Quicksand (1950)

A film noir starring Mickey Rooney might sound like a spectacularly bad idea but Quicksand is actually not a bad movie.

Rooney plays Dan Brady, a motor mechanic whose relatively uneventful life becomes a nightmare when one rash action triggers off a chain reaction that threatens to swallow him in the quicksand of crime. All he wanted to do was take a girl out and show her a good time. What harm could there be in that? The only problem was, he realises at the last moment he has no money until payday. And Vera is a glamorous blonde, and if he doesn’t take her out some other guy will get her. And surely there’s no real harm in borrowing $20 from the till at the car repair shop where he works? He can pay the money back as soon as he gets paid.

It seems like a reasonable plan, but this is the world of film noir and once you take one false step you’ve landed yourself in a trap from which there’s no escape. Dan should be safe because the accounts are only checked once a week and he’ll have his pay cheque before then. He would indeed have been safe, if the bookkeeper hadn’t turned up early for some other reason and decided he might as well check the till while he’s there.

This will require fast thinking. Dan’s thinking is certainly fast, but maybe not all that sensible. He figures if he buys an expensive watch on the installment plan for one dollar down, and then hocks the watch for thirty bucks, he’s home free. This is just not Dan’s day however. That plan backfires badly, and each new plan he comes up with involves more risk and he’s just sinking deeper and deeper into that quicksand.

He does get the girl though, but dating Vera turns out to be not such a swell idea as it originally seemed to be. Vera wants the good things in life and she wants them now and her desire to have these things draws Dan even further into the mire.

Rooney is quite effective. He plays Dan as more or less an innocent which works well enough in the noir context. It’s plain though that Dan is not just a hapless victim of incredibly bad luck. He has the kinds of flaws that always bring noir protagonists unstuck. He has an unshakeable belief in the wisdom of taking short cuts. He also has a flexible moral code, the kind of moral code that allows him to consider stealing as not really stealing if you intend to pay the money back. Or if you’re stealing from someone who doesn’t deserve to have more money than you have.

It’s also clear that whenever an attractive woman comes along Dan’s moral code becomes even more flexible. He had a really nice girlfriend who as devoted to him but he dumped her because he didn’t want to be tied down. Especially if there were glamorous blondes around. He’s not a bad guy but underneath a cocky exterior he’s weak and his judgment is poor.

Jeanne Cagney (Jimmy Cagney’s sister) plays Vera an it’s an interesting performance. She’s the femme fatale of the piece but she’s rather like Dan - she’s not evil so much as weak and she has the same kind of flexible moral code. Barbara Bates as the film’s good girl Helen (Dan’s former girlfriend) is less impressive but it’s a much less interesting role and there’s not really much she can do with it.

Peter Lorre adds to the movie’s noir credentials with a memorably sleazy and nasty performance as amusement arcade operator Nick. He used to be Vera’s boss and there’s bad blood between them, presumably because of Nick’s lecherous designs on her. Lorre adds the edginess the movie needs and that Rooney can’t quite provide.

Like so many entries in the classic film noir cycle this one is let down badly by a clumsy contrived ending. If you can ignore that there’s still plenty to enjoy here.

This one’s in the public domain and is included in various budget multi-movie PD collections. My copy came from a Mill Creek set and while the print was a bit rough it was still quite acceptable (and since the cost of the movies in Mill Creek’s 50-movie Mystery Classics works out at around 40 cents a movie there’s no reason for complaint). This one’s worth a look.

The Parallax View (1974)

Paranoia and American cinema go together like ham and eggs. And the 1970s was a vintage era for filmic paranoia. One of the lesser known examples is Alan J. Pakula’s The Parallax View.

Warren Beatty is second-rate newspaper reporter Joseph Frady (is there any other kind one might ask) who is present at the assassination of a US senator. But this is the 70s and that sort of thing is taken for granted. He stops taking it for granted when he discovers that almost half of the witnesses to the killing have died. They have apparently died from natural causes or from accidents, but it still seems a little odd. And then the woman who pointed this out to him winds up dead as well.

