I, Jane Doe
Directed by John H. Auer
Written by Lawrence Kimball
1948/US
Republic Pictures
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Bigamy, n. A mistake in taste for which the wisdom of the future will adjudge a punishment called trigamy. — Ambrose Bierce.

Kind of fun to see a courtroom drama with an all female defense team.

Jane Doe (Vera Ralson) shot and killed Eve Meredith Curtis’s (Ruth Hussey) husband Stephen (John Carroll). She has refused to reveal her name or talk about the crime in any way. She is swiftly convicted and given the death sentence. She gets a brief reprieve to give birth to a baby.

Eve, a successful attorney, takes an interest in her and gets the full story. Stephen met Annette Du Bois in France during WWII after his plane crashed. She sheltered him and he married her even though he was already married to Eve.  We learn that he is a serial philanderer.

Eve manages to get her a new trial and the story continues to play out through the testimony and flashbacks. With Gene Lockhart as the bombastic prosecutor.

I don’t know that I have seen Vera Ralston before. She is an appealing actress with a delicate beauty. Ruth Hussey was also quite good. John Carroll is the weak link.  It’s an entertaining movie but nothing I would go out of my way to see again.

The Gay Deception
Directed by William Wyler
Written by Stephen Morehouse Avery and Don Hartman
1935/US
Fox Film Corporation
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Sandro: All right, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. I promise to change everything about myself, if you’ll promise to stay exactly as you are.

William Wyler directs a frothy romantic comedy.  He really could do anything.

Mirabel (Frances Dee), a humble clerk, wins $5,000 in the lottery. Instead of taking the sound financial advice cautioning her to make her money last, Mirabel decides to splurge on a luxurious month in New York City. Sandro (Francis Lederer) is a bellboy at the fancy hotel where she is staying. He keeps hanging around making suggestions on improving her taste in hats and food. She resents this mightily.

Mirabe; rapidly finds out that her wealth does not impress the snobs in the society crowd she aspires to join. She buys tickets to a grand charity ball and then is roundly snubbed by the organizers. It is Sandro to the rescue. He steals the proper clothes and poses as a prince. I won’t go farther. With Alan Mowbray and Benita Hume as snobs and Akim Tamiroff as a kind of shady government official.

This is a well-made romcom. It’s leads are charming. Oh, how, I envy Francis Dee. She is beautiful, funny, and had the good fortune to be married to my heartthrob Joel McCrea for 57 years.

Toni
Directed by Jean Renoir
Written by Jean Renoir from material compiled by Jacques Levert
1935/France
Les Films Marcel Pagnol
IMDb page
First viewing/Criterion Channel

Narrator: (First lines)The action takes place in the south of France, a Latin region where, destroying the spirit of Babel, nature knows full well how to achieve the fusion of the races.

This is a well-made and acted film but I expected something more from Renoir.

As the film begins we see immigrants from many European nations arriving in France to seek work. Our hero is Antonio “Toni” Canova an Italian. He seeks lodging at a boarding house and soon is having an affair with its French proprietress Marie. He gets work in the local rock quarry. Time passes and Toni tires of the extremely jealous and possessive Marie. He has fallen in love with Josefa who lives with her Spanish peasant father and her scheming cousin. Finally, Toni decides to ask Josefa to marry him. Her father approves. But Toni’s horrible foreman gets in first. The father thinks a marriage with Albert will be financially advantageous. But as time passes it becomes clear that the only advantage will be to Albert. None of this is going to end well. As the film ends, another large group of foreigners enters France looking for work.

Wow, I had not expected anything so tragic! Everything about the film making and cinematography is great. I thought it would be another exploration of the brotherhood of workers. Given the number of truly evil people in this I came out only with the message that life sucks. It was one Renoir that I had never seen before and for that alone it was worth watching.

Clip – Spoiler

Romance in Manhattan
Directed by Stephen Roberts
Written by Jane Murfin and Edward Kaufman from a story by Norman Krasna and Don Hartman
1935/US
RKO Radio Pictures
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Karel Novak: Everybody looks so happy here. They all smile and look so rich and busy.
Sylvia Dennis: We all try look rich and busy whether we are or not.

