A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Thursday, December 24, 2020

The Bad Seed (Mervyn LeRoy, 1956)

Nancy Kelly and Patty McCormack in The Bad Seed

Cast: Nancy Kelly, Patty McCormack, Evelyn Varden, Eileen Heckart, William Hopper, Henry Jones, Paul Fix, Joan Croydon, Gage Clarke, Jesse White, Frank Cady. Screenplay: John Lee Mahin, based on a play by Maxwell Anderson and a novel by William March. Cinematography: Harold Rosson. Art direction: John Beckman. Film editing: Warren Low. Music: Alex North. 

The Bad Seed stands out today as one of the more muddle-headed products of Production Code censorship. In the play and novel on which the movie was based, Christine Penmark, the unwitting carrier of the gene that turns her daughter, Rhoda, into a serial killer, commits suicide after giving the child an overdose of sleeping pills. One of the shocks of the novel and play is that Rhoda survives to kill again. But suicide as a positive plot resolution and crimes that go unpunished were taboo under the Code, so John Lee Mahin's adaptation blunts the ending for both characters. And then, to add farce to bathos, someone thought it a good idea to add a "curtain call" sequence in which the actress playing Christine, Nancy Kelly, gives the actress playing Rhoda, Patty McCormack, a spanking. Since spanking is hardly a punishment for murder, you have to wonder if Kelly is punishing McCormack for upstaging her. (In any case, McCormack seems to be enjoying it a little too much.) Still, if you take the movie on its own terms, it has its creepy moments, most of them involving McCormack, whom we spot as a bad kid from the moment she shows up with her braids so tight it looks like they hurt and wearing a starchy, spotless outfit that no decent child would have tolerated for a moment. There's some entertaining overplaying by Evelyn Varden as the psychologizing landlady and Henry Jones as the nosy hired man. The production is stagy and the performances often overblown, with the exception of Kelly, who strives to make her character -- and the ridiculous premise that evil is inherited -- credible. It's a role that could easily have tipped over into camp -- as the rest of the film often does -- but Kelly balances right on the edge. 

Monday, December 21, 2020

Spiritual Kung Fu (Lo Wei, 1978)


Cast: Jackie Chan, Kao Kuang, Dean Shek, James Tien, Yee Fat, Wang Yao, Jane Kwong, Hsu Hong, Chui Yuen, Peng Kang, Li Hai Lung, Li Chun Tung, Yuen Biao. Screenplay: Pan Lei. Cinematography: Chen Jung-Shu. Art direction: Chou Chih-Liang. Film editing: Liang Yung-Charn. Music: Frankie Chan. 

Ghosts in red fright wigs help Yi-Lang (Jackie Chan) develop the skills necessary to thwart a plot against the Shaolin temple where he's a martial arts student. The movie makes about as much sense as that sentence, but it's giddy fun. 

Sunday, December 20, 2020

Dead Ringers (David Cronenberg, 1988)

Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers
Cast: Jeremy Irons, Geneviève Bujold, Heidi von Palleske, Barbara Gordon, Shirley Douglas, Stephen Lack. Screenplay: David Cronenberg, Norman Snider, based on a  book by Bari Wood and Jack Geasland. Cinematography: Peter Suschitzky. Production design: Carol Spier. Film editing: Ronald Sanders. Music: Howard Shore. 

Jeremy Irons's performance as the twin gynecologists Beverly and Elliot Mantle is spectacular in its subtle differentiation between the two men. It's one of David Cronenberg's body-horror films, and is said to have given many viewers, especially women, nightmares. 

Saturday, December 19, 2020

The Kid (Charles Chaplin, 1921)

Jackie Coogan and Charles Chaplin in The Kid
Cast: Charles Chaplin, Jackie Coogan, Edna Purviance, Carl Miller, Henry Bergman, Lita Grey, Jules Hanft, Raymond Lee, Walter Lynch, John McKinnon, Granville Redmond, Charles Reiser, Edgar Sherrod, Minnie Stearns, S.D. Wilcox, Tom Wilson. Screenplay: Charles Chaplin. Cinematography: Roland Totheroh. Art direction: Charles D. Hall. Film editing: Charles Chaplin. Music: Charles Chaplin. 

Charles Chaplin's first feature film is not as mawkish as a story about the Little Tramp's raising a foundling might have been. It includes one of Chaplin's wackier fantasy sequences, in which he dreams that he and his fellow slum denizens have become angels and must fight it out with devils. 

