Summertime
One of the prettiest sights in all of cinema is Katharine Hepburn standing in a gondola at dawn, waving goodbye to lover Rossano Brazzi in David Lean’s SUMMERTIME (1955, Max). Yet the shot is also problematic. Although it’s clear they’ve spent the night together, she’s wearing a different outfit than in their scenes the night before. Did he have a collection in various sizes in his apartment, or was this just a sop to the censors? And prettiness dominates the film, which works fine as a contrast to Hepburn’s early loneliness as a single woman on her first European vacation and as she and Brazzi grow closer. It’s just that it starts feeling a bit forced at the end. She’s caught Brazzi in two lies, one of which is a whopper (he tries to pass off his adult son as his nephew). And Brazzi can’t quite match Hepburn’s sincerity. She makes us believe she’s a virgin in the throes of first love. Her silent scenes on her first night in Venice are exquisite and should help you forgive the few moments in which her bumptiousness seems more an actress’ striving for effect than a character acting foolishly. But his protestations of love sound hollow. In the play (Arthur Laurents’ THE TIME OF THE CUCKOO), his character has more ambiguity. You’re never quite sure if he loves the leading lady or is just using her.
Though it’s a blessing to have some of Laurents’ talkiness cut to make way for Hepburn’s exploration of Venice (this is one film you couldn’t shoot in a studio), I think the playwright came up with a better ending. Lean’s film ends picturesquely, but it’s more an old-movie trope about the redeeming power of love and all that bushwa. Hepburn’s Jane is going to spend the rest of her life living off the memory of her few days with Brazzi. Leona, the role Laurents wrote for Shirley Booth, has learned to get on with her life and put her Italian fling in its proper place. With Darren Gavin as a young artist and Isa Miranda as the realistic owner of the pensione where Hepburn stays — both parts were significantly cut for the film — and Jane Rose, the only member of the original stage cast, making her film debut with a very funny performance as a gauche yet strangely charming tourist. This was David Lean’s last intimate film, and his light touch with the comedy here would be sorely missed in his later epics.
Most Likely to Die
According to the horror press, we’ve now moved from slasher to neo-slasher films. This would seem to refer to horrors since the late ‘90s, after the genre’s heyday. They’re supposed to supply some new spin, as in post-modern slashers like WES CRAVEN’S NEW NIGHTMARE (1994) and the SCREAM (1996) franchise that call attention to the conventions of the genre. But there are still plenty of slashers that add nothing new beyond a gimmick. Case in point: Anthony Di Biasi’s MOST LIKELY TO DIE (2015, Peacock). Laura Bannon’s script suggests a new plot device: a killer called “The Graduate” dressed in cap and gown does in former students the night before their tenth high-school reunion in ways related to the predictions under their yearbook pictures. This could have potential if a) the predictions were in some way clever, b) they actually related to how the people died, c) the premise were revealed from the start and d) it were followed consistently. But a) they aren’t, b) they don’t, c) it isn’t and…you get the picture. So, it’s just a bunch of random deaths and scares, some involving decent actors (Heather Morris as a professional poker player; Tess Christiansen as the class lesbian; yes, it’s that formulaic), some involving not very good actors (a model whose lines are all delivered the same way; Perez Hilton, ‘nuff said). The film even fails to cash the mediocre check it writes early on. Morris can’t make it to the top rung of poker players because she lacks a killer instinct. Shouldn’t the film end with her back on the poker circuit, now cleaning up because facing off against The Graduate taught her that instinct? Instead, there’s a half-hearted attempt to establish a franchise, which, given the film’s poor reception and limited release, isn’t likely to happen. So, there’s some consolation in all this.
Dear Heart
I have a strange relationship with Geraldine Page’s work. I like her best in the material for which she has the least respect. Put her in a mindless comedy or melodrama, and she delivers a wonderful performance, often much more fleshed out than what was in the script. And I delighted in her deft playing of Alan Ayckbourn’s farce ABSURD PERSON SINGULAR on Broadway. Put her in Tennessee Williams or Woody Allen at his most serious or, goddess help us, Chekhov, and after five minutes I want to step out for a smoke. I’ve never smoked. I hate smoking. But I’d take it up to get away from those self-conscious, mannered performances. Between her on-screen bouts with Williams and Chekhov, Page was cast in Delbert Mann’s romantic comedy DEAR HEART (1964, TCM), and she’s a delight. You can see echoes of her more serious work — the fussiness she brought to Alma Winemiller and a gesture she would slow down to an almost glacial pace in INTERIORS (1978) — but here it all serves to make the character more endearing and dimensional. As a single woman of a certain age attending a post master’s convention in New York, she’s like the new Jean Arthur. Her Evie Jackson comes off the train from Ohio at the start and knows the names of all her fellow passengers and the porters. She leaves messages for herself at the hotel desk or has herself paged just to feel somebody cares. Then she meets Glenn Ford’s womanizing greeting card salesman, who’s about to move into an office job and marriage to “that tomato from Altoona” (Angela Lansbury), and something magical happens. Her fussy, detailed acting and his proficient, studio-trained mining of personality meet and make something beautiful. There’s a scene in which he shows her the apartment he’s just rented for himself and Lansbury that’s a gorgeous acting duet, and they have a fully dressed scene in Page’s hotel room that’s one of the sexiest things I’ve ever seen. You half expect them to light cigarettes when it’s over. Tad Mosel adapted the script from his TV play. When he’s writing for the adults it’s spot on. The early scenes for Lansbury’s son (Michael Anderson, Jr.) appear to have been written by somebody with no understanding of young people, and Anderson comes off almost unbearably glib (he settles in later). Lansbury is very good as Ford’s fiancée, and the supporting cast also includes Barbara Nichols as another of her cheap blondes (but this one is funnier than she is irritating), Richard Deacon as the convention’s manager and a glorious trio of cranky old women played by Ruth McDevitt, Mary Wickes and Alice Pearce (I’m always amazed at how much nuance she can bring to roles like this). The Henry Mancini-Jay Livingston-Ray Evans theme song — the producers liked it so much they named the film for it — was more successful than the movie, but I think the film is ripe for rediscovery along with some of Delbert Mann’s other late works.
