The Yakuza (1974)

The 70s was a great decade for Robert Mitchum. The Yakuza in 1974 started a run of notable roles.

It begins with Harry Kilmer (Mitchum) doing a favour for his old pal George Tanner (Brian Keith). He has no choice. Due to something that happened years earlier Kilmer owes Tanner a major favour. Tanner is involved in a business deal with a big-time yakuza named Tono. The deal went wrong and Tono is holding Tanner’s daughter for ransom. Kilmer has to go to Tokyo to rescue her. Tanner sends his bodyguard Dusty (Richard Jordan) along to help.

Kilmer is an ex-cop and and ex-private eye. He’s a fairly tough hombre.

Kilmer is owed a favour by ex-yakuza Ken Tanaka (Ken Tanaka). He agrees to help Kilmer.

The fairly complex plot is not what matters. What matters is the web of obligations that develops. Every action taken by any character seems to involve another obligation.

The yakuza have a code of honour that is as rigid as that of the samurai. Debts must be paid. Obligations cannot be ignored or evaded.

Kilmer is an old-fashioned guy who also believes in honouring debts. Kilmer understands Japan pretty well, having lived there for quite a few years. But he doesn’t understand Japan completely and he doesn’t understand yakuza culture completely.

The fact that several Americans are involved complicates things. There’s Kilmer, there’s Tanner, there’s Dusty and there’s Kilmer’s old friend Oliver (Herb Edelman). Americans don’t necessarily adhere to a code of honour, much less a rigid code like the yakuza code. Kilmer does, but other Americans might not.

Paul Schrader wrote the original screenplay with his brother Leonard. This movie had a troubled production history. Robert Aldrich was the initial choice to direct. Mercifully that didn’t happen. Then Sydney Pollack was brought on board. He was an odd choice for the material. He liked a lot of things about Paul Schrader’s script but Schrader had conceived it as very much a yakuza film and Pollack wanted to focus more on the ideas about obligations and on the culture crash. Robert Towne was brought in to work on the script. In retrospect Sam Peckinpah might perhaps have been a more obvious choice as director.

The Yakuza was a box-office disaster. I suspect that this was partly because in 1974 a yakuza movie would have been very unfamiliar territory for American audiences and critics.

Another problem was undoubtedly the fact that apart from Kilmer the other key characters - Tanaka Ken, his brother Goro and Eko - are uncompromisingly Japanese. Their motivations would have been perplexing and alienating to American viewers. They might have been inclined to judge a woman harshly for putting family duty ahead of love. And would certainly have been puzzled by the fact that Tanaka Ken hates Kilmer but will unhesitatingly risk his life to help him. There is a debt of obligation involved, and that overrides everything. To men like Tanaka Ken a debt must be repaid whatever the cost. And there are no moral shortcuts. If you do someone an injury it’s no good just saying you’re sorry. You can atone, but there’s a price to be paid.

And the movie is not tempted to Americanise these characters, or to soften them or to make them more sympathetic to an American audience. You just have to accept that they see things differently.

Audiences expecting an American-style gangster movie would have been bewildered.

There’s a lot of action and a lot of violence but again it’s not done in classical Hollywood style. The action scenes are more like those you’ll find in a samurai movie. There’s an enormous amount of sword-fighting. In the 1970s a yakuza would still settle a score with a sword rather than a gun.

Mitchum is excellent. Kilmer is an honourable man but now he will have to be satisfy Japanese notions of honour. This is typical 70s Mitchum - he’s world-weary and battered but he will not admit defeat.

The Yakuza has a flavour of its own. It has its problems but it’s fascinating and gripping and it’s highly recommended.

The Warner Archive Blu-Ray looks great and includes a director’s commentary track.

American Gigolo (1980)

American Gigolo was written and directed by Paul Schrader and it propelled Richard Gere into the top tier of Hollywood movie stars.

This movie dates from a fascinating transitional period for Hollywood at the tail end of the 1970s, along with movies such as The Eyes of Laura Mars. Hollywood was about to say farewell to the grimy gritty miserable politically obsessed 70s and embrace 80s glamour and decadence. Personally I think it was a change for the better.

The emergence of Richard Gere also paved the way for a new breed of 80s male movie star such as Tom Cruise and, later in the decade, James Spader. Gere was certainly a breath of fresh air after the excessively mannered and contrived performances of 70s stars like de Niro, Pacino, Nicholson and Hoffman.