He decides to do some digging. His investigations lead him to the remote town of Salmon Point where the sheriff befriends him and then tries to kill him by leaving him in the path of a dam overflow. So now he’s getting really suspicious. And where does the Parallax Corporation fit in? The sheriff has some unexplained documents from this mysterious company in his possession. Frady determines to get inside the Parallax Corporation.

A paranoia/conspiracy theory film made in 1974 is inevitably going to be compared to Francis Ford Coppola’s masterful The Conversation, made in the same year. Stylistically it could be argued that The Parallax View is the better movie. And it has the atmosphere of paranoia, in spades. It also has some surprisingly good action sequences, and some quirky little scenes that contribute to the feeling of unreality and insanity, of a world gone mad. The meeting on the miniature railway is a case in point and it’s very effective. The use of interesting and unsettling locations and the even more unsettling ways that Pakula shoots key scenes, with the action happening in long shot and often in two different parts of the frame at the same time, also adds to the feeling that Frady is trapped in a nightmare that is rapidly running out of control.

The acting is impressive as well. Warren Beatty is an unfashionable actor but this was one of his finest moments. Paula Prentiss contributes a terrific cameo.

So there’s a good deal to like in this movie. But there are problems. Big problems. The first of these is the script. I’m all for ambiguity, but this screenplay isn’t ambiguous, it’s just plain vague. There is no sense to anything. What is the purpose of the conspiracy? Why does no-one notice that so many witnesses are dying? And since nobody suspects that the original assassination was anything other than the act of a lone madman, who on earth would the perpetrators no draw attention to it by murdering witnesses who didn’t see anything?

The other major problem is that the paranoia is too amorphous, too vague. The bad guys are plotting a conspiracy because they’re bad guys and that’s what bad guys do. And it’s all hopeless because everything is corrupt and there are conspiracies everywhere. This movie illustrates perfectly what has gone wrong with politics (at both ends of the political spectrum) in the last forty years. Once everything is reduced to wicked and almost universal conspiracies you’re left with nothing to do except wallow in ever-increasing paranoia.

Halfway through I was saying to myself that at least it wasn’t as silly as JFK. By the end I was saying to myself that it was much much sillier than JFK. And JFK is my touchstone of cinematic silliness.

Pakula himself is an odd director. He made Klute , one of the best American movies of the 70s, but the rest of his filmography is decidedly unimpressive. Including the almost unwatchable Sophie's Choice.

The Parallax View is a good example of both the strengths and the fatal weaknesses of American cinema in the 70s.

The Testament of Dr Mabuse (1933)

In 1922 with Dr Mabuse the Gambler Fritz Lang created the first great cinematic diabolical criminal mastermind. In 1933 he was persuaded,despite some initial hesitations, to make a sequel. It was to be his last German movie for almost three decades.

Dr Mabuse’s earlier criminal career had ended in madness. As the second film opens he remains a near-catatonic madman in a lunatic asylum. But has the world really heard the last of Dr Mabuse?

Kriminalkomissar Lohmann (Otto Wernicke) is pursuing the mysterious case of ex-police detective Hofmeister. Hofmeister had ben thrown off the police force in disgrace but had hoped to redeem himself by carrying out his own investigations into a counterfeiting racket. Hofmeister is now a babbling lunatic. The threads of this case lead Lohmann to an insane asylum operated by Professor Baum. Baum’s star patient is none other than Dr Mabuse, and his interest in this very special patient verges on the obsessive. In Baum’s eyes Mabuse was both genius and madman. Baum has been collecting the Mabuse’s notes, which at first seem to be nonsensical but which after a time start to assume a sinister significance.

Also drawn into this web is a man named Kent, an ex-convict who works for a vast criminal organisation. Kent is a decent man who has become involved in crime through a series of misadventures and misfortunes but he has no taste for the extreme methods used by this crime syndicate. And he has fallen in love with Lili, a woman whose belief in his fundamental goodness is unshakeable.

