Divine Right

Film: The Man Who Would Be King
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on laptop.

I can’t claim to know a great deal about the works of Rudyard Kipling, which makes approaching a film like The Man Who Would Be King quite a bit like most of the adapted screenplays I come to. What I know about Kipling is that a lot of his stories take place in India and have a specifically British bent to them. That’s at least partly the case here. What makes this one interesting is that the filmed version actually includes Kipling as a character. Essentially, he’s a framing device, and the story we’re told is given to us as an actual story, something that we’re to take as truth.

As the film begins, we’re introduced to Kipling (Christopher Plummer) as he encounters a terrible apparition from his past. That man introduces himself as Peachy Carnahan (Michael Caine), someone who Kipling met several years before. We get the heart of that meeting, which involves Peachy stealing Kipling’s watch and then discovering that Kipling is a fellow Mason, forcing him to return it. Based on that Masonic connection, Peachy asks Kipling to contact a man named Daniel Dravot (Sean Connery) and tell him that Peachy has headed south. Kipling does so.

Saying One Thing and Meaning Your Mother

Film: Freud (Freud: The Secret Passion)
Format: Internet video on laptop.

When I started reviewing movies on this blog in 2010, I didn’t have a particularly high opinion of Montgomery Clift. Honestly, I think I was just unlucky in picking movies of his I didn’t like much, or roles of his I didn’t like much. As the years have gone by, I’ve discovered I have an appreciation for the man’s work. With Freud (also known as Freud: The Secret Passion), pretty much everything is about Clift and his performance. If he can’t hold the movie together, there’s nothing to hold together.

That’s an issue here, because I’m not a huge fan of the work of Sigmund Freud (played by Clift). I realize that it was in vogue for a number of years, but as far as I know quite a bit of it has been seen as the first blind stabbings into the inner workings of the mind. Freud may have been onto a few things, but for a long time Freudian analysis was considered a panacea for mental disorders, and it’s certainly not that. Not everything is driven by sexuality and not all mental illnesses are caused by repressed memories. That’s not what this film would have you think, incidentally.

Dia de los Muertos

Film: Under the Volcano
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on laptop.

There’s a certain reality when I find a film like Under the Volcano. This is a film I’d never heard of before compiling my Oscar list and it was nominated (in terms of awards I care about) only for Best Actor. Generally speaking, what that means is a fairly average movie with a singular stand-out performance. That’s almost the case with Under the Volcano. The most pressing and singular reason to pay attention to this film is the performance of Albert Finney. However, unlike many films with a single acting nomination, there are some other reasons to watch this one as well.

The story is both simple and nearly impossible to follow. Geoffrey Firmin (Albert Finney) is the ex-British Consul stationed in Cuernavaca, Mexico. His wife Yvonne (Jacqueline Bisset) has left him, but has continued to write him letters, none of which he reads. It’s obvious from the first moment we see him that Geoffrey has been drinking for a very long time. It’s evident soon after that that Firmin hasn’t just been drinking on this day. Geoffrey is more or less a professional drunk, the sort of a man who is so used to constantly fueling himself with alcohol that he can no longer function without it.

Heaven Knows Why I Watched

Film: Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

There’s something about war films from the middle of the last century that lend themselves to a religious message. In a way, it kind of makes sense. If we believed that we were in the right in the war, and I’d argue that we did have the moral high ground in World War II, it would make sense for us to assume that we had God on our side. Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison takes this to some extremes, with Deborah Kerr substituting for God in this case. We’ve got an interesting proposition here, something that is part war story, part religious screed, part Robinson Crusoe. In some sense, it’s not sure what it wants to be, which makes it less than the sum of its parts.

We start simply enough. A lone marine who eventually claims to be named Corporal Allison (Robert Mitchum) washes up on the shore of what initially appears to be a deserted South Pacific island. A little investigation reveals what appears to be a small church. This is inhabited by Sister Angela (Deborah Kerr), the only current inhabitant of the island. After their initial meeting, we learn a little of how the two have found themselves in this unique situation. For Allison’s part, he was disembarking from a sub when his ship started to draw fire. The sub captain essentially abandoned him and some other marines, leaving Allison to drift. Sister Angela’s story is a bit more convoluted.

Huston, We Don't Have a Problem

Film: The Dead; Prizzi's Honor
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix (The Dead) and DVD from personal collection (Prizzi’s Honor) on laptop.

