Monthly Archives: February 2018

Donovan’s Reef
Directed by John Ford
Written by Frank S. Nugent and James Edward Grant; story by Edmund Beloin
1963/USA
John Ford Productions
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Michael Patrick ‘Guns’ Donovan: Yeah, well, frangipani and flame-throwers don’t seem to go together, but that’s the way it was.[/box]

John Ford’s forte was not comedy.  This one is just OK.

It is Christmastime in Paradise.  “Guns” Donovan (John Wayne) remained in the South Pacific after the end of WWII and built up a prosperous shipping business.  He also owns a saloon called “Donovan’s Reef”.  Navy buddy Doc Dedham (Jack Warden) also stayed behind.  As the movie begins a third friend, “Boats” Gilhooley (Lee Marvin),  swims to shore from a passing freighter.  Doc Dedham needs to make a medical circuit of the outer islands and leaves his half-Polynesian children in Donovan’s care.

Shortly thereafter, Doc’s daughter Amelia (Elizabeth Allen) from his first marriage arrives. She is a Boston socialite who has become Chairman of the Dedham Shipping Company. Doc has now acquired a majority of the shares through inheritance.  Amelia hopes to find some violation of a morals clause that would make him ineligible to control the company. Naturally, Amelia and Donovan will fall in love and in a fairly predictable way.  We also get the standard barroom brawl that seems to be indispensable in these sorts of things.  With Dorothy Lamour as Gilhooley’s long-suffering girlfriend.

In Ford’s eye’s a good spanking seems to be the ultimate sign of affection – even as late as 1963!  The cast obviously had a good time and the Kaua’i scenery is gorgeous but this won’t stay with me for long.

This was Ford and Wayne’s final collaboration.

Move Over, Darling
Directed by Michael Gordon
Written by Hal Kanter and Jack Sher based on a screenplay by Sam and Bella Spewack
1963/USA
Melcher-Arcola Productions
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Judge Bryson: Well, are you gonna answer the question or is she going to talk for you the rest of your life?[/box]

This is a fairly faithful remake of My Favorite Wife (1940) with Irene Dunne and Cary Grant. I prefer that version but this isn’t bad.

Nicholas Arden (James Garner) is an attorney whose wife Ellen (Doris Day) was presumably lost at sea after an airplane crash which he survived.  It is five years later and Nick is seeking to have Ellen declared legally dead so he can marry his girl friend Bianca (Paula Prentiss).  On the very day he ties the knot, Ellen reappears, having been rescued from a mostly deserted island by a submarine.

Helen shows up at her husband’s honeymoon hotel determined to halt the consummation of his new marriage.  But this has an idiot plot and Nick finds himself unable to spit out the situation to his new bride for most of the running time of the film.  Many misunderstandings ensue on the way to the happy ending.  With Edgar Buchanan as a befuddled judge and Thelma Ritter as Nick’s mother.

This was pleasant enough though the usually reliable Day gets a bit shrill at times.  It lacks the sophistication of McCarey’s original.

High and Low (Tengoku to jigoku)
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Written by Hideo Oguni, Akira Kurosawa etc. from a novel by Evan Hunter (Ed McBain)
1963/Japan
Kurosawa Production Company/Toho Co.
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Ginjirô Takeuchi, medical intern: …Besides, it’s amusing to make fortunate men taste the same misery as the unfortunate.[/box]

Repeat viewings do not lessen the pleasures of this one.

Kingo Gondo (Toshiro Mifune) is the factory manager of National Shoe Co.  He has been quietly buying up stock in order to take charge of the company.  There is a dispute between the director/stockholders who want to make stylish but cheap and profitable shoes and Gondo who wants to make a quality product.  It is clear that the other stockholders want to force Gondo out if he won’t go along.  Gondo has now mortgaged everything he owns in order to acquire the final shares that will give him a majority.

