Saint Jack (1979)

Peter Bogdanovich’s Saint Jack, based on Paul Theroux’s novel, came out in 1979. Because of Bogdanovich’s insistence on having Ben Gazzara play the lead role rather than a big name star major studios wouldn’t touch the movie (they wanted Paul Newman) so it ended up being made by New World Pictures with Roger Corman himself producing.

My reaction to this movie is very similar to my reaction to Bogdanovich’s earlier The Last Picture Show (1971). I can see what Bogdanovich is trying to do and I think he succeeds in doing it, but I’m just not necessarily particularly interested in the result.

This is a deep dive into squalor, moral corruption and nihilism.

Jack Flowers (Gazzara) is an American expatriate in Singapore in 1973. He runs a whorehouse but he wants his own whorehouse. This gets him into a lot of trouble. He befriends a seedy English expatriate, William Leigh (Denholm Elliott).

Jack has a girlfriend but she no plays no part whatsoever in the story.

Jack falls foul of gangsters. He then goes into business with the smooth but creepy Eddie Schuman (played by Bogdanovich himself). It’s never explicitly stated but we assume Eddie is CIA. He’s certainly involved in the kinds of sleazy illegal immoral activities we would expect from a CIA agent.

Jack gets to manage a huge brothel for the CIA and is persuaded to engage in some political blackmail.

Not much really happens. It’s that kind of movie.

There are really only two characters with even the slightest amount of depth, Jack and William.

We get no backstory at all on any of the characters. For me that’s one of the movie’s biggest strengths. I prefer movies in which a character’s personality is slowly revealed through their actions, rather than having it explained to the viewer.

In this case we learn almost nothing about Jack except that he’s a loser drifting through life. I can see why Bogdanovich wanted Gazzara rather than Paul Newman. Gazzara has zero charisma, which suited Bogdanovich’s purposes.

At the end we get a hint that Jack is a loser but he isn’t a louse, but then we knew that from the beginning from the fact that he treats his whores kindly and is as honest as you can be while being a criminal.

Denholm Elliott is always fun to watch but William remains an enigma.

I assume that that was Bogdanovich’s intention. Jack and William are both empty shells.

There is perhaps a very slight Graham Greene flavour - European expatriates slowly subsiding into moral corruption and despair.

On the audio commentary Bogdanovich tells us that most of the smaller roles were played by non-actors and much of the dialogue was improvised. I have never understood why some directors like doing this. You usually end up with a movie that is rather flat, and that’s the case here. Since the movie is also too long the whole thing drags quite badly in places. It lacks energy. But then that might have been the director’s intention - to emphasise the hopelessness and emptiness.

Singapore in this movie is a city of the damned. A city of degradation and violence, a city of whores, gangsters and corrupt cops. All of the European expatriates know they should go home but perhaps they can’t because they know they serve their damnation.

Is there a chance that Jack might have a chance of achieving redemption? You’ll have to watch the movie to find out.

The Vietnam War plays a background role, with American servicemen on rest and recreation leave heading straight for the brothels. It’s as if the East is corrupting the West at the same time as the West is corrupting the East. The only thing that could make things worse would be for the CIA to show up, which they do.

I didn’t exactly enjoy this movie but there are plenty of interesting aspects to it. It’s an odd emotionally distanced movie.

It was a box office flop. Bogdanovich made these odd movies that as his career progressed seemed increasingly to alienate both audiences and critics. He didn’t quite fit comfortably into the New American Cinema mould. Most directors of that period would have succumbed to the temptation to insert a crude political message into Saint Jack but Bogdanovich is more interested in social alienation than politics. He wasn’t predictable enough. After Paper Moon he had a whole string of flops, including Daisy Miller which I personally think is a superb movie.

Despite its flaws and quirks Saint Jack is worth seeing. Recommended.

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)

I saw the 1946 Hal Wallis production The Strange Love of Martha Ivers many years ago but remember absolutely nothing about it so seeing it now on Blu-Ray it’s all new to me.

The setting is a small town, Iverstown. We begin with a prologue. It is 1928. Young Martha Ivers is a poor little rich girl living with her sadistic tyrannical aunt. The aunt’s lawyer O’Neil is hoping for a share of the riches to send his bookish timid son Walter to Harvard.

Martha has run away yet again, aided by abetted by young Sam Masterson who shares Martha’s desire for freedom and adventure. Once again Martha gets caught. Then tragedy strikes but maybe it’s good luck for Martha and for the weaselly Walter.

