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.

Let's give Waterloo Bridge a happy ending!

I've mentioned on quite a few occasions how I generally find the B-movie/programmers that MGM made in the 1950s to be a lot more interesting than the Freed Unit musicals, although I think I'd extend that to more of the lush color productions that MGM was making even if they weren't musicals. Recently, I watched Gaby, and couldn't help having those thoughts about the difference in quality between the top tier and the little movies.

Unfortunately, the print that TCM ran had the opening credits both letterboxed and pillarboxed, which was a warning sign that at some point, the print would move to being panned and scanned, which would certainly give Sydney Pollack the heebie-jeebies up in heaven. Sure enough, once the credits end the print zooms in by becoming just pillarboxed. Another title informs us it's London, 1944, which of course means World War II, and in this case still before D-Day. Gregory Wendell (John Kerr) is in London with a couple of his army buddies, so they go in to the London equivalent of the USO asking questions about where they can find girls. Not that they're going to get to spend time along with young women which is what they really want, but at least they can have a dance.

On his way to the dance hall with his buddies, Gregory accidentally runs into Gaby (Leslie Caron), a ballet dancer who escaped the Nazi invasion of France and lives with her fellow dancer Elsa (Taina Elg). In the collision, Gaby drops a bunch of coins that are part of her meager budget. When Gregory helps pick them up, Gaby accidentally winds up with some of Gregory's US quarters, which is a substantial extra bit of money that she can't take. Gregory was immediately taken by Gaby's looks, so he decided to spend the evening by himself, going to the ballet just to watch Gaby. She sees him so invites him backstage to give him back his money. They spend the evening together, at the end of which Gregory proposes marriage.

However, there are all sorts of sensible obstacles to delay such a marriage. Gregory has to prove he's not married, is supposed to get references from his family, and needs his commanding officer's approval as well. All of this is going to take time, although at least Gregory as an aunt and uncle (Cedric Hardwicke and Margalo Gillmore) living in London who are both extremely nice to Gaby when they meet her. But before the young couple can get the necessary approvals, June 6 comes, with Gregory among the many Americans taking part in the D-Day invasion.

Gaby visits Gregory's aunt, only to discover that the aunt is the bearer of bad news that Gregory was killed in action in Normandy. It's going to turn out this was a mistake in that Gregory was wounded and had to hide with a French family who gave up his dog tags so that the Nazis if they found Gregory would find him without any American identification. But the same evening Gaby learns of Gregory's "death", she finds a Free Polish airman who is shaking at the French version of the USO. So she helps him in a way that clearly implies the two have sex.

But Gaby is even more of a Code-affected movie than the 1940 version of Waterloo Bridge, so it's even more circumspect about Gaby's alleged transition to prostitution. Frankly, this is a huge mistake on the part of the movie, as it makes Gaby's guilt seem non-sensical. Not only that, but Gregory's reaction when Gaby reveals the truth to him is laughable as well, as is the abrupt happy ending that follows. Jeanne Eagles in The Letter this isn't. But then MGM couldn't have Leslie Caron be the bad girl, could they?

I have a feeling that Gaby would at least look better in the full Cinemascope aspect ratio. Leslie Caron is still beautiful here. But the story is just too watered down to be a true classic.

Glory Alley

I've stated two different general thoughts on MGM over the years. One is that, as probably the most prestigious Hollywood studio, they brought a lot of gloss to movies that would have benefitied from having no gloss. The other is that, once the Freed Unit musicals really got going, it was the other stuff made that's really a lot more interesting. Both of those thought came to mind as I was watching Glory Alley.

The movie is ostensibly set in New Orleans, although it's the MGM backlot's version of New Orleans, which has all the connotations you can think of. Working for one of the newspapers, although about to retire, is columnist Gabe Jordan (John McIntire), who tells his editor that he's never told the full story of boxer Socks Barbararossa (Ralph Meeker). So, as you can guess, we're about to get a flashback that tells us... the rest of the story. Wait, this isn't Paul Harvey, either the radio man or the character actor.

