John Grant

“Two Weeks in Another Town,” a film directed by Vincente Minnelli from 1962, recalls another Minnelli film, the wonderful “The Bad and the Beautiful,” from 1951.  Kirk Douglas stars in both films, but Two Weeks in Another Town drifts more towards satire and farce than drama.  Douglas plays a washed-up actor, Jack Andrus, who suffers from alcoholism and mental illness.  While in a very fancy mental hospital, he gets a letter from a former colleague, a director named Maurice Kruger (Edward G. Robinson) to play a part in a film.  The rest of the picture takes place in Rome, where Andrus finds love with Daliah Lavi and feuds with Kruger and the film’s male star.

Kirk Douglas contemplates his future in “Two Weeks in Another Town.”

The characters act unkind and cynical with each other, which adds to the humor. Kruger’s film, the movie within the movie that’s never named, undergoes filming at Cinecittà, the famous studio in Rome. However, the place suffers the worst of Hollywood, with uncooperative actors, an irritating producer and an abusive director (Kruger).  Andrus’ break comes when Kruger suffers a heart attack; from his sickbed, Kruger persuades Andrus to finish directing the film.
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Spending three years in a mental asylum doesn’t seem to dull Andrus’ artistic sensibilities, and he ends up doing quite well in the director’s chair. Andrus meets a major complication when he begins socializing with the beautiful Veronica (Lavi). She’s dating the nervous young actor Davie Drew, who can’t seem to come up with the confidence and professionalism to complete his scenes satisfactorily. This forces Andrus to molly-coddle the young male star, but that also helps Drew look better in Veronica’s eyes. As Andrus’ support system falters, he returns to drinking heavily and his binge becomes a travelogue for the viewer showing the sights of Rome.

Douglas acts crazy at one point during the film, but not “Lust for Life” crazy.  He tones it down during a wild car ride through Rome with Cyd Charisse, who plays his ex-wife.  You can’t go wrong with Douglas and Robinson, and George Hamilton, who plays a petulant actor, does a fine job as well.  All the negative forces conspiring to sabotage the movie within the movie stem from Kruger’s inability to focus and regain his lost directing talent. The eventual condition that befalls Kruger must have been a scenario that Minelli could easily contemplate. Minnelli directs another good  “inside” Hollywood film, and adds a hefty dose of cynicism and humor.

For an exquisitely conceived and executed movie, take a look at Max Ophüls’ 1953 film “The Earrings of Madame de…”  Ophüls casts the lovely Danielle Darrieux as a flirtatious woman of high class named Louise who gets involved in an affair with an Italian diplomat named Baron Donati, played by Vittorio De Sica.  Madame de’s husband, Andre, played by Charles Boyer, suspects an affair but maintains a classy attitude towards his wife and the Baron.  The diamond earrings, which Louise sells at the beginning, continually circulate among the three principals, as they are bought and sold numerous times.

Madame de… (Danielle Darrieux) tries on her earrings.

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The film begins with Madame de (Darrieux) making the decision to sell her earrings to pay off her debts. The camera flits around her bedroom for a while before finally focussing on the magnificent jewelry mentioned in the movie’s title, with the viewer wondering how such inanimate objects could provide a plot for this movie masterpiece. Madame de sells them to a jeweler and later at the opera tells the General (Boyer) that she’s lost them (after a lot of contrived histrionics). Then the jeweler contacts the General and offers to sell them back to him; he agrees to buy them but does not tell his wife. Eventually, the earrings come into the possession of an Italian baron, Donati (De Sica), who later meets the General’s wife and falls in love with her. Complicating matters even further, the General knows Donati quite well and considers him a good friend. The General shows tremendous restraint; he doesn’t jump to conclusions about his wife and his friend, but his eventual discoveries provide a satisfactory denouement in this film of subtlety and deceit.

The deft camerawork gives the film a profound intimacy, while the outstanding performances by Boyer, Darrieux and De Sica keep us continually moved.  Ophuls does an outstanding job of keeping the principals up front, including the earrings, which display prominently and seem to gain power as the movie goes on. The journey the earrings take provides a profound lesson, and the ending implies the journey will continue with a new set of characters.

“Diabolique,” a French film from 1955 directed by Henri-George Clouzot, offers a taut and interesting story about a wife and a mistress of school principal who plot a murder. The principal, Michel, played by Paul Meurisse, beats both his wife and his mistress, and they all work at a provincial boy’s boarding school in a small village in France.  The mistress, Nicole, played by Simone Signoret, masterminds the plot and gets the principal’s wife involved.  The wife, Christina, played by Véra Clouzot, suffers from both a heart ailment and an extremely pious attitude to life.  But the principal’s cruelty forces Christina’s hand and she agrees to murder him.

Simone Signoret (left) and Véra Clouzot in “Diabolique.”