While the title describes Julian, the protagonist played by Richard Gere, as a gigolo he is in fact a prostitute. A male equivalent of a call-girl. He only services female clients.

He doesn’t try to pretend to himself that he’s not a whore. He talks about turning tricks. He doesn’t feel guilty about it. He just accepts it. He takes pride in his work. It’s not just about being good in bed. He’s charming and amusing and cultured.

Then he meets Michelle (Lauren Hutton). She’s not a client, and yet she is. Of a sort. She’s prepared to pay him for sex. Just as female prostitutes learn a lot about what makes men tick so a male prostitute inevitably learns a lot about what makes women tick. And Julian actually likes women. He knows that Michelle wants more than a roll in the hay. And maybe he starts to want more than that too. Falling for a client is of course not recommended.

And he knows that she’s married.

And then he turns a trick in Palm Springs and it gets a bit kinky. Handcuffs and that sort of thing. That’s not Julian’s scene.

And then there’s a murder. Julian doesn’t see how he could possibly be a serious suspect and he has the crazy idea that if you’re innocent you’ll be OK. Unless someone is trying to frame you. Someone smart and ruthless.

This is definitely a neo-noir of sorts. Julian isn’t quite a classic noir protagonist. He isn’t tempted into crime by some personal flaw. He’s basically a decent guy, and apart from his mode of earning a living he’s totally law-abiding. He isn’t greedy. He likes money but he likes to earn it ethically. He’s drawn into a noir nightmare mostly by being in the wrong place at the wrong time and by the fact that without knowing what is happening he’s hopelessly out of his depth.

And the paranoia level starts to head into the extreme zone.

Michelle is not a femme fatale, except in the sense that getting involved with a woman with a very powerful husband can be hazardous and maybe she’ll drag him down without wanting to. Maybe she’s trapped in some ways as well.

Visually and stylistically this movie has serious neo-noir vibes. To a large extent it established the visual template for 80s/90s neo-noir and erotic thrillers. It’s a great-looking movie. The whole look and feel and tone of this movie marks a break with the 70s.

There’s a slight European flavour. And maybe a dash of artiness, but not in a bad way.

It has a cool detached style. It’s rather minimalist. I love the fact that we get no backstory for Julian. We don’t know a thing about his past. Schrader is confident that we will learn all we need to know about him by seeing the way he behaves now, and he’s confident that Gere is good enough to reveal Julian’s personality without needing to tell us how he feels through dialogue. And Gere is good enough.

Richard Gere is excellent. He’s not immoral but maybe he’s a little amoral. He’s rich but his occupation makes him an outsider. He doesn’t want to undermine society’s moral fabric. He’d just like society to leave him alone.

It’s a movie that avoids politics. It also avoids moralising. Julian does not consider that he is doing anything wrong. Some laws are just stupid and unnecessary.

This movie reminds me a lot of Klute. Both Bree in Klute and Julian in American Gigolo are very good prostitutes because they enjoy giving the client a genuinely satisfying experience. When Bree finds a man who offers her his love she is bewildered and hostile. When Julian finds a woman who offers him her love he has no idea how to handle the situation.

An intelligent slow-burn very stylish neo-noir. Very highly recommended. It would make a fine double bill with The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978).

The Criterion Blu-Ray looks good and includes a stack of extras.

The Running Man (1963)

The Running Man is a 1963 Carol Reed crime thriller and it’s a somewhat overlooked entry in his filmography. This is what I call a “little movie” - it’s rather low-key, it’s not overly ambitious and it’s essentially just an entertainment. But with a script by John Mortimer and Carol Reed in the director’s chair it’s quite a clever and nuanced little entertainment.

It opens with pretty American Stella Black (Lee Remick) grief-stricken at the memorial service for her husband Rex. A keen aviator, he was killed when his glider crashed into the sea. His body was never found. So why does Stella give that odd little smile when nobody is looking?

We soon find out the reason, when Rex (Laurence Harvey) walks in the door.

Rex and Stella are pulling an insurance fraud.

Stella is asked quite a few questions by insurance investigator Stephen Maddox (Alan Bates) but it’s obvious that he’s quite satisfied with her answers.

Obviously they will have to abroad. Rex is after all supposed to be dead. Once they have the insurance money they will meet up in Spain, in Malaga.