Twenty years later Sam Masterson (Van Heflin) just happens to suffer car troubles and ends up back in Iverstown. He hasn’t seen the place since 1928.

Sam meets an interesting blonde, Toni Marachek (Lizabeth Scott). It’s a pickup, of a sort. Toni has a bus to catch but now that she’s met Sam the bus doesn’t interest her. She wonders if he would object to having a passenger when his car is repaired and he leaves Iverstown. When Lizabeth Scott makes a suggestion like that you don’t say no.

Toni is fascinating, vulnerable, troubled, lonely and desperate. The kind of gal you just know is going to lead you into a whole world of trouble but Sam doesn’t care. He doesn’t even care when she tells him she’s just been released from prison.

Martha now owns and controls Iverstown and she owns and controls Walter (Kirk Douglas). Walter is now the DA but he takes his orders from Martha.

Walter seems much too worried about Sam’s reappearance. Sam finds this puzzling.

Sam, Toni, Martha and Walter are soon caught in an intricate web of jealousy, suspicion, betrayal, guilt and fear. Fear of the past. In their own ways they’re all haunted by the past. It’s also a web of misunderstandings. None of then know as much as the others fear they do.

There are plot twists but it’s the character twists that are most interesting.

These are complicated people with tangled motivations which they themselves don’t fully understand. They’re unpredictable because they themselves have no idea what they’re going to do next.

These are people who might be evil, or mad, or weak, or deluded or just selfish. There are no straightforward heroes or heroines but also no straightforward villains or villainesses.

It’s interesting to see Kirk Douglas playing a weak, cowardly failure of a man. He’s dangerous in the way that cowards are always dangerous.

Van Heflin gives a nicely nuanced performance.

Lizabeth Scott is excellent. Barbara Stanwyck is at the top of her game. You figure one of these two will be the femme fatale, but which one?

This film is at best marginally film noir. It lacks the noir aesthetic. It’s more of a cruelly twisted melodrama than a noir. It does have some noir touches however so if you want to consider it film noir you can.

Either way The Strange Love of Martha Ivers is an extremely good extremely interesting movie.

It’s on Blu-Ray from Kino Lorber.

Death Trap (1962)

Death Trap is a competent 1962 entry in the British Merton Park Studios Edgar Wallace cycle.

Paul Heindrik (Albert Lieven) is a ruthless but successful middle-aged investment banker. His feckless stepson Derek (Kenneth Cope) is in over his head financially and is desperately trying to persuade his stepfather to bail him out, but so far it’s no dice.

Paul’s Jean Anscomb (Barbara Shelley) has been listening in on Paul’s conversations and going through his briefcase.

Her disreputable friend Ross Williams (John Meillon) is just out of prison where he’d been sent after embezzling clients’ money from Paul’s firm. Maybe he was set up and maybe he wasn’t but he has convinced himself that Paul owes him. He is about to spot an opportunity for blackmail.

A woman, Carol Halston (Mercy Haystead), turns up at Paul’s office. A few weeks earlier her sister Moira died of an overdose of sleeping pills. The inquest brought in a finding of accidental death. Carol isn’t entirely convinced. The day before she died Moira withdrew seven thousand pounds from her bank. No trace of the money can be found, although several of the characters have come up with definite theories.

So we have a bunch of people who are all ethically challenged to some degree. Some might be involved in serious crimes. Some may simply be a bit foolish.

And then a man is deliberately run down by a car. He is linked to Paul Heindrik and to these other characters. That makes two sudden deaths. One is definitely murder, the other might possibly be.

The viewer knows more than the police but there’s a lot of important stuff that we don’t know, and the motives remain a mystery.

This movie does a fine job of keeping us guessing about the characters. We know that one of them is a criminal but we honestly don’t know about any of the others. Their behaviour might invite suspicion but they might be innocent.

There’s some decent suspense. There’s a killer who is highly likely to kill again and a character we have come to be fond of is in very real danger.

Detective Inspector Simons (Leslie Sands) is one of those thorough coppers who doesn’t take anything at face value and he’s very quick when it comes to spotting connections.

Merton Park Studios never had any problems assembling very competent casts for these movies. It’s Barbara Shelley, looking rather glamorous, who delivers the star power. All the cast members deliver suitably ambiguous performances.

Look out for a young Barbara Windsor in a small role, looking cute wearing nothing but a towel!

Director John Llewellyn Moxey had a prolific career in both British and American TV and helmed several of these Edgar Wallace B-films including the very good Face of a Stranger (1964), Downfall (1964) and the excellent Ricochet (1963). He was a very competent artisan.

