Blonde Crazy (1931)

Blonde Crazy is a good-natured and cheerfully immoral little 1931 Warner Brothers pe-code gem which pairs Jimmy Cagney and Joan Blondell as a couple of roguish but engaging grifters.

Bert (played by Cagney) is the bellboy at a moderately swank hotel in an anonymous small city. Anne (Blondell) is down on her luck, but he manages to get her a job as a maid. Bert dreams of being a big shot with lots of money, and he’s been working a few minor cons. Anne seems like the perfect partner, and pretty soon they’re pulling in reasonably big money. But Bert isn’t as clever as he thinks he is, and he finds himself the victim of a swindle. He and Anne manage to pull off another lucrative job and seem like they’re headed for the big time. Anne however was never really happy with the idea of making dishonest money, and when she meets a smarmy but outwardly respectable stock broker she decides to quit the grifting game and get married and settle down.

This throws Bert’s plans into disarray since he’s been crazy about Anne since the first time he set eyes on her. But fate has several unexpected twists in store for both of them.

Cagney is definitely not in tough guy mode in this movie. There’s lots of slapping, but he’s always the one getting slapped! By Blondell. She’s definitely a feisty kind of gal.

Cagney is basically a decent guy who just doesn’t see any honest way of making a decent living, and under a cynical exterior he’s really a hopeless romantic. His problem is that he’s used to getting by with wise-cracks, and he can’t stop the wise-cracks for long enough to admit he’s madly in love with Anne, and to tell her he loves her.

There’s an abundance of snappy and witty dialogue. There’s great chemistry between Cagney and Blondell, and both have the perfect comic timing to carry off a light-hearted if slightly naughty caper comedy like this. And they’re both so thoroughly likeable. Blondell so often ended up playing the heroine’s best friend, so it’s great to see her in such a rewarding leading role.

Blonde Crazy is charmingly amoral and there’s no shortage of sexual innuendo. There’s even a nude scene featuring Blondell which is pretty hot stuff by the standards of 1931.

This is a fast-paced and completely delightful movie, not to be taken at all seriously but simply to be enjoyed.

Sadly this movie doesn't appear to be available on DVD, although it was released on VHS.

Midnight Lace (1960)

Midnight Lace is a 1960 Doris Day thriller. She’d made thrillers before (such as The Man Who Knew Too Much for Hitchcock) but this one is an odd but fascinating combination.

As has pointed out, it doesn’t really work as a thriller. If you haven’t figured out the solution to the mystery within the first 20 minutes then you’re just not concentrating. But again as has pointed out, the thriller plot isn’t the reason for watching this movie.

What makes Midnight Lace so intriguing is the date it was made. It’s an attempt to do an “adult” thriller. By 1960 the Production Code had relaxed a little, so film-makers could deal with sexual subject matter, but they still had to tread very carefully, so you get this delightful mix of daringness and coyness.

Doris Day is Kit, an American woman living in London with her wealthy businessman husband Tony (Rex Harrison). Only he isn’t really all that rich while she is. She has an encounter with a stranger in the fog, a stranger who threatens to kill her. Then she starts getting phone calls, calls that are both obscene and threatening. Unfortunately no-one else is ever around when he gets the calls, so after a while both Scotland Yard and her husband start to suspect she’s making it up to get attention. Even her beloved Aunt Bea (Myrna Loy) starts to share this suspicion. The fact that Tony is always too busy with his work to spend much time with her adds to the suspicion of attention-seeking behaviour.

But is she really making it up? well in fact the entire explanation is quite obvious, but what’s interesting is the treatment of the plot and the characters, not the plot itself. The movie is quite open about exposing the truth that behind the façade of respectable 1950s middle-class life there lurked a dark underworld of sexual dysfunction, of men who could only get their sexual jollies from either making obscene phone calls to women or from terrorising women, and women who could only gain sexual and emotional satisfaction from fantasies of being stalked by mysterious men. There’s also at least a faint hint that women who make up stories may be motivated by sexual neglect at home. There’s also scene that in 1960 must have been fairly daring, where the police make Kit listen to endless tapes of obscene phone calls in the hope she’ll recognise the voice.

But there’s not just the sexual dysfunction angle. The movie also exposes the fundamental doubts, the fears, the insecurities that the glossy surface of 1950s life tried to cover up. There’s a sense that perfect marriages like that between Tony and Kit are often empty shells, that marriage might not solve all problems. There’s a sense of unease.

All this is contrasted to the incredibly glossy Technicolor surface of the movie. It’s all bright lighting and pastels, lots of pinks and soft blues. Kit’s bedroom is extremely pink. Even her telephone is pink. On the surface everything is cheerful and bright. Much too cheerful and much too bright. It’s interesting that this was a Ross Hunter production, since it has much of the look of the Douglas Sirk movies of the same era, also produced by Hunter. And just as in Sirk’s movies, the brightness is misleading.

