Jungle Book (Zoltan Korda, 1942)

Sabu in Jungle Book

Cast: Sabu, Joseph Calleia, John Qualen, Frank Puglia, Rosemary DeCamp, Patricia O'Rourke, Ralph Byrd, John Mather, Faith Brook, Noble Johnson. Screenplay: Laurence Stallings, based on a novel by Rudyard Kipling. Cinematography: Lee Garmes, W. Howard Greene. Production design: Vincent Korda. Film editing: William Hornbeck. Music: Miklós Rózsa.

If you can ignore the childish anthropomorphism that labels elephants "gentle" and tigers "evil," and tolerate the Anglo actors in brownface playing Indians, there's some fun to be had in Jungle Book. Sabu is a lively Mowgli, swinging on vines through the jungle and interacting well with the animal characters, both live and puppet. The sets and Technicolor cinematography are appropriately lush and vivid, and there's a spectacular forest fire at the film's end. But something in me prefers both the cel-animated Disney version of 1967 directed by Wolfgang Reitherman and its 2016 live/CGI remake by Jon Favreau. Is it just that in the fight between Shere Khan and Mowgli I found myself rooting for the beautiful tiger?

Land of the Pharaohs (Howard Hawks, 1955)

Joan Collins in Land of the Pharaohs

Cast: Jack Hawkins, Joan Collins, Dewey Martin, Alexis Minotis, James Robertson Justice, Luisella Boni, Sydney Chaplin, James Hayter, Kerima, Piero Giagnoni. Screenplay: William Faulkner, Harry Kurnitz, Harold Jack Bloom. Cinematography: Lee Garmes, Russell Harlan. Art direction: Alexandre Trauner. Film editing: Vladimir Sagovsky. Music: Dimitri Tiomkin.    

Why has there never been a really good movie about ancient Egypt? Is it that we can't imagine those ancient peoples in any other terms than the sideways-walking figures on old walls? Archaeologists have uncovered enough about their daily lives, their customs and their religion, that it might be possible to put together a plausible story set in those times, but eventually filmmakers turn to spectacle, with lots of crowds and opulently fitted palaces inhabited by kings and courtiers wearing lots of gold and jewels. Land of the Pharaohs was an attempt by one of the great producer-directors of his day, Howard Hawks, enlisting none other than William Faulkner as a screenwriter. It, too, laid on the usual ancient frippery and a cast of thousands, and it was a box-office bomb, eliciting some critical sneers. More recently, it has attracted some admirers, including Martin Scorsese, though only as a "guilty pleasure." Hawks himself admitted that one of the problems he and the writers faced was that they "didn't know how a pharaoh talked," and Hawks was always a master of movies with good talk. So while it's impossible to take seriously, Land of the Pharaohs provides a good deal of entertainment, even if only of the sort derived from making fun of the movie. Though it's not ineptly made, it's also impossible to take seriously, especially when Joan Collins is vamping around. 

Morocco (Josef von Sternberg, 1930)

Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper in Morocco

Tom Brown: Gary Cooper
Amy Jolly: Marlene Dietrich
La Bessiere: Adolphe Menjou
Caesar: Ullrich Haupt
Mme. Caesar: Eve Southern
Sgt. Tatoche: Francis McDonald
Lo Tinto: Paul Porcasi

Director: Josef von Sternberg
Screenplay: Jules Furthman
Based on a play by Benno Vigny
Cinematography: Lee Garmes
Film editing: Sam Winston
Costume design: Travis Banton
Music: Karl Hajos

At one point in Josef von Sternberg's Morocco, Tom Brown literally sweeps Amy Jolly off her feet and then tries to guess her weight. She scoffs at his estimate of 120 pounds and says his low estimate must be because he's so strong. In fact, Marlene Dietrich had slimmed down noticeably since she made The Blue Angel for Sternberg only a few months earlier in Germany, though she's still not quite as svelte as she would become after his transformation of her into a Hollywood icon was complete. The pounds are gone in her first American film, as are the realistically tawdry cabaret costumes Lola Lola wears in the German film, replaced by a wardrobe designed by Travis Banton. She is also filmed lovingly by Lee Garmes, who helped her locate the key light whenever the camera is on, a lesson she never forgot long after Sternberg's star-making was over. Morocco was a sensation, earning Dietrich her only Oscar nomination, though it's hardly her best performance or even a very good film. Sternberg still maintains the slightly halting pace of a director making a transition from silent films to talkies, chopping up Jules Furthman's dialogue by pausing too long between lines, losing the snap that would be present when Sternberg and Furthman worked together two years later on Shanghai Express. What action there is in the story, such as the attack by thugs outside Amy's apartment or the taking out of the machine gun nest, is tossed off casually, all in service of romance. And even the celebrated ending, with Amy kicking off her shoes to join the camp-followers into the desert, is more likely to elicit laughs today. As handsome as Gary Cooper's legionnaire is, it doesn't seem likely that a tough cookie like Amy, once capable of tearing up La Bessiere's card into small pieces while he's watching, would be such a careless lovesick sap. Still, Morocco is worth sitting through for its legendary moments, including the celebrated appearance of Dietrich's Amy in men's evening wear, taking a flower from a woman whom she kisses on the mouth and then tossing it to Cooper's wryly amused Tom, who tucks it behind his ear. It's an entertaining flirtation with what the Production Code would, in just a few years, and for several dreary decades, egregiously label "sex perversion."

