David Niven's crisis

Yet another of the movies that I recorded off of TCM because of how it sounded interesting, but only got around to watching not long before it expired from my DVR, was the previously unknown to me Guns of Darkness. As always, having watched it, it's once again time to write up a review.

David Niven stars as Tom Jordan, who is working as a manager at a British plantation in the fictional Latin American republic of Tribulación. There's some hints that Tom was a bit of a screw-up in his previous professional life which is why he's working a job like this. It doesn't exactly please his wife Claire (Leslie Caron) either. She'd like to have a family but hasn't been able to have kids to this point, and she's getting to the point that she's thinking of packing up and heading back to Europe.

All of this is happening against the backdrop of a New Year's Eve party all the expats and some local elites are at. What none of the expats know, however, is that outside a bunch of rebels are planning to overthrow the current government of El Presidente Rivera (David Opatoshu). The coup is successful in that Rivera winds up out of power, but somewhat unsuccessful in that Rivera escapes, if with an injury.

Amazingly, the following morning none of the expats seems to have learned that there was a coup the previous night! And they should be relatively close to the capital city considering that one of last night's party guests, Hernandez (Derek Godfrey), shows up on the balcony with the new leader to serve as the Minister of Justice in charge of finding Rivera. The expats, meanwhile, all go to work the next day and act as though they're just going to keep going to work every day with the new regime not even resulting in a temporary disruption as order gets restored!

Eventually they learn about the coup and suffer some inconveniences themselves as there are roadblocks looking for Rivera and some summary justice as the new authorities deal with the people who aren't quite on board yet with the new regime. But if everybody suffers minor inconveniences, the Jordans are about to suffer a major one. Rivera was shot and needs medical treatment, and he's found hiding in the Jordans' car! He doesn't just want medical treatment, he wants Jordan to help him escape across the border where a neighboring country will presumably accept him into exile.

Husband, wife, and ex-president set out, and find that the road to the border, or at least the one that the authorities aren't watching, involves crossing a dryish riverbed. Unfortunately it's not quite dry, and what moisture there is left has turned the area into quicksand! Worse, as part of getting across, they're spotted by a young boy who Rivera is convinced will rat them out to the authorities. So he want to kill the boy, which is brutal but understandable and even logical. Jordan doesn't want to. The road ahead is going to require them to go on foot and go through difficult terrain to keep from being found by the new president's men.

Guns of Darkness is another of those movies where there's the basis of a pretty good movie in the plot, and you can see why the stars involved might want to take on this project. The finished product, however, is surprisingly inert. The conflict between Mr. and Mrs. Jordan doesn't feel authentic, and it doesn't seem at all likely that someone as injured as Rivera would be able to make it as far as he does. So it's all a bit of a tepid misfire, but one of those movies where you'll want to watch and judge for yourself.

Bunbury

I've mentioned a lot how I've got a bunch a movies on my DVR that need watching before they can expire. With that in mind, coming up next is the 1952 adaption of Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest. Having finally watched it, I can now do a review on it.

The movie opens up in London, at the apartment of one Ernest Worthing (Michael Redgrave). He's visited by an Algernon Moncrieff (Michael Denison), who claims among other things to have Ernest's cigarette case. This, however, is a ruse, as the cigarette case is one with a dedication from a Cecily that Ernest claims not to know anything about. And it's about to get a whole lot more complicated. Ernest theoretically does know Cecily, except that Ernest isn't Ernest. Ernest is really Jack Worthing, who lives at an estate out in the country where a much younger Cecily is his ward. Ernest is a fake identity, a made-up poor brother used by Jack as a ruse to be able to get away from his country home and go down to London.

And, to be fair, he's not the only faker out there. Algernon has created a fake identity, too, that of Bunbury, a friend who lives out in the country and is an excuse for Algernon to get away from London to go to the country. And once Algernon learns about Cecily, he'd like to go see her and put the moves on her. And Alergnon has a young female relative of marriageable age himself: his cousin Gwendolen (Joan Greenwood), still living with her mother, Jack's aunt Augusta, Lady Bracknell (Edith Evans).

