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.

The Mouse on the Moon

I've been going through a lot of the shorter movies on my DVR, and shorter movies generally means older movies. So even though TCM ran it just a few weeks back, I decided to watch The Mouse on the Moon rather than some of the stuff that's been on my DVR for a long time because it dates from the early 1960s.

The Mouse on the Moon is a sequel to The Mouse that Roared, a movie I thought I had blogged about but apparently not. The plot of the original movie involved the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, one of those small political entities that dotted Central Europe in movies from before World War II when the writers needed a prince from a fictional place -- think the prince who resolves the plot problems in First Lady if you watched that. Anyhow, the country more or less went bankrupt and came up with a ruse to get financial aid from the West.

A few years later, the country is still as backward as ever, and still as much in need of financial aid as ever to try to modernize the country. Worse, the country's main export, its wine, is being barred from export because the stuff has a nasty habit of exploding. Well, now that it's the early 1960s instead of the late 1950s, there's a space race going on. Prime Minister Mountjoy (Ron Moody) comes up with the brilliant idea to say that it wants to enter the space race, and get financial assistance to help in this regard. He knows the Americans will give on the reasoning that it's a diplomatic coup and the country will never be successful; Grand Fenwick can then use the money to do things like install running water.

Things get more interesting when the Soviets respond by sending an actual rocket. Meanwhile, the country's top scientist, Dr. Kokintz (David Kossoff), has figured out that whlie the wine may be explosive, it also has anti-gravity properties that make it a perfect propellant for a rocket ship, as using it won't require the rocket to achieve escape velocity. So perhaps they'll be able to figure out a way to get to the moon, which would suit Kokintz just fine. It would also make Mountjoy's son Vincent (Bernard Cribbins) happy. In theory, he's supposed to be next in line for the hereditary prime ministership, but he really wants to be an astronaut.

Meanwhile, the Americans, Soviets, and British all get alarmed at the prospect that somebody else might get to the moon first, so they start trying to figure out what Grand Fenwick is really up to. Kokintz is able to get the rocket launched, but because they don't need escape velocity, it's going to take longer to get to the moon than it would take the Apollo program (well, technically Apollo hadn't been started yet) to, at least from liftoff from Earth to landing on the moon. So the US and Soviets both rush rockets into preparation to try to beat both Grand Fenwick and each other.

The problem with The Mouse on the Moon is that it feels like the writers ran out of ideas for Grand Fenwick after The Mouse That Roared. This, even though the movie is based on a book. The producers apparently had a financial hit with The Mouse That Roared, and wanting to continue that, came up with this, but like Grand Fenwick itself, not really keeping up with the times. So what we get is a lot of stuff that feels like it's past its sell-by date, and not quite as funny as it otherwise might have been.

I'll probably have to track down a copy of The Mouse that Roared and watch it, as it's been years since the last time I saw it.

Murder at the Gallop

MGM's British unit produced four films in the early 1960s starring Margaret Rutherford as Agatha Christie's detective Jane Marple. TCM ran all four of them back in August during Rutherford's day in Summer Under the Stars, although I only had enough space on my DVR to record one of them, Murder at the Gallop. I recently got around to watching it and doing a review on it here.

At the start of movie, Marple is going around town with her companion and custodian of the local library, Mr. Stringer (Rutherford's real-life husband Stringer Davis, reprising his role from the first of the movies, Murder She Said), to raise money for a local charity. One of the stops is at the big manor-type house of a rich old man, Mr. Enderby (Finlay Currie), notorious for not donating to charity. He lets them in, however, where they find him getting scared by a cat and suffering fatal heart attack in the process!

Miss Marple just knows that it's murder, and figures that the last person before them to show up at the house deliberately brought a cat in order to induce that heart attack. So even before local police inspector Craddock (Charles Tingwell, also reprising his role in Murder She Said shows up, she's trying to get evidence, which you'd think would be a crime since she's technically impeding a legitimate police investigation.

Except that the police don't believe it was murder, just a run of the mill heart attack, leaving Marple free to come up with her batty conspiracy theories. Well, of course, this being Miss Marple maybe they're not so batty. First she concludes that the murderer, whoever it was, must have come over on horseback as she's able to get an impression of a riding boot. Find out whose boot it matches, and you've got the murderer. She also eavesdrops on the reading of the will.

