Daily Archives: September 21, 2016

Bonjour Tristesse
Directed by Otto Preminger
Written by Arthur Laurents based on a novel by Françoise Sagan
1958/USA/UK
Wheel Productions
First viewing/Amazon Prime

[box] Cecile: It’s getting out of control. I just wish I were a lot older or a lot younger.[/box]

I don’t remember Otto Preminger for his imagery but this is a beautiful film.  Of course, the Riviera never hurts.

As the film begins, we are introduced to Cecile (Jean Seberg), a young girl who drifts from one man to another, feeling nothing for any of them.  Her life is filled with a deep sadness. As she dances to the title song, she thinks of happier times and we segue into flashback. Scenes of Paris in the present will be alternated with scenes of the Cote d’Azure in the recent past throughout.

Cecile and her father Raymond (David Niven) are kindred spirits.  He is a playboy who has a ditzy blonde in tow for the duration of his vacation and she lives for fun and good times with a law student she hooks up with.

Into this menage comes Anne Larson (Deborah Kerr).  Raymond has even forgotten that he invited her to come down for a couple of weeks.  The fashion designer is a more serious sort.  When she and David fall in love, she tries to steer Cecile back onto the straight and narrow.  It proves to be the recipe for the tragedy that haunts the girl’s Paris nights.

I’m still sorting out my feelings about this one but overall I was entertained.  Jean Seberg’s flat line delivery has always left me a bit cold but she certainly is beautiful and suits her character well.  The Riviera never looked better and the black-and-white sequences could almost have come out of a French New Wave film.

Montage of clips set to the title tune

Terror in a Texas Town
Directed by Joseph H. Lewis
Written by Dalton Trumbo (fronted by Ben Perry)
1958/USA
Seltzer Films
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] [explaining how he got the nickname “Wagon Wheel Joe”] I carried a box filled with different wagon wheels. Whenever I’d come to a scene which was just disgraceful in dialogue and all, I’d place a wagon wheel in one portion of the frame, and make an artistic shot out of it, so by the time the scene was over you only saw the artistic value and couldn’t analyze what the scene was about. — Joseph H. Lewis[/box]

Here is your only opportunity to see Sterling Hayden with a Swedish accent and a shootout involving a harpoon vs. a sixgun.  I thought it was a ton of campy, pulpy fun.

Ed McNeil (Sebastian Cabot) is a fat, greedy city slicker with a big appetite for the local land.  He claims he owns all of it via a land grant and that the honest farmers of the place are squatters.  Nonetheless, he tries to buy the settlers out.  If that doesn’t work, he turns to his trusty hit man, Johnny Crale.  A few settlers try to unite to stand up against McNeil but fear holds them back.

Enter George Hansen (Hayden).  He has returned from his last whaling voyage to join his father on the farm they have jointly bought only to find his father has been shot down.  He gets little cooperation from the sheriff or anyone else until a humble Mexican reveals the possible reason behind McNeil’s lust for the land.

This movie is a hoot!  The dialogue is supremely clunky but that only suits the ridiculous story.  Watching the stone-faced Hayden sporadically attempt a Swedish accent only adds to the fun.  I’m surprised this is not a cult classic.

This was Lewis’s last feature film.  He continued to direct in television.

Montage of clips