I enjoyed this cute, if slight, romantic comedy.

Karel Novak (Francis Lederer) has saved for years in his native Czechlosavakia for the steamship fare and $50 in cash necessary to immigrate to the United States. When he arrives he finds out that the ready cash requirement has increased to $200 and he is deported. He jumps ship as it is leaving port and goes out to find work. Eventually he becomes a taxi driver. He meets and falls in love with Ginger Rogers, a chorus girl who is taking care of her younger brother.

Can their love withstand a taxi strike, Ginger’s unemployment, threats to take the brother to an orphanage, and threats to deport Francis? You only get one guess.

I have nothing more to say than that this an entertaining comedy with very appealing leads.

Drunken Master (Zui quan)
Directed by Woo-Ping Yuen
Written by Lung Hsiao and See-Yuen Ng
1978/Hong Kong
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Jim Ti-Sam: I’ll break every bone in your body… and send you to hell.

I gave this Jackie Chan kung-fu movie a chance and regretted it.

I’ll be brief.  Jackie Chan plays the skilled and hot-headed son of a master in kung fu.  He gets in a fight with the wrong person and his father punishes him by putting him under the harsh tulelage of a master in drunken kung-fu.  I stopped paying attention about half-way in.

I put this on because I thought it might be amusing given its 7.4/10 IMDb rating.  This is a crass slapstick comedy where pratfalls are substituted with cartoonish martial arts face-offs.  The fights are almost non-stop and although the moves are meant to be funny as well as impressive, they are also over-the-top violent.  Life is really too short.

Death on the Nile
Directed by John Guillermin
Written by Anthony Shaffer from a novel by Agatha Christie
1978/UK
IMDb page
First viewing/YouTube rental

Jim Ferguson: You damn froggy eavesdropper.
Hercule Poirot: Belgian! Belgian eavesdropper!

All-star cast plays second fiddle to fabulous cinematography and art and costume design in this fun murder mystery.

As the movie begins, Jaqueline De Bellefort (Mia Farrow) visits her friend heiress Linette Ridgeway (Lois Chiles) and asks her to give Jackie’s fiance Simon Doyle (Simon MacCorkindale) a job on her estate. Linnet agrees to interview Simon. The next thing we see is Linett and Simon emerging from a chapel and setting off on a luxurious honeymoon in Egypt. Jackie stalks them throughout. It would be criminal to reveal any more about the plot though it is a given that everyone is a suspect. Instead look at this supporting cast! Jane Birkin, Bette Davis, Jon Finch, Olivia Hussey, George Kennedy, Angela Lansbury, David Niven, Maggie Smith and Jack Warden all have juicy parts.

For me, neither the plot nor the actors are the high spots of the movie. It is the sumptuous  reconstruction of 1920’s dress and furnishings and the gorgeous color photography by Jack Cardiff that carried me away. To add to my enjoyment, the locations brought back memories of a cruise my husband and I took down the Nile many years ago.

Death on the Nile won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design.

Piccadilly Jim
Directed by Robert Z. Leonard
Written by Charles Brackett and Edwin K. Knopf from a novel by P.G. Wodehouse
1936/US
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental

James Crocker, Jr.: Have you, by any chance, formed the wrong impression of me?
Ann Chester: I think not. You’re a typical American – European model.
James Crocker, Jr.: A romantic figure, I trust?
Ann Chester: Oh, very. I think the technical term is a bar fly.

The source material and the stars make this movie a lot of fun.

Robert Montgomery plays the title character, James Crocker, Jr., an American artist known as Piccadilly Jim who draws caricatures of London celebrities. He is accompanied everywhere by his faithful valet Bayliss (Eric Blore). One day he spots rich and beautiful Ann Chester (Madge Evans), who is engaged and won’t give him a tumble. Despondent, Jim shifts from caricature work to drawing a comic strip that parodies, unbeknownst to him, Ann’s own batty family. Will Jim get the girl? With Frank Morgan as Jim’s ham actor father.

The first thing I noticed about this film was its sparkling dialogue. The film is based on a P.G. Wodehouse novel and I imagine they lifted pages worth of the great man’s dialogue. It’s kind of a preposterous plot but surely that should be expected.