Shanghai Express (Josef von Sternberg, 1932)

Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express

Shanghai Lily: Marlene Dietrich
Capt. Donald Harvey: Clive Brook
Hui Fei: Anna May Wong
Henry Chang: Warner Oland
Sam Salt: Eugene Pallette
Carmichael: Lawrence Grant
Mrs. Haggerty: Louise Closser Hale
Eric Baum: Gustav von Seyffertitz
Maj. Lenard: Emile Chautard

Director: Josef von Sternberg
Screenplay: Jules Furthman
Based on a story by Harry Hervey
Cinematography: Lee Garmes
Art direction: Hans Dreier
Film editing: Frank Sullivan
Music: W. Franke Harling

There's something claustrophobic about Shanghai Express: Its characters are always enclosed -- in train cabins, in interrogation rooms, even in crowds of other people. Even the titular train gets itself into a tight spot, navigating the narrow passage through the streets of what the film calls "Peking." Which makes it all the better for Lee Garmes's camera, tasked as it is with making the most of Marlene Dietrich's face. Garmes (with director Josef von Sternberg looking over his shoulder) always finds ways to frame that face with veils and feathers and furs, with the actress's own hands, with misted windows, and when nothing else will do, a simple shaft of light caressing those eyelids, cheekbones, and lips. Fortunately, the movie is more than glamorous poses: There's a good deal of snappy dialogue and some wily character acting from the likes of Eugene Pallette, Louise Closser Hale, and -- in a role that seems to have been a kind of audition for his most famous one, Charlie Chan -- Warner Oland. I only wish that a leading man more attractive, or less plummily British, than Clive Brook had been provided for Dietrich. The story is nonsense, of course, and it verges dangerously on colonialist poppycock in its treatment of the Chinese, though even there it pulls back somewhat by turning Anna May Wong's Hui Fei from a stereotypical dragon lady into a genuinely heroic figure. It must also be said that Shanghai Express was made at the right time: A couple of years later, the sexual adventurism of its women would have been taboo under the Production Code and Hui Fei would have been made to pay for murdering her rapist.

Scarface (Howard Hawks, 1932)

Vince Barnett, Paul Muni, and Karen Morley in Scarface

Tony Camonte: Paul Muni
Cesca Camonte: Ann Dvorak
Poppy: Karen Morley
Guino Rinaldo: George Raft
Angelo: Vince Barnett
Johnny Lovo: Osgood Perkins
Tom Gaffney: Boris Karloff
Inspector Guarino: C. Henry Gordon
Mama Camonte: Inez Palange

Director: Howard Hawks
Screenplay: Ben Hecht, Seton I. Miller, John Lee Mahin, W.R. Burnett
Based on a novel by Armitage Trail
Cinematography: Lee Garmes, L. William O'Connell
Set designer: Harry Oliver
Film editing: Edward Curtiss