Some time in the past, before the Korean War (the movie was released in June 1952), Socks is about to fight a title bout. But as he's in the ring, he looks up at the very bright ring lights, and realizes... he can't go ahead with the fight! So he just gets out of the ring right then and there and goes to his dressing room in the basement to hide from everyone. Not quite everyone; there's his manager Peppi (Gilbert Roland), trainer of sorts Shadow (Louis Armstrong), girlfriend Angela (Leslie Caron), and Angela's blind father The Judge (Kurt Kasznar). Now, since Leslie Caron had a French accent, she and her dad are portrayed as having fled France when the Nazis occupied it, with Dad hoping to get the family assets back and Angela training to become a nurse to get the money for Dad to have an operation. Except that that last bit is only what Dad thinks; Angela in fact dances in one of the dive nightclubs which brings in rather more money. Anyhow, why did Socks just up and leave the ring? The full reason isn't explained until the end of the movie, but Socks looks at himself in the mirror and sees some of the toll boxing has already taken from him.

Peppi buys a bar of his own while Socks lets himself go, drinking heavily to the point that he's going to have to accept a pity job at Peppi's place. Peppi holds the contract of one other fighter, "Newsboy", which he gives to Socks. Socks intends to raffle off the contract to get some money and to get out of the boxing game for good, but he and Newsboy both get drafted to serve over in Korea. Then, in a truly nutty twist, Socks is able to show some real bravery and win the Congressional Medal of Honor, except that's an award he doesn't really want although he can't really sell it legally to make money.

Socks returns from Korea, and eventually tells Angela the real reason why he left the ring just as he was about to fight for the title, and... everyone lives happily ever after? Yes, basically that's what happens, and the "official" reason Socks gives for running away from that previous title fight is one that makes no sense.

In fact, the movie as a whole doesn't make much sense, seeing as how it veers wildly from one genre to the next. The characterizations are also all wrong. Ralph Meeker is asked to play something much too gentlemanly for a boxer who came up from poverty. Leslie Caron was most likely cast here because it was just after An American in Paris made her big. With her French accent, the studio had to make her character French, necessitating that back story. The melodrama with Dad's operation is an odd thing to shoehorn in here. Even worse is how the movie suddenly switches to the Korean War, looking like a cheap B movie at the same time it's doing this.

So Glory Alley goes wrong in so many ways, and yet that's something that actually makes the movie interesting, to watch how it goes so badly wrong. Not good, mind you, but interesting nevertheless.

Fanny

Yet another of the movies that I had sitting on my DVR that's coming up again on TCM is Fanny. It's next airing is tomorrow, March 23, at 3:30 PM, which is why you're getting the post on it now.

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Fanny is played by Leslie Caron, and is a young woman of 18 living in Marseilles with her mother Honorine, who sells fish in the seaside equivalent of a farmers' market at some time in the past. (This movie was released in 1961, based on a musical from several years earlier which was in turn based on stories written in the 1920s. And, as you'll see, there's a ten-year gap between acts of the movie. The earlier scenes in this movie, however, don't look like they're set in any sort of past beyond an old car here and there.) Fanny is in love with Marius (Horst Buchholz), who is the son of César (Charles Boyer), a bartender at the sort of bar that served the sailors and where you wonder how the proprietor could earn a living. As such, Marius doesn't care for ths sort of life, and wants to go to sea where he feels he can be free.

Although Fanny loves Marius, he only sees her as a friend. Meanhile, Panisse (Maurice Chevalier) is a man who has saved up a bunch of money. So when he approaches Honorine, she unsurprisingly thinks he's like to live with her and be a father figure to Fanny. She's shocked to learn that he's willing to marry Fanny (who doesn't want an 18-year-old who looks like Leslie Caron). Never mind the fact that Fanny doesn't have any feelings for Panisse and has no desire to marry him. She only pines for Marius. But Marius is looking into getting a job with a scientific research vessel that's going to be at sea for five years. Even though Fanny is willing to wait, Marius says she shouldn't. She lets Marius go off to sea, because she doesn't want Marius to have any regrets.

Of course, the night before Marius goes off to sea would be the one night that Marius and Fanny make sweet sweet love. And of course, that one time they get it on is, in the best Hollywood tradition, enough to get Fanny knocked up. She knows the baby needs a father, so she sucks it up and tells Panisse she's going to marry him. Panisse doesn't much care since he's OK with having Fanny near him, even if she doesn't love him and still holds a torch for Marius.

Marius comes back and sees the child, but Fanny isn't going to punish Panisse. Several years later, the child is given the opportunity to meet the man who is his father without actually being told this is the father. By this time, Panisse has gotten old enough that he's about to die.