Of course none of this can have anything to do with Dr Mabuse. He is incurably insane and hasn’t spoken for years. And yet the criminal activities convulsing the city seem to have the unmistakable Mabuse stamp, being concerned more with spreading fear and confusion than with actual profit. And these activities are on a grandiose scale such as could only be conceived of by a madman whose mind works on such epic scales.

This is the paranoid world of Fritz Lang, a world of people trapped in vast webs of deceit and manipulation from which escape seems impossible. They know they are trapped but they don’t even understand how or by whom, much less have any idea how to extricate themselves.

Lang pulls off a number of spectacular visual set-pieces. The room in which the young lovers are trapped, the sabotage of the chemical factory, the criminal mastermind seen only as a shadow behind a curtain, all these scenes are not merely impressive but they act to increase the feelings of entrapment and of a world in which corruption and violence flourish (very similar to the atmosphere of his first talkie M in 1931). There’s also a superb night-time car chase. Lang uses lots of high-angle shots which again have the effect of making the characters seem somehow puny and insignificant, up against forces beyond their control.

Lang adapted very quickly to sound and uses it in striking ways to add to the overwhelming sense of imprisonment. The opening sequence is a tour-de-force of sound effects, with an incessant hammering sound that makes both the unfortunate Hofmeister and the audience feel that the world is inexorably closing in on them.

The acting is impressive and restrained, which is appropriate given the fact that most of the characters are mere playthings of fate. Rudolf Klein-Rogge once again plays Mabuse. Otto Wernicke is particularly memorable as the determined Kriminalkomissar Lohmann, a character who in some ways anticipated Glenn Ford’s tenacious and obsessive honest cop in Lang’s 1953 the Big Heat.

Lang later claimed the movie was a kind of allegory of the methods used by the Nazis but Lang was always conscious in interviews of the necessity to further the Lang legend and his public statements were often spectacularly unreliable. It seem more likely that the film was intended as a criticism of political extremism in general, of both the left and the right, and of the use of violence and terror as means of gaining political power. Personally I think this makes the movie’s achievement more impressive. Like most of Lang’s great movies it deals with universal themes and the themes of this particular film have remained frighteningly relevant right down to our own day.

The Eureka UK all-region DVD release is a restored print that allows us to appreciate the visual brilliance of Lang’s German films. Both the movie and the DVD release are highly recommended. A must-see for anyone who is even vaguely serious about movies.

The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)

Anthony Hope’s 1894 novel The Prisoner of Zenda is one of the classics of adventure fiction. And the 1937 film adaptation is one of the classic adventure films.

An Englishman. Major Rudolf Rasendyll, on a fishing holiday in the (imaginary) central European nation of Ruritania is puzzled by the strange looks he keeps getting from the locals. An encounter in the woods provides him with the explanation. He is the spitting image of King Rudolf. It turns out to be less of a coincidence than it first appeared - the Englishman and the king of Ruritania are distant cousins.

Rassendyll is thereupon invited by the king to a drinking party (this being the king’s favourite occupation). The king has not yet been crowned and his evil brother Duke Michael (Black Michael) is determined this will never take place. He has the king drugged, the idea being that when the king fails to appears at his own coronation he will be discredited in the eyes of the people and Michael will be acclaimed as the new king.

With the king unconscious (or more unconscious than usual) his advisers are distraught. The coronation is to take place the next day. A desperate plan is hatched. The Englishman will be passed off as the king and crowned in his stead.

It’s not quite that simple however. The impostor will also have to convince the king’s intended bride, the Crown Princess Flavia. The marriage is vital. The princess has a stronger claim to the throne than any of the male claimants. Only by marrying her can they be sure of being accepted as the legitimate king.

