Thursday Movie Picks #225: Gangsters

This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. This week's theme is gangsters, which for somebody like me who prefers old movies is a very easy topic to come up with three movies on. The only problem I had was making certain I hadn't used the movies before. So, I decided to come up with a theme-within-a-theme of more comedic gangster movies:

A Slight Case of Murder (1938). Edward G. Robinson plays a bootlegger gangster who finds that now that Prohibition is over, nobody wants to buy his beer because frankly, it's terrible compared to the legal stuff. He wants to get into society anyway to marry off his daughter (Jane Bryan), so he takes a house in Saratoga, only to get more than he bargained for, notably the bodies that some other gangsters left behind. And we're only getting started.

Love That Brute (1950). Paul Douglas plays a Chicago gangster of the 1920s who sees a pretty governess (Jean Peters) in the park one day, and decides he'd like to have her. Except that he doesn't have a kid. So he finds the orphaned son of another gangster and takes that kid in as a ruse to have the governess (who doesn't know his background) work for him. What will happen when she discovers his secret?

The Happening (1967). Anthony Quinn plays a retired gangster who gets accidentally kidnapped by a bunch of hippies (including Faye Dunaway, Robert Walker Jr., and George Maharis) who don't realize whom they've kidnapped. When they try to ransom him, he's shocked to learn that his wife (Martha Hyer) is having an affair with his business partner (Milton Berle), and that she's perfectly satisfied not to pay the ransom and let the kidnappers do whatever to him. Since the hippies don't really know the first thing about kidnapping, he shows them how it's done, to get revenge on his wife.

Yet another look at women directors

TCM is running a spotlight tonight and next Thursday on women directors, with a bunch in between on November 7 as well. The prime time looks are a bunch of silent movies, and with the shorts TCM has them listed as being in blocks of multiple movies beginning at the same time, as is their tendency. This means the night is listed with three Alice Guy movies starting off at 8:00 PM, and I don't know if the order they're listed in is the correct one.

That's followed at 9:15 by a pair of Lois Weber movies, including the interesting Where Are My Children? that I mentioned from one of the previous female director spotlights. It's an intersesting movie about abortion and birth control, with birth control being virtuous because it's being used to get the lower classes to stop spitting out so many babies, while abortion is used (illegally) by the upper classes not to have so many babies, making it bad.

I'd say that Where Are My Children? is the highlight of the night, but I haven't actually seen the stuff later in the evening, so I can't really judge.

Now that I've seen Hell's Heroes

At the beginning of the month, I mentioned that Hell's Heroes, the first sound version of Three Godfathers, was going to be on TCM. I hadn't seen it before, so I was curious to see how it compared to the other versions.

To be honest, I enjoyed it quite a bit. The basic synopsis of the plot is here from when I blogged about the mid-1930s version of Three Godfathers, although there are some slight differences. The biggest one is that the woman was only about to give birth in Hell's Heroes, while she had already given birth in Three Godfathers. It led to some childcare stuff that I don't quite remember being in the later movie.

For the most part, though, it seemed to be fairly similar. I haven't read the Peter Kyne story, so I can't comment on how similar the movies are to the story, but the version used in the movies is good. Charles Bickford does a good job as the lead of Hell's Heroes, while everybody else is satisfactory if not particularly memorable. The Mojave Desert cinematography is also good. All in all, while Hell's Heroes is not an all-time classic, it's certainly a solid telling of a good story.

The Warner Archive released a double bill of Hell's Heroes and the 1936 Three Godfathers.

The ghost may or may not go west

I recorded The Ghost Goes West last week when it was on TCM, and was planning to do a post on it in time for Halloween. Unfortunately, I failed to notice that the DVD is out of print, since it's a backorder at the TCM Shop and listed as unavailable at Amazon. Not having anything else to blog about, I'll break with my normal pattern and to a "please release me" post instead.

