The Woman Racket (1930)

The Woman Racket (later retitled Lights and Shadows) is a 1930 MGM pre-code romantic/crime melodrama. I have heard that it was originally shot as a silent film but that only the talkie version survives. It’s one of MGM’s early attempts at a hardboiled feel, which works fairly well.

It begins with a police raid on the Blue Moon speakeasy. Patrolman Tom Hayes (Tom Moore) takes pity on one of the hostesses, Julia Barnes (Blanche Sweet) and allows her to escape. They go out together, they fall in love and they get married.

The problem is that Julia likes glamour excitement and pretty things and you don’t get much of that married to a cop, on a cop’s salary. Tom is decent enough and he’s crazy about her but he’s a cop through and through.

She succumbs to the temptation to pay a visit to the Blue Moon.

And she’s tempted to fall back into her old wicked ways. The marriage is on the rocks.

Pretty soon she’s the mistress of the owner of the Blue Moon, Chris Miller (John Miljan). But her old life doesn’t appeal to her so much any more and she’s riddled with guilt.

There’s also the matter of her friend Buddy (Sally Starr). Buddy is a sweet kid and a promising chanteuse but Julia is worried that the wicked Chris Miller will corrupt her. And Chris has every intention of doing just that. Julia wants to save her Buddy from making he mistakes she made.

The other problem is that Chris isn’t just a nightclub owner but also a bit of a gangster, in a modest way. So Julia and Buddy could get mixed up in some very shady goings-on if they’re not careful.

The Wall Street Crash happened in late October 1929. The Woman Racket was released in January 1930 which means that production would have been well underway or perhaps even completed) before the Crash hit. Which means this is a Jazz Age movie rather than (like so many pre-code films) a Depression movie. And it does have a Jazz Age feel.

Blanche Sweet had been a major star in silent films but failed to make a successful transition to talkies. In this film she’s trying to achieve a mixture of mildly hardboiled with sweet and good-natured and she does a fairly decent job but by this time new time new stars were starting to emerge, who did this sort of thing better. But there’s really nothing wrong at all with her performance here.

John Miljan was one of the great slimy oily villains of the early sound era. Maybe he wasn’t quite in the Warren William class but he was very nearly as good. He’s in deliciously sinister manipulative form here.

The plot is serviceable enough. There are moments that betray its stage origins (it was based on a successful play).

The ending is slightly contrived but the final confrontation in total darkness is quite well done.

Is it really pre-code? Not overly, although it is fairly obvious that Julia really is Chris’s mistress and she is of course a married woman. She was a hostess as well as a singer and the title of the movie suggests that perhaps we’re intended to assume that the hostesses at the Blue Moon are part-time prostitutes. It’s possible that that element was more evident in the original script but was seriously downplayed in the final cut.

I enjoyed The Woman Racket and I’m happy to recommend it.

The Warner Archive DVD is fine.

Speaking of Murder (1957)

Speaking of Murder (Le rouge est mis) is one of three movies included in Kino Lorber’s recent French Noir Blu-Ray boxed set. But it is most definitely not film noir. It does not possess a single film noir trademark. It’s a tough hardboiled crime thriller based on a novel by Auguste Le Breton.

It’s also a heist movie.

It starts very slowly but when the mayhem kicks in there’s quite a bit of it.

Louis Bertain (Jean Gabin) is an ageing small-time gangster who operates a garage as a front for bank jobs. There are five members in his gang and right from the start there is uneasiness about the possibility of a double-cross.

Frédo is very jumpy. Pepito (Lino Ventura) is very dangerous and very suspicious. The other two gang members are typical hoodlums and are not very bright.

Louis’ kid brother Pierre is a petty criminal just out of prison. Pierre has figured out that he’s not cut out for a life of crime.

Pierre has a girlfriend Hélène (Annie Girardot). For reasons that are not entirely clear Louis hates Hélène and is determined to break up the relationship.