This is an adventure movie with more emphasis on romance and intrigue than on action. It’s none the worse for that. Being a David O. Selznick production you’d expect it to look lavish and it does. The supporting cast is very strong. Raymond Massey makes a splendid bad guy as Duke Michael. Madekeine Carroll is charming as the crown princes. Mary Astor and David Niven make the most of their fairly minor roles. C. Aubrey Smith’s natural pomposity serves him well as the king’s chief counsellor.

Ronald Colman is excellent in the dual roles of King Rudolf and Major Rodolf Rassendyll. But it’s Douglas Fairbanks Jr who steals the picture. He’s Rupert of Hentzau, Duke Michael’s chief henchman. He’s handsome, charming, utterly ruthless and entirely lacking in any morals whatsoever. He’s also witty and thoroughly likeable in a delightfully villainous way. The younger Fairbanks has the time of his life with this role.

The interesting twist to the plot is that King Rudolf is a lousy king. He’s perpetually drunk, he’s lazy, selfish and cynical and his main reason for not simply allowing Michael to have the throne is that he knows that Michael is too thorough and too well-organised to leave any loose ends behind him, such as a living rival king. The English impostor is in fact a far better king, but the king’s advisors are adamant that the rightful king must reign. And Michael would in all probability be worse, being bitter, vicious and spiteful.

John Cromwell was a solid reliable director and with a great cast and a fine literate script The Prisoner of Zenda is superb entertainment.

Darling Lili (1970)

Darling Lili represented an early attempt by Julie Andrews to escape the saccharine-drenched virginally pure image that had haunted her since Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. In Darling Lili she got to pay a bad girl. A rather sweet and likeable bad girl, but a bad girl nonetheless. The movie also has the distinction of having contributed considerably to the death of the traditional big-budget Hollywood musical, and its spectacular commercial failure took Paramount to the brink of bankruptcy.

Julie Andrews is Lili Smith, a beloved music hall singer who also happens to be a spy for the Germans. Her latest target is Major Bill Larrabee, famed air ace and commander of the eilte Eagle Squadron. The German spymaster von Ruger (who is also Lili’s lover) wants information on Allied air tactics and other military secrets to which Larrabee has access. Lili sets out to seduce the major, which turns out to be very easy indeed. But this is the movies, so of course she begins to fall in love with him. He situation becomes more difficult when she learns that French Military Intelligence have discovered that Bill is the source of recent very damaging security leaks and they are fairly sure he is passing secrets to a woman working for the German intelligence service.

In retrospect it’s very easy to see why this film bombed at the box office in 1970. Casting Julie Andrews as a German spy was bad enough, but casting her as a German spy who uses sex to obtain military secrets was too much for audiences at the time. And to compound the sin, she’s presented as a very sympathetic spy who is totally unrepentant. And the idea of Mary Poppins having sex, and even doing a strip-tease!

The other aspect of the movie that undoubtedly alienated contemporary audiences is the bewildering mix of styles and genres. The film is a combination of sophisticated romantic comedy, crude slapstick, wartime adventure, spy thriller, musical, satire and romance, and it switches between genres with alarming rapidity and frequency. Today such blending of genres is commonplace (possibly too commonplace) but in 1970 it must have seemed confused rather than audacious. And to further estrange the movie from audiences there’s a noticeably mocking attitude towards patriotism and the military virtues, which might have appealed to the youth audience but was unlikely to endear itself to the type of people likely to see a Julie Andrews musical.

The very things that led to its being box office poison in 1970 are likely to be the things that a modern audience will enjoy. Once you realise you’re not meant to take any of it seriously, and that the plot is suppose to be ludicrously contrived, there’s much to enjoy. Julie Andrews is funny and charming, and she’s even sexy in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way. It’s all gloriously overdone. Everything is too colourful and too shiny. There’s too much of everything. Director Blake Edwards is being too clever and too knowing. Julie Andrews is too self-consciously a star. In other words, we’re talking delicious high camp here. Darling Lili is enormous fun and I enjoyed every minute.