John Riddick wrote the well-constructed script for Death Trap as well as scripting others of the Wallace films including The Partner (1963), The Double (1963) and the very fine The Rivals (1963).

Death Trap is included in Network’s Edgar Wallace Mysteries Volume Four DVD set. It gets a very nice transfer.

Death Trap is well-crafted and enjoyable. Highly recommended.

Street of Women (1932)

Street of Women is a 1932 Warner Brothers pre-code melodrama directed by the prolific Archie Mayo.

The subject is marital infidelity and of course the great thing about pre-code movies is that you never know just how stories like this will play out.

Larry Baldwin (Alan Dinehart) is a tycoon who is building the world’s tallest building. In the past three years he has suddenly become immensely successful. They do say that behind every great man there’s a great woman. That’s true here. Except that the woman in this case is not Larry’s wife but his mistress.

His marriage to Lois (Marjorie Gateson) is an empty shell and has been for years.

His mistress is successful dress designer Natalie Upton (Kay Francis). She is his inspiration. They are madly in love. They have been having an affair for three years and this being a pre-code movie it leaves no doubt that they have been sleeping together.

Natalie’s kid brother Clarke (Allen Vincent) has been studying in Paris for three years. Now he’s back and that’s going to lead to a domestic cataclysm. Clarke is very very conventional. He is shocked and enraged at his sister’s illicit relationship.

There’s another complication. Clarke wants to marry Larry’s daughter Doris (Gloria Stuart ).

Larry thinks Doris will understand. She has always claimed to be a modern girl who does not believe in all that stuffy old-fashioned traditional morality stuff.

Unfortunately it turns out that Doris and Clarke are actually fanatical believers in the rigid enforcement of traditional morality.

Things are going to get messy.

Despite wishful thinking on the part of many modern critics and cinephiles pre-code movies by and large did not reject traditional morality. They were not trying to subvert that morality. They were not trying to subvert anything. What you do find in pre-code movies is the suggestion that maybe traditional morality doesn’t need to be rigidly and mercilessly enforced and that maybe moral lapses can be forgiven. That’s what differentiates pre-code movies from post-code movies. Once the Production Code started to be enforced there could be no suggestion that moral lapses could be forgiven. Such lapses had to be ruthlessly punished.

Pre-code movies are unpredictable and exciting because you just don’t know which way they will jump. A story such as this could end happily for Larry and Natalie or it could end in disaster for them. It could end in disaster for everyone.

All the performances are solid but Kay Francis is of course the standout performer. She was one of the great pre-code stars and this role is right in her wheelhouse.

Director Archie Mayo made some notable pre-code movies including the superb Svengali (1931). Under Eighteen and Illicit are also very much worth seeing. It was one those reliable journeyman directors for whom I have a lot of respect.

The characters have some depth and there’s plenty of moral complexity. Natalie and Larry realise that the revelation of their affair has hurt Doris and Clarke and they feel bad about that but at the same time they do not believe they have done anything wrong. All they did was to fall in love. Doris and Clarke are savagely judgmental but at the same time we can make allowances for them because they are very young. They’re not capable of understanding that Natalie and Larry need each other desperately.

This is a good romantic melodrama and it’s very pre-code and it’s highly recommended especially if you’re a Kay Francis fan.

The Warner Archive DVD looks very good.

The Man from Utah (1934)

The Man from Utah is a 1934 western B-movie made by Lone Star Productions and it’s one of the many B-westerns John Wayne made in the 30s.

Somehow or other the music track for this movie was lost at some stage and eventually a somewhat unsatisfactory modern music track was added. Fortunately the original dialogue track survived.

When we’re first introduced to John Weston (John Wayne) we think this is going to be a singing cowboy movie but it isn’t.

John Weston arrives in a little town in the West looking for work. When he almost single-handedly foils a bank robbery the crusty but good-natured Marshal Higgins decides he’s found the man he needs to take on a gang that uses a rodeo in the neighbouring town of Dalton as a front for its criminal activities including a series of robberies.

Weston is deputised. He will be undercover, posing as an entrant in the rodeo. It could be dangerous. There have been several mysterious deaths at the rodeo - men who fell foul of the gang. Marshal Higgins can’t prove that these were murders but he has no doubt that they were.

Weston is going to have romance problems as well. He falls for Marjorie Carter (Polly Ann Young), daughter of Dalton’s leading citizen but he has to play up to sexpot Dolores (Anita Campillo). Dolores is mixed up with the gang and she could provide a way for him to ingratiate himself with the gang.