Among the heirs is Enderby's sister Cora, so Marple goes to visit Cora, finding her dead, and a housekeeper Miss Milchrest (Flora Robson) who wonders whether Marple is in fact the killer. As for the other heirs, there's Enderby's nephew Hector (Robert Morley) who runs a local inn that also provides horse riding as part of the recreation; art dealer Crossfield (Robert Urquhart); and Mr. and Mrs. Shane. All of the heirs are staying at Hector's in the Gallop, so Marple decides she's going to take a "vacation"... at the Gallop.

Some vacation, since it's patently obvious that she's going to investigate the murder. Along the way, she's going to be put in a bit of danger as she finds everybody is a suspect. But you know that she's ultimately going to figure out who the killer is.

Eddie Muller, in the wraparounds, stated that this particular movie is based on one of Christie's books that did not in fact have Miss Marple among the characters. So for Agatha Christie purists, they may not like the movie as a result. I more or less liked it, as the mystery is good enough and Margaret Rutherford brings the same humor to the Marple role that she did in Murder She Said. I have to admit, however, that I preferred Murder She Said.

Still, anybody looking for a relatively undemanding mystery can enjoy Murder at the Gallop.

Blithe Spirit

Another of the movies that I recorded months ago but is coming up on TCM soon is Blithe Spirit. The next airing is tomorrow afternoon at 4:45 PM.

Rex Harrison plays Charles Condomine, a successful writer living in one of those English country estates together with second wife Ruth (Constance Cummings), his first wife Elvira having died some years ago. One of the plot points in his next book involves a séance, so Charles decides that he's going to invite some friends over and bring in a local medium to hold a séance.

Of course, everybody knows that this sort of stuff is a giant scam, doesn't everybody? The Condomines invite a couple of friends, Dr. Bradman (Hugh Wakefield) and his wife (Joyce Carey), and get Madame Arcati (Margaret Rutherford) to do her thing as the medium.

They all get together, and as you can expect, nothing happens. Not long after the séance breaks up and Arcati and the Bradmans head home, there's a sudden, inexplicable rush of wind at the patio door.

Wouldn't you know it, but something did happen. (Obviously, something had to happen, or else there wouldn't be a movie. A green-hued woman enters the scene visible only to Charles, and it's obvious to the viewer that this must be a spirit of some sort. What's obvious to Charles is that this is the spirit of Elvira (Kay Hammond).

Elvira is decidedly unhappy, as she's seen Charles' second wife, and she thinks Ruth isn't right for Charles. Elvira is also unhappy about having been brought back from the dead, although she's not exactly alive either; just in some sort of limbo where she can interact with objects and even talk to Charles. So she talks to him, and anybody else who happens to be around for these conversations only hears Charles so they think something's seriously wrong.

Charles is eventually able to convince Ruth and Arcati that Elvira has come back; and Ruth wants Arcati to help send Elvira back to where she came from. But no matter what Arcati tries, it doesn't work, making everybody including Elvira a bit testy.

If that's not bad enough, there's a series of accidents involving Charles and some of the hired help. This give Ruth a frightening insight: Elvira has decided that she wants Charles for herself and not let Ruth have her anymore, and the only way to do this is to kill Charles so they'll both be in the afterlife together. At this point even more shocking turns of events take place.

Blithe Spirit is based on a play by Noël Coward, who according to IMDb provided the narration. I'm not as big a fan of Coward's comedies as people who are fans of the stage or people who are Anglophiles tend to be, so there are going to be people who like this more than I did.

Not that I disliked Blithe Spirit, however. I did have a few problems, mostly with Kay Hammond who seemed a bit too shrill. I've never seen the play, so I don't know if Elvira was supposed to be as irritating as she is in this movie adaptation. Technically, however, the movie is a treat. It was filmed in Technicolor which is quite vivid, and the special effects are very good too.

I had thought about doing a post on Blithe Spirit earlier, but I could have sworn that when I searched on the TCM Shop, they didn't have a DVD available. The opening of the print TCM showed, however, is the Criterion logo, so I looked there, and sure enough, they have a box set of David Lean directing Noël Coward in four movies. Three of them (Blithe Spirit, In Which We Serve at 11:30 AM, and Brief Encounter at 6:30 PM) are on tomorrow's schedule; the only one that isn't is This Happy Breed. Of course, being a Criterion release, it's quite pricey.

Apparently there's a new version of Blithe Spirit in the works, although the release date got pushed back by the coronavirus nonsense and it's not set to be released until sometime in 2021.