Doris Day goes totally overboard with her performance. It’s all suppressed hysteria, except when the hysteria isn’t suppressed at all. But it works perfectly. It’s a suitably camp performance for a rather camp movie. Rex Harrison is much too charming, which again is the right performance for the movie. Myrna Loy seems perpetually amused, which she probably was, and she’s also perfect in her role.

This is another example of just how interesting the period from the mid-50s to the mid-60s was in Hollywood cinema, a period that saw the Production Code gradually lose its teeth, and a period that produced some delightfully outrageous movies, from Baby Doll in 1956 up to Valley of the Dolls in 1967. Midnight Lace is a bit of an oddity, but it’s an exceptionally interesting oddity that is very much worth checking out. Highly recommended.

Front Page Woman (1935)

Front Page Woman sees Bette Davis and George Brent as rival newspaper reporters who are also sweethearts.

Devlin (Brent) wants to marry Garfield (David) and naturally wants her to quit her job, since being a newspaper reporter is no job for a woman. They make a bet - if he can prove that women are no good as journalists, she’ll marry him. Which of course makes sense - why wouldn’t a woman want to marry a man who has publicly humiliated her and demeaned her and spends most of his time making snide remarks about how stupid women are?

This is 1935, the Production Code is in force, and it’s time for uppity women to be put in their place. And if you need an actor to portray an arrogant sexist pig, who better than George Brent? He made an entire career out of playing obnoxious pigs. Of course Garfield doesn’t really mind being treated like an idiot, because she doesn’t really want to be a reporter. She wants to get married.

If you can sit through 80 minutes of George Brent being insufferable and annoying, you do get to see Davis finally get the upper hand. Sort of. But of course, after he’s systematically sabotaged her career and engaged in every kind of underhanded trick to make her look like a fool, she realises how much she really loves him and how much she wants to marry him.

You also have to endure the unbelievably irritating Roscoe Karns as Devlin’s offsider.

Apart from His Girl Friday I’m not really a fan of newspaper movies, and Front Page Woman did nothing to make me alter my views on the genre. At this stage it’s clear that Warner Brothers still didn’t have any clear idea what to do with Bette Davis, and she’s wasted in this role.

This not a movie I’d particularly recommend. It’s a good example of the less obvious sort of damage done by the Production Code. And it's disappointing because Bette Davis as a feisty woman reporter could have been a real winner in the pre-code days.

The Tarnished Angels (1958)

Douglas Sirk’s 1958 movie The Tarnished Angels was based on a minor novel by William Faulkner.

Alcoholic newspaper reporter Burke Devlin (Rock Hudson) thinks he’s found the ultimate human interest story when a group of barnstorming pilots arrive in New Orleans in the early 1930s for an air show. Devlin sees former First World War air ace Roger Shumann (Robert Stack), his stunt parachutist wife LaVerne (Dorothy Malone), their young son Jack and their faithful mechanic Jiggs (Jack Carson) as modern gypsies.

This could be the story that makes him the great journalist he always believed he could be, but never quite became. He discovers that underneath the glamour of air races and stunt flying there’s absolutely nothing. These people are dead inside. If they ever knew how to be happy it’s something they’ve long since forgotten. There’s a particularly unhealthy romantic triangle going on between Roger, LaVerne and Jiggs, and it’s festering because their way of dealing with emotions is to pretend they’re not there. There are things that all three desperately need to say, but none of them are saying anything at all.

Sirk uses the background of mardi gras in New Orleans subtly but effectively, with masks being used to suggest the alienation and the falseness of the lives of the protagonists. Devlin finds himself drawn to these people even as he’s appalled by them (and presumably appalled also by the parallels to his own life and his own broken dreams).

Rock Hudson is amazingly good as Devlin. He was simply the perfect actor for Sirk’s purposes. Dorothy Malone gives another powerful performance, similar to the one she gave in Sirk’s Written on the Wind – she’s all suppressed hysteria and emotional and sexual frustration. Robert Stack was a terrible actor, but he also found his niche in Sirk’s films and his performance works. Jack Carson is terrifyingly hopeless and helpless as Jiggs, a man whose entire life has amounted to nothing at all.

The black-and-white cinematography is absolutely stunning. Sirk’s movies always looked fabulous but the use of black-and-white instead of the incredibly lush Technicolor palette usually associated with his 1950s output is a surprising but very effective choice here.

Of the various Sirk movies I’ve seen (including Written on the Wind which is generally regarded as his masterpiece and is certainly a magnificent film) this may well be the greatest of all. It’s melodrama, you can see the plot unfolding with a certain degree of inevitability, and the dialogue is gloriously overwrought and overheated. In the hands of a lesser film-maker it could have been a disaster; in Sirk’s hands it’s a masterpiece. A must-see movie.

The Romantic Englishwoman (1975)

Joseph Losey’s 1975 film The Romantic Englishwoman, with a script by Tom Stoppard and Thomas Wiseman, is one of those movies that seems to have disappeared into obscurity. It’s actually a rather interesting film.

