55 Days at Peking

This year's Summer Under the Stars concludes today with a day of films devoted to actress Ava Gardner. And concluding her day, in the wee hours of tomorrow morning at 3:00 AM (so even if you're on the west coast but only have the east coast feed it's still technically on Sept. 1) is 55 Days at Peking.

After the opening titles, voiceover narration informs us that it is the summer of 1900, a restles time in Chinese history: the Manchu/Qing dynasty was weak, having been forced to give a lot of economic concessions to the various western powers that wanted to trade with China. Originally, the Chinese government had been in a powerful enough position to bar whole families from coming over and keep the westerners isolated in special communities much like the Japanese did with the Dutch in Nagasaki. But by the end of the 19th century the west had the upper hand. This combined with a bad harvest emboldened more radical Chinese forces, in a group commonly called the "Boxers" because of their closed-fist salute. They were trying to drive the west out wholesale, and the government was in a bind because trade duties with the west and taxes on the concessions were actually bringing in a sizeable chunk of money to the Chinese treasury.

It's against that restive background that the Americans rotate in a fresh platoon of marines to the American legation in the diplomatic quarter of Peking, under the leadership of career Marine Maj. Lewis. He shows up looking for rooms at the hotel just as a Russian, Baroness Natalie (Ava Gardner) is being evicted because her visa was revoked by her brother-in-law (Kurt Kasznar) for family reasons. Maj. Lewis doesn't know much about the local politics, but he's about to learn, and fast.

The day after he arrives, the Boxers assassinate the German ambassador to China, leading to an ultimatum from Dowager Empress Cixi (Flora Robson): all of the westerners must leave. The assembled ambassadors take a vote, with all of them voting to leave except for the American who is absent because he's dying in hospital, and the British ambassador, Sir Arthur Robinson (David Niven). The other countries, however, decide that they can't afford to give up all of their concessions to the British, so they change their minds and stay. And that causes the Boxers to start besieging the city.

The westerners are badly outnumbered, but all they have to do is hold out long enough for relief to arrive, which is supposed to get to Beijing fairly soon. Except that Imperial forces are mustered to prevent this from happening, and the westerners have to hold out longer until they can somehow get someone out of the area from below and get word that relief is still needed. Against the backdrop of all this, various personal dramas play out. These include a mixed-race child, Sir Arthur's family, and the relationship between Maj. Lewis and the baroness, which is turning romantic because apparently a movie like this needs a love interest in it.

The technical aspects of 55 Days at Peking are quite good, although it's Spain substituting for China in the backgrounds. This isn't terribly important, since the besieged quarter is all sets anyhow and mostly doesn't need large vistas. The sets and costumes work well as does the music. The weakness, however, is the story, which runs over 2½ hours and sags quite a bit, especially with the baroness character who's not really needed to advance the plot. There are also enough Hollywood-style reimaginings of the history that are probably going to bother some viewers. So it's easy to see why a movie like 55 Days at Peking got mixed reviews and hurt the career of its director, Nicholas Ray.

Reality TV with Nicholas Ray

With TCM spending this evening looking at the films of some of the people who died in 2024, I decided to watch a movie off my DVR that's nominally a documentary of a man who is dying: Lightning Over Water.

The man in question is director Nicholas Ray, who died in June 1979 after a couple years battling cancer. Some time before that, he had met German director Wim Wenders when they were working on a film together, and became friends. So, when Ray was diagnosed with cancer and wanted to keep working rather than go off someplace and die peacefully, Wenders was willing to work with Ray.

The movie opens up in early April, 1979, about two months before Ray's death. Wenders has been able to secure two weeks away from Los Angeles, where he was working on another project, and flies to New York where Ray is still living. All of this looks like it's done as recreations and on good film stock. Wenders gets to Ray's apartment fairly early in the morning when Ray is still asleep, but appearing to be in rather horrible pain from the cancer that's killing him. When Ray wakes up, at some point the film stock switches to video, which I presume is supposed to represent the idea that this is the "real", raw footage, as opposed to all those recreations that might not have represented any sort of reality in Ray's life.

Ray talks some about ideas he has for a film script, something that's obviously not going to be completed in his lifetime. But Wenders lets Ray talk about this, and then film scenes with Ray in a way that seem obviously scripted and not part of a documentary. Meanwhile, Ray also heads up to Vassar in Poughkeepsie to give a lecture after a screening of his earlier work The Lusty Men. Wenders films the limousine ride, as well as scenes from backstage and a bit of Ray's speech.

