Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 02/02/20

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

Sunday, February 2, 2020

Police Story 2 (Jackie Chan, 1988)

Jackie Chan and Keung-Kuen Lai in Police Story 2

Cast: Jackie Chan, Maggie Cheung, Kwok-Hung Lam, Bill Tung, Keung-Kuen Lai, John Cheung, Charlie Cho, Yuen Chor, Ben Lam, Chi Fai Chan, Shan Kwan, Isabella Wong, Ann Mui. Screenplay: Jackie Chan, Paul B. Clay, Edward Tang. Cinematography: Yiu-Tsou Cheung, Yu-Tang Li. Production design: Oliver Wong. Film editing: Peter Cheung. Music: Yao-Tsu Chang, J. Peter Robinson, Siu-Lam Tang.

Jackie Chan's hyperactive policeman Cha Ka-Kui has been demoted to traffic as a result of the mayhem in the first Police Story film, but he bounds back under threat from his old enemies. There's a lot more pyrotechnics in this installment, thanks to the explosives wizardry of the film's chief villain, a deaf mute played by Keung-Kuen Lai.

The Squaw Man (Cecil B. DeMille, Oscar Apfel, 1914)

Cast: Dustin Farnum, Monroe Salisbury, Winifred Kingston, Mrs. A.W. Filson, Haidee Fuller, Red Wing, Dick La Reno, Joseph Singleton, William Elmer. Screenplay: Cecil B. DeMille, Oscar Apfel, based on a play by Edwin Milton Royle. Cinematography: Alfred Gandolfi. Art direction: Wilfred Buckland. Film editing: Mamie Wagner.

Apart from its historical interest as the first feature to be filmed in Hollywood, The Squaw Man holds up well enough as drama for Cecil B. DeMille to have remade it twice, in 1918 (a version now lost) and again in 1931. Today it's mostly of archival interest for its rather naïve treatment of Native Americans, but also because its use of outdoor locations shows why Southern California, with its varied landscape and good weather, became the center of American filmmaking. It also helped establish the Western as a major movie genre.

The Wicked Lady (Leslie Arliss, 1945)

Margaret Lockwood in The Wicked Lady

Cast: Margaret Lockwood, James Mason, Patricia Roc, Griffith Jones, Michael Rennie, Felix Aylmer, Enid Stamp-Taylor, Francis Lister, Beatrice Varley, Amy Dalby, Martita Hunt, David Horne, Emrys Jones. Screenplay: Leslie Arliss, Gordon Glennon, Aimée Stuart, based on a novel by Magdalen King-Hall. Cinematography: Jack E. Cox. Art direction: John Bryan. Film editing: Terence Fisher. Music: Hans May.

Entertaining claptrap about a Restoration beauty (Margaret Lockwood) named Barbara who seduces the wealthy squire Sir Ralph Skelton (Griffith Jones) on the eve of his marriage to the virtuous Caroline (Patricia Roc). But having married Sir Ralph, Barbara quickly becomes bored with life in the country, dresses in men's clothes, sneaks out by a secret passage, and turns highwayman. This puts her in competition with (and the bed of) the notorious Capt. Jerry Jackson (James Mason), the terror of the county's roads. Eventually the wicked are punished and virtue is rewarded, of course. The story needs a little more tongue in cheek than writer-director Leslie Arliss is able to give it, but it moves along nicely. Mason, as usual, gives the standout performance.