Fanny feels like one of those old-fashioned movies that will appeal to a certain sort of viewer. I'm sorry to say that I'm not particularly that sort of viewer. Having said that, everybody involved does a professional job with the material, and a good portion was shot on location, and in color, which are both big plusses. It would just be nice if all of this were in service of a better story.

Lili

Surprisingly enough, even during 31 Days of Oscar there are some older movies that I haven't done blog posts about before, and that I have on my DVR. Among them is one that I'll admit I hadn't watched before now because I wasn't certain it would interest me. But it's the sort of movie where I probably ought to rectify not having watched it, considering it won an Oscar: Lili. It gets its next airing overnight tonight at 12:30 AM, which is technically February 26 in the eastern time zone but still February 25 in more westerly time zones.

Leslie Caron plays Lili, and as the movie opens she's a 16-year-old girl who lost her mother at some point in the past while her father has just died, leaving her an orphan. She's from some sort of small French town, and has come to another small town looking for an old friend of her father's who might be able to tell her. But that friend has died, too, and Lili, being naïve, is at risk of being exploited by somebody. She's rescued by Marc (Jean-Pierre Aumont), who works as a magician for a traveling carnival. Marc gets her a job, but it's going to require traveling with the carnival.

In response, Lili develops a crush on Marc, not realizing that he's married to his assistant Rosalie (Zsa Zsa Gabor). She's so infatuated with Marc that she doesn't pay attention to the job she has with the carnival, that of waiting tables, instead watching Marc's magic act. She's going to need to do something different than waitressing. And just wait until she learns that Marc and Rosalie are married.

On the first point, she's mildly lucky. Another part of the carnival is the puppet show, with the puppets manned by Paul (Mel Ferrer) and his assistant Jacquot (Kurt Kasznar). Paul used to be a dancer, but he was injured fighting for the Free French in World War II and can no longer dance as a result. This is why he got into puppeteering, but has also left him bitter and using the puppets as a surrogate to communicate with the outside world. Lili, being immature, talks to the puppets as though they're real characters.

But this interaction is actually a stroke of unintentional genius, as using a human to communicate with the puppets as part of the show is something that really draws in the carnival viewers. And Paul and Jacquot use the conversations they have with Lili to turn the puppet show almost into an improv show. But will everybody's personal issues destroy the whole show?

Lili is in some ways a strange little movie, in that it defies genres. You'd think it should be a musical, and there is a fantasy dance number at the end. But it doesn't quite have as much music as the Freed Unit musicals that MGM was putting out did. Lili is also so immature that the way the adult men treat her comes across as creepy at times.

However, Leslie Caron does a fine acting job, picking up an Oscar nomination along the way. Lili was a big box-office hit, and it's easy to see why it would appeal to a lot of people. I don't quite share that appeal, to be honest, but a lot of viewers even today probably will find it appealing.

Fred Astaire robs the cradle

Another of the movies that's been in the FXM rotation for a little while, but that I haven't blogged about before, is Daddy Long Legs. It's got another airing tomorrow (Jan. 14) at 6:00 AM, so recently I watched it to write a post on here.

Fred Astaire plays Jarvis Pendleton III, the latest in a family of extremely wealthy businessmen. There's that old phrase of "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations", and it seems as though the current Jarvis may be living up to it since he seems more into jazz drumming and dancing than actually running the business. He's also got a niece Linda (Terry Moore) who's in college now, but whom he hasn't seen since she was six months old, much to the consternation of her mother.

Anyhow, part of Jarvis' business involves going over to France to deal with some post-war restructuring/Marshall Plan-type stuff. It's not made exactly clear what all the business entails, but the only real point of it is to get Jarvis over to France. On the windy country roads outside of Paris, the car Jarvis and his entourage are in has to run off the road to avoid a cart and gets stuck in the mud. Jarvis goes off to look for help, and the nearest residence he can find is a small orphanage.

The orphanage seems to have a lot of young orphans and, like The Cider House Rules one who is to the point that she could start making her own way in life. That elder orphan is 18-year-old Julie Andre (Leslie Caron). She's so beautiful that Jarvis decides he'd like to adopt her. However, adopting an 18-year-old seems like a bit of a problem, something icky enough that Ambassador Williamson (Larry Keating) advises against it. So instead Jarvis comes up with the idea that one of his foundations will sponsor Julie to go to college in New England where Linda goes to school, on a scholarship, without Julie knowing who her benefactor is.