I think John Huston can be forgiven for the evident nepotism of frequently casting his daughter Anjelica Huston in many of his later films. I mean, we’re talking about Anjelica Huston here, not someone talentless and not worthy of mention. He can also be forgiven for putting her in one of the lead roles in his final film, The Dead, based on the final story in James Joyce’s Dubliners. This is one of the singularly most Irish films I have ever seen. Not only is the story one of fine Irish heritage, it is also an all-Irish cast, with the exception of Anjelica Huston herself, and she was at least partly raised in Ireland.

The bulk of the story takes place at a party in Dublin at the beginning of 1904, a party evidently there to celebrate the Epiphany, the revelation of Christ as the son of God shortly after his birth. That’s not a mistake, since the film itself is about the lower-case epiphany of one of its characters.

All That Glitters

Film: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Format: DVD from personal collection on laptop.

The first 20 minutes of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a master’s class on how to set up characters and plot. We meet Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart), a down on his luck American stuck in Tampico begging for money from other Americans. When he finally finds a job with fellow down-and-outer Curtin (Tim Holt) from a man named McCormick (Barton MacLane), they discover that McCormick is a known cheat who always finds a way to avoid paying his workers. They learn about the fever of gold prospecting from an old timer named Howard (Walter Huston). And they confront McCormick and beat him senseless, taking only what they are owed. In this 20 minutes, we learn that our two men are desperate, still honest, tough, and that the idea of finding gold has been firmly planted in their heads.

Our trio heads off into the wilds of Mexico to see if they can locate some of the magical metal that changes hearts and lives. Dobbs and Curtin are initially of the opinion that they’ll be carrying Howard on their back, but Howard proves to be more than able to carry his own weight. In fact, he appears to be in the best shape. After a run-in with fool’s gold and other problems of the Mexican wilderness, they find what they’re looking for—gold dust mixed in with the dirt. They set up camp, build a sluice and a mine, and start digging.

Dark Continent

Film: The African Queen
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on kick-ass DVD player.

If you’re a huge fan of The African Queen, you’re not going to like some of the things I say about it. I don’t dislike this film, as a matter of fact, but I also don’t think it specifically worthy of all of the accolades it gets. It’s a fine film, a good little actioner and a grand adventure. What it isn’t, though, is much of the romance it bills itself as. It has some other problems, too. But I want to go on record as saying that this is a film that I do enjoy some. I just don’t think it’s anywhere near the pinnacle of Bogart, Hepburn, or John Huston.

The action starts with the beginnings of World War I in Central Africa, which was controlled by Germany at the time. This was of little importance to most of the people living there, including the Sayers. The Reverend Samuel Sayer (Robert Morley) is a missionary working at converting the natives with his sister, Rose (Katherine Hepburn). Their only connection to the outside world comes in the form of Charlie Allnut (Humphrey Bogart), a Canadian who works on the river on his ship, the eponymous African Queen. The Sayers are very British and very religious, always proper and filed with decorum while Allnut is coarse and crude. Nevertheless, he is tolerated because without him, the Sayers would lose all contact with the world outside.

Technical Knockout

Film: Fat City
Format: Video from The Magic Flashdrive on laptop.

I didn’t realize just how boxing-heavy The List was until recently when I noticed at least four of them. Considering that there are very few sports films listed in general, that seems like a lot. Evidently, there is something about the fight game that makes for cinematic greatness that doesn’t exist in hockey (no films), basketball (one documentary), football (no films), or baseball (two films). It’s possible I’m wrong on these numbers, but I think those are accurate.

Fat City is, like most boxing films, filled with the sort of rags-to-riches possibility and rags-to-rags reality that is reality for most pugilists. There’s a definite sense that films like Rocky took something from Fat City. But it’s more than that—it’s not just about boxing, but about life on the skids, down-and-out people and up-and-comers crossing paths. But it’s more than that, too. Fat City feels like an early Warren Zevon song, like a boxing version of Carmelita. There’s a sense of pain and loss, dreams broken through bad decisions and too much drinking, shattered hopes, and resigned suffering. It’s a Tom Waits song come to life.

Beating, Yes. Devil, Not so Much

Film: Beat the Devil
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on laptop.

Film noir wasn’t known as film noir until after the style was no longer in vogue. There had to be a sense of it, though, because John Huston managed to parody the style with Beat the Devil. This was a film that was not warmly received when it was originally released, but that has grown in stature over time. It’s become quite the classic, and has a cast that backs up that sort of evalutation.

We have a trio of criminals looking to exploit the mineral wealth of Africa. Specifically, they are looking to get their mitts on uranium deposits, since those deposits are essential for the production of both atomic energy and atomic weaponry. These men represent the varying fading powers of Europe. Specifically, there is the British Peterson (Robert Morley), the German-by-way-of-Chile O’Hara (Peter Lorre), and the Italian Ravello (Marco Tulli, who is perhaps the most angular human being to ever exist). They are joined by the fascist and Hitler-boosting Major Jack Ross (Ivor Barnard).