The leader of the gang is Spike Barton (Edward Peil). He has his suspicions of Weston. Weston has some ideas about how the gang uses the rodeo as a cover for its robberies. He also thinks he’s figured out how the murders were carried out.

So it’s going to be a cat-and-mouse game between these two.

A major advantage that B-movies (especially crime thrillers, spy trillers and westerns) enjoyed was that the running times were so short. This one clocks in at just 51 minutes. You didn’t have to think about the pacing. It had to be brisk. There was no choice. This movie moves along very quickly indeed.

There’s lots of rodeo action. It’s all stock footage of course but it’s integrated into the movie pretty well.

There’s lots of action. Of all kinds - shoot-out, fistfights and daring trick riding.

The Big Trail (1930) was an ambitious epic western that was expected to make John Wayne a star but it didn’t happen. The movie flopped. This turned out to be, perversely, a lucky break for Wayne. He wasn’t ready for stardom then, the John Wayne persona was not yet fully formed and he did not yet have the necessary star quality. He spent almost a decade in the B-movie ghetto but when he did finally get his big break, in Stagecoach in 1939, he was ready. He’d gained a vast amount of experience, his trademark persona was now fully developed and the characteristic John Wayne star quality was there in abundance. After that his career never looked back.

In The Man from Utah you can see the process half-completed. He’s starting to get that easy good-humoured confidence that was such an essential part of John Wayne the star.

This movie boasts a perfectly serviceable plot and while it’s obviously not one of the great westerns there’s a lot for fans of the genre to enjoy. If you’re a fan of Duke Wayne, even better.

The Man from Utah is a fun little movie and it’s highly recommended.

My copy is on an ancient long out-of-print Payless double-feature DVD (it’s paired with a Roy Rogers movie) but the transfer is quite acceptable.

An American in Paris (1951)

MGM’s 1951 Technicolor extravaganza An American in Paris is generally acknowledged as a landmark in the history of the movie musical. I saw it years ago and it really didn’t work for me. It seemed to be trying too hard to be clever, trying too hard to be arty and just generally trying too hard. But that was years ago, my tastes have changed and it’s time for another look at this movie.

It won six Oscars but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad movie.

There’s certainly some serious talent involved. Gene Kelly doing the choreography. Vincente Minnelli, one of the great directors of musicals, in the director’s chair. John Alton doing the cinematography (or at least the cinematography for the sequence for which the film is remembered). Songs by George and Ira Gershwin. Costumes by Orry-Kelly. These are creative Big Guns.

Jerry Mulligan (Gene Kelly) is a very unsuccessful American painter living in Paris. He finally sells two paintings, to wealthy widow Milo Roberts (Nina Foch). She decides she’s going to turn him into a successful painter. She has the money and the connections to do that. Jerry figures out that it’s going to be not so much a patron-artist relationship as a wealthy woman-gigolo relationship. He doesn’t like that idea.

On the other hand he’d like to become a rich successful artist. He agrees to an arrangement. At this point I think you have to do a bit of reading between the lines. This was the era of the Production Code. We’re asked to accept that nothing is actually going on between Jerry and Milo and that he’s not a kept man. But if this is the case then the plot makes no sense and Jerry’s behaviour makes no sense. Milo is not the kind of woman who would spend a fortune boosting the career of an unknown painter without demanding something in return. And Jerry behaves as if he despises himself for being in effect a male whore. It seems to me that this would have given the plot an actual point but since the movie was afraid to go there the movie ends up without an actual plot.

In the meantime Jerry has met cute French teenager Lise Bouvier (Leslie Caron). They fall in love but she is engaged to marry crooner Henri Baurel (Georges Guétary). The usual romantic dramas will follow.

I’ve never been a Gene Kelly fan. He’s OK here. Jerry Mulligan is somewhat tortured for a lead character in a musical.

Leslie Caron has the right gamine look but I found her to be very insipid.

I still think it’s trying too hard to be clever and arty. I do now appreciate the way in which Minnelli and Kelly were trying to reinvent the movie musical. And I do appreciate the aesthetic. It looks so gloriously artificial. What I love in that there is some location shooting done in Paris but the whole movie still looks uncompromisingly artificial. I adore the way colour is used.

And then of course we get the very long fantasy ballet sequence on which the movie’s fame is largely based. Earlier we got a brief fantasy sequences in which musician Adam Cook (Oscar Levant) is transported into the world of his music. Now we get painter Jerry transported into the world of his paintings. It’s a visually dazzling sequence and it’s impossible not to admire its boldness.