Julie is understandably interested in her benefactor, whom she calls "Daddy Long Legs" because the younger orphans saw his shadow when he first came to the orphanage, and thought it looked like that sort of spider. However, the letters go not to Jarvis, but to his executive assistant Griggs (Fred Clark) and Griggs' secretary Alicia Pritchard (Thelma Ritter). Griggs tells Alicia to file the letters away, and Jarvis never sees them, so he doesn't know what Julie is thinking about him, if he even remembers her. Julie, meanwhile, begins to feel a bunch of emotional hurt over not hearing from Daddy Long Legs.

Eventually, Alicia insists one of the letters be answered, so Jarvis comes up with the idea of going up to the college, since after all his niece Linda attends and it will give Jarvis the chance to see her for the first time since Linda was an infant. It'll also give him a chance to see Julie at least from afar, and possibly even talk to her to get a read of what's going on with "Daddy Long Legs". However, what happens is that Jarvis and Julie begin to fall in love. There's that creepiness the ambassador warned about. And, amazingly, the ambassador comes to New York by coincidence on the one weekend Julie comes down to New York to see Jarvis, with the two getting hotel suites next to each other. So of course the ambassador is going to find out what's going on.

Daddy Long Legs is an appealing enough story that it's been made into a movie on several occasions, starting with a Mary Pickford silent over a hundred years ago. This one, being a vehicle for Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron, adds songs and dances since the dancing is where they were both really talented. As such, that's going to make the movie one that might hold a bit less appeal to some people. The big problem with the dance numbers is that some of them, especially Caron's big climax, go on too long and bring the movie to a screeching halt, even if Caron is quite a fine dancer. These also pad the movie out to a little over two hours when it's the sort of material that would have been perfect for a 90-minute programmer back in the 1930s.

Still, there's a lot worse music and dancing out there, and Daddy Long Legs is definitely going to please a lot of fans of musicals.

The Story of Three Loves

One of the movies in the Kirk Douglas tribute on TCM tomorrow that I haven't blogged about before is The Story of Three Loves, which comes on at 10:00 AM.

Douglas doesn't come into the movie until the third act, but that's be design, since as you might have guessed from the title, this movie is an anthology of three love stories, with the hook tying the three together being that the men in the love stories are all traveling on the same transatlantic liner to the United States.

First up is James Mason, in a story called "The Jealous Lover". He plays Charles Coutray, a choreographer and producer. His love is a tragic one, being involved with ballerina Paula Woodward (Moira Shearer). Or maybe I should say ex-ballerina, since she has a heart condition that is supposed to keep her from dancing. But she's so desperate to dance that she runs off to Charles and does a tremendous dance for him. Too tremendous, in fact.

The scene then goes to young boy Ricky Nelson, playing Thomas Campbell. He had a French governess named Mademoiselle (played by Leslie Caron; "Mademoiselle" is also the title of this segment), who was taking care of him while his family was in Rome. He couldn't handle the French poetry and irregular verbs that Mademoiselle was trying to make him learn. On a dare from another American, he goes to see alleged witch Hazel (Ethel Barrymore), who gives him a special ribbon that turns him into an adult for one night (Farley Granger), a night on which he falls in love with Mademoiselle.

Finally, we get to Kirk Douglas, in a story called "Equilibrium". Kirk plays Pierre Narval, a French trapeze artist who is no longer doing his routine because it was an extremely daring one. Too daring, in fact, as it killed his previous partner. But then he meets Nina (Pier Angeli) and thinks she'd be perfect as his new partner. This even though she knows nothing about the trapeze and has a tragic past of her own, having lost her husband in World War II and having tried to commit suicide as a result. Still, Pierre trains Nina and the two fall in love along the way. But then the time comes for the two to do their most daring stunt without a net....

Anthology films are quite often uneven because each story is self-contained, and naturally some stories are going to be more interesting than others. For me, I found that The Story of Three Loves had a different problem. It was made in nice Technicolor at MGM, and all three stories are very competently filmed. But to me the movie kept having that MGM touch that I've described before where everything seems a little too perfect, winding up cold and sterile instead of full of vitality. Some point out that "The Jealous Lover" has an obvious comparison to The Red Shoes, and to be honest I've never been a fan of The Red Shoes either (not that it's bad, just that I find it a difficult watch). Leslie Caron isn't my favorite actress, so for me the Kirk Douglas story is the best of the three.

