about it, with hammy acting, and Lemmon pretending to be a British client of Maclaine and so on.

Also it's a love story, albeit an unhealthy one - cop Lemmon falls for hooker Maclaine and she loves him but she insists on seeing customers, so he pretends to be customers so she'll only sleep with him.

It's long. So long. Two hours and seventeen minutes. Lemmon and Maclaine are in good form but jeez...

The film has undercast support players - Lou Jacobi is in a role intended for Charles Laughton and does very little with it, Bruce Yarnall is also not memorable as Maclaine's former pimp. James Caan and Bill Bixby can be glimpsed as sailors. Cliff Osmond has a small role - this started a long association with Wilder.

Movie view - "Cannonball Run II" (1984) **

 For ten years Burt Reynolds, it seemed, couldn't put a foot wrong, at least not when he got behind the wheel of a car, then with this and Stroker Ace it seemed he couldn't put a foot right. Like City Heat I think this made money but it's a film few people seem to like. Maybe the public tired of it, maybe Burt just got a little bit too old... being a big kid is a little less charming.

This skews older than the previous film - instead of Farrah Fawcett there's Shirley Maclaine, it has a strong Rat Pack presence with a plot about paying back loan sharks and a cameo from Frank and other old timey stars like Sid Caesar, Doug McClure, Tim Conway, Don Knotts, plus Telly Savalas as a baddy.On the new talent there's Tony Danza and a comic chimp and Shawn Weathley as a girl Martin is rooting. Oh and Menudo's song.

Susan Anton and Catherine Bach (both gorgeous) replace Tara Buckman and Adrienne Barbeau and Danza replaces Terry Bradshaw as Mel Tills' sidekick, Robert Kiel is Jackie Chan's new sidekick.

The first movie felt like all ages, this one feels old. Also it doesn't have the same heart and feeling of camraderie as the first one - in that, Burt's romance with Farrah was sweet (well, apart from the abduction), but here he just makes out with Shirley Maclaine in the backseat like two old ageing movie stars (instead of having Maclaine and Marilu Henner I think they just should've had Henner). In the first, it was lovely how Dom DeLuise talked about how he was lonely til he found a friend in Burt, and how Burt explained to Farrah the joys of cannonballing - scenes like that are missing. There's not even that much car action.

It is fun to see Frank Sinatra, and while Dean Martin looks old and weathered Sammy Davis Jnr is full of life and Jackie Chan gets more fight senes.

Movie review - "The Sheepman" (1958) *** (warning: spoilers)

 A flabby sort of shaggy dog movie but it has a lot of charm, starting with its central idea: Glenn Ford wins some sheep in a poker game and tries to run them but comes up against prejudice and a cattle baron (Leslie Nielsen).

Actually more could have been done with that idea - scenes with sheep, Ford could've had a relationship with particular sheep, some shearing comedy, etc. There was more potential. I think they should have started with the game instead of telling it in reportage.

But Nielsen is fine as the villain and Shirley Maclaine adds from freshness as the girl (even if she does seem too young for Ford) and I liked seeing character types like Edgar Buchanan, Mickey O'Shaugnessy and especially Pernell Roberts, excellent as a killer.

Has an enjoyable quasi comic tone that many films from writer Bill Bowers had. I loved that Ford sold the sheep in the end because he didn't like him. The Mexican hand who then went and died was a little predictable.

Movie review - "John Goldfarb Please Come Home" (1965) *

 Urgh. I'm glad Fox won the lawsuit against Notre Dame to show this but it's a terrible movie. Smart arsey. Too smart by half. Overly frantic. Dumb. It feels like the sort of movie where everyone on it was taking cocaine.

J. Lee Thompson was found out a little with this one. Comedy was not his forte. Shirley MacLaine tries - wears some slinky outfits. It's not enough. Richard Crenna seems to try to channel Joel McCrea - it doesn't work. Crenna was a good actor but not a film star. Peter Ustinov in brownface mugs it up. So too do people like Jim Backus and Harry Morgan. There's some sexy harem girls but the movie is just offensive and unfunny.

Movie review - "What a Way to Go" (1964) **

This has a cute idea a little bit like Kind Hearts and Coronets  - Shirley MacLaine is a woman who dislikes money, keeps marrying poor men who then become rich and die, leaving her richer and richer.

The film took no chances at the box office, roping in Robert Mitchum, Paul Newman, Dick Van Dyke, Dean Martin and Gene Kelly to play husbands, with Robert Cummings thrown in for good measure.

How well you enjoy this depends on how much you like the stars. I'm not a massive MacLaine fan - Mitchum seemed irritating (sometimes I like him, sometimes he feels genuinely lazy and this was such a time), Dean Martin was... fine, Van Dyke was... fine, Newman was trying to be Funny (in a beard as a French artist). Cummings was fun as a nutty shrink who falls for MacLaine.