Eventually Wenders has to fly back to Los Angeles, but in mid-May, just a few weeks before Ray's death, is able to get back to New York to film more footage, including Ray working on "directing" rehearsals of a production of a Kafka stage play. But, it's not enough footage, as Ray dies, and there's an epilogue filmed after Ray's death.

There have been any number of documentaries of terminally ill or very elderly people who want portions of their lives documented before they die, so doing that for a prominent movie director like Nicholas Ray is not a bad thing. However, in watching Lightning Over Water, I couldn't help but get the feeling that almost none of this is real. It also feels a lot like a vanity project. In short, I think that Lightning Over Water is the sort of movie that fans of Nicholas Ray will like, but that average movie fans, and even more so people who aren't (yet) that big of a fan of older movies, aren't going to care so much for.

Nicholas Ray's dud

A lot of professional movie critic and film historian types like to praise a director like Nicholas Ray for being a bit of a maverick and doing things that challenged Hollywood and American middle-class society, as in movies like Rebel Without a Cause and Bigger than Life. But even directors like Ray weren't immune from making absolute duds, as you can see if you watch a movie like Hot Blood.

Luther Adler plays Marco Torino, the head of a branch of Roma or Gypsies (the word used since in the 1950s mainstream society would never have used the word "Roma") that emigrated to the US a couple of generations ago but is still trying to keep the cultural norms they had back in Europe. Marco is getting old and has the feeling that he may be dying, so it's time to find a new chief, meaning his kid brother Stephano (Cornel Wilde). And with a new king there's a need for a new king. Stephano kind of likes Velma (Helen Westcott), but there are political implications of the same sort that would have faced the traditional royalty of Europe in centuries past.

In steps the Caldash family, Dad Theodore (Joseph Calleia) has a daughter of marriageable age, Annie (Jane Russell). But what Marco doesn't know is that Theodore is a bit of a con artist. He's been going around the US offering his daughter's hand in marriage, only to faint during the ceremony at some point after the dowry has been paid but before the marriage is official, allowing him to flee the jurisdiction with the money and take the shtick to another city. Their plan is to trick Marco out of a couple thousand dollars, which was a fairly tidy sum in the mid-1950s.

What Theodore doesn't know is that Annie has plans of her own. She tells Stephano about the ruse, figuring this will make him go along with the wedding since he doesn't really want to marry her. But she decides to go through with the wedding for real, never fainting during the ceremony. Stephano is none too happy about having been tricked.

Annie, however, is willing to be married for real and wants Stephano to reciprocate, and when he still doesn't, there's a whole lot of bickering between the two that results in Annie threatening to divorce Stephano in front of the entire Gypsy council. Will the two live happily ever after? Is Marco dying at all?

Hot Blood feels like the sort of movie that could have come from a novel that was really set in the old country and had the action moved to modern-day America for no good reason, resulting in a script that seems utterly unrealistic, even more than something like The Rose Tattoo. It also doesn't help that Russell and Wilde are both badly miscast as Gypsies. Beyond that, I can't figure out what everybody was thinking making this movie.

Hot Blood is currently available on TubiTV and, since it was released on Columbia, may show up on The Roku Channel's Cinevault Classics that seems to be the service with all the old Columbia movies. But The Roku Channel doesn't release schedules in advance, so you'd have to stumble onto this one through pure dumb luck (or dumb bad luck).

Frogmen in the Air

Today is Veterans' Day here in the US. Of course, it used to be Armistice Day, since it originally marked the end of World War I, but nowadays it's another holiday to honor all veterans. TCM is running a bunch of war movies, but either I've blogged about their selections, or don't have them on my DVR or on a DVD. I couldn't find anything World War I-related offhand, so instead I decided to dig out my box set of John Wayne war movies, and watch Flying Leathernecks.

Wayne stars as Maj. Kirby, who has just been given command of a group of Marine flyboys in World War II who are about to get involved in the battle for Guadalcanal. None of the men in the squadron know Kirby, and they were expecting that the group's former second-in-command, Capt. Griffin (Robert Ryan), would be elevated to commander to replace the old guy. But apparently the brass some levels above didn't think Griffin was ready for command yet, which is why Kirby has been brought in.