Like so many early talkies, Scarface feels a little off in its pacing at times, especially in scenes with dialogue, as if the director was uncertain how much of the exposition was getting across to the audience. Which is surprising, considering the director is Howard Hawks, the master of fast-paced repartee. But the real Hawks shows up eventually, especially in the action scenes, and in some brilliant bits, such as the murder of Boris Karloff's Tom Gaffney in the bowling alley. We see Gaffney start to fall after the shot, but the camera follows the track of the ball he has just bowled: It's a strike, but one pin wobbles uncertainly for a second before toppling. François Truffaut commented on the scene, "This isn't literature. It may be dance or poetry. It is certainly cinema." For many, Hawks's Scarface has been overshadowed by Brian De Palma's 1983 version, and its rough contemporaries Little Caesar (Mervyn LeRoy, 1931) and The Public Enemy (William A. Wellman, 1931), the gangster films that set Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney on their road to fame, shadowed the Hawks film at the time, delaying its release as Hawks and producer Howard Hughes wrangled with the Hays Office censors, who were edgy about the plethora of gangster films. In response to their objections, the film has no fewer than three screens full of text before the movie actually starts, proclaiming that it's "an indictment of gang rule in America and the callous indifference of the government to this constantly increasing menace," and exhorting the audience to demand that the government do something about it. Later there are clearly interpolated scenes that suggest some of the things the government can do include gun control and immigration reform or even the imposition of martial law. The film was even released with a subtitle, Scarface: The Shame of a Nation. This heavy-handedness suggests that Hughes had less clout with the Hays Office than did Warner Bros., which didn't jump through quite so many hoops in releasing Little Caesar and The Public Enemy. Nevertheless, Scarface was a box office success, largely because it's a hugely entertaining film, showcasing what may be Paul Muni's best screen performance -- the only other contender would be I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (Mervyn LeRoy, 1932). Muni has a leering, gleeful quality as Tony Camonte; he's almost sexy, which is something that would never be said of the actor after he began to take himself seriously in William Dieterle's stodgy biopic celebrations of Great Men like The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936) and The Life of Emile Zola (1937). Because Scarface was made before the Production Code clampdown on sex, it's pretty clear what's going on between Tony and Karen Morley's Poppy, but also that Tony's relationship with his sister, Cesca, has a touch of the perverse about it. The film is full of delicious asides, too, like a minor character, a reporter known as "MacArthur from the Journal," a tip of the hat to screenwriter Ben Hecht's former colleague in Chicago journalism, Charles MacArthur, who was also his co-writer on the play The Front Page. The character is played by Hecht and MacArthur's friend John Lee Mahin, one of the screenwriters on Scarface. 

The Paradine Case (Alfred Hitchcock, 1947)

Ann Todd and Charles Laughton in The Paradine Case

Anthony Keane: Gregory Peck
Gay Keane: Ann Todd
Lord Thomas Horfield: Charles Laughton
Simon Flaquer: Charles Coburn
Lady Sophie Horfield: Ethel Barrymore
Andre Latour: Louis Jourdan
Maddalena Anna Paradine: Alida Valli
Sir Joseph: Leo G. Carroll
Judy Flaquer: Joan Tetzel

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Screenplay: David O. Selznick, Alma Reville, James Bridie
Based on a novel by Robert Hichens
Cinematography: Lee Garmes
Production design: J. McMillan Johnson

Alfred Hitchcock was at the end of his seven-year servitude to David O. Selznick when he was roped into The Paradine Case, a project Selznick had been nursing since 1933, when he bought the rights at MGM hoping to star Greta Garbo as the "fascinating" Mrs. Paradine. Garbo declined then and later, saying she didn't want to play a murderer. Hitchcock's involvement in the belated project was grudging, given that the other two features, Rebecca (1940) and Spellbound (1945), on which he had been forced to work directly with Selznick had been difficult experiences, producer and director having decidedly different views on almost everything about filmmaking. But he went ahead with crafting a screenplay, enlisting his wife, Alma Reville, playwright James Bridie, and Ben Hecht. In the end, however, Selznick rewrote the screenplay, sometimes after individual scenes had been shot, and claimed credit, relegating Reville to "adaptation" and Bridie to "treatment in consultation with," and leaving Hecht off the credits entirely. Moreover, Hitchcock's initial cut was three hours, which Selznick then scissored down to 132 minutes and after premieres to the extant 114 minutes. It's hard to say what was lost in the process, except that Anthony Keane's supposed erotic fascination with Mrs. Paradine barely registers in the current version, making Gay Keane's jealous moping almost nonsensical. It also robs the climax of the film of any real emotional impact. But miscasting also may be responsible for those failures: Gregory Peck, never a very interesting actor, becomes even duller in his attempts to play a distinguished British barrister. Peck was 31, and the gray streaks in his hair do little to convince us that he's a man with a long career at the bar. Moreover, his attempts at a British accent are fitful: You can almost see him tense up every time he has to pronounce "can't" as "cahn't." Alida Valli, in the key role, is more sullen than mysterious, and Ann Todd as Peck's wife, is pallid. What life exists in the film comes from Charles Coburn as the solicitor in the case and from Charles Laughton, deliciously haughty as the judge, with a reputation for enjoying hanging women as well as clear evidence of his sexually predatory nature when he makes his moves on Mrs. Keane. Ethel Barrymore for some reason was nominated for an Oscar for her small role as the judge's wife, who sweetly admonishes her husband for his ways, but otherwise has little to do. There is not much Hitchcock could do stylistically in the film with Selznick hanging around: He attempts some impressive long takes, many of which Selznick chopped up in the editing room, and an experiment in collaboration with cinematographer Lee Garmes in lighting changes during Keane's interrogation of Mrs. Paradine. He also introduces Louis Jourdan's character by keeping him in shadows and half darkness, to heighten our suspicion of the character's nature, but such occasional tricks only stand out from the general flatness of the drama.

