The Broadway Melody (1929)

The Broadway Melody has some historical importance. It was MGM’s first musical and it was the first musical to win a Best Picture Oscar.

With the advent of sound it was obvious that musicals would be a big thing, but the right formula needed to be found. It was no good just filming a Broadway show. A way would need to be found to make musicals cinematic. Paramount were already getting into the musical business and while Ernst Lubitsh’s The Love Parade is a delight it’s more or less an operetta. The Broadway Melody on the other hand invents a new genre - the backstage musical. Big musical numbers but also lots of human drama and romance and intrigue behind the scenes.

This formula would reach perfection with 42nd Street in 1932 but The Broadway Melody is a bold very early attempt.

It signals its intentions from the start, with some stunning aerial shots of Manhattan. This is going to be the magic of Broadway meeting the magic of movies. Or that's what we hope.

Songwriter Eddie Kearns (Charles King) has just got his big break. Big-time Broadway producer Francis Zanfield (Eddie Kane) has not only bought one of his songs, he’s going to use it as the centrepiece of his new revue. Eddie now thinks he’s in the big-time, which he is up to a point. His girlfriend Hank Mahoney (Bessie Love) and her kid sister Queenie (Anita Page) have a successful sister act out in the boondocks but now they want to try their luck in the Big Apple. Eddie is sure he can get them a spot in the revue. Unfortunately when Zanfield sees their act he thinks Queenie is terrific but he thinks Hank is no good. There’s going to be some tension between the two sisters.

And there’s a complicated romantic quadrangle involving the Mahoney girls, Eddie and a smooth operator named Jacques Warriner (Kenneth Thomson).

This provides the behind-the-scenes human drama. And the entire focus of the film is this four-way romantic tangle.

The Broadway Melody’s biggest problem is that everybody is going to compare it to 42nd Street and it’s just not in the same league.

It just doesn’t have that Busby Berkeley genius. In the Busby Berkeley musicals the musical production numbers supposedly take place on stage. But they could never be accommodated on any stage and could never be watched by a theatre audience since they can only be appreciated when viewed through the camera’s roving eye, from above and beneath and from various angles. We have left the world of the theatre and entered a world of pure cinema. In The Broadway Melody the production numbers are filmed entirely from in front, as if we’re looking through the proscenium arch. These are filmed stage performances. They’re quite good, but they’re totally non-cinematic.

The Broadway Melody lacks the cynical hardboiled edge of the Warner Brothers musicals, and that sense that the show must succeed otherwise they all lose their jobs and starve. That’s because the 1930s Warner Brothers musicals were very much Depression-era musicals. But this is not true of The Broadway Melody. It was made and released in the boom times before the Stock Market Crash. The Broadway Melody is very much a Jazz Age musical, and it has an underlying buoyant optimism. We’re all going to be successful and we’re all going to be rich.

This is of course a pre-code movie. Jacques Warriner makes it clear that he wants to set Queenie up as a kept woman and that marriage will not be part of the deal. Queenie makes it clear that she’s happy with this idea.

There’s one slightly disturbing moment. A showgirl perched on the prow of a prop ship falls 25 feet to the stage floor. She hits the floor and she doesn’t movie. She is taken out on a stretcher - and she is never mentioned again! The poor girl might be dead for all we know. But the show must go on.

This movie really is way too long. The ingredients are here, but the balance is wrong. There’s too much focus on the romance melodrama and not enough on the backstage struggles involved in putting on a show. The staging of the musical numbers is unimaginative and stodgy. It is worth seeing for its historical importance but it just doesn’t catch fire.

The Warner Archive Blu-Ray looks terrific.

Night Watch (1973)

Night Watch has the distinction of being the only horror movie Elizabeth Taylor made. And this 1973 British production is a reasonably successful effort.

It follows the psychological horror formula that had become familiar in the early 60s, in movies like Hammer’s psycho-thrillers of that era. But Night Watch adds a few new twists of its own.

Elizabeth Taylor is Ellen Wheeler. She is married to investment consultant John Wheeler (Laurence Harvey) although she is apparently wealthy in her own right. The marriage seems happy enough. John works fairly long hours but Ellen has her friend Sarah Cooke (Billie Whitelaw) to keep her company. Ellen is somewhat disapproving of Sarah’s mysterious affair with a married man. on the whole these seem like reasonably normal upper middle-class people. Until one night, in the middle of a severe storm, Ellen sees something in the window of the deserted house next door.