Charlie Chan in Paris (1935)

There have been more than fifty Charlie Chan movies. Charlie Chan in Paris was one of the sixteen made by Fox in the 1930s with Warner Oland playing the great Chinese detective from Hawaii. It’s the second of the Warner Oland films that I’ve seen and confirms my impression that Oland was simply perfect for the role.

Like most of the Charlie Chan movies this one is not based on one of Earl Derr Biggers’ novels (of which he wrote a mere half-dozen). But it does capture the feel of the books pretty well.

Chan is investigating some shady goings-on in a Paris bank. Pretty soon the first murder connected with the case occurs. A female night-club singer is the victim. The crime might not seem directly linked to the bank’s problem but Chan has reason to believe the link is there. A cantakerous war veteran on crutches always seem to be on the scene when something happens and it will take all the famous detective’s skill to sort this one out.

This movie introduced the character of Number One son Lee Chan (played by Keye Luke), a character destined to become a fixture. This version of Charlie Chan (unlike the one played by Sidney Toler in the 1944 Charlie Chan in The Chinese Cat) does not put down his son. In fact he’s brimming with familial pride. While his sons don’t appear in the novels this does bring the character much closer to Earl Derr Biggers’ original conception. Charlie Chan is a man for whom family is everything.

Warner Oland plays Charlie Chan as a kindly, soft-spoken jovial character whose geniality masks a razor-sharp detective’s brain. He’s very much a detective who relies on intellect rather than muscle. He is not a two-fisted action hero. For the purposes of a movie series it can be useful to have some action however. Introducing Lee Chan to the series therefore works out rather well. He can handle the more physical aspects of crime-solving. In this film at least he is certainly not a mere comic relief character.

As in the books racial stereotypes are introduced, but only in order for them to be deftly and wittily mocked.

The likeability of Warner Oland’s performance is the movie’s biggest asset. Oland was bon in Sweden but always claimed to have some Asian blood. More important than that was the fact that he took the role very seriously and immersed himself in it. He became interested in Chinese culture and he was clearly very fond of the character he played. His enthusiasm for the role is always evident.

Apart from that it’s an example of the better kind of 1930s crime B-movie, very well-made and highly entertaining.

Fox’s DVD release includes an informative documentary and with both picture and sound quality being pretty good this one can definitely be recommended.

Charlie Chan in The Chinese Cat (1944)

Charlie Chan in The Chinese Cat was the second of Monogram’s Charlie Chan films (the earlier ones having been made by 20th Century-Fox) and it’s not a particularly memorable effort.

This will be a two-part review of sorts since straight after this I’m going to watch one of the earlier Fox movies with Warner Oland playing the famous Chinese-Hawaiian detective.

Sidney Toler had taken over the role after Oland’s death and in my view he’s a much less satisfactory Charlie Chan. By 1944 he was really too old for the role (the Chan of the books is in his 40s and Toler was 70) and he doesn’t look even remotely Asian.

The relationship between Chan and his Number 3 son Tommy moves the character even further away from the detective of Earl Derr Biggers’ books. The Chan of the books would never have treated his children with such contempt. Tommy Chan is there purely for laughs which means we have two actors rather than one providing the totally unnecessary and extremely annoying comic relief, the other being African-American comic Mantan Moreland as taxi-driver Birmingham Brown. The comic relief really swamps the mystery in this particular production.

The story starts with a locked-room mystery - a wealthy society woman’s husband is murdered and she finds herself the chief suspect. The murder is linked to a major jewellery robbery.

As you’d expect it suffers from much lower production values than the Fox efforts but Phil Rosen’s lively direction makes up for many of these deficiencies. The result is a mildly entertaining B-movie comedy mystery.

I don’t think Sidney Toler’s performance is all that bad but I just didn’t think the character of Charlie Chan came through in this film. The script gave him no help.

MGM have released this one on DVD. The transfer is not fantastic and there are no extras so it’s hard to recommend this one.