Glenda Jackson is Elizabeth, an Englishwoman who feels the need to escape from her marriage for a time. She goes to Baden Baden, makes a very brief acquaintance (nothing even approaching an affair, just a few words exchanged in a lift) with a handsome young man, and returns to her husband. Her husband Lewis (played by Michael Caine) is a writer. He imagines that she has had an affair, and this imagined affair finds its way into the book he is writing. Then, out of the blue, the young German man (played by Helmut Berger) turns up in England. The husband invites him for lunch, and soon the young man is ensconced in the spare room.

It starts as a game, with the husband trying to discover if something really did happen between Elizabeth and the young man. The young man, Thomas, appears to be completely free while Elizabeth and Lewis in their different ways seem to be captives of the lives they lead with the responsibilities and the ties that go with those lives. Elizabeth is tempted by the freedom that Thomas seems to represent, but does she really want freedom? What price would it entail? Would she be prepared to pay that price? And is Thomas really free or is he a captive of his shady past? And can Lewis disentangle truth from fiction, and can he offer Elizabeth enough to keep her? As Thomas says, Englishwomen are the most romantic. They want everything.

Jackson, Caine and Berger are all superb. It’s a rather low-key but engrossing movie with some rather acerbic humour. It’s romantic without a trace of sentimentality. I enjoyed it.

Rome Express (1932)

It’s always been my firm belief that you can’t really go wrong with a suspense movie set on a train. If the train happens to be an old-fashioned one with compartments and it happens to be travelling through several different European countries and there’s a hint of international intrigue in the air, then you have a sure-fire winner. Rome Express is a movie that provides ample confirmation of this theory.

This stylish 1932 British thriller pretty much establishes the formula for all subsequent suspense-on-a-train movies. It mixes mystery with humour, and a dash of romance. It has the requisite assortment of passengers. There’s a movie star, a gang of international art thieves, the obligatory garrulous bore for comic relief and the equally obligatory eccentric old lady. There’s a mild-mannered entomologist who turns out to be something quite different, and a couple of lovebirds heading off for a weekend of adultery in the sun.

The strong cast is headed by Conrad Veidt as an archetypal charming but sinister villain, and very entertaining he is too. Frank Vosper is delightful as M. Jolif, a dapper and deceptively efficient French detective. It will require all his resourcefulness to untangle the complex web of lies told by the various passengers on the Rome Express. Even the law-abiding passengers have their own reasons for being economical with the truth.

The plot involves a stolen painting, and attempts by the thieves to double-cross each other, attempts culminating in murder. Meanwhile two young couples find themselves mixed up in complicated romantic entanglements, while other passengers find themselves re-assessing their lives and hoping for an opportunity to make fresh starts.

The pacing is taut and the tension is ratchetted up by constant cross-cutting. The screenplay is by Sidney Gilliat, who also worked with such luminaries of the British film industry as Alfred Hitchcock (on another illustrious train movie, The Lady Vanishes) and Sir Carol Reed.

This is a movie that looks surprisingly modern, with Walter Forde directing with flair and confidence, and coming up with some nifty camera angles. A very entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable movie. Highly recommended.

Inside Daisy Clover (1965)

Inside Daisy Clover, directed by Robert Mulligan, follows the adventures of a teenage girl from Angel Beach, California, as she becomes Hollywood’s newest singing star. It’s set in the 1930s but this is a 1960s vision of the 1930s. Daisy’s costumes are like a Carnaby Street re-imagining of 30s fashions. Oddly enough, the blending of 1930s and 1960s sensibilities works quite well once you get used to it.

Natalie Wood was much too old to play the teenage starlet Daisy Clover. She just about gets away with it, although she’s perhaps just a touch too knowing and too sophisticated to really be convincing. Christopher Plummer is a charming but ruthless producer who makes Daisy a star, and Robert Redford is a handsome young star who falls for Daisy – a match made in heaven, if only Daisy had been a boy rather than a girl.

The things that make Inside Daisy Clover a failure are actually the things that make it a rather interesting failure. Made in 1965, it’s not quite sure if it wants to be a Hollywood movie or a European art film. There are moments that are almost surreal, but they’re not pushed far enough to make it a Hollywood version of 8½, but the narrative is too loose to really make it work as a conventional Hollywood product. There are several sub-plots, but no real main plot, and the sub-plots don’t really go anywhere.

The relationship between Mrs Clover (Ruth Gordon) and Daisy is interesting but undeveloped. We get the feeling that there’s an interesting story behind Baines (Roddy McDowell), the enigmatic assistant of the big-time producer, but we never find out what that story is.

Nonetheless it’s a fascinating movie and as an expose of the emptiness behind the glitter, the cynicism behind the façade of the Dream Factory, it works quite well.

The early to mid 60s is a very underrated period of Hollywood history and this is a fine example of the kinds of quirky movies that were made at that time.

It would make a good double-feature with Vincente Minnelli's similarly underrated (and equally cynical) 1960 movie about movie-making, Two Weeks in Another Town.

I caught up with this one on TCM. Both the Region 1 and Region2 DVDs are unfortunately out of print, but it's still available on DVD as part of a Natalie Wood boxed set.