Ellen is sure she saw a murdered man with his throat cut. It was jut a glimpse as the shutters briefly blew open before blowing closed again but Ellen is convinced that she did indeed see a murdered man. The police are called but a search of the deserted house reveals nothing unusual or sinister. John is inclined to think that Ellen let her imagination play tricks on her, and the police share his view.

Ellen lost her first husband Carl in a car accident some years earlier. We do not find out the circumstances of the accident until late in the picture but Ellen has clearly never quite recovered from this tragedy.

Shortly afterwards Ellen sees another body in the derelict house, this time a woman’s body. The police are called again and again they find nothing. Ellen becomes increasingly distraught and John, by this time very concerned, calls in his psychiatrist friend tony (Tony Britton) to take a look at Ellen.

Ellen refuses to be shaken in her belief that she really did see those bodies. She is so persistent that they even dig up her neighbour Mr Appleby’s flower beds but they can still find absolutely no evidence to support Ellen’s story. Ellen rings Inspector Walker (Bill Dean) so many times that the police dismiss her as a harmless crank and no longer bother to respond to her phone calls. On Tony’s advice Ellen eventually agrees to admit herself to a private clinic in Switzerland but before she takes that plane flight the story reaches its climax.

As you might expect Elizabeth Taylor gives a wonderfully over-the-top performance. Taylor was never afraid to push her acting to extremes that would have been ridiculously histrionic in any other actress, but she was always able to get away with it. And she gets away with it here. Her performance is the key to the film’s success and she delivers the goods.

Laurence Harvey and Billie Whitelaw provide fine support. Robert Lang is amusing as Mr Appleby, a man who seems both absurd and vaguely sinister.

Brian G. Hutton directed only a handful of movies although these included another rather outrageous and very entertaining Elizabeth Taylor vehicle, Zee and Co (released in the US as X, Y and Zee). He does a very capable job with Night Watch. Screenwriter Tony Williamson had a prolific carer in British television, writing episodes for just about every crime/adventure series of the 60s and 70s. Twisted little stories were something he was very good at and his screenplay is economical and effective.

This movie has been released in the Warner Archive made-on-demand DVD series, in an excellent anamorphic transfer.

Night Watch is a fine example of the British psychological horror thriller and Elizabeth Taylor’s performance in her only horror outing is certainly an added inducement. Taylor proves that she can do horror very well indeed.

Under Eighteen (1931)

Under Eighteen (or Under 18) is a 1931 Warner Brothers romantic melodrama and it’s very much a Depression melodrama.

It begins in 1928 in the optimism and confidence of the Jazz Age. In New York the Evans family is prosperous.

Sophie Evans (Anita Page) has just married Alf (Norman Foster). He’s rather feckless but considers himself something of an entrepreneur. He owns a pool hall. In these pre-Stock Market Crash days business is booming and he looks forward to the day he will own a chain of pool halls.

Sophie’s sister Margie (Marian Marsh) is filled with romantic dreams.

Then comes the Depression. The Evans family is now broke. Alf has lost his pool hall and can’t find a job (partly because he still can’t adjust to the reality of no longer being a big shot and no longer being able to be his own boss).

Margie is expecting to marry Jimmy (Regis Toomey). He’s a delivery man. It’s not glamorous but at least it’s a job. Margie sees her future as an endless struggle against poverty. She’s dissatisfied and reckless. She’s jealous of Elsie (Dorothy Appleby). Elsie is a prostitute but she drives around in a limo and has beautiful clothes and jewellery and never has to worry where her next meal is coming from.

Margie still loves Jimmy, but she’s having doubts about marriage.

The marriage between Sophie and Alf is falling apart, Sophie needs money to pay for a divorce and the money cannot be found.

Margie is working at the fashion house of François (Paul Porcasi) but now she’s landed her big break - a modelling job. This is due to the interest taken in her by François’ biggest client, Raymond Harding (Warren William). Harding is fabulous rich, a notorious womaniser who has kept a string of mistresses and he’s just generally regarded as a very wicked man. He might be wicked, but Margie is now thinking that being nice to Harding might be her best option.

The cast is very strong. Regis Toomey and Norman Foster are very good. Anita Page is good as the increasingly desperate Sophie.

Warren Williams is in top form. Playing rich powerful men who are charming and sinister is what he did better than anyone.

Marian Marsh is excellent. She’s convincingly torn between her ingrained belief in respectability and the temptations of wickedness and she’s cute and likeable.

There’s no shortage of pre-code content. We have no doubt what any arrangement offered by Harding will entail. And there’s some amusing pre-code dialogue. When Margie arrives at Harding’s penthouse where a party is in full swing around the rooftop pool he says to her, “Why don’t you take your clothes off and stay awhile?”