So it's understandable that the men don't particularly like Kirby. But he only makes it tougher on himself by being a stickler for doing things the right way, and being particularly not nice about it when the men under his command screw up. When one guy loses a fighter while chasing a Japanese reconnaissance plane, Kirby schedules the man for a court martial! But in Kirby's defense, there's a war on, and if there's too much laxity, there's no way the Americans are going to win.

Since there's a war on, we get a lot of combat sequences, and these are all made up of actual combat footage from World War II, which is mildy jarring since it looks like it ws done on different film stock compared to all the Hollywood scenes. And there's not much of a plot fleshed out besides the ever-present conflict between Kirby and Griffin over whether Griffin will ever be fit for command.

It's not all that long ago that I did a post on the Fox film The Frogmen, which deals with many similar themes, with Richard Widmark in the "new commander" role taken on here by Wayne, and Dana Andrews in the "man passed over" role given to Robert Ryan. And frankly, I preferred The Frogmen, because I think the characters are better fleshed out. Everybody tries their best in Flying Leathernecks, but the picture never really goes anywhere.

Strong enough for a man, but made for a woman?

Gloria Grahame had a day in Summer Under the Stars this past August, so I recorded one of her movies that I hadn't done a blog post on before: A Woman's Secret. Recently, I watched it so I could do a post on it here.

Grahame plays Susan Caldwell, a singer and actress who performs on the radio under the stage name Estrellita. She finishes up her radio show one night and goes back to her posh apartment in Manhattan where she lives with her friend who discovered her, Marian Washburn (Maureen O'Hara). Susan announces that she's going to give up performing, which causes an argument between the two women. Susan goes up to her room, Marian following her into the room. We then hear a gun shot, and Susan is gravely injured.

Unsusprisingly, the police, in the form of lead investigator Fowler (Jay C. Flippen) arrest Marian and hold her on a charge of attempted murder. What's much more surprising is that Marian confesses right away, basically shushing anybody around her who might try to stop her. One of those who would try to stop Marian is Luke Jordan (Melvyn Douglas). He's a pianist and bon vivant who also appears on radio shows due to his knowledge of all genres of music. He's convinced Marian couldn't have shot Susan, and is going to try to get Marian cleared of the charges, even if Marian doesn't seem to want to.

To that end, Luke impresses upon lawyer Brook Matthews (Victor Jory), who was apparently romantically involved with both Marian and Susan at different times, to take on Marian's case, even though he'll have a client who doesn't want him to represent her and in spite of that convoluted back story. As you can guess, since all of this happens in roughly the first quarter of the movie, we're going to get a flashback as to what really happened. Well, that only comes after half a movie's worth of Luke giving the back story involving himself and the two women.

Susan had been a singer herself back before the war, but she got some sort of illness that took away the qualities in her voice that made her a good singer, leaving her with a voice that's fine for talking but not singing. Around this time Marian and Luke discover Susan, and since she's got some talent, the start building her up, with Marian becoming a sort of manager. So there's the possibility that if Susan retires, it would take away Marian's meal ticket. Add in a GI they met in France (Bill Williams) and things get even more complicated.

In fact, I think a big part of the problem is that A Woman's Secret is too complicated for its own good. There's also not much of a secret going on here. If it's not attempted murder then there are only one or two other possibilities; it's not as if an attempted murder with a bunch of different suspects. But the biggest problem of them all is that the writing came across as flat. It's just really hard to get emotionially involved in the story of any of these characters, and that's a pretty big failing. All of the stars do the best they can with the material they're given, but in the end it's just not enough.

Party Girl

Cyd Charisse was TCM's Star of the Month back in June. She is of course known more for her dancing, although she did essay a couple of serious roles. One of those that I hadn't blogged about before is Party Girl. As an MGM movie, it's on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive, so I recently sat down to watch it.

Charisse is the title character, although I don't think she's really the main character. That would be the character played by Robert Taylor: Tommy Farrell, a lawyer in Chicago in the early 1930s. He's working for gangster Rico Angelo (Lee J. Cobb), basically working to make certain that Rico and his associates stay out of prison. One of those associates is Louis Canetto (John Ireland), who stands trial but whom Tommy defends with some theatrics in the court, so you get an idea of precisely the sort of lawyer Tommy is.

