Archive 550

February 2024

Jonathan Hole

Born: August 13, 1904 in Eldora, Iowa. Died February 11, 1998 in Hollywood.

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Vampires in Silent Film by Gary Rhodes - Amazon

Lady in a Cage - 1964: Often savage, sometimes simply over-the-top, but mostly effective "shocker" about a woman (Olivia de Havilland) recovering from hip surgery in her luxury home and having to use an elegant indoor elevator to get between the floors of her open-layout home. Then the elevator gets stuck with her in it. Located in an elevated place midway in the air, she is helpless as local denizens up to no good invade her home and commence to looting the place, only for one group (led by James Caan in his first onscreen role) as a particularly brutal young man who seems to have a Charles Manson-level of appetite for destruction, years before Charles Manson had ever became famous. A dark film about cruelty, inhumanity and the will to survive.

Holy Matrimony - 1943: A hugely successful artist assumes the identity of his recently deceased man servant, only to become accused of his own murder in this gentle comedy about art, missing husbands and the prafmitism of housewifery - more Holy Matrimony, 1943

The Major and the Minor - 1942: Billy Wilder's first film as a director has Ginger Rogers masquerading as a 12 year old girl in order to get a half-fare ticket for a trip home to Iowa from New York City. She is fed up with the leering and harassing men of the city, and once aboard the train she is forced by circumstances to hide in the railway cabin of Ray Milland who has a "bum eye" and doesn't see through the phony 12 year old girl charade. Adopting a familial arrangement in which Ray is the "uncle" and "Su-su" (Ginger) is the unsophisticated niece, the pair end up at the military academy where Ray is on staff and Su-su goes to stay in Ray's fiancee's home, and then things get really complicated.

More about the comedy The Major and the Minor - 1942

Injury on set! Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) pic.twitter.com/L5v6ZtqEuv

— Hammer Horror Films (@HorrorHammer1) February 17, 2024

Panique - 1946: Story of a mob and two crooks and one misanthropic astrologist.

More about Panique, 1946, directed by Julien Duvivier.

Taming of the Shrew - 1967: Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton duel throughout the two hour runtime of this Shakespeare play adaptation, and though Burton's character of Petruchio is clearly destined to succeed in his pursuit of the violent, thin-tempered Katherina, the film's script by Paul Dehn, Suso Cecchi D'Amico and Franco Zeffirelli tries to balance the fighting we observe (which is almost entirely humorous) with the ongoing emotional alteration that takes place between the two.

For Petruchio, he's got to gain Katherina for financial reasons, and for Katherina, who has made a career of dodging romantic obligations foisted upon her by her family, this is just another contest she is determined, and seems perfectly able, to win. The sheer scale of the fighting between Burton and Taylor feeds a lot of the humor (overlapping into outright slapstick), but the twisting, funny dialogue is where the real laughter lies.

Background characterization by the rest of the cast seems watered down compared to the histrionics of Burton and Taylor, and I don't think I've seen a better Elizabeth Taylor movie in which her screaming, a liability in other films, perfectly suits the continual madness of the whirling "romance" between Petruchio and Katherina.

Franco Zeffirelli's storytelling is visually grand and there are a lot of colorful costumed bodies on the screen, but the architecture of the era is explored in a limited way which doesn't match the acting giantism of Taylor and Burton.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - 1931: A personality "split" taken to a whole different level.

More about the 1931 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with Frederic March and Miriam Hopkins.

Fast Reviews

Secret of the Incas (1954): Proto-Indiana Jones adventure with Chuck Heston up against the limits of his own obsession to find a hidden treasure, an evil compititor with an even greater obsession, a refugee who needs his help, and the vast high altitude landscape of the Manchu Picchu area in the Andes mountains of Peru.

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Man's Favorite Sport (1964): Paula Prentiss is going to help Rock Hudson learn to fish and camp whether he likes it or not.

More about the 1964 Howard Hawk's Man's Favorite Sport

Fast Review: Ghosted (2023) Movies in which a relatively "normal" guy falls in love with a secret agent who wields action movie level combat skills has been made before, and in this regard Ghosted is like its predecessors with the guy often in shock and the lethal female regularly pushing the guy to try and keep up. But, Chris Evans and Ana de Armas are a good pairing and carry the picture forward with a bantering, bickering companionship that peels back layers of insecurity, anger, hubris, jadedness and comedy as they flip-flop between repulsing each other and falling in love while constantly having their lives put into danger. Stunt work is good and contains a lot of comedy itself, with in-jokes parodying Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark in places, a villain played by Adrien Brody who seems like an oily culmination of a number of maniacal cinematic super villains, but with a funny, frustrated edge to it. Ghosted also includes humorous cameos of various bad guys hunting the couple who we know better from the world of Marvel superhero movies where Chris Evans is the famous Captain America.

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