At this precise moment, a kidnapper seizes a boy that he believes to be Gondo’s son.  Gondo is only too happy to pay the ransom.  But when it turns out the kidnapper seized his chauffeur’s son by mistake, Gondo has a crisis of conscience.  The remainder of the movie is a police procedural covering advice given during the kidnapping itself and later the search for the kidnapper and the money.  With Tetsuya Nakadai as the lead detective on the case.

I’ve always loved this one.  Maybe it’s because I enjoy seeing Mifune in his more subdued roles.  I have to admit that the second act drags a bit and that the scenes in the heroin den are perhaps overdone.  Nothing that mars my enjoyment of the story though.  Recommended.

The Ghost (Lo spettro)
Directed by Riccardo Freda
Written by Oreste Biancole and Riccardo Freda
1963/Italy
Panda Societa per L’Industria Cinematografica
First viewing/Amazon Prime

[box] “Now I know what a ghost is. Unfinished business, that’s what.” ― Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses[/box]

This is a solid ghost story but not outstanding in any way.

Scientist Dr. John Hitchcock is confined to a wheelchair.  His only remaining interest is exploring the borderland between life and death through seances.  “Friend” Dr. Charles Baldwin is experimenting on the use of a poison and antidote to stimulate John’s crippled limbs.  Charles is having an affair with John’s young wife Margaret (Barbara Steele).  The two execute a plan to murder John for the treasure he has hidden.  But before long they are wondering whether John has come back from the grave to haunt them.

This is OK.  It’s always fun to watch Barbara Steele.

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

Trailer – color is much more vivid on Amazon

The Evil Eye (La ragazza che sapeva troppo)
Directed by Mario Bava
Written by Sergio Corbucci, Ennio De Concini, Eliana De Sabata, Mario Bava, et al
1963/Italy
Galatea Film/Coronet s.r.l.
First viewing/FilmStruck

[box] Nora Davis: [into the phone] Oh mother, murders don’t just happen like that here.[/box]

The beautiful telling of an OK murder mystery story.

American tourist Nora Davis is looking forward to a fun holiday in Italy.  But the trip seems doomed from the start.  Her first stop is to visit a relative in Rome.  What she doesn’t know is that the old lady is practically on death’s door.  It is then that Nora meets charming young doctor Marcello Bassi (John Saxon).  She is left alone with the patient and it turns into a dark and stormy night.  The invalid promptly dies.  The phone line is dead so Nora goes out into the night headed for the hospital where Bassi works, which is close to the Spanish steps.

While walking down the steps, Nora is assaulted for her purse and pushed to the ground where she hits her head.  When she briefly regains consciousness, she observes the murder of a young woman by stabbing.  By the time she is rescued by a policeman, all evidence of the crime has disappeared and Nora is not believed – not least because she is an avid murder mystery reader with a vivid imagination.  But Nora will not give up and eventually Dr. Bassi joins her on the hunt for the killer.  With Valentina Cortese as a kindly, but suspicious, Roman who takes Nora in.

The poster stresses the “supernatural” elements of the film but this is basically a murder mystery with a few jump cut thrills thrown in.  It is partially told through the mind-reading technique where Nora gives a voice over of her thoughts.  I kept expecting it to turn into a spoof but it did not.  Director Bava, who was also the film’s DP, made it beautifully atmospheric.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEapuJP4JP4

The Insect Woman (Nippon konchuki)
Directed by Shohei Imamura
Written by Keiji Hasebe and Shohei Imamura
1963/Japan
Nikkatsu
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] “The shared secret and the shared denial are the most horrible aspects of incest.” ― John Bradshaw, Bradshaw on the Family: A New Way of Creating Solid Self-Esteem[/box]

Shohei Imamura gives us a good-looking film but, for me, it was two hours of seeing people I didn’t like doing stuff I would rather forget. Yuck.

Tome (Sachiko Hidari) is born into extreme poverty to tenant farmers in a remote village.  Seemingly, for these people anything goes.  Young Tome is sleeping with her father (or is he her step-father?) from an early age.  Eventually the extended family forces Tome to go to a rich landowner as a maid.  She is promptly raped and gives birth to her only child Nobuko.  During the war years, Tome escapes to do war work in the city.  She enjoys some happy moments as the mistress of a mill foreman and some independence when she becomes involved with union organizing. Nobuko and Tome’s father are left destitute when the extended family appropriates the money Tome sends home.