But I'm sure that other people will like The Story of Three Loves more than I did, considering how professionally made it is. The movie is available on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive, so if you can't catch the TCM showing, you can still watch and judge for yourself.

The Man Who Understood Women

One of the movies that returned to the FXM lineup not too long ago is The Man Who Understood Women. It's going to be on again tomorrow morning at 9:10 AM, and doesn't seem to be on DVD, so the FXM showing is your rare opportunity to catch it.

The movie starts off in Nice, France, in 1956. Ann Garantier (Leslie Caron) is in the waiting room of a hospital together with one of her husband's friends and colleagues Norman (Harry Ellerbe). Apparently something's happened to the husband, and Ann may have to answer questions. Cut to the flashback of how they all ended up here....

Willi Bauche (Henry Fonda) is an Orson Welles-type Hollywood personality: a director and sometimes actor, screenwriter, and producer who makes movies that are acclaimed but go way over budget and cause problems for the studios as a result. He gets fired from the studio, but in meeting his friend G.K. Brody he sees French-born actress Ann Garantier making a screen test.

Willi is immediately taken with Ann, and thinks he can make Ann a star. But he's also going to do it his way, which means engaging in all sorts of mildly underhanded shenanigans with the various Hollywood types. But eventually Willi is able to get Ann in a movie, and then another, with Ann becoming quite successful. The two get married, but it's not necessarily a match made in heaven as Willie is still scheming on their wedding night instead of consummating the marriage.

Things go on like this until Ann decides that she's had enough of Hollywood and wants to go back to her native France. Willi gets the idea that perhaps they can make a movie in France, and so goes along with her to the French Riviera. On the train, Ann sees Maj. Marco Ranieri (Cesare Danova), a dashing soldier of fortune. He being dashing and she going through difficulties with her husband, you know that the two are going to fall in love.

Willi knows as well that Ann is going to fall in love with the Major, so he calls up G.K. back in Hollywood. Apparently they knew a guy Soprano (Bern Hoffman) who got deported back to his native Sicily, and could be of use as a sort of private detective to follow Ann and Marco, and bring Ann back to Willi. Soprano meets a drunken Baron (Edwin Jerome), and the two go off in search of the couple.

However, the Baron is a hopeless romantic, and when he sees Ann and Marco in love, he feels the two can't be separated. What this means is that while Willi might have been able to countenance Marco dying in an "accident", the Baron won't let that happen, instead preferring that the two lovers die together, something Willi doesn't want to happen at all for the obvious reasons.

The Man Who Understood Women is material that sounds like it should be good or at least interesting. But instead, it winds up flat. Somehow I couldn't really bring myself to care about these characters, none of whom seemed very appealing. The movie also moved slowly, even though the version FXM ran was only 100 minutes. (IMDb says it's 105 minutes, and was supposedly edited down to that.) It doesn't help that FXM once again ran a print that was letterboxed and pillarboxed. Having said that, the reviews I've read are even more scathing than what I thought of it. So perhaps this is one of those movies where even more than others you need to watch and judge for yourself.

As I said at the beginning, I couldn't find this one available on DVD (or streaming), so if you do want to watch, it's FXM or nothing.

My spidey sense is tingling

A movie that's been on the FXM schedule for a while now is the 1955 Fred Astaire version of Daddy Long Legs, which is going to be on again tomorrow at 12:50 PM and Thursday at 7:55 AM. I had DVRed it on the old DVR to watch and do a full-length post on here, but the old DVR died. I did get a chance last month to watch the last ten minutes or so just before Désirée, and noticed that the print was both letterboxed and pillarboxed, boo his.

Anyhow, the brief subject of the movie is that Astaire goes over to France and at an orphange, meets one orphan (Leslie Caron) he's taken with, so he anonymously sponsors her to study at college in the US. She falls in love with her unseen benefactor, and then meets Astaire not realizing he's the benefactor. Dance-filled complications ensue.

Anyhow, in doing a bit of research on the movie, I noticed that it's based on a novel from the beginning of the century, and that the Astaire version is at least the third movie version. Janet Gaynor starred in a 1931 version, and there's a 1919 silent with Mary Pickford, who did a whole bunch of these much younger than her actual age roles. That version being from 1919, it's in the public domain, so you can find it on Youtube. I didn't check if any of the versions on Youtube have scores: