Monthly Archives: November 2017

The Big City (Mahanagar)
Directed by Satyajit Ray
Written by Satyajit Ray from a story by Narendranath Mitra
1963/India
R.D. Banshal & Co.
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Arati: [to her husband] You would not recognize me if you saw me at work.[/box]

Satyajit Ray does it again in a very human and perfectly realized domestic drama.

Subrata Mazumder works as a bank manager.  His wife Arati keeps house and cares for their young son.  The couple has not been able to make ends meet since his parents moved in with his younger sister.  Both are very traditional Bengalis. The father is a retired teacher who mightily resents the fact that his students have succeeded while he lives in poverty.  He believes they owe him something and is generally demanding at home.

Subrata lets slip that the wife of one of his friends has gone to work outside the home. This sets Arati ablaze with the idea of similarly helping out.  She gets a job as a door-to-door salesperson.  She finds that not only is she good at it but she loves it.

On the other hand, all the other members of the household, with the exception of the sister-in-law, disapprove. Father stops speaking to either his son or daughter-in-law. Tensions rise as Arati goes from success to success as her husband’s fortunes slide. The story builds to a really satisfying conclusion.

Satyajit Ray had the magical ability to make all his characters understandable despite their flaws.  This movie is just fantastic.  We can sympathize with both the husband and the wife as they struggle to adapt to a new India.  Even the father has his reasons.  The film is also beautiful to look at.  Very highly recommended.

Re-release trailer

Le joli mai (The Merry Month of May)
Directed by Chris Marker and Pierre L’Homme
Written by Chris Marker and Catherine Varlin
1963/France
Sofracima
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Narrator (English version): Why search for beauty in a dove and poetry in poets? When you have owls, painters, cosmonauts, inventors, lovers… [/box]

Chris Marker and company make a beautiful documentary about a beautiful city and its people at a particular time.

The setting is Paris.  The time is May 1962.  President de Gaulle advocated independence for Algeria.  The French overwhelmingly voted for independence and an end to the war in April but feeling still ran high.  Progress continued on rehousing Parisians suffering a crunch dating from WWII.  Lovers loved, poets wrote, and the average Joe tried to make ends meet while having a good time.  All these facets of Parisian life are explored in the film accompanied by striking images of Paris’s grand and not-so-grand locales.

This is very much a film of its time and my appreciation could have been heightened by more of a knowledge of French history.  I love Paris and I enjoyed it very much anyway.  Recommended.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oev6gGMTF9o

Trailer

Palm Springs Weekend    
Directed by Norman Taurog
Written by Earl Hamner Jr.
1963/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] P.S. I Love You – Palm Springs city slogan[/box]

I live 25 miles from Palm Springs so naturally I had to watch this sitcom of a movie.

It is Easter Break in early 60’s Palm Springs.  Stephanie Powers’ father is the Chief of Police.  He looks askance at all the rowdy goings on.  Basically this a a Where the Boys Are style plot.  The boys are Texan Ty Hardin, odd-ball Jerry Van Dyke, nice-guy Troy Donahue and bad-boy villain Robert Conrad.  The girls are Powers, pseudo-sophisticate Connie Stephens and “plain-Jane”  Zeme North.  There’s a sub-plot about a middle-aged hotel owner and the chaperon/coach of the boys.  She has an obnoxious bratty son played by Billy Mummy.

Every year in the Coachella Valley we celebrate Mid-Century Modernism week celebrating the style and architecture of exactly this era.  Palm Springs was in its hey day in 1963.  The scenery and style made it fun for me to watch.  The story on the other hand is a piece of fluff made worse by Jerry Van Dyke’s style of “comedy”.

McLintock!
Directed by Andrew V. McLaglen
Written by James Edward Grant
1963/USA
Batjac Productions
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] George Washington McLintock: I’ve got a touch of hangover, bureaucrat. Don’t push me.[/box]

John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara get the sparks flying once again.

G.W. McLintock (Wayne) is the richest man in the territory.  He has been living as a bachelor for two years since wife Katherine (AKA Katie – O’Hara) walked out on him without explanation.  Daughter Becky (Stephanie Powers) returns after finishing college back East and so does her mother.  Becky promptly falls for the son of GW’s housekeeper, Devlin.

Both GW and Devlin find that the way to a strong woman’s heart just happens to be a coal shovel applied with gusto to the back side.  With Yvonne De Carlo as the housekeeper, Patrick Wayne as Devlin and a host of familiar faces including Chill Wills, Jack Kruschen, Edgar Buchanan, Bruce Cabot and Struther Martin.