Worthing and Algernon meet the two women, and Algernon comes up with a way to leave Jack and Gwendolen alone. Except that Gwendolen thinks this is Ernest Worthing, not Jack, a deception Algernon is perfectly willing to keep up. So when Aunt Augusta starts questioning Worthing, this being an era when the parents had to approve of marriages, Jack has to make up a pedigree about having been abandond as a child.

And then to make things more complicated, Algernon figures out where the Worthing country house is, and shows up unnanounced. Cecily and her governess, Miss Prism (Margaret Rutherford), immediately presume that this is the Ernest that Jack keeps talking about, something that displeases Jack to no end when he shows up. Algernon-as-Ernest proposes to Cecily. But then in a move that ups the complexity another level, Gwendolen also shows up, claiming that she too is engaged to Ernest, even though we all know there is no Ernest.

The Importance of Being Earnest is a movie that really demands a lot of attention while watching, as it's mostly in the dialog and there's a lot going on. It is, however, very well acted, and sure to be a delight for anyone who's a fan of the works of Oscar Wilde. I have to say that I haven't seen or read that much of Wilde's work, although obviously I think I did a review on the 1940s MGM adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Grey ages ago.

Don't call it "Slander"

In TCM's 31 Days of Oscar, we're about to get up to the letter L, which includes the movie Libel, on tomorrow morning at 6:00.

Paul Massie plays Jeffrey Buckenham, a Canadian pilot on a layover in London. While in a pub, he sees a TV program about the gret old manor houses of Britain. This episode focuses on Sir Mark Loddon (Dirk Bogarde) and his wife, Lady Margaret (Olivia de Havilland). That's something which really intrigues Jeffrey, for reasons that will become clear in a short while.

The Loddons have periodic guided tours of the estate in order to defray the costs of living there, and Jeffrey comes to one of those tours, more as a way of seeing Mark in the Loddons' private residence after the tour. It turns out that both Mark and Jeffrey served in World War II, and wound up in the same POW camp. Mark's bad experiences in the camp resulted in his only having sketchy memories of a lot of things that happened when he was younger before the War, which would explain why he doesn't recognize Jeffrey despite the fact that they escaped together.

When Jeffrey sees Mark's hand and sees that Mark has lost the first joint on one of his fingers, his suspicions are confirmed: this isn't Mark Loddon, but an impostor, Frank Welney. Frank was the third member of the escape, and an actor who had lost a joint on that finger. In Jeffrey's view, Frank's actions during the escape were less than honorable and resulted in Mark's death. So Mark writes an open letter to one of the Sunday tabloids.

Mark doesn't like that the letter was printed, and especially doesn't like the resulting publicity. In theory, they could just ignore it as the writings of a crank, but then what effect would it have on Mark and Margaret's son? So Mark makes the difficult decision to sue for libel, since the libel laws in the UK are rather more generous toward the putative victim than in the US. But the problem with taking the case to court is that a whole bunch of uncomfortable stuff is going to come out into the public, and with Mark having all sorts of memory holes thanks to that POW experience, who knows what's really going to come out.

Sir Wilfred (Robert Morley) is Sir Mark's barrister, while Hubert Foxley (Wilfrid Hyde-White) is Jeffrey's. At the trial, we get the views of both Jeffrey and Mark about what heppend both while they were in captivity, and that pivotal escape attempt, told in flashback. It's clear that Jeffrey thought even while they were all in captivity that Welney was a chancer who was trying to learn as much as possible about Mark's past life in order to kill Mark when the opportunity presented itself and take over Mark's identity. That opportunity would, in Jeffrey's view, present itself during the escape attempt.

Libel is a well-acted movie, albeit one with what seemed to me a glaring plot hole. Surely the British military would have had either fingerprint records of everyobdy under arms, or dental records, or both, in order to aid with identification of the killed in action if dog tags or other ID went missing. It should have been a fairly simple thing to check against those records. (A quick search suggests the US Army started fingerprinting soldiers all the way back in 1905; I couldn't find similar information for the UK.) I had other problems with the script, too, which is a shame since the actors all did a fine job.

Libel was produced by MGM's British arm, so it's no surprise that the movie has received a DVD release from the Warner Archive.