A thing I like about pre-code movies is that this was the very beginning of the sound era and genre conventions for sound films had not yet solidified. As a result you’re always sure which way the plots will jump. In this case Under Eighteen could be heading for a tragic ending but could just as easily be heading for a feelgood happy ending. In fact the ending of this movie might seem dubious unless you remember that the movie doesn’t quite fit neatly into genre formulas that were established by the end of the decade. Not everyone will like the ending to this film but it works for me.

You also can’t predict which way the characters will go. All the characters here could be headed for disaster, but not necessarily. And they could turn out to less sympathetic, or more sympathetic, than they initially appeared to be. This is a movie that doesn’t rush to make moral judgments on the characters.

I thoroughly enjoyed Under Eighteen. Highly recommended.

The Warner Archive DVD looks very good.

Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)

Gold Diggers of 1933 is one of the great Warner Brothers pre-code musicals with wild Busby Berkeley production numbers.

The plot is your standard Warner Brothers pre-code backstage musical plot. Producer Barney Hopkins (Ned Sparks) is putting on a show or at least he’s trying to. But this is the Depression and the money needed to finance a show is simply impossible to find. The show closes before it even opens.

Polly Parker (Ruby Keeler), Fay Fortune (Ginger Rogers), Carol King (Joan Blondell) and Trixie Lorraine (Aline MacMahon) are broke again. They’re in utter despair until Barney announces that he has a new show ready to go. But as usual, he has everything he needs except the money.

The girls’ neighbour, Brad (Dick Powell), then offers to finance the show. Since he’s a penniless aspiring songwriter nobody takes him seriously. But somehow he comes up with the money.

Barney wants Brad to be the juvenile lead but Brad tells him that it is simply not possible for him to perform in public.

Then we get the classic Warner Brothers backstage musical scene. The juvenile lead cannot go on. The show is doomed. The only hope is for Brad to go on.

Brad and Polly have already fallen hopelessly in love. They decide to get married.

Things get complicated when Brad’s real identity is revealed and his brother J. Lawrence Bradford (Warren William) arrives on the scene intent on preventing the marriage.

We then get plenty of farce with identities getting mixed up and the girls cooking up a plot to make sure that true love triumphs.

Warren William was always at his best when he could be really slimy and oily. In this movie he’s basically not such a bad guy, which may disappoint some of his fans.

Aline MacMahon is the out-and-out comic character and overdoes things a bit. Guy Kibbee is fun (as always) as J. Lawrence Bradford’s lawyer who has a weakness for the ladies. Ned Sparks is terrific. Ruby Keeler is as sweet as ever but she could get away with being sweet. Joan Blondell and Ginger Rogers are excellent.

What I love about these Busby Berkeley musicals is that they have theatrical settings and the musical production numbers are supposedly taking place on stage. But these numbers could never be accommodated on a stage and they could never be watched on stage since they can only be appreciated when viewed through the camera’s eye. As soon as the musical production numbers start we are teleported from the world of the theatre into a world of pure cinema.

These are also production numbers that could only work in black-and-white. They need the artificiality of black-and-white. We are in a world of total artifice.

They would also look terribly crass in colour. This is a kind of glamour that only great black-and-white cinematography can provide.

Barney’s show is intended as a show about the Depression and Gold Diggers of 1933 is a movie about the Depression. It’s at its best in the early stages when we see Barney and the showgirls refusing to admit defeat. They’re show people and regardless of the obstacles they’re going to put on a show.

For many people the highlight is the Forgotten Man production number at the end. For me this number goes close to ruining the movie. It’s typical heavy-handed Warner Brothers “social commentary” and it’s like a political lecture clumsily tacked on at the end. These Warner Brother musicals work because they take us into a magical world of pure cinematic fantasy. The Forgotten Man number is out of place and a movie that should end on a playful joyful note ends in misery and whining.

As a result Gold Diggers of 1933 is the weakest of the Warner Brothers pre-code musicals but it does include three terrific production numbers. The Shadow Waltz is visually impressive. Pettin' in the Park is fabulous and inspired pre-code cheerful naughtiness. We're in the Money opens the movie and it’s the movie’s high point and it’s a great showcase for Ginger Rogers.

If you’re a Busby Berkeley newbie start with 42nd Street or Footlight Parade which are much better movies than this. Gold Diggers of 1933 has a few great moments but it doesn’t quite make it.