Tome remains in the city and eventually is more or less tricked into prostitution.  When she wins a wealthy “regular” she betrays the house madam to the police.  This allows her to go into business for herself.  She treats her girls as badly as the former madam.  Finally, Nobuko comes to town seeking a 200,000 loan for her share in a communal farm.  Nobuko catches the eye of Tome’s man and it looks like things might go full circle.

I think we were meant to feel sorry for Tome but by the end of the movie I was hoping that she would die so she couldn’t destroy any more people.  Imamura is 0 for 2 with me.  I must say that I could at least understand the plot with this one, which is more than I can say about Pigs and Battleships.

The Householder
Directed by James Ivory
Written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala from her novel
1963/India
Merchant Ivory Productions
First viewing/YouTube

[box] “She wondered whether all marriages started out this way. Whether this initial stress and adjustment, push and pull and tremors and shakes were common to all relationships…. She wondered why all those relatives who had sat on her head asking her to get married had never mentioned this particular phase.” ― Shweta Ganesh Kumar, A Newlywed’s Adventures in Married Land[/box]

Merchant-Ivory’s first production is a tender story about the growing pains of a newlywed couple in Delhi.

Prem Sagar works as a teacher in a Delhi college for a meager salary.  He has recently married Indu and finds she is a stranger whom he doesn’t much like.  For her part, Indu lounges around the house in a state of extreme boredom.  When she falls pregnant, things get much worse with the arrival of Prem’s domineering mother.  By this time his wife is barely talking to him.  Prem seeks advice from a number of people, including an American besotted with spiritual India and a swami.  Because or despite them things gradually begin to improve.

This film took its time growing on me.  The main problem is that the actors speak English with thick Hindi accents and I had no subtitles to help me along.  When I got used to this and into the story, I found it rather delightful.  I loved the ending!

The Cardinal
Directed by Otto Preminger
Written by Robert Dozier from a novel by Henry Morton Robinson
1963/USA
Otto Preminger Films
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Cardinal Glennon: He’s a lucky man to have a son who’s not afraid of him.[/box]

This three-hour spectacle about the life of a Catholic priest was not as hard to take as I expected.

As he awaits his ordination as cardinal, Stephen Fermoyle (Tom Tryon) ponders his years as a Catholic cleric.  Fermoyle was seemingly destined from birth for the priesthood by his Irish-American parents.  Fate also seemingly destined him for great things by giving him a gift for languages and a scholastic bent.

His first years as a priest were painful, however.  Much of this was caused by his sister Mona’s (Carol Lynley) romance with a Jew. They were engaged to be married when the man decided he could neither convert nor promise to raise his children as Catholic. Fermoyle was forced by his religious principals to take a stand that caused his sister to descend into a life of “sin” and misery.  Later, he is sent by Bishop Glennon (John Huston), who thinks the scholar is too big for his britches, to serve as the assistant to the dying pastor (Burgess Meredith) of the poorest parish in his diocese.

Many things happen over the remaining two hours of this movie, including Fermoyle’s leave of absence and friendship with an adoring Austrian (Romy Schneider); the confrontation between Fermoyle and Southern bigots; and his mission to Vienna after the Anschluss to deal with a Hitler-supporting prelate.  With a cast of thousands, including Dorothy Gish in her final role.

I was hesitant going into this, expecting a three-hour melodramatic extravaganza would just not be for me.  I was right and yet it was better than I expected it to be.  The acting is solid and the settings are  beautiful, especially at the Vatican.  So many different plot points are covered that it also doesn’t seem to be quite as long as it is.

John Huston was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.  The film was also nominated in the categories of Best Director; Best Cinematography, Color; Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color; Best Costume Design, Color; and Best Film Editing.