The gang has a major armoured car robbery lined up but it goes wrong and the gang, thoroughly rattled, shoot a whole bunch of people.

Louis is not as smart as he thinks he is or maybe he’s just getting old. The police will soon be closing in. Suspicions and recriminations and nerves lead to more violence. These crooks are vicious and trigger-happy but inclined to make a lot of mistakes.

The plot hinges on the suspicions of betrayal and the growing paranoia verging on panic among the gang members.

There are ample plot twists but you can see them all coming a mile away. There are no surprises in this story.

The interest lies in the gradual disintegration of Louis’ world and the possibility that when things really fall apart he’ll lead others to destruction as well.

The major focus is on the uneasy relationship between the two brothers. That’s handled well. The relationship between Pierre and Hélène could perhaps have been developed a bit more.

Jean Gabin was more or less unknown in the English-speaking world but was a huge star in France. He’s very good here as a man who seems to be totally in control but isn’t.

Italian-born Lino Ventura became one of the great tough guys of French cinema. He’s quite chilling here.

Annie Girardot was another major star in French film and she’s fine as the slightly ambiguous Hélène. Hélène however is not in any sense a femme fatale.

Gilles Grangier was the director. There’s a nice visual set-piece at the end and the action scenes are handled well.

The cinematography by Louis Page is gritty without being noirish.

Speaking of Murder isn’t really anything particularly special. It’s a well-acted well-crafted fairly violent hard-edged crime thriller and it’s an interesting example of the long French tradition of crime cinema. Recommended.

The transfer is extremely good (the movie was shot in black-and-white) and mercifully there are no extras.

Better Jean Gabin crimes movies (with genuine claims to being film noir) are Port of Shadows (1938) and La Bête Humaine (1938).

Donkey Skin (1970)

Donkey Skin is a 1970 fairy tale adaptation written and directed by Jacques Demy. The original French title of the film is Peau d’âne. It was released in English-speaking markets with a variety of different titles including Once Upon a Time and The Magic Donkey. Demy emerged as a director at the time when the Nouvelle Vague or New Wave was becoming a thing in French cinema. Demy’s movies do not however feel very much like the contemporary movies of Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut.

Demy is best-known for Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, 1964) and Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (The Young Girls of Rochefort). Demy took a decidedly offbeat approach to the musical genre. Rather than actual songs there is dialogue which is sung, by actors and actresses who are not actual singers. It’s sounds like a catastrophically bad idea but weirdly it works and these two movies were international hits.

He uses a similar approach in Donkey Skin.

Donkey Skin is based on the fairy tale Donkeyskin, from Charles Perrault’s 1697 fairy tale collection which contained the original versions of so many of the most famous fairy tales.

Jean Marais plays the king and he is the happiest king of the happiest kingdom in the world. His queen is the most beautiful queen in the world, and they have a lovely charming daughter (played by Catherine Deneuve).

Then disaster strikes. The queen dies. On her deathbed she forces the king to promise that he will remarry (for the kingdom’s sake he needs a male heir) but only if he can find a princess more beautiful than his dying queen.

There is no princess in all the world who would qualify. None, except one. His daughter.

The king decides that therefore he should marry her.

The princess decides that maybe she likes this idea.

At this point her fairy godmother, the Lilac Fairy (Delphine Seyrig), decides that she needs to take steps to prevent this marriage. She suggests that the princess should stall by demanding impossible wedding presents, but the king manages to provide them. The Lilac Fairy then suggests that the princess should demand the skin of the king’s magic donkey.

Using the donkey skin to disguise her beauty the princess flees to a neighbouring kingdom. The young prince of that kingdom falls in love with her but then cannot recognise he. But he has her ring. No-one else can wear that ring, so if he finds a maiden who can wear it then he has found his princess.

There are a lot of things to like about this movie. The visuals are gorgeous and they’re gorgeous in interesting ways.

I like the fact that Demy does not succumb to the temptation to add an anachronistic modern political subtext.