In Malaga Rex manages to get hold of a passport belonging to rich Australian sheep farmer Jim Jerome (John Meillon). He steals his identity. It crosses Rex’s mind that if Jim Jerome were to die suddenly Rex and Stella could pocket another nice little insurance payout.

There is trouble in paradise. Stella and Rex had been madly in love. Now Stella is not sure this is still the man she loved. He has changed. He seems colder, with a touch of cruelty. Perhaps it isn’t possible to remain the same person once you become a criminal.

And then Stephen Maddox turns up in Malaga.

Of course Rex and Stella know that he must be on to them. Rex decides that they need to get pally with him. To find out how much he knows. Stephen gives every indication that he is falling for Stella. He of course thinks she’s a widow. He has never seen Rex so he accepts him as Jim Jerome.

Now things start to get a bit twisty. Is Stephen really sweet on Stella? Is she sweet on him? He’s a very nice guy and he isn’t irritable and cruel the way Rex is these days.

The twists get more interesting with some lovely little ironic touches. Mortimer’s screenplay is nicely plotted.

I like Laurence Harvey a lot and he manages the subtle changes in Rex's behaviour pretty well. But his (mercifully brief) attempt at an Australian accent is excruciating!

Alan Bates is excellent as the shy very diffident but very likeable Stephen. You can see why Stella might be attracted to him. Rex is exciting and glamorous but Stella isn’t sure she wants any more excitement. Stephen is gentle without being boring.

Lee Remick gives her usual fine performance. She conveys Stella’s conflicted emotions and sense of guilt skilfully and subtly.

The scene between Stella and Stephen in his hotel room is a fine example. What exactly is she feeling? Perhaps she isn’t sure herself.

Perhaps The Running Man’s problem is that it looks very conventional but it’s filled with subtle ambiguities (not necessarily resolved) and ironies. It’s a very pretty film but it’s cleverer than it looks and it’s not as cheerful and lighthearted as it looks.

Rex is a bit of a villain, but he isn’t really evil. He’s reckless and irresponsible and the whole saga began as a result of his own carelessness (which resulted in an earlier quite legitimate insurance claim being rejected), and his inability to take responsibility for his own mistake. Stella’s emotions are complicated.

The Running Man is highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed lots of Carol Reed’s movies - The Fallen Idol (1948), Our Man in Havana (1959), Girl in the News (1940), Trapeze (1956), The Man Between (1953).

Private Detective 62 (1933)

Private Detective 62 (1933) is one of four movies in the Warner Archive DVD set William Powell at Warner Bros. Pre-code William Powell is always fun.

There’s a very odd prologue. Donald Free (Powell) is an American diplomat who has just been deported from France. It’s fairly obvious he was no diplomat but an American intelligence agent and the French not unreasonably took exception to his espionage activities. But we don’t find out exactly what he was up to and this entire angle has no connection to the rest of the movie.

Donald ends up having to swim ashore in New York but his problems have just begin. The Depression is in full swing. He can’t find a job and he’s flat broke. Finally he talks his way into a partnership with private eye Dan Hogan (Arthur Hohl). Hogan isn’t just down-at-heel, he’s pretty much down-and-out.

He hasn’t had a client for so long that he’s even more broke than Donald. But while Hogan is lazy and incompetent Donald is a live wire and the agency is soon back on its feet.

Unfortunately Hogan is also dishonest and while his connection with racketeer and gambling club owner Tony Bandor (Gordon Westcott) brings in lots of business Donald is increasingly uncomfortable with the increasingly ethically dubious nature of the agency’s jobs. He doesn’t like frame-ups and blackmail.

Tony has a very big problem. Janet Reynolds (Margaret Lindsay) has won huge amounts of money at his gambling joint. Tony can’t pay her what he owes her. Donald’s job is to frame her so that she can be blackmailed into not pursuing Tony for the money.

Donald falls for Janet straight away. She’s young and beautiful but he’s also attracted to her devil-may-care attitude and sense of fun. She gambles for the kicks, not the money.

The frame-up leads to an unexpected consequence and a possible murder rap.

That’s the plot and it’s a bit thin but quite serviceable. It would have been cool had the spy angle been developed a bit.

The movie’s biggest asset is of course William Powell. Donald is no Boy Scout but he has his limits and he’s reaching the point where he’s going to be totally morally corrupted if he’s not careful. Powell gets this across effectively. He’s always charming but I particularly like him when he’s charming and just a tad ethically challenged.

Margaret Lindsay is pretty good. There’s not quite enough chemistry between the two leads.

Ruth Donnelly is fun as Hogan’s disapproving secretary Amy Moran. Arthur Hohl as Dan Hogan is a sleazeball and a weasel and he’s terrific.

Michael Curtiz once again demonstrates his ability to make good movies in any genre.

A major plus is the 66-minute running time which means there’s no fat at all to this story. It zips along very smoothly.

How pre-code is it? There are lots of drug references. It’s very upfront about the sleazy nature of private detective work. There’s no suggestion that gambling is immoral, as long as you don’t welch on your debts.

The private eye genre was still in its infancy and this movie is only marginally hardboiled. It’s a setup that would, a decade later, have made for a decent film noir.

Private Detective 62 is lightweight but enjoyable and William Powell is just so watchable. Recommended.

Private Detective 62 gets a perfectly acceptable transfer.

I’ve reviewed other movies in this set - The Road to Singapore and the excellent High Pressure.

Forever Amber (1947)

Forever Amber is a glossy Technicolor 20th Century-Fox swashbuckling historical adventure romance directed by Otto Preminger (who was brought in to replace the original director John M. Stahl).

It was based on Kathleen Winsor’s steamy and scandalous 1944 novel of the same name which had attracted a firestorm of controversy and was banned for obscenity in many U.S. states. The Production Code Authority initially made it clear that they would not in any circumstances countenance a film adaptation. But they later relented. This was a fascinating period in Hollywood history, with growing pressure from the studios for a relaxation of the Production Code and a willingness by the Production Code Authority to compromise just a little.

Obviously the story had to be sanitised considerably but it does get away with quite a bit. It is made absolutely crystal clear that the heroine’s relationships with a series of men are sexual relationships.

The Catholic Legion of Decency condemned the movie on its release which helped to make Forever Amber a gigantic hit which broke box-office records.

The setting is England just after the Stuart Restoration in 1660. Bruce Carlton (Cornel Wilde) is seeking financial support from King Charles II for a privateering expedition. The King has reasons of his own for wanting Bruce to be far far away. The king fears that his latest mistress may be a bit too fond of the handsome Bruce.

On his way to London, at a little village named Marygreen, Bruce had met Amber St. Clair (Linda Darnell). Amber lives in humble circumstances and is about to be married off to a farmer, much to her horror. She does not see herself as a farmer’s wife. Amber has much higher ambitions. Bruce is good-looking and he has a title. He would make a splendid husband. But Bruce does not want an entanglement and sets off for sea without Amber.

Amber might be a gold digger but it is possible that she really does love Bruce. It becomes increasingly obvious that this really is the case.

Everything then goes wrong for Amber and she ends up in debtor’s prison. She becomes the mistress of a highwayman. She embarks on a career on the stage. In Restoration England it was assumed that all actresses were whores. She becomes the mistress of Captain Rex Morgan. And the things really start go wrong.

And there’s the baby to think of.

Amber will bounce back, and she will get kicked around again by fate and she’ll bounce back again.

Amber is the kind of heroine that Hollywood filmmakers liked at this time. She’s a very bad girl. She breaks all the moral rules. But she’s lively, likeable, feisty, exciting and very sexy. Rather than disapprove of her audiences were naturally going to adore her. Linda Darnell, a very underrated star, gives one of her best performance. She has no trouble making Amber a sympathetic complex bad girl. And for all her wickedness we know that she still loves Bruce. And while she breaks society’s moral rules she is never actually malicious.

Amber St Clair is not quite Scarlett O’Hara but the two women do have several things in common. They both have guts and they both have physical courage, but it’s a woman’s courage rather than a man’s courage. And they’re very hard to break - they both have a great deal of inner strength. A big difference compared to Hollywood today is that Hollywood in the 40s made movies featuring strong interesting female characters but they were very much women.

Linda Darnell really did deserve a better leading man. Cornel Wilde just doesn’t have the charisma needed. He’s the biggest weakness in the film.

George Sanders is of course terrific as King Charles II. He doesn’t play him as a mere wicked debauchee but as a man weighed down by duty who has to keep himself amused in order to keep going. And he plays him as a man who does actually have a sense of honour. He wants to get Amber into bed and he could abuse his power as king to force her to comply but he never does. That would be vulgar and dishonourable. Sanders also adds a slight sense of melancholy. Sanders and Darnell are by far the most impressive cast members.

It might seem like an odd movie for Otto Preminger to direct but considering his passionate loathing for the Production Code he might have enjoyed seeing how far he could push things.

Forever Amber doesn’t have a huge reputation, perhaps because it slots into every film genre that serious-minded critics automatically despise - it’s a costume drama, it’s a women’s melodrama, it’s a romance. It’s actually very enjoyable and Linda Darnell makes it very much worth seeing. Highly recommended.

Footlight Parade (1933)

Footlight Parade was the third of the 1930s Warner Brothers musicals with production numbers by Busby Berkeley. I’ve always considered 42nd Street to be the greatest of the series but having watched it again I think Footlight Parade may be even better.

It has not just great Busby Berkeley dance sequences. It also has Jimmy Cagney! Gangster movies had made Cagney a huge star but Footlight Parade gave him the chance to do what he really wanted to do - to be a song-and-dance man. Cagney is absolutely fantastic.

This time it’s not about putting on a broadway show, it’s about putting on prologues. These really were apparently a thing for a while. They were very short live song and dance shows which would precede the showing of a talking picture in a movie theatre. At the start of Footlight Parade broadway producer Chester Kent (Cagney) is facing ruin. Nobody wants musical comedies any more. Everybody wants talking pictures.

There are these prologues but they’re expensive. Then Chester has a brainwave - pre-packaged prologues which could be moved from theatre to theatre in a single unit. This will be much more cost effective.

The Chester Kent prologues are a huge success. But he has a deadly rival - Gladstone Prologues. And Gladstone keeps stealing Chester’s ideas. Chester is also being cheated by his chiselling business partners.

He has to come up with new ideas constantly and he’s in danger of cracking under the strain.

He has woman problems as well. His ex-wife is trying to fleece him. He’s fallen for a no-good dame, Vivian Rich (Claire Dodd). He doesn’t know it but she intends to take him to the cleaners as well. If only Chester would realise that his faithful secretary Nan (Joan Blondell) is the right girl for him and that she’s crazy in love with him.

Meanwhile mousy little typist Bea Thorn (Ruby Keeler) is hoping for her chance to show what she can do on stage. We just know that she will get her chance.

Naturally Dick Powell is on hand as well.

There’s just enough plot to keep things ticking over.

Cagney is amazing. Charismatic beyond belief, hyper-active, bouncing off the walls, talking faster than a machine-gun. He did that in his gangster movies as well but here he demonstrates his ability to be incredibly likeable.

And Cagney can play the driven dedicated producer and then do the song and dance stuff as well (and he was a superb dancer). He dominates the movie to a much greater extent than the producer characters in 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933.

Teaming Cagney and Joan Blondell was definitely a winning move. Not everybody likes Ruby Keeler but I think she’s sweet. And Claire Dodds makes a terrific calculating uber-bitch.

And then there are the Busby Berkeley numbers. The cat number is cute. The Shanghai Lil routine offers the promise of sin in the tropics. And the Honeymoon Hotel number is a joyous and very risqué celebration of adultery. The highlight however is By a Waterfall. Berkeley’s production numbers were staggering triumphs of organisation as Berkekley uses girls to create wild moving abstract paintings. Was there any way he could have made things even more difficult for himself? You bet - how about doing the whole thing in a gigantic tank, including underwater shots from multiple angles? The result is breathtaking.

Footlight Parade has less of a Depression feel than the earlier movies. It’s cheerful and optimistic. It’s such a total immersion in style class. Very highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933.

L.A. Confidential (1997)

I saw L.A. Confidential years ago and really disliked it. Rewatching it now has made me change my opinion quite substantially.

It was directed and co-written by Curtis Hanson, based on James Ellroy’s novel.

The first thing to note is one of my quibbles with this movie. It’s the 1950s but the men don’t wear hats. And not a single person smokes. So this is not the 1950s. And apart from those two details overall this movie is just not convincing at all in its attempts to capture the period flavour. A period settings for a movie is always a mistake. It never rings true. This one looks like 90s people on their way to a 50s-themes costume party.

Fortunately this movie does have a lot of other things going for it.

This is the story of three cops. They know each other slightly and they don’t like each other. All three are morally compromised in some way. All three will reach a point where they have to make a choice. A difficult possibly dangerous choice. But still possibly preferable to continuing on their present course.

Bud White (Russell Crowe) is considered a thug even by his fellow cops. Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) is a college grad fast-tracked for promotion and now he’s totally out of his depth as a detective lieutenant. Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) no longer cares about the job. He’s a technical consultant to a TV cop show and he hobnobs with Hollywood types. He’s corrupt, but only in a very trivial way. He’s been doing business with sleazy scandal magazine publisher and part-time blackmailer Sid Hudgens (Danny DeVito).

This is a cop movie but it’s also a movie about Hollywood.

The plot starts to kick in with a massacre at the Nite Owl coffee lounge. Six corpses, blown apart by pump-action shotguns. There are three obvious suspects. And a rape victim’s testimony can put the case against them beyond doubt.

The plot is incredibly convoluted but that serves a purpose. What is really going is only very gradually revealed to both the audience and the three cops. Initially it seems like a routine if grisly crime. Then it starts to look like something a bit bigger, as other incidents seem to be tied in. Then it starts to look like something really big as more and more odd things that don’t fit start to fit. The audience doesn’t know just how big this case is going to get. Nor do the three cops.

There’s a very rich guy operating a high-class call girl racket. The gimmick is that the girls get plastic surgery to make them look like Hollywood movie stars. Bud has had a brief puzzling encounter with one of the girls. He thought she’d been beaten up but he was wrong. Then he meets Lynn Bracken (Kim Basinger). She’s also one of the whores. She’s the Veronica Lake look-alike. Bud gets involved with her. What is he up to? What is she up to? Is she going to be the femme fatale of the story? She sure looks like a femme fatale, but you can’t take anything in this story at face value.

The focus is on the three cops. Ed Exley is a Boy Scout but he’s ambitious and while he still thinks of himself as a moral paragon his ambition has corrupted him. He’s forgotten why he became a cop. Until something reminds him.

Jack Vincennes has long since lost sight of the reasons he became a cop. Morally he just goes with the flow, collects small payoffs and merely goes through the motions on the job. But ethically he has his limits.

Bud is the most interesting because right from the start he’s a mass of contradictions. He’s a vicious violent cynical thug but where women are concerned he’s a knight in shining armour. And there’s no fakery to it. He remembers why he joined the force. He saw a woman beaten to death. He became a cop to stop stuff like that from happening to women.

Lynn is a less central character but she’s interesting because you can’t predict her. She could turn out to be a Good Girl or a Bad Girl. Maybe she really has fallen in love with Bud.

One really interesting aspect to this film is that the evil comes from the corruption, not from the crimes themselves. The drug bust early on is pointless. They’re just a young guy and a young girl smoking a little weed. The prostitution racket harms no-one. The girls are well paid, they don’t mind the work and the guy who runs the racket treats them extremely well. The problem comes from the fact that making these activities illegal guarantees that the cops and city officials will become corrupted and that organised crime will become involved. It’s the corruption that is the source of all the evil.

It’s also worth noting that while Bud is aways trying to rescue damsels in distress he’s not trying to save Lynn. She doesn’t need saving. Maybe that’s why he falls in love with her.

Guy Pearce is good. Kevin Spacey is very good. Russell Crowe is superb, making Bud’s contradictions believable. Kim Basinger doesn’t have to do much more than make Lynn enigmatic, which she does.

I liked L.A. Confidential very much the second time around. Complex and tightly constructed. Highly recommended.

High Pressure (1932)

High Pressure, released in 1932, is one of the movies William Powell made during his time at Warner Brothers.

The Warner Archive released a four-movie DVD set of some of the lesser-known less remembered movies William Powell made during his time at Warner Brothers.

One of these movies is High Pressure, released in 1932. Powell is Gar Evans, a company promoter. He is not a con man. Well, not exactly. He will not do anything that is actually illegal. If he’s going to promote a company that makes bicycle clips there has to be an actual factory that manufactures actual bicycle clips. Gar’s genius lies in persuading investors and the public that such a company makes the finest bicycle clips ever devised and that the company will soon be bigger than Standard Oil.

In this case it’s a company that makes artificial rubber from sewage. “Colonel” Ginsburg (George Sidney) assures him that the process actually works and produces actual artificial rubber. He has seen the formula devised by the genius scientist. Thus reassured Gar sets out to create the necessary hype. He will sell people on the idea that the Golden Gate Artificial Rubber Company is a goldmine and that they would be crazy not to put money into it.

It’s all about creating the right impression. If you rent a luxurious suite of offices, expensively furnished, in a fancy office building people assume the company really is going to become a vast business empire. Everything gives the impression of prosperity even though the impression has been created by borrowed money. And he has an uncanny ability to persuade people to offer him insanely attractive deals, such as halving the rent on the suite of offices.

Gar is careful not to tell any actual lies. He simply presents the truth in an imaginative and artistic way.

Soon the company is booming. The stock price is skyrocketing. Nothing can stop the Golden Gate Artificial Rubber Company. And the great thing is, it’s all on the level. The artificial rubber processing system really exists. At least Gar assumes that it exists. The Colonel assured him that the inventor had assured him that it works. It must be on the level. It has to be. Gar would just feel a bit happier if they could actually find the inventor. Nobody else has been able to make any sense of his formula.

If the invention doesn’t exist they’ll all end up behind bars.

Gar has woman problems as well. He’s been stringing Francine (Evelyn Brent) along for years but his promises of marriage never seem to come to anything. Francine is getting fed up. She’s also suspicious that Gar might have his eyes on his new secretary, a pretty blonde.

It has to be said that Evelyn Brent is just a little bit dull.

There are some terrific character actors in the supporting cast. Guy Kibbee, who pays the hapless clueless president of the company, is always a delight. And there’s Charles Middleton - Fu Manchu himself!

High Pressure loses focus at times. It’s William Powell who carries the movie and he does so effortlessly. He’s all manic energy and bravado and fast talking slick ultra-confidence. He’s in superb form. Gar is a bit of a scoundrel but he’s so much fun and has so much charm. We don’t care if he’s not entirely honest. He’s so brazen that we want him to succeed.

High Pressure is sparkling entertainment and a treat for William Powell fans. Highly recommended.

The DVD transfer is extremely good.

Dante’s Inferno (1967)

Dante’s Inferno is a 1967 Ken Russell documentary/biopic about Pre-Raphaelite painter/poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It was made for the BBC and screened as part of their Omnibus series.

Russell had been making arts documentaries for the BBC since 1959. At first they were fairly conventional documentaries. The BBC did not approve of having actors portraying historical figures in documentaries. That policy was gradually eased. For The Debussy Film Russell solved the problem by having a film within a film. The critical acclaim for the Debussy Film finally convinced the BBC to let Russell make his documentaries the way he wanted to. It was one of the most sensible decisions the BBC made during the 60s.

Russell’s later BBC documentaries, Dante’s Inferno, The Dance of the Seven Veils and Isidora, are hybrid dramatised documentary-feature films but in practice they’re really feature films. They were in black-and-white and in the 1.37:1 aspect ratio so they were suitable for TV broadcast but they were shot in 35mm so that they could be given at least limited theatrical releases.

Russell was fascinated by artists and composers but he wasn’t interested in treating these figures worshipfully. He wanted to get down to the nitty-gritty of what made them tick. He was interested in genius, but he was particularly interest by geniuses who were either failures in their personal lives or partial failures in their artistic lives.

These mid-60s films are essentially Ken Russell’s personal response to various artistic figures.

The Pre-Raphaelites were all but forgotten by the beginning of the 1960s but there was about to be an explosion of renewed interest in the movement. Dante’s Inferno certainly played some part in fuelling this renewed enthusiasm.

Dante’s Inferno focuses a great deal on Rossetti’s relationships with women, especially his difficult relationships with Lizzie Siddal and Jane Morris. Lizzie Siddal modelled for Rossetti, became his muse and a complicated romantic involvement began. For various reasons (some of them quite reasonable) Rossetti put off any thoughts of marrying her. Lizzie’s health problems led to a reliance on laudanum which became a serious addiction.

Lizzie painted and wrote poetry as well. Her paintings have been ludicrously overpraised for ideological reasons. She had some talent, but those talents were very limited.

In Russell’s version Siddal’s insistence on scrupulous defence of her virginity and Rossetti’s unwillingness to marry her led to predictable problem. A few years later Jane Morris (one of the most famous artists’ models of all time) entered his life which led to a fraught romantic triangle between Rossetti, Jane ands Jane’s husband William Morris. The fact that William Morris and Rossetti were close friends and artistic colleagues complicated things further.

