Daily Archives: September 6, 2015

Park Row
Directed by Samuel Fuller
Written by Samuel Fuller
1952/USA
Samuel Fuller Productions
First viewing/Amazon Prime

[box] Phineas Mitchell: The press is good or evil according to the character of those who direct it.[/box]

Samuel Fuller’s tribute to honest journalism is well worth seeing.

It is the late 19th century. Hard-hitting reporter Phineas Mitchell (Gene Evans) has just been fired from his job on The Star, the city’s leading daily.  The co-workers who tried to stick up for him were fired as well.  The day is saved when a printer friend offers to help him launch his own paper.  Mithcell calls his paper the Globe and prints it on anything he can get his hands on cheaply, including butcher paper.

Mitchell is unafraid to take on the powers that be.  When he finds out that France’s gift of the Statue of Liberty has not been erected because it requires an expensive pedestal, he starts a popular fund-raising campaign promising each donation, however small, will be mentioned in The Globe.  Another revolutionary gamble is hiring Ottmar Mergenthaler on staff to work on his invention of the linotype machine.

Charity Hackett (Mary Welch), the young, ruthless publisher of The Star, finds that she cannot halt the growth of her rival through fair means and decides to resort to force.  For a while, it looks like this might just be too much for the Globe.

Fuller was a New York reporter before going into films and this movie makes it clear that printer’s ink continued to run through his veins.  His characteristic passion is in full force and the cast of unknowns seems fully committed to the task set for them.

I’ve been trying to account for Fuller’s impact on me.  His writing is unsophisticated, almost naive.  I think it’s the sincerity, coupled with the quirky filmmaking, that makes his films work.  It is their lack of subtlety, perhaps, that gives his stories their strange power.

Trailer

The Importance of Being Earnest
Directed by Anthony Asquith
Written by Oscar Wilde
1952/UK
British Film-Makers in association with Javelin Films (both uncredited)
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

Lady Bracknell: To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

I find this to be supremely re-watchable.

Jack Worthing (Michael Redgrave) and Algernon Moncrieff (Michael Denison) have a lot in common, despite their non-stop bickering.  They both have created elaborate excuses to leave their obligations behind on a moment’s notice.  Jack has invented an imaginary younger brother named Errnest, whose constant scrapes call him back to town from his country house.  In town, he uses the name Ernest and in this guise has won the heart of Gwendolyn Fairfax (Joan Greenwood).  Algernon, Gwendolyn’s cousin who lives in town, has a chronically ill friend named “Bunbury” who lives in the country and requires his constant attention.

Jack works up the courage to propose to Gwendolyn and is readily accepted.  The catch is she loves him largely because of his pseudonym, Ernest.  Jack’s second problem is that Gwendolyn’s harridan of a mother (Edith Evans) is a stickler for “family” and he has none to produce.

Matters only get more complicated when Algernon shows up at Jack’s country house posing as Jack’s younger brother Ernest.  He and Jack’s ward Cecily fall immediately in love.  Of course, Cecily loved him before she met him, largely because of his enticing name, Ernest.  With Margaret Rutherford as Cecily’s governess, Miss Prism, and Miles Matheson as the country rector, Canon Chasuble.

This is a decidedly stage-bound version of the Oscar Wilde farce.  It works extremely well due to the pitch perfect performances and the already artificial nature of the proceedings. The entire thing is quotable.  Highly recommended.

Clip – Lady Bracknell quizzes Jack on his lineage – very possibly the funniest scene in the play