For me the best was Gene Kelly, in part because he does a few song and dance numbers - including one with MacLaine who does it terrifically. It made me wish this was a musical - at times it feels as though it was meant to be and had songs cut out or something. Because in those scenes you see the actors really trying as opposed to being a smart arse. That may be unfair but the rest of the movie felt like stars being smart arses - drenched in costumes and production value, pulling faces. But like I say if you adore those actors you might feel differently.

It was directed by J. Lee Thompson who actually made a few comedies in his career, people just didn't remember them. I'm actually surprised this wasn't turned into a stage musical or remade because of the concept.

Movie review - "The April Fools" (1969) **

Catherine Deneuve's first Hollywood movie sees her miscast as the wife of an executive (Peter Lawford) who has an affair with an unhappily married man (Jack Lemmon). Apparently Shirley Maclaine was originally considered for Deneuve's role and they really should have gone with her - or another more expressive actress. Her beauty and aristocratic manner can work well on film but not here when the role requires some life.

The longer this movie went on the more it annoyed me. Cinema screens and theatres in the late 60s were full of these sort of middle-aged-men-wish-fulfillment stories about disaffected middle aged men who threw off their inhibitions and ran away from their nagging bitch wives to find happiness with hot dream girls. Lemmon's wife Sally Kellerman is a materialistic ball breaker (he doesn't seem to be responsible for any of the problems in the marriage), his male friends are lecherous and drunken but basically supportive (Jack Weston, Harvey Korman), the female roles are caricatures: blank dream girls (Deneuve), greedy bitches (Kellerman) or wacky hipsters (Myrna Loy).

It is fun to see Myrna Loy and Charles Boyer as free spirited old people, but even they can't transcend cliche. Lemmon and Deneuve have zero chemistry, their dilemmas have no stakes (he doesn't like his wife and job and she doesn't like her husband and neither have kids... so what's the issue?), the final rush to the airport takes something like over half an hour of on screen time (and involves "hilarious" drunk driving), there's too much talk about princes turning into frogs and vice versa plus endless scenes of people dancing at parties (this was a feature of some of Deneuve's French films around this time - maybe director Stuart Rosenberg was trying to make her feel at home).

On the sunny side, Lemmon is perfectly cast and never phones it in; there are some funny line; the support cast is impressive; and the music score very good, including the title track and "Say a Little Prayer".

Movie review – “My Geisha” (1962) **

It takes a big to swallow the premise of this Norman Krasna penned comedy – Shirley MacLaine is a Hollywood comedy star whose film director husband (Yves Montand) wants to do a version of Madame Butterfly in Japan without his wife. The studio won’t give him the money to make it without MacLaine, so she pretends to be a Japanese geisha, and ends up being cast in the lead, without her husband knowing.

 

I went with the impersonation because MacLaine wears geisha make up – I didn’t buy so much that hubby would cast her (maybe they should just have Montand doing research as opposed to casting her in the lead of a film). The main Act two complication is the sleazy leading man (Bob Cummings) falling for MacLaine’s geisha. Unfortunately this means Montand’s character is less prominent when he should be key.

 

MacLaine is good and few do light comedy as well as Bob Cummings (even if he was starting to look a bit long in the tooth) but it’s not a lot of fun. Jack Cardiff handles things with a leaden hand and far too much of this is heavy and not that funny eg Cummings trying to hit on MacLaine to such a degree he almost rapes her, Montand talking and talking about how he felt emasculated in his marriage (poor director). (I wonder if this was in there because of producer Steve Parker, who was married to MacLaine and spent most of his time in Japan.) It’s also a bit sexist with its praising of geisha lifestyles and how they support men. Oh, and Montand seems too world-weary and tired to be effective in farce.

 

On the sunny side, there are some gorgeous images of Japan, it’s nicely photographed and we get slabs of Puccini. Edward G Robinson plays the producer who is in on the deception.

Book review – “Starmaker” by Hal Wallis and Charles Higham

Hal Wallis was one of the giants of old Hollywood; he’s not as well remembered today as Selznick, Zanuck, Mayer or Warners despite being head of production of Warners during their glory days. As one writer pointed out (I can’t remember who, maybe Humphrey Bogart’s biographer), Warners were never really Warners after Hal Wallis left – but Hal Wallis was never Hal Wallis again either. He never lost his ability to spot and exploit stars – Martin and Lewis, Charlton Heston, Burt Lancaster, Elvis – but his films were, on the whole, less distinguished. Inevitably they were more conservative – his bread and butter efforts were Westerns, Martin and Lewis and Elvis, but he still took the odd chance eg Come Back Little Sheba, Becket.

Lots of interesting stories – you only wish there were more. Even though funding films was easier in the old days it was still a pain in the neck getting the script right, the cast they wanted etc. We hear a lot about original casting choices – Bette Davis was last choice for Now Voyager, ditto Monte Woolley for The Man Who Came to Dinner (Orson Welles almost did it, Charles Laughton was considered too gay – they were worried the same thing about Woolley); Mia Farrow agreed to do True Grit but turned it down after Mitchum told her how scary Henry Hathaway was; Kim Darby only reluctantly agreed to replace her despite a lack of reputation. The hassles of casting Casablanca get a long airing, not surprisingly (perhaps Wallis’ crowning achievement, although luck was on his side). He also talks at great length about the troubles of making Captain in the Clouds – would anyone care?