Clouzot segments the film into three distinct parts.  The first part shows the principal at his most monstrous as he bullies the boys, yells at his staff and abuses both Nicole and Christina.  In the middle of the film, the elaborate murder and disposal of the body takes place. Part three involves the women avoiding detection as they turn against each other to cover their tracks.  A private eye begins to sniff around the school and suspects the women may be involved in a crime.
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The murderers expect things to play out a certain way, and their plans account for their assumptions. However, when things don’t pan out, they turn against each other. They’ve ditched the body in a swimming pool on the school grounds, and expect it to surface in a couple of days. It doesn’t surface, and it’s not found when they drain the pool. After hearing about a body found in the River Seine, Christina marches down to the morgue to identify the body, but instead only finds the snooping investigator. Back at school, Christina then begins hearing things and the movie gets scarier as the audience wonders whether Michel is really dead. The viewer is treated to a taut and unusual combination of suspense, mystery and horror.

Everything pays off beautifully at the end.  Perhaps the film serves as an example that it’s better for a screenwriter to think of the ending first and then write the rest of the movie.  In fact, the ending is so satisfying, interesting and surprising it invites a much closer look at the individual scenes.  I didn’t notice anything that could have tipped off the ending; I was too wrapped up in the story and the chemistry between Nicole and Christina to anticipate such a finish.

I saw “Dark City,” a 1998 film, in a movie theater when it first came out.  I found it highly impressive, with wonderful images, a great story, a well-designed plot, and lots of wonderful and interesting ideas.  Directed by Alex Proyas, the movie skirts the genres of film noir, horror, science fiction and fantasy.  It’s full of substance and it delivers wonderfully on style.

Kiefer Sutherland is in cahoots with aliens in “Dark City.”

So I couldn’t believe that so few of my friends and fellow movie fanatics had even seen it.  I didn’t know the full story of the film until the “director’s cut” DVD came out, which offers a version of the movie closer to the director’s vision. Proyas discards the narration at the beginning and lets the audience figure things out as they occur.  The story concerns an apparently alien race that experiments with humans, transferring memories among inhabitants of a 1940’s style city where it’s always nighttime. One man, John Murdoch, becomes conscious during the experiments, prompting the aliens to hunt him down. Kiefer Sutherland plays a doctor, Schreber, in cahoots with the aliens.
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The color film uses a film noir style, with very dark images, shadows and set designs that include lots of bright white backgrounds. The film opens as John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) awakens in a bathtub with his memory lost. He climbs out of the tub and sees a horrific scene of a murdered woman sprawled on the floor. Confused, he runs out into the night, which becomes a major mystery when he realizes that the city never experiences daylight. Each night, at midnight, the entire population of the city dozes off while the buildings, streets and people transform themselves into a new environment. The aliens notice Murdoch’s immunity to their experiments and send Schreber to lure him into their lair. Except for their superior intelligence, the aliens’ power comes from their incredible ability to shape realities with their mind (psychokinesis, or “tuning” as it’s called in the movie). Ironically, Murdoch doesn’t particularly want to battle them, he just wants to get to an idyllic place called Shell Beach — which may not exist.

The DVD adds 3 complete commentaries, and several documentaries about the film. Anybody who watches the new cut of the movie along with all the special features will realize the film’s value.  It’s definitely watchable more than once and I count it as one of my favorite movies of the last 20 years.  Rufus Sewell, Jennifer Connolly, William Hurt and Richard O’Brien also star in the film.

The Italian cinema thought up a great idea when they decided to make a funny “caper” film in 1958.  The film, “Big Deal on Madonna Street,” follows the story of 5 completely inept small-time hoods who decide to burglarize a pawn shop.  The plan involves knocking down a wall shared by an apartment next door to the shop, and then drilling open the safe.  But an even more intriguing story is the look the film gives of impoverished and desperate characters trying to make a living in Italy during the late 1950’s.

The crooks of “Big Deal on Madonna Street.”

Among the inept crooks, Marcello Mastroianni plays a terrible photographer whose casing of the pawn shop results in a broken arm.  Vittorio Gassman plays an awful glass-jawed boxer who takes over as the ringleader of the heist after leaving prison.  Memmo Carotenuto, who plays a would-be don named Cosimo, thinks up the heist scheme, but then resorts to petty theft. When Carmelina, (Claudia Cardenale), the shuttered sister of one of the gang members, catches the eye of Mario, played by Renato Salvatori, he decides that love is more important than loot.
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What makes the film so funny is that the members of the gang join the heist in all sincerity, try to do their best, but then run into various troubles during the planning stage. In heist films, the script tries to explain the intricacies of the theft so the audience doesn’t continuously wonder what’s going on during the heist. In this film, so many complications occur because of the idiotic crooks that I expected the heist to be called off at the last second. Nevertheless, the gang eventually does break into the pawn shop, making an enormous racket while experiencing a comedy of errors. They work off a map of the premises that proves to be wrong in every way possible. It’s a testament to the filmmakers that they can continually throw interesting complications in the way of stumblebums who probably would have botched the burglary anyway.

The film, directed by Mario Monicelli, contains plenty of social references that could only come from Italy.  For instance, much is made of the differences between northern and southern Italians.  About Sicily, Mario says: “Nothing but rocks and cacti down there.”  At that time, apparently, men or women could hire scapegoats to serve prison terms for themselves.  This satirical and very funny film makes it seem like a wide-spread occurrence, and it’s believable in the realm of these desperate characters.