Robert Donat plays Murdoch Glourie, scion of a Scottish clan in the 18th century. The Scottish are planning to go off and fight the English, although Murdoch is rather more of a ladies' man than his ancestors ever were, something that irritates his father no end. Then there are the McLaggen clan, who make fun of Murdoch for his perceived cowardice. He does eventually go off with the intention to fight, but before he can get in the real fighting, he gets killed without having earned his honor. So he becomes a ghost, forever haunting the Glourie castle until he can bring a McLaggen to his knees.

Fast forward 200 years. Donald Glourie (also Robert Donat), the latest head of the Glourie clan, lives in the castle, although probably not for much longer as he's heavily in debt and the creditors are planning to sell off the castle to get the debts paid off. The only problem is the old Glourie ghost, who scares off potential buyers. That is, until an American family shows up. Lovely Peggy Martin (Jean Parker) is the daughter in the family, with Dad (Eugene Pallette) being a grocery magnate. Peggy likes the castle, although Mom doesn't want anything haunted. Peggy sees the ghost and falls in love with it, thinking it's Donald in costume since, after all, both characters are played by the same actor.

Eventually, Dad decides to buy the castle, but he's got an odd plan for it. As a nouveau riche American, his intention is to dismantle the castle, ship it to America, and rebuild it in Florida! Donald is going to go along to supervise the reconstruction, since he could use a job and he'll be near Peggy. Dad doesn't realize that if he does that, the ghost is going to go along for the ride. The ghost is supposed to come out at midnight every night, but where is he going to come out if the castle is dismantled? As it turns out, he shows up on a transatlantic liner, not knowing at first where he is. And the passengers are intrigued by the idea of a ghost, even if the ghost isn't intrigued by the passengers. Indeed, he doesn't like America at all.

Still, Mr. Martin sees the ghost as a great publicity ploy for business, with his chief grocery rival not believing in the existence of ghosts. And the ghost doesn't want to show up any more if it means showing up in America. How is everybody going to resolve the situation such that they can live happily ever after?

I have to admit that The Ghost Goes West took rather a long time to get where it was going, even though the movie is fairly short. (IMDb says 95 minutes; Amazon says 82; I thought the print I watched was a little under 80. So I have no idea what if anything might have been cut.) The portion of the movie in 18th century Scotland wasn't quite my cup of tea, but things really picked up once Eugene Pallette shows up. It's not that Donat is bad; it's just that I felt the script in the first half of the movie let him down a bit. Peters is OK, but pretty much any ingenue actress of the 1930s could have handled her role, which I felt was secondary to the men.

The Ghost Goes West was made in the UK by Alexander Korda producing and René Clair directing; this is probably the explanation for the lack of an in-print DVD release. Clair has an interesting resume when it comes to English-language movies; he also did I Married a Witch and It Happened Tomorrow, both of which are interesting fantasies. The Ghost Goes West is no less interesting. It really needs another DVD release.

Thoughts on Filmstruck

So it was announced at the end of last week that Filmstruck, the streaming service run in a partnership between TCM and the Criterion Collection, is shutting down at the end of November. I've been thinking about it, but don't really have anything expert to say since I don't do streaming video what with my lack of bandwidth and data.

Still, in many ways I'm not surprised. There have been a lot of streaming services to come and go and we are in many ways still in the early days of streaming all our TV instead of the traditional ways to watch. I've always argued that a la carte cable channel purchasing would be terrible for channels with a less general audience, and can't help but think the same is true for services like Filmstruck. I also happen to be a fan of niche sports (at least niche in the US) and know from talking to other fans that trying to get all of those sports that you want adds up quickly. Along the same lines, BeIN, a Qatari-owned sports channel that tried to break into the US market with non-UK soccer, motorcycle racing, and women's tennis, is probably on the verge of folding because they're getting bumped off most cable providers. Even NBC Sports, which has the most lucrative soccer league in the English Premier League, is moving more of those games to the pay streaming service, much to the chagrin of people who are fans of non-name teams.