Duel in the Sun (King Vidor, 1946)

Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones in Duel in the Sun

Pearl Chavez: Jennifer Jones
Lewt McCanles: Gregory Peck
Jesse McCanles: Joseph Cotten
Senator Jackson McCanles: Lionel Barrymore
Scott Chavez: Herbert Marshall
Laura Belle McCanles: Lillian Gish
The Sinkiller: Walter Huston
Sam Pierce: Charles Bickford
Lem Smoot: Harry Carey
Mrs. Chavez: Tilly Losch
Vashti: Butterfly McQueen

Director: King Vidor
Screenplay: David O. Selznick, Oliver H.P. Garrett
Based on a novel by Niven Busch
Cinematography: Lee Garmes, Ray Rennahan, Harold Rosson
Production design: J. McMillan Johnson
Film editing: Hal C. Kern
Music: Dimitri Tiomkin

This is a bad movie, but it's one distinguished in the annals of bad movies because it was made by David O. Selznick, who as the poster shouts at you was "The Producer Who Gave You 'GONE WITH THE WIND.'" Selznick made it to showcase Jennifer Jones, the actress who won an Oscar as the saintly Bernadette of Lourdes in The Song of Bernadette (Henry King, 1943). Selznick, who left his wife for Jones, wanted to demonstrate that she was capable of much more than the sweetly gentle piety of Bernadette, so he cast her as the sultry Pearl Chavez in this adaptation (credited to Selznick himself along with Oliver H.P. Garrett, with some uncredited help by Ben Hecht) of the novel by Niven Busch. Opposite Jones, Selznick cast Gregory Peck as the amoral cowboy Lewt McCanles, who shares a self-destructive passion with Pearl. Both actors are radically miscast. Jones does a lot of eye- and teeth-flashing as Pearl, while Peck's usual good-guy persona undermines his attempts to play rapaciously sexy. The plot is one of those familiar Western tropes: good brother Jesse against bad 'un Lewt, reflecting the ill-matched personalities of their parents, the tough old cattle baron Jackson McCanles and his gentle (and genteel) wife, Laura Belle. Pearl is an orphan, the improbable daughter of an improbable couple, the educated Scott Chavez and a sexy Indian woman, who angers him by fooling around with another man. Chavez kills both his wife and her lover and is hanged for it, so Pearl is sent to live with the McCanleses -- Laura Belle is Chavez's second cousin and old sweetheart -- on their Texas ranch. It's all pretentiously packaged by Selznick: not many other movies begin with both a "Prelude" and an "Overture," composed by Dimitri Tiomkin in the best overblown Hollywood style. It has Technicolor as lurid as its story, shot by three major cinematographers, Lee Garmes, Ray Rennahan, and Harold Rosson. But any attempt to generate real heat between Jones and Peck was quickly stifled by the Production Code, which even forced Selznick to introduce a voiceover at the beginning to explain that the character of the frontier preacher known as "The Sinkiller" (entertainingly played by Walter Huston) was not intended to be a representative clergyman. There are a few good moments, including an impressive tracking shot at the barbecue on the ranch in which various guests offer their opinions of Pearl, the McCanles brothers, and other things. Whether this scene can be credited to director King Vidor, who was certainly capable of it, is an open question, because Vidor found working with the obsessive Selznick so difficult that he quit the film. Selznick directed some scenes, as did Otto Brower, William Dieterle, Sidney Franklin, William Cameron Menzies, and Josef von Sternberg, all uncredited. The resulting melange is not unwatchable, thanks to a few good performances (Huston, Charles Bickford, Harry Carey), and perhaps also to some really terrible ones (Lionel Barrymore at his most florid and Butterfly McQueen repeating her fluttery air-headedness from GWTW).