But I just couldn’t get invested in the lead characters. The triangle between Henri, Jerry and Lise is uninteresting because Henri hardly exists as a character. The Jerry-Milo-Lise triangle could have been much more intriguing but because the movie doesn’t dare to suggest that there actually is a Jerry-Milo relationship the potential is never exploited. So the movie ends up having no actual romantic plot at all.

So the movie relies entirely on those two fantasy sequences. But their impact is lost because the characters are so undeveloped. The earlier sequence has more punch because Adam is trying to deal with the fact that as a musician he’s a failure. The later sequence should have been Jerry dealing with his struggle to become a real artist and to reconcile his art and his emotional life but the fact that Jerry is a painter is a plot point that is never really developed. Is he actually a talented painter or a talentless hack? We never find out. Could he become a real success an artist? We never find out. So that ballet sequence is just technical virtuosity for its own sake.

Vincente Minnelli was a superb director of melodrama but no matter how good a director might be it helps to have an actual script. What Alan Jay Lerner gives him seems more like a first draft of a screenplay. In fact it seems more like a few ideas jotted down on a notepad.

Visually this movie dazzles. But I found myself not caring what happened to any of the characters which meant I ended up not caring much about the movie. Recommended, solely for the visuals.

Night Court (1932)

Night Court (later re-released as Justice for Sale) is a very hard-edged 1932 MGM pre-code crime thriller.

Judge Andrew J. Moffett (Walter Huston) is a night court judge and he’s as crooked as they come. He’s also cruel and vindictive.

He has a mistress, Lil Baker (Noel Baker), whom he has set up in a luxury Park Avenue apartment.

Now there’s going to be an investigation into crooked judges, headed by Judge William Osgood (Lewis Stone) who is something of a rarity - a judge who is not on the take.

Moffett will have to try to destroy as much evidence as possible and he will also have to hide his mistress away somewhere. He can’t afford to allow Osgood to talk to her. She knows way too much of an incriminating nature.

Lil is hiding out in a rooming house. Next door is a young couple with a baby. The wife is a good-natured ditzy blonde, Mary Thomas (Anita Page). Quite by accident Mary happens to see a piece of damning evidence. Moffett plans to deal with Mary by framing her on a nonsensical charge of prostitution but he’ll have to move fast. He’s under surveillance.

Mary’s husband Mike (Phillips Holmes) figures out that Mary was framed and he’s out for revenge but he doesn’t realise just how powerful Moffett is. And while Osgood is working to close the net on Moffett he may have underestimated Moffett’s ruthlessness.

While the ending is a little contrived it is rather cool and very effective with a very nifty surprise witness scene.

This is Walter Huston at his nasty best, a fine portrait of evil and arrogance. Walter Huston was absolutely on fire in the pre-code era, delivering one extraordinary performance after another.

Anita Page and Noel Baker are both quite good. Phillips Holmes overacts but he’s playing man under such extreme pressure that this approach actually works.

This is a very pre-code movie. Once the Production Code came in any mention of the truth about crooked judges, corrupt cops and government corruption was pretty much forbidden. This movie makes it clear that the entire system was corrupt from top to bottom, that it wasn’t just a case of one bad apple.

It’s not just the corruption. The movie takes aim at the way vicious stupid cops target the powerless. The Production Code would never have permitted the criminal justice system to be depicted as it really was, a system that provided justice only for those with money.

It’s also crystal clear that Lil is a kept woman. And there are plenty of quite open mentions of prostitution.

This has some of the feel of pre-code gangster movies but in this case the gangsters are judges, lawyers and court officials. There is also perhaps a slight proto-noir vibe with a young couple hopelessly enmeshed in a web of evil from which there seems no escape.

Put it this way, if you enjoy film noir or early 30s gangster movies you will almost certainly enjoy Night Court. If you’re a pre-code fan as well you’ll love it.

It’s fascinating to me that in the early 30s MGM made some incredibly tough movies (and Night Court is very tough indeed). One that comes to mind is another Walter Huston film, the hard-as-nails The Beast of the City (1932). And they made some seriously wild and sleazy movies, such as Kongo (1932) which starred, yes you guessed it, Walter Huston.

The Warner Archive DVD is obviously an unrestored print but it’s quite acceptable.

Night Court packs a wallop. Very highly recommended.

Other Walter Huston movies made in this same year that showcase his ability to set the screen on fire are Rain and Law and Order (one of the greatest westerns ever made).