Charisse plays Vicki Gaye, a showgirl in the show at a nightclub owned by Rico. Rico is giving a party, so he hires some of the showgirls to be guests at the party, and Vicki is one of those paid attendees. That's how she meets Tommy. When Tommy points out that being paid to be an escort isn't exactly work to be proud of, Vicki responds that what Tommy does isn't really any different, it's just that he's got high-class degrees behind his work. It's the start of a friendship between the two, although Tommy can never marry Vicki because he's got a wife who won't grant him a divorce.

At any rate, all of this gives Tommy the idea of going straight. One thing he can do is finally get his hip fixed. He's suffered from a limp since childhood thanks to a childhood injury, and getting that hip fixed will take him all the way to Stockholm, which also means getting out of Chicago for a while.

But even on his sojourn to Europe, Tommy can't get away from Rico. Another young hoodlum, Cookie La Motte (Corey Allen) is arrested and faces execution, and Rico wants Tommy to be the defense attorney again. Tommy reluctantly accepts mostly because of the power Rico also has over Vicki. But Cookie, being too aggressive for his own good, escapes to Indiana after one of the jurors is bribed.

Tommy goes to Indiana to talk to Cookie and try to get Cookie to do the right thing, but somebody else responds by pointing a machine gun through the curtains and knocking off Cookie and some of his associates; Tommy survives. It's just the start of a gang war in which a whole bunch of people get killed. This gets the state led by ambitious prosecuting attorney Jeff Stewart (Kent Smith) involved, and holding both Tommy and Vicki on charges.

Rico is still behind the scenes using veiled threats against Vicki to keep Tommy from talking, while Stewart tries whatever he can to get either Tommy or Vicki to talk It all leads to the climactic shootout and the Production Code-approved ending.

I didn't realize going in that Party Girl was directed by Nicholas Ray. I didn't notice his style to the extent that a lot of other reviewers have. Instead, I saw something that was fairly typical for MGM, which was trying to take tough material only to see it softened because MGM just somehow couldn't keep its gloss from rubbing off on everything. It works for some types of movies, but it's not what Party Girl needs.

That's not to say that Party Girl is a bad movie, however. It's eminently watchable despite the two male leads both having somewhat limited ranges. Cobb is given a mobster role that's perfect for him, however, so he does just fine. Taylor tries his best and isn't bad, but you wonder what an actor who had the chops to play such a conflicted character -- somebody like a Gregory Peck -- could do here. The Metrocolor helps the dance sequences although it's not necessary for the rest of the movie.

Party Girl is a movie with imperfections, but one of those movies where it's the imperfections that make the movie more interesting.

The perfect movie for Bastille Day

Tomorrow is July 14, which means that the French will be commemorating Bastille Day and the start of the French Revolution. TCM has run French Revolution-themed films before in a block on July 14, but not this year. Instead, we get a morning and afternoon of the films of Robert Mitchum, including The Lusty Men at 10:45 AM.

Mitchum plays Jeff McCloud, who is returning to the old homestead after years away that he spent on the rodeo circuit. Having recently been injured, however, he's looking to settle down, hence the return "home". It's not home any more, of course, since the family moved away and a man named Watrus (Burt Mustin) owns the place, although Watrus does remember Jeff's parents.

Also interested in the house is cowhand Wes Merritt (Arthur Kennedy) and his wife Louise (Susan Hayward). They're not making much, but the big thing for them is that this would finally be a place of their own. Wes recognizes Jeff and helps Jeff get a job at the same ranch where Wes is working.

But Wes wants more. Knowing that Jeff was a relatively big-time rodeo guy, at least in the smallish world of rodeo, Wes wants the taste of that himself. Louise is fairly pragmatic and worries about the physical danger Wes would be getting himself into. After all, Jeff had to quite the rodeo business due to injury. Still, Wes decides that he's going to get the money together and enter a rodeo without telling Louise. Perhaps Jeff can help train him and teach him the behind-the-scenes part of the business, but Jeff wants a substantial cut, and frankly, who can blame him.

Unsurprisingly, Wes does well at his first rodeo, because if he failed badly we wouldn't have much of a movie. Wes, having succeeded, finds that he likes both the rodeo itself, and the money, along with the modicum of fame. As I said, Louise is at least pragmatic enough to decide that perhaps Wes can win enough money to buy the old McCloud place from Watrus, and then retire from rodeo having gotten it out of his system.