It’s annoying that this movie is available on Blu-Ray while the vastly superior Footlight Parade is not.

Locker Sixty Nine (1962)

Locker Sixty Nine is a 1962 entry in the British Merton Park Edgar Wallace thriller cycle - a prolific and consistently excellent series of crime B-movies.

This one was directed by Norman Harrison and written by Richard Harris.

We are introduced to businessman Bennett Sanders and we realise he’s the sort of businessman who makes enemies. He has hired ex-cop Craig (Walter Brown) as a bodyguard.

Murder follows, or at least possible murder. With no body to be found Detective Inspector Roon (John Glyn-Jones) is understandably reluctant to commit himself, but there are some suggestive bloodstains.

Miguel Terila (John Carson) and his wife Eva (Clarissa Stolz) have some sort of grudge against Sanders.

Someone might want to kill Sanders for business or financial reasons but with two beautiful glamorous women mixed up in the case, both apparently Sanders’ mistresses, romantic jealousy is just as likely. The second woman is night-club chanteuse Julie Denver (Penelope Horner).

The vital clue is a secret file kept in a safety deposit box. Everyone wants that file. They are prepared to use drastic measures to get hold of it.

Reporter Simon York (Eddie Byrne) is convinced there’s a much bigger story here and he intends to uncover it.

The plot is solid enough overall but the main problem is that the major plot twist is too obvious and there’s not enough sense of urgency or real danger. These criminals are not quite desperate enough.

These Edgar Wallace thrillers were consistently good because they had fine writers and very competent directors and while they did not have huge stars the cast members were always very capable. I can’t single out any particular cast member since they’re all absolutely fine. It is always fun to see Alfred Burke in anything (he plays Simon York’s editor).

These were low-budget movies so there was no scope for spectacular visual set-pieces or lavish sets. They relied on good scripts and on the fact that they were made by professionals who knew what they were doing and who understood the genre.

The very short running times (usually just under an hour) helped as well. There was no time to waste on unnecessary subplots.

As was the case with most of the directors of these movies Norman Harrison worked mostly in television. Screenwriter Richard Harris had a distinguished career as a TV writer.

Locker Sixty Nine is included in Network’s Edgar Wallace Mysteries Volume Four DVD set. It gets, as usual, a very nice transfer.

Like all the movies in this series Locker Sixty Nine was shot widescreen in black-and-white. Locker Sixty Nine is decent entertainment.

I’ve seen and reviewed a stack of these Edgar Wallace films, including Marriage of Convenience (1960), Man at the Carlton Tower (1961) and The Sinister Man (1961). In fact I’ve reviewed a couple of dozen of these films!

Stage Fright (1950) - Hitchcock Friday #13

Alfred Hitchcock retuned to Britain in 1950 to make Stage Fright. From the mid-1940s he had started to become quite experimental in his approach, both technically and in narrative terms, and most of his 1940s experiments were critical and commercial disappointments. Stage Fright was another experiment and it had a decidedly mixed reception.

The willingness to experiment was part of Hitchcock’s genius and he would certainly have been aware that it was extremely risky. A director who has several flops in quick succession can find himself reduced to making cheap B-movies for Poverty Row studios. But if you don’t take risks you don’t learn anything and while Hitchcock made mistakes he never made the same mistake twice. And without his willingness to take risks we would never have had towering masterpieces like Rear Window, Dial ‘M’ for Murder, Vertigo, Psycho and The Birds.

In Stage Fright he utilises a certain plot device that makes this his most controversial and divisive film. I can’t describe the plot device because it would constitute a huge spoiler and if you haven’t seen this movie before it’s best to approach it without knowing about it. Knowing about it can prejudice the viewer against the film. And there are those who consider the device to be a masterstroke rather than a flaw.

Hitchcock himself considered it to have been a very serious mistake. What he was trying to do was perfectly valid, but after the movie was completed Hitch realised that the device did not work as he had intended it to work.

The movie begins with a young man, Jonathan Cooper (Richard Todd), on the run from the police. He is suspected of murder. The murder victim was the husband of major show business star Charlotte Inwood (Marlene Dietrich). Jonathan and Charlotte are lovers. There’s blood-stained dress that Jonathan will need to destroy.

Jonathan is involved with another young lady, aspiring actress Eve Gill (Jane Wyman). Even is hopelessly in love with Jonathan. She will do anything to help him prove his innocence. She considers Charlotte to be a very bad woman.

