Monthly Archives: May 2021

Family Plot
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Written by Ernest Lehman
1976/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Fran: You better give me a quick synopsis. I’m confused.
Arthur Adamson: Simple. A cab driver is shacked up with a sex-starved medium named Blanche Tyler. Don’t ask me why, but apparently they’re on the trail of some spook named Eddie Shoebridge.

Alfred Hitchcock certainly did not go out with a bang with this screwball thriller.

The story takes place in some unnamed location in contemporary California.  Fake psychic Blanche Tyler (Barbara Harris) lures in marks to exploit with the assistance of her taxi driver con-man boyfriend George Lumley (Bruce Dern), who does the research to add authenticity to the project.  Blanche has landed a big fish in the form of aged millionaire Julia Rainbird (Catherine Nesbitt).  Julia has long felt guilty for forcing her sister to give up her illegitimate son for adoption.  She wants to locate the son and make him her heir.  For this she will give Blanche $10,000.

George traces the heir to the Shoebridge family.  It seems that the adoptive parents and the heir, Edward Shoebridge (William De Vane) were killed in a fire.  But something about the gravestone seems suspicious to George and he investigates further.

Spoilers

Concurrently the heir has assumed the name Arthur Adamson and is working as a jeweler. He and his girlfriend Fran (Karen Black) have a sideline as serial kidnappers who demand valuable diamonds as ransom.

When George tracks Arthur down he and Blanche are in terrible danger.

Alfred Hitchcock once said of this movie: It’s “a melodrama treated with a bit of levity and sophistication. I want the feeling of the famous director Ernst Lubitsch making a mystery thriller.”  The problem is that Hitchcock definitely did not have the Lubitsch touch and particularly not this late in his career.  Most of the humor consists of sex jokes that I didn’t find all that funny. There is one death by rigged auto scene but nothing raising to the level of a Hitchcockian set piece.  As for suspense, I also found the movie lacking.  It’s watchable enough but I don’t know that anyone would recognize it as Hitchcock without knowing it’s lineage.

The Tenant (Le locataire)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Written by Gerard Brach and Roman Polanski from a novel by Roland Topor
1976/France/USA
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime (free to Members)
One of 1000 Great Horror Films on They Shoot Zombies Don’t They

Trelkovsky: Simone Choule does not disappoint!

The third of Polanski’s truly creepy psychological horror film involving paranoia in big city apartments does not disappoint.

Trelkovsky (Polanski) is a mild-mannered clerk.  He is looking for an apartment in Paris where they are scarce.  He finally finds one in a run-down building with a shared toilet.  He does not receive a warm welcome from the concierge (Shelly Winters) or the landlord Mr. Zy (Melvyn Douglas).  Two rules are emphasized: any noise after 10 p.m. and women guests are both banned.  The previous tenant, Simone Choule, jumped from the apartment’s window onto a glass skylight below and is currently in the hospital in critical condition.  Many of her possessions remain in the apartment.

Trelkovsky visits Simone in the hospital.  There he meets her friend Stella (Isabelle Adjani).  Simone eventually awakes, lets out an unearthly scream,  and dies.  Trelkovsky invites Stella out for a drink and then to a Bruce Lee movie.  Stella makes advances but Trelkovsky is more preoccupied with the events of the day.

Slowly and steadily, the people he meets treat him as if he were Simone.  He is served her breakfast and only her brand of cigarettes is available to him.  Concurrently, he begins to get in trouble with the landlord and other tenants.  He makes the mistake of bringing some uncouth work colleagues over for a housewarming and things get completely out of hand. He is chastised for this and later is chastised for noise made while his apartment was being burglarized.  Various neighbors try to get his support for getting other tenants evicted. He refuses.  He can see the building’s toilet across the way and it seems to be continuously occupied by people who stand motionless for hours.

As his mental health deteriorates, something compels Trelkovsky to dress up as Simone.  He goes deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. Finally, he is hallucinating non-stop.  I will stop here.  With Jo Van Fleet as a nosy neighbor and Kedrova as a persecuted one.