Yeah, right. Once again, The Lusty Men would be a fairly boring movie if Wes were that pragmatic too. He's beginning to get pursued by the ladies, and some of the people around the rodeo are putting it into his head that Jeff was a big hit with the ladies back when he was doing rodeo. Wes earns the $4100 that will let Louise make the escrow payment on the house, and Wes responds by saying sorry, but he loves rodeo too much to quit now.

So while there's a lot about The Lusty Men that's formulaic, one thing that's relatively new is that it's set against the world of (semi-)professional rodeo. The one other movie that came to mind was J.W. Coop, which I apparently never blogged about after watching it some years back. Here, Arthur Kennedy is miscast but does his best. Hayward is professional and Mitchum seems cast best of the leads. Probably the most interesting thing, however, is some of the establishing scenes of the rodeos without the leads. The movie probably should have been in color, however, to make those scenes more worthwhile.

The Lusty Men is an interesting change of pace, even if it isn't the first thing I'd think of to recommend to people who want to learn about any of the three leads. It's definitely worth a watch.

Bitter Victory

Earlier this year, I bought this 5-film "war" movie box set. (Young Winston, which I blogged about not so long ago, is only partly a war movie, while I wouldn't call The Prisoner a war film at all.) I had recorded Bitter Victory before picking up this set, and finally got around to watching it.

The scene is North Africa during World War II, when the Germans still control a fair portion of North Africa, notably Benghazi. The British command in Cairo wants to get some important information from the Germans, necessitating a commando operation. Who to lead it? They have two choices. Capt. Leith (Richard Burton) knows the area and speaks Arabic, having studied the archaeology of North Africa. But he's only a captain. Maj. Brand (Curd Jürgens) has rank on Leith, but is a by the books officer who doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the men under him. So the general makes the Solomonic decision to have both men go with the rest of the commandos, with Brand nominally in command.

Brand and Leith then go to dinner, where Brand introduces Leith to Mrs. Brand (Ruth Roman). Of course, they need no introduction, as Mrs. Brand had a relationship with Leith before marrying Brand, one that Leith broke off. But for whatever reason, Maj. Brand is pissed about it, probably because his wife still holds a candle for Leith. So there's going to be a lot more tension between Leith and Brand.

The men parachute in behind the lines and reach their assigned target. Unsurprisingly, the place is well-guarded enough that the commandos aren't going to be able to get those documents unmolested. And wouldn't you know it, one of the German guards spots the interlopers and attacks. Brand finds himself unable to kill the enemy, being too much of a coward to kill at close range, leaving Leith to do the deed. No wonder nobody has any respect for Brand.

The commandos head out into the desert toward where they're supposed to rendezvous with the people who are going to provide them with the camels they need to get the rest of the way out of the desert. However, along the way they spot a German patrol and get into a firefight with them, killing several but also leaving a British solder and a German officer seriously wounded. Brand, being in command, comes up with the brilliant idea of leaving Leith behind with the two wounded men since they can't just leave a British soldier to die alone. It also has the added benefit in Brand's mind that it will probably kill Leith too, and Leith won't be able to report back to Cairo how much of a coward Brand was.

It doesn't quite work out that way, as Leith decides the least bad thing to do is to put both wounded men out of their misery. The two wounded do ultimately die out there in the desert, leaving Leith free to leave the scene and catch up with Brand. Boy can you bet there's going to be a lot of tension once Leith shows up again, and even more when they discover the people provisioning the camels have been found out and killed, leaving just one camel for the men.

You'll have to watch the rest of Bright Victory to see how the conflict between Leith and Brand is resolved. It's an interesting movie in that it's more of a thoughtful movie than a war movie of action. Casting a German in Jürgens as an Allied officer (he's passed off as South African, presumably an Afrikaner) seems odd, but works because he gives a good performance. I'm not the biggest fan of Richard Burton, but he doesn't do anything to make the movie worse. Roman only gets a couple of scenes, while the commandos include a very young Christopher Lee whom I didn't recognize at first.

Much of the filming was done on location in Libya; this was a dozen years before Qaddafi came to power. The rest was done in France. Although the print TCM ran has a Columbia logo at the beginning, the movie was made by a comapny called Transcontinental Films based in France with Columbia getting distribution rights in the English-speaking world. Apparently there were cuts made for the original release (there are a couple of scenes I can understand censors being unhappy with), but the print TCM ran and the one on the box set are both around 102 minutes which, as I understand it, was the original pre-cut running time.

People who want a war movie with less action will probably enjoy Bitter Victory, but be aware that it's also a bit of an acquired taste.