War! What is it Good For?

Film: The Battle of San Pietro (San Pietro)
Format: VHS from personal collection on big ol’ television.

I sometimes acquire movies in strange ways. A next-door neighbor moved away several months ago after booting her husband out of the house. The reason for the boot? The man was a serious hoarder. Our neighbor had boxes and boxes of his stuff (seriously, we’re talking the entire garaged filled with boxes because there was no more room in the house) that she wanted to get rid of including multiple boxes of video tapes that were still shrinkwrapped. Buried at the bottom of one such box was a VHS copy of The Battle of San Pietro (sometimes called simply San Pietro), which I took as my very own and finally got around to watching.

I’ll come completely clean here, though. If you glance to the right and scroll to the top of this blog, you’ll see a plug for my daughter and her upcoming trip/tour in Europe. We’re holding a garage sale for her as a fundraiser. I watched this today in part because it’s on the list and in part to see if it’s something that will have a 50-cent price tag on it on my driveway next week. Turns out it will be—I don’t foresee a need or desire to watch this one again.

The Battle of San Pietro is exactly what it claims to be—a short documentary (by film legend John Huston) on the eponymous battle. We see footage of Allied troops fighting in Italy; actual footage of the battles, complete with aircraft, tanks, artillery, and mortars; and even the bodies of fallen American troops being placed in body bags, wrapped in cloth, and buried near the site of the fighting.

Why this battle? Why not D-Day or Iwo Jima or the bombing of Dresden? This I cannot answer, although I am fairly sure that a part of this is because of the tremendous difficulty of this particular piece of the campaign. The terrain around San Pietro was perfect for the defenders and a nightmare for the attacking Allied troops. Huge mountains, rugged passes, few good roads, and more meant that the Allied troops essentially walked into the mouth of a meat grinder every time they attempted to take the German positions on the heights. Some companies were whittled down to almost nothing by the end of this battle.

What’s interesting here is that the documentary really pulls no punches. It doesn’t denigrate the German soldiers, downplay their bravery or tenacity, or brush off the massive casualties taken by the Allies in the week or so the fighting centered about this village. There’s no jolly pan of the camera past smiling troops (okay, there is one, but more on that in a minute). Rather we see a field of white crosses, women from the village carrying coffins on their heads, and graves being dug. The sacrifice of more than 1,000 men is neither glossed over nor turned into a point of patriotism and pride. It’s merely a fact of the documentary—taking this part of the road in Italy was costly and terrible, and the fighting didn’t stop once the Allies broke through here.

As for that pan across a group of soldiers, the narration suggests that between the time of the filming and the showing of the footage, many of these men gave their lives as the push up the Italian boot continued. There’s no happy ending to speak of here, just a brief pause in the battle before the battle continues. There’s no resolution and only a brief respite.

Where the film tends to bog down is in the sequences that describe the battle in terms of general strategy and troop movement. For these, we get a rough, undetailed map of the area and military symbols showing positions. Troop movements are indicated with a pointer. While perhaps integral to the understanding of the overall battle and limited by the technology of the day, these portions of the film are slow and a bit tedious for anyone who isn’t specifically a student of military history or military science.

The Battle of San Pietro is a unique piece of history, a military film that aims for accuracy and truth rather than mindless jingoism. Students of history may find quite a bit here to recommend it. If it feels a bit cold, it’s perhaps a welcome change from what could easily have been bleeding red, white, and blue.

Why to watch The Battle of San Pietro: True history with the propaganda toned down.
Why not to watch: A lot of maps and pointers.

The (Concrete) Lion Sleeps Tonight

Film: The Asphalt Jungle
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on middlin’-sized living room television.

With any genre of film, there are half a dozen or so that get mentioned in the first breath. When it comes to film noir, The Asphalt Jungle is one of those films. It is close to a perfect film, one that hits every note correctly both for film in general and for film noir in particular. Yes, I’m gushing, and I’m revealing at the start how I feel about this film. I don’t really care.

Since this is a film noir, it’s going to deal almost exclusively with criminal behavior, and to perpetrate this behavior, we have a huge collection of bad, bad people. We could start anywhere, but we may as well start at the man who seems to be the amoral center—Dix Handley (Sterling Hayden). Dix is a thug, a man whose job in any caper is to shoot at whatever someone points him at. He has a soft spot for Doll Conovan (Jean Hagen), who has an equal soft spot for the big lug.

Dix gets brought in on a big job knocking over a jeweler by crime mastermind Doc Erwin Riedenschneider (hereafter referred to as “Doc,” and played by Sam Jaffe). Doc’s proposed job will cost about $50,000 for Dix, the driver, and the safe cracker, but will net a cool half million in purloined gems. Fronting the operation is shady lawyer Alonzo “Lon” Emmerich (Louis Calhern), a man who lives bigger than his wallet, in part because of his penchant for spending time with Angela Phinlay (a very young Marilyn Monroe).

Emmerich’s problem is that he’s busted. Spending money on Angela hasn’t helped this, but he holds his entire lifestyle to blame—he’s just too free with the money. This is something he shares in common with Dix, who tends to play the ponies and play them poorly. Regardless, Emmerich’s plan is to fence the gems from the heist himself, and then use the money to skip to Europe, leaving Doc, Dix, and the others holding the proverbial bag.

This is all part and parcel of film noir, of course, which trades both on the idea of the anti-hero as well as the almost certainty of a double-cross somewhere in the mix. The heist runs into problems and guns blaze. People get shot. Emmerich attempts his double-cross. Guns blaze and people get shot.

I like film noir a lot. The more noir I see, the more it becomes one of my favorite genres of film. Part of this is that the plots tend to be intricate enough to warrant watching. Oh, I know going in that people are going to pursue their vices and die for their sins. That’s part and parcel of the genre. I know there’s going to be furtive meetings in shadows, plans formed and sent reeling due to bad luck or greed. I know it’s not going to have a happy ending. But what I also know going in is that the dialogue is going to be interesting and worth listening to. I know that the characters are going to be more than just the sum of their collective sins.

On all of these scores, The Asphalt Jungle is a classic. The dialogue is noteworthy mainly because it isn’t very noteworthy. There aren’t many tremendous lines or quotes to walk away with, but the dialogue here is very real, and spoken always in earnest. The characters, for all of their faults, are believable and I want to pay attention to them.

I tend to get sucked into films with this basic plot over and over again. I can predict the bad ending even as I hope for something good to happen to the poor mugs with the bad luck to be written into a noir.

Eh, I’m rambling. Film noir is an important genre of film and The Asphalt Jungle is one of the purest and best examples of the genre. There’s no real other reason to watch this film. It’s enough that it’s simply great.

Why to watch The Asphalt Jungle: Noir doesn’t get better than this one.
Why not to watch: Nothing good happens to anyone.

"Noir" Means Scary Dames

Films: The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity
Format: DVD from Rasmussen College Library on laptop.


When you live in today’s world, it’s easy to forget just how damn cool some older movies really are. More to the point, it’s easy to forget just how damn cool some of the actors of yesteryear were. Humphrey Bogart was cool, and there’s really no other way to put it. He was plenty cool in a number of his films, but when he started getting starring roles, and particularly started playing the classic hard-boiled detectives people tend to remember him for, he was never better.

There’s a reason why his role as Sam Spade is still so revered today. Bluntly, it’s because it was and still is one of the great screen tough guy roles, and one that’s impossible to see someone other than Bogart in, despite the fact that his version of The Maltese Falcon is actually the second film of the same name, and essentially the third version of the same story.

Like any great noir, the plot is a complicated one. Spade (Bogart) and his partner, Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan) are hired by a woman calling herself Miss Wonderly (Mary Astor). Her sister has gone missing because of a man named Floyd Thursby, who ran off with her. She’d like Spade and Archer to find Thursby and return her sister. Archer, enamored of the young woman, says he’ll go. Sadly for Miles, he doesn’t so much find Thursby as find a slug from a pistol in his heart, leaving poor Sam Spade partnerless.

Of course, it’s far more complicated than that. Thursby catches a quartet of bullets himself, and Spade is an immediate suspect. Making Spade’s life more complicated is Miles’s widow, Iva (Gladys George), who has an unrequited crush on Spade, making her something of a suspect in Archer’s death as well. Of course, that’s not all, either. It turns out that Miss Wonderly is actually Brigid O’Shaughnessy, and she has a problem. She’s connected with a group of thugs looking for a black statue of a falcon.

In addition to Brigid, the crew looking for the bird include Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre), an effeminate little man who smells of gardenia; Kasper Gutman (Sidney Greenstreet), a fat man who wants nothing more than the bird at any cost; and Wilmer Cook (Elisha Cook Jr.), a gun happy kid who does anything Gutman tells him and otherwise threatens whomever bugs him, which is everyone.