Love Douglas’s bat wing coat!

This was the last in Polaski’s informal horror trilogy which begins with Repulsion (1965) and Rosemary’s Baby (1968).  It is not quite as good as the first two films but holds its own against them.  This is one of those films where the viewer is left to decide whether the hero is actually morphing into his doppleganger (here one of a different sex) or is simply going insane.  Either way, the movie is filled with forboding and the last act is absolutely terrifying. The striking cinematography was done by Bergman regular Sven Nyqvist.

The Front
Directed by Martin Ritt
Written by Walter Bernstein
1976/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime (free for members)

Howard Prince: What are you blacklisted for?
Alfred Miller: I’m a communist sympathizer.
Howard Prince: Well, you always were.
Alfred Miller: Well, it’s not so popular anymore.

This is an OK movie which was written, directed , and performed by artists targeted by the Hollywood blacklist.

Howard Prince (Woody Allen) is a uneducated nebbish who works as a cashier in a restaurant and is a small-time bookmaker.  He is always in bad financial straits and unable to cover bets he loses.  His brother is his main source of funds but is fed up with him.  So Howard jumps at the chance when his childhood friend Alfred Miller (Michael Murphy), a genius TV scriptwriter who has been blacklisted, approaches him about serving as a front so he can continue to work.  He will pay Howard 10% of his fees.

“Howard” is a huge success and attracts the affections of editor Florence Barrett who admires his “work”.  They become an item.  Howard offers to front for other writers and increases his commission.  He begins living the high life.  In the meantime, the star of the TV show he writes for, Hecky Brown (Zero Mostel), falls to the blacklist.  Florence is incensed and quits her job to write an expose of blacklisting in the industry.  Howard befriends Henky who now has to work for peanuts in the Catskills to earn income.

Howard is placed in an awkward position when he is asked to do last-minute rewrites on some of his scripts.  Things get even more awkward when the HUAC comes after him and asks him to name names.

Woody Allen shows himself to be a competent dramatic actor in this and the script is good if not a bit simplistic.  If you are interested in the period, it is worth watching.

Director Martin Ritt, writer Walter Bernsten, and actors Zero Mostel, Herschel Bernardi, Lloyd Gough, and Joshua Shelley were all victims of the Blacklist.  This was Mostel’s last feature film.

The Front was nominated for the Best Original Screenplay Oscar.

Hollywood on Trial
Directed by David Halpern
Written by Arnie Reisman
1976/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime (free to members)

I fought fire with oil. — Dalton Trumbo

I learned many new things from this excellent documentary about the Hollywood blacklist and the fates of the Hollywood Ten.

The film, narrated by John Huston, starts with the inception of the hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee on subversives in Hollywood and their influence on films.  It begins with testimony by several industry celebrities alleging that members of the American Communist Party were inserting propaganda in films.  I had not known that the hearings were, in part, a reaction of the studios to major strikes in the 1930s, in particular by the Screen Writers Guild.

The Hollywood Ten

The film goes on to cover the fates of the “Hollywood Ten” who defied the Committee by refusing to answer questions about their Party membership or political beliefs on First Amendment grounds.  Most of these were screenwriters.  The ten were jailed for Contempt of Congress.  Many never worked in Hollywood again.

There are also extensive contemporary interviews with members of the Ten.  The film also discusses The Front (1976) in which Woody Allen plays the titular “front” who puts his name on a screenplay written by a blacklisted writer.  I will be watching that movie today.

28 Oct 1947, Washington, DC, USA — Screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, one of the “Hollywood Ten” targeted by the Un-American Activities Committee, leaves the witness stand shouting “This is the beginning of Amercan concentration camps.”  Trumbo went on to win Oscars for his work on “Roman Holiday” and “The Brave One” under assumed names while blacklisted.

This is a very well-made documentary.  I recommend it to anyone interested in this shameful period in American history.

I couldn’t find a clip from the documentary.