With that in mind, it doesn't surprise me that a service that's specializing in foreign films and other stuff with an already lower interest is going to have trouble too. At the same time, however, I wonder exactly how much the service costs the providers to set up. I would assume that the rights are the biggest issue. With streaming being a new thing, I can imagine that the content holders in sports are just negotiating rates with the various sports channels that already hold the rights. I have no idea how it works for movies. It seems as though it should be a simple enough matter to put up (as an example) all of the movies in the old library that Ted Turner acquired back in the 80s, with the caveat that some of the movies probably still have to be converted to a digital format suitable for streaming. But how many people would pay to watch that, rather than pay one lump sum to a company like Amazon and then get a smaller selection of movies from various sources bundled with the membership.

The other problem I've always had with streaming is that apparently, in most cases you don't actually own a copy of the movie that you buy. Instead, you own a license to watch it whenever you want. At least, until the people you bought it from lose the right to feed it to you, as happened earlier this year with either Apple or Google's streaming service. People were understandably quite miffed about that one.

The one other thing that strikes me is the sense of entitlement that some of the TCM fans seemed to have. I've always gotten a sense that some people think a movie channel should just have the ability to pick this movie and that, and voila it's going to show up on the channel.And when their favorite channel doesn't do that, they raise holy hell. In the case of Filmstruck, it's all the fault of the big nameless corporation (well, it does have a name in AT&T) and it's somehow obvious but unstated that a product like Filmstruck should be raking in money hand over fist.

Ultimately, I wonder whether we'll ever get a good streaming service with a big selection, mostly because of the copyright issue. Disney pushed hard to get copyrights extended 20 years back when Steamboat Willie was nearing the end of its copyright, and they're probably going to try the same thing when the current term nears its end (which without looking it up is I think in 2048). As long as the stuff stays under copyright, there's the rights fees issues, which I'd think would lead to a relatively fragmented market. Especially for things like foreign films where there are even more rights holders involved.

Patterns

A couple of weeks back TCM ran a night of films devoted to Ed Begley (Sr.) and, since I hadn't bloged about Patterns before, I decided to DVR it and watch it.

The Ramsey Corporation is one of those big conglomerates of the last century that's headquartered in New York and seems to have its fingers in everything, run by Ramsey (Everett Sloane), son of the founder of the business. Ramsey just brought up a new man who was managing a factory in the Cleveland area to be the newest executive, and that's what all of the secretaries are talking about. The new man, Fred Staples (Van Heflin), is going to be working alongside one of the most senior executives, Bill Briggs (Ed Begley).

Fred has a sort of wide-eyed view of New York, feeling it's the big time, and impressed with the way the corporation has handled his transfer. They've gotten him a big how out in the suburbs, already furnished, so on his first day his wife Nancy (Beatrice Straight) is able to drive him into work in a New York that has surprisingly little traffic. But Fred is soon to find out that everything isn't as idyllic as it seems.

Two things give Fred that indication. He's brought into a board meeting on his very first morning at the place, and one of the items up for discussion is the purchase of a factory currently in receivership. Ramsey wants to close it down for retooling for a good six months, since to keep it open would be unproductive and unprofitable. Briggs, however, feels it should be kept open, since it's the main employer in the town where it's located, and closing it down that long could mean by the time they're ready to reopen it, there's not going to be a workforce to work there. But really, this factory is just a McGuffin for the interaction between Ramsey and Briggs. Ramsey more or less winds up screaming at Briggs, belittling him and browbeating him into being a yes-man. Not what Fred expected at all. Worse is when Fred finds out this his secretary is going to be the thoroughly competent Marge (Elizabeth Wilson), who has been Briggs' secretary for years, and is being permanently reassigned to Fred. Marge knows what that means.

Although Fred has his misgivings, he's keeping a bit silent about them at work since he's made fast friends with Briggs, what with their working together on a big report. Nancy also realizes something's going on, and tries to get Fred to stand up for himself, even if that's going to cause some friction at work. If it's a dog-eat-dog world, you don't want to be the one being eaten. And it's not only causing friction at work, but at home, too.

Matters come to a head when the Staples hold a party for the various board members and their wives. Briggs can't make it, which should be another ominous sign. But Nancy engineers things so that Ramsey will get to read a copy of the report ahead of time, and Ramsey thinks that Fred should get all of the credit for it. Obviously, he's trying to push Briggs out, and since you can't really fire people this high up, you try to make their working life such a living hell that they'll give up and quit. Briggs, for his part, seems to have nothing in his life but his work, and isn't about to quit....

The plot of Patterns is a good one. The performances are uniformly excellent. The one problem I had, however, is with the script, which seemed a bit heavy-handed in places as it was trying to drive home its points. I was in many ways reminded of Executive Suite while watching Patterns, and I have to say that I'd give a slight edge to Executive Suite. That's not to say that Patterns isn't a darn good movie. Indeed, I can strongly recommend it.

Patterns is available on both DVD and Blu-ray.

Baby Peggy turns 100 tomorrow

Assuming she doesn't die in the next 24 hours, and yes, I know that sounds morbid. But since she was a child star in the silent era, TCM is celebrating the day tonight in its Silent Sunday Nights lineup.

The first selection isn't actually a silent movie, but the 2010 documentary Baby Peggy: The Element in the Room, at midnight tonight. I've mentioned this one several times in the past and it's an excellent look at what Hollywood and the parents did to these poor children, with Peggy being more or less washed up at the age of 7.

Of the two silent movies, The Family Secret at 1:15 AM is actually new to me, although I've seen (and enjoyed) Captain January which shows up at 2:30 AM.

TCM Imports is shunted to 4:00 AM instead of the usual time slot around 2:00 AM, although we get a good one this week in Diabolique.

Daughters of the Dust

I recorded quite a few movies during TCM's spotlight on the Black Experience in film back in September. Among the films I hadn't seen before was Daughters of the Dust.

The basic plot synopsis is interesting enough. It's 1902, and on the Sea Islands off the coast of Georgia and South Carolina, the extended Peazant family is preparing to leave for the mainland because of how little economic opportunity there is on the islands. The islanders are descended from slaves of various west African cultures, with their languages and English having become intermixed to become a creole known as Gullah; the islanders also wre among the last of the people to maintain many of the old African traditions.

A couple of cousins in the extended family have already gone to the mainland, and are now returning to help their cousins move. Viola (Cheryl Lynn Bruce) has become more Americanized, having brought over a photographer to document the migration and get portraits of everybody, especially the matriarch Nana (Cora Lee Day) who knows her time has passed but for whom time is more or less a circle, so the next generation will share her story. There's also cousin Yellow Marry (Barbara-O), who was a wet-nurse on the mainland and brought over her friend Trula. Yellow Mary is intending to go to Canada.

While everybody is preparing for the migration, various cultural practices are engaged in, and some old family conflicts are gently brought up. Eli is married to Eula, but there are some serious issues regarding their unborn child who is also the narrator of the film. There's a Cherokee whose ancestors escaped the forced migration from Georgia during the Andrew Jackson administration and made their way to the Sea Islands, and he and Iola Peazant have a realtionship. There's a Muslim, since many of the cultures from which the slaves had been taken were Muslim; Viola on the other hand is a devout Christian and tries to instill that in the youngest generation of Peazants.

I found Daughters of the Dust to be interesting, but at the same time difficult. The difficulty is in the non-linear storytelling, which I found made things quite difficult to follow at times. Some scenes suddenly switched to a sort of slow motion, which as far as I could figure was supposed to be a sign that these were events that had happened at some time in the past.