Like all the Pre-Raphaelites Rossetti was besotted with the Middle Ages, with the romance and the chivalry. It was an ideal to which to aspire but he was never able to Iive up to those ideals. The ideal of courtly love was an impossible ideal for Rossetti. He enjoyed the more carnal varieties of love too much.

Rossetti’s career began to falter, partly due to his own drug addiction but perhaps also to the invariably less than unhappy outcomes of his passionate love affairs with women. In this film Russell certainly suggests that he was also increasingly aware that he had failed to live up to his lofty ideals.

As Rossetti Oliver Reed gives one of his finest performances. Reed could be mercurial and passionately intense and extravagant as an actor but he could also be subtle and sensitive and he had extraordinary charm and all of these qualities are in display here.

Judith Paris as Lizzie is wan and needy but that’s presumably deliberate and is perhaps a fair interpretation of Siddal.

Casting Gala Mitchell as Jane Morris was a masterstroke. She was a model with no acting experience but she looks perfect. She has the same kind of beauty as Jane Morris. She looks like the ideal Pre-Raphaelite woman. Mitchell doesn’t get much dialogue. She doesn’t need it. She just has to look Pre-Raphelite-ish and stunning.

One of the things that amuses me about modern critics is the way they so often respond to what they wish the movie said, rather than to what it actually says. There’s a good example here, among the extras. The critic naturally reads Rossetti as the villain and Lizzie as the victim and sees the brilliantly talented Lizzie as having been sucked dry artistically and emotionally by Rossetti. But when you actually watch the movie Lizzie comes across as a whiny, needy, manipulative emotional vampire. And her overdose comes across as a passive-aggressive act. “If I kill myself he’ll be sorry.” Watching the movie one gets the impression that it was Lizzie who sucked Dante dry emotionally. And the movie makes it clear that Lizzie’s talents were meagre.

Russell wanted to make Dante’s Inferno in colour but the BBC wouldn’t come up with the money.

Dante’s Inferno is a typical Ken Russell biopic - it’s his own totally personal response to Rossetti. It’s a brilliant movie, as good in its way as any of his later feature film biopics. Highly recommended.

The BFI Blu-Ray also includes the equally good Isadora and Always On Sunday, his film on Henri Rousseau.

The Big Diamond Robbery (1929)

The Big Diamond Robbery was the final silent film for legendary cowboy star Tom Mix. It came out in 1929, right at the end of the silent era.

This is a western but it’s a contemporary western (which seems to be true also of the other film included in the Blu-Ray set). This is a movie made in the 1920s, and set in the 1920s. So while part of the action takes place in the West this is not quite the Old West, not quite the Wild West.

Tom Mix is Tom Markham and he’s in New York. He meets a girl and she’s on horseback but the second time he meets her she’s been arrested for speeding in her sports car. She is Ellen Brooks (Kathryn McGuire).

She has so many previous offences that this time she’ll get jail time for sure. Except of course she won’t. She’s rich.

Her very rich daddy has just bought her a fabulously valuable diamond.

The diamond is stolen. Tom steps in to help retrieve the stone.

To punish her for being a bad girl Ellen is banished to the ranch in Arizona. Tom seems to be the manager of the ranch.

So now the action moves out West.

The thieves are still after that diamond and now they’re in Arizona too.

There’s a stagecoach holdup and a war party of braves from the local tribe attacks the stagecoach as well. But appearance can be deceptive.

So this a hybrid film. The first half is an urban crime thriller with shootouts with machine-guns and car chases. Later it becomes a western, but not really a western. Tom does some trick riding and chases the bad guys’ car on horseback. It’s really just a crime thriller that features a cowboy.

It’s all very lightweight but it has action, comedy and romance and it’s fast-paced and done with a certain amount of panache. The plot is paper-thin.

Tom Mix is no great shakes as an actor but all he really has to do is look like a square-jawed cowboy hero and ride a horse well and and he manages those things easily enough.

Kathryn McGuire is likeable enough. She isn’t really a Spoilt Rich Bad Girl. She just needed to get out of the city and meet a handsome cowboy.

This is a good-natured romp and the running time is short enough to ensure that it won’t wear out its welcome.

I’d be willing to see more Tom Mix movies although I would like to see him in a full-blown western.

The Big Diamond Robbery is recommended.

It looks terrific on Blu-Ray and they found a tinted print. I love tinted movies.