Jonathan is a man caught between two women, a sexy femme fatale and a good girl. Eve is a woman caught between two men. She’s in love with Jonathan but now she’s met Detective-Inspector Smith (Michael Wilding) and he’s such a nice kind man and so charming and rather good-looking and she thinks he’s a bit of a dreamboat.

Eve however still has to help Jonathan prove his innocence and she persuades her father Commodore Gill (Alastair Sim) to help. The Commodore thinks it’s all foolishness but it could be fun and he’ll do anything for his daughter.

A lot depends on that blood-stained dress. Maybe it could be used to break down Charlotte’s resistance and persuade her to confess.

This is a movie that feels very very English. It’s very similar in feel to Hitch’s great 1930s British movies. There’s also plenty of very English humour.

It benefits from a great cast. Michael Wilding is very solid and Richard Todd manages to be rather jumpy, as you would expect from a man with the police after him. Sybil Thorndyke is fun as Eve’s dotty mother. I have never liked Jane Wyman but I must admit that she’s excellent here. She somehow manages to be both mousy and feisty.

But the standout performers are of course Alastair Sim and Marlene Dietrich. Sim is in fine form playing the eccentric irascible loveable rogue Commodore Gill.

Dietrich gives one of her best performances. She’s delightfully seductive and wicked and scheming and manipulative but oddly enough she’s rather kind to Eve when Eve goes undercover as her dresser. Charlotte is incredibly self-centred but not gratuitously cruel. Marlene singing I’m the Laziest Girl in Town is definitely a highlight.

The final scenes are very well shot and very Hitchcockian, and very tense with the highlighting of the eyes.

How well the plot works depends entirely on how you feel about that notorious plot device, and whether or not you think it makes the ending difficult to accept. Either way Stage Fright is rather enjoyable and it’s recommended.

The House of the Seven Hawks (1959)

The House of the Seven Hawks is a 1959 British thriller directed by Richard Thorpe.

Robert Taylor is John Nordley, an American who operates a charter boat service in a small British port. His latest job involves a brief cruise in English coastal waters. His passenger is a Dutchman named Anselm. Anselm wants Nordley to take him to the Netherlands. That could cause problems with the British authorities. Nordley had not informed them that he would be heading to a foreign port. But Anselm is paying well.

It’s established from the start that Nordley is a nice guy but perhaps not scrupulously honest. He’s not quite a crook but he can be persuaded to bend the rules and perhaps venture just a little bit outside the strict letter of the law.

He makes it to a Dutch port but by this time his passenger is deceased. Nordley assumes the man had a heart attack.

He’s puzzled when the man’s daughter appears in a small power boat and invites herself aboard his yacht just before he reaches that Dutch port. He’s even more mystified that she seems to be looking for something and having failed to find it she departs very suddenly.

Nordley has already found something curious, a letter with a diagram, among Anselm’s effects.

The Dutch police have astonishing news for Nordley. His passenger was not a man named Anselm. He was a high-ranking Dutch police officer, Inspector Sluiter, engaged in a mysterious investigation in England.

Both Nordley and the Dutch police are puzzled by Sluiter’s actions. Was Sluiter involved in something shady?

Nordley has another surprise in story for him. That girl who came to meet his yacht is no relative to the dead man. She is Elsa (Linda Christian). And now another woman has shown up who really is Inspector Sluiter’s daughter, Constanta (Nicole Maurey). Nordley is not sure that he trusts either woman. They’re not sure that they can trust him.

The mysterious Captain Rohner (Eric Pohlmann) is interested in that letter as well. Nordley has no doubt that Captain Rohner cannot be trusted at all but he is open to the idea of a deal, if the terms are favourable.

That letter is a key, in a metaphorical sense. A key to something interesting, fascinating and valuable. Probably not legal, but nobody involved in this tale is overly concerned with legalities.

Robert Taylor is ideally cast. He did the world-weary slightly morally corrupted thing so very well in so many movies at this period and he does it extremely well here.

Eric Pohlmann is always an absolute joy to watch and he’s in fine form here. Nicole Maurey and Linda Christian are good. Philo Hauser is fun as Nordley’s useful but very disreputable and thoroughly untrustworthy friend Charlie Ponz.

The plot is nicely worked out. There’s not much action (although there is some). Mostly the movie relies on an atmosphere of double-dealing and general moral murkiness.

This is a low-key but fine entertaining thriller and I do enjoy nautical thrillers so it’s highly recommended.

The Warner Archive DVD offers a very satisfactory transfer.

This movie was based on the 1952 novel The House of the Seven Flies by Victor Canning, a now forgotten but very fine British thriller writer.