One of the big pluses was the cinematography, which was mostly beautiful and not just because of the locations; having a backdrop like the Sea Islands certainly helps. The biggest positive about the movie is the fact that it got made at all, showing a dying cultural tradition that would probably be unknown to most people. (I knew about the Gullah language, but didn't know anything about the cultural traditions of the Sea Islanders.)

Overall, I'd definitely recommend Daughters of the Dust, with the one caveat that it helps to know going in that there's a non-traditional (from most Americans' point of view) narrative structure. The movie was restored a few years ago, and part of that resotration included a release to DVD and Blu-Ray.

There wasn't a Czech film museum before?

I'm always a day or two behind in listening to the programs from the various international broadcasters I listen to, so I just got around to looking up something that Radio Prague's English service ran on Wednesday

NaFilM: Czech film students’ National Film Museum project set to premiere

The Czech film tradition dates to the very beginnings of the medium itself, and the country’s film archive is among the world’s oldest. Yet the Czech Republic had no national museum dedicated to the art form. Five years ago, three film students set out to rectify that. Building on pop-up exhibitions, their NaFilM project now has a permanent home – though still undergoing reconstruction. NaFilM cofounder Terezie Křížkovská talks about how their dream to establish an innovative, hands-on, interactive National Film Museum became a reality.

As usual, the Radio Prague website has a transcript of the feature, as well as the opportunity either to stream the audio or download it directly as an MP3. The direct download is here, a 6.7MB MP3 that runs around 15 minutes. This time, however, I'd recommend also going to the pge, as the film students made a promotional ad for the museum to try to get funding, and that's embedded in the page. Watch for the shoutout to Closely Watched Trains at the end.

The Lost Patrol (1934)

The latest viewing off my DVR that's available on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive is The Lost Patrol.

It's World War I in British Mesopotamia, and a group of British soldiers are on patrol out in a middle of nowhere part of the desert. Suddenly, the captain of the patrol falls off his horse, having been hit by an unseen sniper somewhere out in the dunes. The Sergeant (Victor McLaglen) forced into command faces a serious dilemma. He was never let in on the exact nature of this patrol, so he has no idea where he's supposed to be going or where the group even is. (You'd think they'd have a sextant or something to help navigate.) Making matters worse is that one of the men, Sanders (Boris Karloff) is a devout Christian who insists on holding a proper funeral for the fallen man, even thogh hanging around seems like a serious risk

So, having buried the captain as quickly as possible, the Sergeant leads his men north, and eventually they at least have a seeming bit of luck in finding an oasis. Now, I'd think the restive Arabs would know where all the oases are and that hiding out at one of them would be suicide for the British, but it's not as if they've got any better options. It's the least bad thing to hunker down there for a while and try to figure out what to do.

As you can guess, the Arabs find the British, as in the morning the night sentry has been shot dead, and the horses were released. Not having horses is certain to kill all of them, but still the Sergeant tries to figure a way out of the situation. The Arabs have time on their side, and are willing to wait and take whatever chance they can to know the British soldiers off one by one. Eventually, a British airplane flies overhead, which could mean rescue, but the pilot decides to land rather than going back to base and informing the commanders there. Little does he know he's landed somewhere surrounded by snipers. Sanders, meanwhile, is slowly reaching the breaking point as a Christian not cut out for war.

In some ways there's not much to The Lost Patrol, but what there is is quite good. It's a fairly simple story that could translate to almost any military anywhere, at least in the days before GPS made pinpointing location much easier. The movie is more about the performances and the impending sense of doom, both of which are pulled off well. Karloff doesn't get the credit he deserves as a serious actor thanks to his having played Frankenstein's monster, but he's quite good here. McLaglen doesn't do badly, and the supporting actors (including Alan Hale, Reginald Denny, and Wallace Ford) all do OK. The simplicity of the plot heightens the sense of doom as there's nothing to distract from it. The desert cinematography (the Sonoran Desert in southeast California and areas around Yuma substituting for Iraq) also stands out.

The Lost Patrol is a worthy watch if you haven't seen it before.