The bird is sort of the cinema’s greatest MacGuffin. A present for the King of Spain from the Knights Templar. It never made it to the king’s hands, though, and has been floating around the world between the hands of collectors since. Its value is incredible, worth the lives of Archer, Thursby, and eventually the captain of the boat that brings it into San Francisco.

The actual statue of the falcon is, ultimately, sort of unimportant. What is important is what everyone will do to get it, which is pretty much anything they can think of that’s worth trying. In the middle of all of it is Spade, who plays the whole caper as a vaguely crooked shamus, out for himself and looking to make a few bucks when he can.

The plot here is a doozy, but it’s Bogart who makes the whole thing work. He plays the whole caper as if he always knows what he’s doing, and he always seems to. He knows the right moves, and knows how to deal with everyone he encounters. The only thing I can’t understand is why he doesn’t do the obvious—marry his secretary, Effie Perine (Lee Patrick). She always knows what he needs and does everything for him, and it’s pretty evident that she’s crazy about him. Brigid O’Shaughnessy may be a hot little number, but she’s nothing but trouble.


The only noir that might be better than The Maltese Falcon is Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity. Again, as with any classic noir, we’ve got a complex plot and people who should know better doing bad, bad things. Standing at the center is Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), an insurance salesman who is pretty good at his job, but is always on the lookout for something better.

He finds that something better when he stops by the home of a man named Dietrichson, who needs to have his car insurance policies renewed. What Neff didn’t expect was Dietrichson’s wife, Phyllis (Barbara Stanwyck). She’s a looker despite the blonde wig that makes her look a little like one of the founding fathers. The two have an immediate connection with each other, but neither one seems ready to act on it right away.

What Phyllis is really interested in, though, is getting an accident policy on her husband, preferably without his knowledge. That way, should he die while on his job, Phyllis would collect—the perfect set-up for a murder. It doesn’t take Neff long to cotton to the idea, mainly because Phyllis is as much of a prize as the money.

Neff develops the perfect plan. If Phyllis can convince her husband to take a trip on the train, Neff can kill him, and if it looks like an accident, the policy will pay off double. If they can pull it off, they’ll get Dietrichson out of the way, and walk away with a cool $100,000. The biggest issue is Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson), the claims adjuster. Keyes can always tell when a claim wasn’t on the up and up, and no one does the job better.

Of course, the murder goes off, thrillingly filmed not by focusing on Neff strangling Dietrichson, but by watching Phyllis staring straight ahead, a faint smile on her face while her husband dies in the seat next to her. Neff boards the train pretending to be Dietrichson while Phyllis dumps the body on the tracks, and the deed is done.

From here, the rest of the film is a cat and mouse game between Phyllis, Neff, and Keyes. Neff and Phyllis want nothing more than to be together but can’t be, and can’t trust each other. Keyes sees that there’s something funny about the claim, but can’t bring himself to accuse Neff, who he is fond of. Things continue to spiral out of control for everyone until the inevitable conclusion.

Double Indemnity is told as a flashback, with Neff narrating the story into a Dictaphone. The ending is something of a foregone conclusion, but the getting there is so interesting, there’s almost a hope that everything will turn out in the end.

Little touches make this film work even more than it normally would. After dumping the body, for instance, Phyllis and Neff run back to the car. For a good thirty seconds or so, the car won’t start, almost blowing the entire scam for the two of them, previewing the tension that will come in the second hour of the film. Neff repeatedly lights matches for Keyes’s cigars, a wonderful touch that is finally reciprocated at the end of the film.

How good are these films? As good as they get. The Maltese Falcon is both a fantastic story and a beautifully filmed affair. Sam Spade is one of those guys that, like Buckaroo Banzai, the average guy would love to be. He’s the reason that detectives are looked at as guys men want to be. Spade is cool, and women dig him.

Double Indemnity contains an equally gripping and entertaining plot. The real reason to watch, though, is Edward G. Robinson. Since his first major starring role, Robinson had always played starring roles, and almost didn’t take this role because it was a supporting one. He makes it his, though, and he is a real joy to watch. Equally great is Barbara Stanwyck who is both gorgeous and cold, the perfect femme fatale.

Both films could not be better and should be enshrined as they are forever. They should never be remade (remade again in the case of The Maltese Falcon), colorized, or touched except to be watched again and again and enjoyed again and again.

Why to watch The Maltese Falcon: Everything about it is fantastic.
Why not to watch: You’re an idiot.

Why to watch Double Indemnity: Edward G. Robinson rocks, and Barbara Stanwyck is scary.
Why not to watch: There is not a single reason to not watch this film at least once a year.