Fender Bender
Writer-director Mark Paiva knows how to generate suspense. His FENDER BENDER (2016, Shudder) has all the right rhythms for a slasher film. But there isn’t a lot of character logic. People do things not because they would, but because it will advance the plot or make a supposedly neat effect. But without logic, we know we’re watching plot devices instead of people, so caring goes out the window. The film opens creepily. A woman (Cassidy Freeman) enters her house while talking on the phone about an accident she just had. Someone rear-ended her, and she has his info. Then she gets into a bubble bath to relax and receives a text from the guy who hit her telling her to enjoy her bath. Creepy, huh? Then she gets into her bed, turns off the light and rolls over to discover a masked, leather-clad man in bed with her. So, did she not notice him while walking into her fully lit bedroom or feel another presence in the bed beside her before she turned out the light, or did he just materialize as soon as the light was out? And while you’re trying to figure all that out, you may not notice that he’s killed her, and we’ve moved into the credits. Then it all repeats with a young woman (Makenzie Vega) whose parents ground her for getting into a fender bender that wasn’t her fault, but they needed some excuse to leave her home alone. After she takes a shower, she discovers her phone isn’t where she left it. When she finds it, she sees that there are photos she didn’t take of a steamy bathroom. So, she slowly walks down the hall to compare the photos with her bathroom, because she doesn’t know what it looks like? By this point, it was time for my evening snack, and then I did some knitting because the film really didn’t deserve my full attention, nor does it deserve any of yours.
Death of a Cyclist
The grandeur of the American Southwest is poorly supported by the actors and script in Don Coscarelli’s PHANTASM IV: OBLIVION (1998, Shudder), aka “Phantasm: OblIVion.” Coscarelli admitted he only made the film to cash in on the franchise, but did he have to do it so poorly? Sadly, the picture starts promisingly, with a montage showing the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) stalking, Mikey (A. Michael Baldwin) driving, Reggie (Reggie Bannister) escaping the trap in which Scrimm held him at the end of PHANTASM III (1994) and scenes and outtakes from the earlier films. It’s all very dreamlike, in the manner of the first film, and then Bannister’s voiceover narration comes in and drags everything down to mundanity. At one point, he refers to himself and Baldwin as “soldiers,” which would indicate Coscarelli didn’t realize one of the charms of the original was that the main characters weren’t soldiers. They were a group of schlubs who got caught up in the mystery surrounding the local funeral home. The third sequel conveniently forgets there was a child kidnapped by Scrimm at the end of the previous film. Instead, it follows Baldwin as he tries to resist being turned into the next Tall Man and Bannister as he tries to find Baldwin. There’s lots of driving and walking through Death Valley, three exploding cars (no originality for us), a demon woman with death orbs as her breasts (misogynistic much?) and lots of outtakes from the original, some with new dialogue post-dubbed, that are supposed to reveal something or other but just serve to pad out the running time. There’s one intriguing scene in which Baldwin travels back in time to meet Jebediah Morningstar (Scrimm), the good-hearted undertaker who would become the Tall Man. Scrimm gets a chance to use his natural voice, and for a moment there’s the possibility he’ll get to show off his stage training (he was particularly noted for high comedy), but the script doesn’t do anything with the idea. You don’t even get to see his transformation. Then it all ends on a cliffhanger that wouldn’t be resolved for almost 20 years. As if at this point anybody cared.
The Steel Helmet
Samuel Fuller’s third directing effort, THE STEEL HELMET (1951), brought him a contract with 20th Century-Fox, and quite rightly so. It’s not just that he scored a 2,000 per cent profit on the low budget film. With a limited budget and a script that has its fair share of war movie cliches, he still manages to construct a gut-wrenching anti-war story. Fuller’s script establishes Gene Evans’ tough sergeant, left for dead by North Korean forces and saved by a war orphan (William Chun), as an effective battle veteran. Fuller then steadily chips away at him until he’s a broken man moving on sheer primitive instinct. There’s no romanticization of war in this film. It’s hard and brutal. And Fuller even raises the conflicting feelings of people of color fighting for a nation that mistreats them as the black medic (James Edwards) faces a prejudiced corporal (Steve Brodie) and memories of Jim Crow back in the States while a Japanese-American soldier (Richard Loo) speaks of his parents’ separation when they were sent to World War II detainment camps (the screen’s first mention of those camps). For Fuller, race is a part of the U.S.’ ugly history and no determinant of character. In his films, a person’s worth is defined by actions: the first Asian seen on screen is Chun, who saves Evans’ life; Edwards saves lives, too; Loo helps Evans take out a pair of snipers, but Brodie sends one of his men into a death trap out of sheer ignorance. Fuller was accused of anti-American, pro-Communist leanings and investigated by the FBI, but that didn’t stop Daryl F. Zanuck from hiring him. Talent and profits like his were too important to overlook.
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