Friday, December 18, 2020

The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973)

Christopher Lee in The Wicker Man
Cast: Edward Woodward, Christopher Lee, Diane Cilento, Britt Ekland, Ingrid Pitt, Lindsay Kemp, Russell Waters, Aubrey Morris, Irene Sunters. Screenplay: Anthony Shaffer, based on a novel by David Pinner. Cinematography: Harry Waxman. Art direction: Seamus Flannery. Film editing: Eric Boyd-Perkins. Music: Paul Giovanni. 

Edward Woodward plays a police officer from the mainland who goes to investigate the disappearance of a young girl on a remote Scottish island and falls into a terrible trap. This celebrated horror film benefits from some intelligent writing, particularly in the conflict of the bigoted Christian policeman and the carnally pagan islanders. Christopher Lee, who plays the island's sophisticated laird, called it one of his favorite roles, and he brings his usual suavely sinister presence to it.  

Thursday, December 17, 2020

Sidewalk Stories (Charles Lane, 1989)

Charles Lane and Nicole Alysia in Sidewalk Stories

Cast: Charles Lane, Nicole Alysia, Sandye Wilson, Trula Hoosier, Darnell Williams. Screenplay: Charles Lane. Cinematography: Bill Dill. Production design: Ina Mayhew. Film editing: Charles Lane, Ann Stein. Music: Marc Marder.  

A low-budget independent classic, with writer-director-producer-editor as a homeless man who, like Charles Chaplin's Tramp in The Kid (1921), gets encumbered with a small child. It's a smart blend of neorealism and sentiment that gets its impetus not only from Chaplin's movie but also from Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (1948). The movie is silent until the very end, when its message about homelessness is verbalized. 

Island of Lost Souls (Erle C. Kenton, 1932)

Charles Laughton in Island of Lost Souls
Cast: Charles Laughton, Richard Arlen, Leila Hyams, Bela Lugosi, Kathleen Burke, Arthur Hohl, Stanley Fields, Paul Hurst, Hans Steinke, Tetsu Komai, George Irving. Screenplay: Waldemar Young, Philip Wylie, based on a novel by H.G. Wells. Cinematography: Karl Struss.  Art direction: Hans Dreier. 

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Lost in Yonkers (Martha Coolidge, 1993)

Mercedes Ruehl and Richard Dreyfuss in Lost in Yonkers

Cast: Mercedes Ruehl, Richard Dreyfuss, Irene Worth, Brad Stoll, Mark Damus, David Strathairn, Robert Miranda, Jack Laufer, Susan Merson, Illya Haase. Screenplay: Neil Simon, based on his playCinematography: Johnny E. Jensen. Production design: David Chapman. Film editing: Steven Cohen. Music: Elmer Bernstein. 

Céline and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette, 1974)

Dominique Labourier and Juliet Berto in Céline and Julie Go Boating

Cast: Juliet Berto, Dominique Labourier, Bulle Ogier, Marie-France Pisier, Barbet Schroeder, Nathalie Asnar, Marie-Thérèse Saussure, Philippe Clévenot. Screenplay: Juliet Berto, Dominique Labourier, Bulle Ogier, Marie-France Pisier, Jacques Rivette, Eduardo de Gregorio, based in part on stories by Henry James. Cinematography: Jacques Renard. Film editing: Nicole Lubtchansky. Music: Jean-Marie Sénia. 


Monday, December 14, 2020

Dos Monjes (Juan Bustillo Oro, 1934)

Victor Urruchúa in Dos Monjes

Cast: Victor Urruchúa, Carlos Villatoro, Magda Haller, Beltrán de Heredia, Emma Roldán. Screenplay: Juan Bustillo Oro, José Manuel Cordero. Cinematography: Agustín Jiménez. Production design: Mariano Rodríguez Granada, Carlos Toussaint. Film editing: Juan Bustillo Oro. Music: Max Urban. 

Sunday, December 13, 2020

The Cloud-Capped Star (Ritwik Ghatak, 1960)

Supriya Choudhury in The Cloud-Capped Star

Cast: Supriya Choudhury, Anil Chatterjee, Bijon Bhattacharya, Gita Dey, Gita Ghatak, Dwiju Bhawal, Niranjan Ray. Screenplay: Ritwik Ghatak, Samiran Dutta, Shaktipada Rajguru. Cinematography: Dinen Gupta. Production design: Ravi Chatterjee. Film editing: Ramesh Joshi. Music: Jyotirindra Moitra.