Apparently Elvis was a dream to deal with; his most troublesome stars were Jerry Lewis and Shirley Maclaine; Joan Fontaine was selfish (when Wallis arranged a cabin on a ship for her she didn’t even send him champagne) and Anna Manganini a handful but one of those handfuls that people seem to be affectionate about.

Wallis wrote this in collaboration with Charlies Higham and definitely feels like a Higham work – fast paced, gossipy, inaccurate in places, sketchy. He alludes to Higham’s claims against Errol Flynn (“we never would have employed him if we’d known), including the silly one that Dive Bomber was used by Japanese espionage – didn’t the US Navy want to do the film to show off their boats, etc? The book is frustratingly vague on Wallis’ family and his first marriage – he alludes to unhappiness, what was the deal there?

This is OK, but it feels incomplete. It doesn’t help that on a personal level Wallis is a little dull (hard working, private, happy marriages, likes massages and walks). There are memos at the end which are great because they give the impression of the sort of decisions Wallis had to make every day. You get the feeling had the entire book been comprised of memos it would have been better.

Movie review - "Ask Any Girl" (1959) ***

Small town girl Meg Wheeler (Shirley MacLaine) who arrives in New York to bag a husband. She falls for a good looking executive (Rod Taylor) but turns and runs when she finds out he wants nothing more than sex. The main plot involves Meg falling for a playboy (Gig Young) and enlisting the help of his stuffy brother (David Niven) and scientific research methods to snare him.

With its heroine dead set on marriage and preserving her virginity, Ask Any Girl is not very politically correct by today’s standards, though, interestingly, take away those two things and the film has basically the same plot as many modern-day romantic comedies. It is a cheery, fun movie, with MacLaine extremely appealing and polished work from Niven and Young. Rod steals the film with his stand out performance; he rarely got the chance on screen to engage in broad comedy and proves extremely adept at it, whether attempting to seduce MacLaine with wolf-ish sincerity or doing pratfalls.

Surprisingly, the film was selected to represent America at the Berlin Film Festival. The reason was the festival could only chose from films submitted to it by the Motion Picture Export Association, and only one other film (The Rabbit Trap) had been submitted.

Movie review – “Rumour Has It” (2006) **

Comedy with some bright moments and a clever idea but it never seems to get going. I think the problems are structural – maybe it should have been a play. Jennifer Aniston worries that her mother might have been the Katherine Ross character in The Graduate, and when you see Shirley MacLaine is cast as the inspiration for Mrs Robinson you think “this is going to be great”. 

It starts brightly, with Aniston finding out the family history at a wedding, with strong support performances from Mark Ruffalo (her fiancée), Mena Survini (her blonde bimbo sister), Kathy Bates (a lush-y Pasadena type) and of course MacLaine. 

It starts to go a bit downhill when Aniston (in pretty good form actually) then tracks down Dustin Hoffman, who is Kevin Costner (who hasn’t aged that well but conversely is ten years too young for the role – it needed Robert Redford or Dustin Hoffman or someone). Once we find out he’s not dad, it becomes a case of their romance, which isn’t terribly involving. 

They don’t really use The Graduate stuff – if they were, it would be about Aniston, Costner and MacLaine – and they would have the Katherine Ross character still alive, and also deal more with Aniston’s father. Instead they concentrate on Aniston wondering why she feels as though she can’t fit in to her family and why she can’t commit to Ruffalo, which is a fine sub text thing or B plot but not enough for a film. So the last 15 minutes of so it’s like “alright, who cares?” Rob Reiner used to be so strong on story but he keeps making errors lately – like for Alex and Emma and this.

Movie review – M&L#14 - “Artists and Models” (1956) ***1/2

One of the best, if not the best, Martin Lewis films, full of tremendous energy and good cheer. Both stars are in top form, even if they are separated for much of the running time, but when they are together its gold. It’s gold when they’re apart too. Many of their films involved them struggling to make it in the big city, and getting involved with friends (usually two love interests) – I think this family feeling was and unsung reason behind their film’s success.

Two main reasons this is better than their usual output: first, Frank Tashlin directed, giving the film life and energy and gorgeous colour (the musical numbers are all well done, particularly the finale); there is lots of his sly humour and satire, like the Rear Window gag, the spy satire and the comic book author who just wants blood and guts.

The second, the female actors are top notch. Dorothy Malone is spirited as Dean’s girl, Shirley MacLaine steals the show as the “bat girl” desperate to seduce Lewis (there is some hilarious scenes when she does this); there’s also Anita Ekberg in the perfect Anita Ekberg role, i.e. playing a model, looking great and not saying much, and Eva Gabor as a mata hari type. The women are frequently wearing not much: Malone walks around in a towel, she and Maclaine show off their legs, Ekberg and Gabor wear low cut dresses, etc. Structure-wise it’s a shame the spy stuff wasn’t introduced earlier, it has real meat. Affectionate and good natured movie.