Imagine the sexual politics of The Quiet Man ratcheted up a notch and moved to the Old West.  If you think brawling can be hilarious you will love this movie.  It’s OK for light-hearted entertainment on a gloomy fall day.

The Mouse on the Moon
Directed by Richard Lester
Written by Michael Pertwee from the novel by Leonard Wibberley
1963/UK
Walter Shenson Films
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] [repeated line] Grand Duchess Gloriana XIII: It’s that nasty tin thing again![/box]

This was possibly more hilarious in 1963 than it is now.

The setting is The Duchy of Grand Fenwick as introduced in 1959’s The Mouse That Roared.  The duchy is still presided over by Grand Duchess Gloriana XIII (Margaret Rutherford) but Rupert Mountjoy (Ron Moody) has taken over as Prime Minister.  Mountjoy has determined that the tiny duchy needs new plumbing and once against plots to get the money out of the US.  This time the plan is to announce that Grand Fenwick needs cash for its space program.  This will give the Americans the chance to show “international cooperation” with a country that cannot really compete.

In the meantime, a scientist has in fact dreamt up a low-tech way to get to the moon and the US and USSR can’t risk coming in second … or third.  With Terry-Thomas as a birdwatcher.

This lost me shortly after it began.  There are some funny moments but the humor is perhaps too topical … and too British …to really work for this viewer at this late date.

The Kiss of the Vampire
Directed by Don Sharp
Written by Anthony Hinds
1963/UK
Universal International Pictures/Hammer Films
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Dr. Ravna: [referring to Marianne] I will not say that she has not changed in any way., Mr. Harcourt. She has, as you may put it, grown up – tasted the more sophisticated, more erotic fruits of… life.

Gerald Harcourt: [realizing that she has been initiated into vampirism] Oh, my God!

Dr. Ravna: [officiouly] God is hardly involved, Mr. Harcourt.[/box]

Perhaps Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee could have injected some oomph into this underwhelming Gothic horror flick.

The story takes place in the early years of the last century.  As the film begins, we witness a professor driving a stake through a coffin just as it is about to be lowered into the earth – this will be one of the few evidences of blood shown in the film. We then follow the journey of newlyweds Gerald and Marianne who are motoring through Europe.  They run out of petrol and are forced to stay in a hotel that has fallen on hard times.  It contains only one other guest – the professor we saw at the beginning.

The local aristocracy reaches out to the couple, inviting the two to dinner and then a ball.  But it is soon clear that Dr, Ravna and his family have sinister intentions with regard to Marianne ….

This may be the least scary vampire movie ever made.  When I think Hammer horror I think gore and ominous atmosphere.  This movie is lacking in both as well as in good acting or storytelling.  A disappointment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MuJ6hsU1Gs

Monstrosity (AKA The Atomic Brain)
Directed by Joseph V. Mascelli
Written by Vy Russell, Sue Dwiggins, and Dean Dillman Jr.
1963/USA
Cinema Venture
First viewing/Amazon Prime

[box] Narrator: As with the other bodies stolen from cemeteries, the nerve endings of the brain were too far gone to receive a proper transplant. The experiment failed to produce anything more than a walking, breathing zombie-like creature. But the doctor permitted her to wander about the laboratory – she was harmless and … [leering tone] at times even amusing.[/box]

Horror meets mild titillation in this truly weird and terrible brain transplant movie.

Dr. Frank’s experiments in atomic brain transplants are being financed Mrs. March, a wealthy, mean and nasty old woman.  She hopes to have her 80-year-old brain transplanted into a sexy young body so that she can at last be “loved for herself.” For now her needs are satisfied by craven gigolo Victor.

Dr. Frank has been somewhat successful with transplanting animal brains into dead bodies leaving a Wolf Man like monstrosity to do his bidding.  What he needs are some live bodies to work on.  These arrive in the form of foreign young women – from Britain, Austria, and Latin America – hired by Mrs. March as domestics.  On and on the story goes as experiments pile up, misfiring along the way to the fiery climax.

Once again the Random Number Generator has supplied a movie from the very bottom of the barrel to begin a new year.  This one is bizarre in the extreme.  The most amusing part is the sexy “British” girl’s – she’s named Bea! – sporadic attempts at an accent that range from Cockney to upper class.  But there’s something for every bad movie lover here.  It does drag at only just over an hour.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTkpNaqAYT0

Clip – opening