I like the fact that he was not tempted to transpose the story to a more modern setting. This is a fairy tale world that mostly looks the way Charles Perrault’s readers in 1697 would have imagined it.

There are some clever moments referencing various poets and filmmaker, such as Cocteau.

But there are things that, for me, just don’t work. Having some of the dialogue sung is a gimmick he’d used before. It’s a gimmick that left me cold.

The big problem is that for all the visual splendours, it’s just a bit lifeless. The characters have all the vitality of wooden dolls. Perhaps, given his association with the New Wave, Demy was deliberately aiming for this and for extreme emotional distance. It doesn’t work for me.

And I hate to say this since I’m a fan of hers but Catherine Deneuve’s performance is a major weakness. She’s flat, lifeless, cold and charmless.

Before making this movie Demy should have sat down and watched Ernst Lubitch’s early masterpieces such as The Doll (Die Puppe, 1919) and The Wildcat (1921). Lubitsch shows how it should be done. Storybook characters come to life, but Lubitsch actually does bring them to life.

Donkey Skin does have some striking images but for me it was a movie to admire rather than a movie to love. There is however enough of interest here to make it worth a watch. Recommended.

Music in My Heart (1940)

Music in My Heart is a 1940 Columbia musical. Rita Hayworth is the female lead but this is pre-stardom Rita Hayworth. This is Rita on the cusp of stardom. When you watch this movie you can tell that it was just a matter of time. The star quality is there.

Tony Martin plays Robert Gregory, almost a musical comedy star. He is at least the understudy to the star. Now he finally gets to play the lead, but his visa has expired and he’s about to be kicked out of the country.

He’s on the way to the pier to board his ship when his cab crashes into a cab containing Patricia O'Malley (Rita Hayworth). She needs to get to the ship as well. Her husband-to-be Charles Spencer Gardner III (Alan Mowbray) is awaiting her. He’s a millionaire. She is pretty pleased with herself for snaring a rich husband.

They both miss the boat, literally. Now Robert has the cops after him and Patricia has missed out on her rich husband.

Of course they’re going to fall in love and have impossible obstacles to surmount.

Gardner’s manservant Griggs (Eric Blore) is plotting to bring his master and Patricia back together.

Patricia’s kid sister Mary (Edith Fellows) is plotting to bring his master and Robert together.

Patricia lives in a rooming house. On the ground floor is a restaurant run by Sascha (George Tobias), a crazy White Russian who is planning to restore the Romanovs, and a penniless Italian. They’re about to be evicted. They can’t pay their rent.

The plot is standard romantic farce and it works perfectly well.

Eric Blore is alway a joy to watch.

With Rita Hayworth not yet a star this movie was conceived as a star vehicle for Tony Martin. He’s OK but he doesn’t quite have the necessary charm or charisma.

Rita gets plenty of screen time, she really is the female lead, but musically the movie is built around Tony Martin’s singing rather than Hayworth’s dancing. Had the movie been made a year later the balance would obviously have been reversed.

While Rita gets very little dancing to do she gets plenty of opportunities to demonstrate her comic talents and her potential as one of the great romantic stars. She outshines her leading man Tony Martin to an embarrassing degree.

Andre Kostelanetz and His Orchestra are heavily featured. They would become hugely popular on record in the 50s and it’s perhaps surprising that they didn’t feature in more movies. Chet Forrest and Bob Wright wrote the songs one of which, It’s A Blue World, was a reasonably big hit for Tony Martin.

Joseph Santley had a long and prolific career as a director without ever attracting much attention. He does a competent job here.

The one big big problem is that Columbia knew they had a future star in Rita Hayworth but hadn’t yet figured out what kind of star and hadn’t realised that it might be a good idea to give the kid plenty of chances to do some serious dancing. That’s all that’s missing here. If they’d added a couple of dances for Rita it could have been a huge hit.

As it stands it’s still quite entertaining. It’s so fluffy and lightweight that the slightest breeze would waft it away but it’s amusing and likeable. A must for Rita Hayworth fans. Highly recommended.

Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988)

Tucker: The Man and His Dream was another of the offbeat, ambitious films made by Francis Ford Coppola in the 80s and 90s. It was a box-office failure, although not on the same scale as One From the Heart.

It’s based on the real life story of Preston Tucker, who attempted to challenge the automotive giants of Detroit with a highly advanced futuristic new car design. The attempt was a fiasco, only 50 cars were ever built, and Tucker was lucky to avoid a long prison sentence for fraud. Tucker’s supporters have always insisted that he was the victim of a concerted plan by the established car-makers to destroy a possible competitor.

Coppola’s movie certainly presents a very romanticised and idealised depiction of Tucker as a visionary genius and as the heroic little guy fighting against impossible odds.

The Second World War has just ended and Preston Tucker (Jess Bridges) has decided that the time is right to make his dream a reality. He will build the car of the future for Americans. The Tucker Torpedo is a daring innovative design with a host of advanced features that would not in reality become common for decades. It’s a car for a society about to enter the Jet Age.

Unfortunately all Tucker actually has are a few drawings and some ideas. None of the ideas have been properly worked out. He has no money at all. And no factory.

With the help of financier Abe Karatz (Martin Landau) he sets out to raise money, by methods that are imaginative and risky.

He gets a factory, in fact the biggest factory in the world. And now he has a major problem. The Tucker Torpedo does not exist. There is no prototype. It hasn’t even reached the model stage. Building a prototype will take at least nine months and Tucker has just 60 days. The prototype is built, but corners have to be cut.

Tucker doesn’t realise that immensely powerful corporate and political forces are massing against him.

The movie portrays Tucker as a hero, but also as something of an innocent. And wildly over-confident and over-optimistic. He just cannot or will not understand that he hasn’t got a chance. But the odds against him don’t worry him. His enthusiasm and his belief in his dream are unshakeable.

This is a movie that could not possibly be made today. It doesn’t have the right kind of overt political messaging. In this movie the mega-corporations are the bad guys, but the government and the bureaucracy and politicians are the bad guys as well.

Tucker is a celebration of traditional American values - hard work, determination, the old-fashioned can-do spirit. It’s a reflection of the optimism of the postwar period with the belief in unstoppable scientific and technological progress. And it’s a joyous celebration of the traditional American family. Tucker’s marriage is happy and successful. His wife stands by him without question. He is a good father. His kids like and admire him.

Like One From the Heart and Dracula, 1992 this is a movie that glories in its artificiality. It uses some of the innovative and unconventional techniques used in One From the Heart.

Interestingly Coppola uses innovative techniques but also makes extensive use of classic 1940s filmmaking techniques.

Coppola was aiming for a very 1940s feel, but not a gritty 1940s film noir feel. He was aiming for the feel of promotional advertising films of that era. In fact large parts of the movie are ostensibly Tucker promotional films.

Everything is pastels. Everything is lust and pretty, and deliberately so. And it works.

Coppola makes no concessions to realism. And this is a movie entirely and refreshingly free from irony.

Coppola’s original idea was to do this movie as a musical and it does have a great deal of the breezy romantic whimsical fantasy feel of so many 1940s musicals. Although we know that his car was never going to be a success Tucker’s unquenchable spirit makes it an odd kind of feelgood movie. This is a movie about failure, but it's about heroic failure.

All the performances are good. Jeff Bridges adds some real complexity to Tucker - he’s a good guy, but visionaries can be difficult and they can be self-destructive.

It’s obvious that Coppola felt a very strong kinship with Tucker. Coppola is also a man who follows his dreams and like Tucker he refuses to allow commercial failures to dishearten him.

Tucker: The Man and His Dream is in its way inspirational. It’s a movie with real heart. Very highly recommended.

The Blu-Ray looks terrific (this is the kind of visual feast movie that needs Blu-Ray presentation). I have to say that Francis Ford Coppola does delightful audio commentaries for his movies.