Ernst Lubitsch’s “Monte Carlo,” released in 1930, offers Jeannette MacDonald as Countess Helene Mara.  She skips out on an elaborate marriage to a prince in the first scene and heads to Monte Carlo.  There, she meets the womanizing Count Rudolph, played by Jack Buchanan, who masquerades as a hairdresser.  She discovers quickly that he can’t really cut hair, but retains him nevertheless after they sing a song together called “Whatever It Is, It’s Grand.”  He soon becomes her chauffeur and butler as well.

Jeannette MacDonald and Jack Buchanan

Nothing much happens in Monte Carlo; the main plot points involve Rudolph keeping his station as a count a secret, and the prince finally returning to make another play for Countess Helene. Jeanette MacDonald sings “Beyond the Blue Horizon” on the train to Monte Carlo.

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Everyone in the film seems silly and shallow, and the Count Rudolph part seems tailor-made for Louis Chevalier, but I always enjoy seeing Jeannette MacDonald in any movie. The film makes a good primer to Lubitsch’s later masterpiece, “The Merry Widow,” released in 1934. Paramount Pictures, in marketing the movie, chose not to concentrate on the more subtle elements of Lubitsch’s style. They used the following rather salacious taglines: “As intimate as a lady’s boudoir!” and “As exciting as a caress! As intimate as clinging silk!” Jeanette MacDonald strips down to her underwear, as she does in many of her films, while on the train to Monte Carlo, but the movie never gets quite as salacious as the tagline come-ons.

In a later Ernst Lubitsch film, “Trouble in Paradise,” the banter between the leads played by Miriam Hopkins and Herbert Marshall seems like play acting, but that’s because they play con artists who can’t resist making a joke of it with each other. In Monte Carlo, the Countess may suspect that Count Rudolph wants to con her, but she willingly exposes herself to it. Perhaps the best part of the Lubitsch touch is that misunderstandings are figured out by the characters early, but Lubitsch doesn’t let the audience know it.

I value the films I can watch over and over again and always get something new from them.  My favorite film, “The Wizard of Oz,” is certainly on that list.  Another favorite of mine, “Trouble in Paradise,” from 1932, remains charming and almost hypnotic in its dialogue and pacing.  Herbert Marshall, Mariam Hopkins and Kay Frances pull off the magic in this Ernst Lubitsch film.

Kay Francis (left), Mariam Hopkins and Herbert Marshall form a love triangle in Lubitsch’s “Trouble in Paradise.”

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Edward Everett Horton and Charles Ruggles play two suitors vying for Madame Colet’s affection.  Their bickering adds a light touch to the plot without straining the main story.  Lubitsch opens the film with a night-time view of a garbage scow and its owner collecting garbage on a Venice canal.  Soon, we become aware of a robbery as the escaping villain in silhouette sheds his disguise.  We then cut to an elegant scene in a hotel suite featuring Marshall and Hopkins.  Gaston says, “Beginnings are always difficult.”  It’s Lubitsch saying that the thieves in this film are not common and are above the fray.

I think Greta Garbo’s portrayal in “Two-Faced Woman,” released in 1941, gives an indication of her broad range.  She plays Karen Borg, a rustic ski instructor who marries a magazine writer named Larry Blake, played by Melvyn Douglas.  Larry returns to New York, but Karin thinks up a ruse to pose as her own twin sister (Katherine).  Larry sees the sophisticated “Katherine” in New York and romances her; but Larry’s  pretty sure it’s only Karin playing a joke on him.

Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas

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The film has a similar plot to Preston Sturges’ and Paramount’s 1941 film “The Lady Eve,” starring Barbara Stanwyck in a double role and Henry Fonda.  Garbo walked away from films forever after Two-Faced Woman, but it’s not a bad effort.  She kept looking for a good script, but none materialized.  George Cukor, the director of Two-Faced Woman, commented later that Greta Garbo never improvised and he respected her for that.

“Ladies of Leisure,” a 1930 film starring Barbara Stanwyck, proved to be a breakout role for her.  She plays a call girl, Kay Arnold, who tries to reform by posing for a famous and rich artist.  The artist, Jerry Strong, maintains high ideals about the perfect pose and the perfect painting, and ends up taking a lot of time painting Kay.  He dominates her and orders her around, but shows no romantic interest in her.  Naturally, Kay falls for Jerry, much to the dismay of his rich industrialist father.

Barbara Stanwyck (left) and Marie Prevost play call girls in “Ladies of Leisure.”

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What’s great about pre-code films is that they feature wonderful actresses in good roles.  The director, Frank Capra, keeps the pace quick, despite the long scenes of Kay posing for Jerry.  Capra took a chance on Stanwyck and propelled her into a future star.  Capra made 4 more movies with Stanwyck, including “The Miracle Woman (1931),” “Forbidden (1932),” “The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933),” and “Meet John Doe (1941).”