Zombies, Madmen, and Cats: The Films of Val Lewton

I love Halloween. Especially the iconic images of Halloween: the gypsy fortune teller driving her cart through a forest at night, lit by a solitary lamp; ghostly women in diaphanous gowns who walk the halls of old houses at the ends of lonely roads; cackling witches; yowling black cats; grinning jack o' lanterns; and death riding a skeletal horse through a midnight sky. My idea of Halloween is, obviously, a romantic one based on the influence of a lifetime of Gothic literature, cheap, paper Halloween decorations, and old Hollywood movies.

In my opinion, the best horror films ever were made in Hollywood in the 30s and 40s and though I love Universal Horror as much as anyone else (The Black Cat, especially) my personal favorites are those kitschy, heavy-handed, offensively cliche RKO films made by Val Lewton on a shoestring budget with a repertory cast. He stole from classic literature frequently (both The 7th Victim and I Walked with a Zombie are drawn from Jane Eyre), relied on offensive stereotyping, and sometimes I'm damned if I can figure out what the point of the film is (what's with that woman in The Curse of the Cat People, anyway) but he also created fun, stylish, moody films that while not actually scary are spooky in that uniquely Halloween way. I guess I'm easy, give me an outmoded folk legend, an exotic locale, or a deserted house with subterranean waters and I'm yours.

The first time I saw them was on a cable channel Halloween marathon and I've been in love with them ever since. If the only Val Lewton film you've ever seen is Cat People, you should definitely check out some of the others. My personal favorites are:

I Walked with a Zombie - a young nurse travels to the West Indies to care for a madwoman and comes face to face with Voodoo, very evocative, very lifted from Jane Eyre.

Isle of the Dead - a group of people are trapped on an island with Boris Karloff and a dread disease. They're droppin' like flies.

The 7th Victim - a young career woman goes to the big city and gets involved with Satanists - can her little sister save her?

And, of course, last but never least, Cat People - a curse from the old country follows a young woman to her new home and destroys her life.

If you want some more ideas, read Wendell Jamieson's article from the New York Times or Bright Lights Film Journal's article on Val Lewton.

Have fun! Don't get sick on corn candy!

The Loss of Bergman and Antonioni

Two giants of mid-century European cinema died this past week. Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni were responsible, in their own highly individualistic ways, for creating films that dealt with issues concerning man's place in the world, his existential angst, and alienation in the modern world. They also brought foreign film to the notice of American viewers for the first time.

I admit to being somewhat of a Bergman junkie. I've seen most, though definitely not all, of his films and the list of ones I admire deeply is long. He gets a bad rap for being heavy going and for dealing in big, serious themes like religion, death, and morality, but his films display a charm and wit unique to him, and though being rather serious, and possibly erring on the side of self-conscious intellectualism, the themes he explored are universal and seemingly timeless. Though I prefer the films Bergman made in the 1950s, ones like Cries and Whispers are as excellent as anything he made before. To list the films I admire most would tax any reader's patience and most of them are so famous as to be too obvious to mention. However, I have to suggest watching Summer Interlude since I believe it was one of his favorites and I know it is mine and practically no one ever mentions it.

While I feel a little two knowledgeable about Bergman (you know, like those people who can drone on endlessly about a subject they spend too much time and effort on - freakishly knowledgeable Star Trek or Harry Potter fans, for example) I've only seen two of Michelangelo Antonioni's films: L'avventura and Blow Up. I know practically nothing about his work or him, except that watching both of these films awed me and made me feel utterly stupid! Such complexity, such depth, and so perfectly rendered: I'll probably never completely understand what they're about, but I can enjoy trying to.

There's a lot in the press this week about Bergman and Antonioni, here are a few samples of what's out there:

Bergman, Antonioni and the Religiously Inclined - New York Times

Ingmar Bergman Obituary in the London Telegraph
Ingmar Bergman Obituary in The Guardian
Ingmar Bergman Obituary in The New York Times

Michelangelo Antonioni Obituary in the New York Times

Senses of Cinema on Michelangelo Antonioni

Happy Birthday Hume Cronyn

Looking for something to write about (I seem to be temporarily out of ideas) I checked my favorite celebrity birthday site and realized that it was Hume Cronyn's birthday on July 18. A great but underrated actor, Cronyn often played strange, distasteful little men chock-full of neuroses and axes to grind. I don't think I've seen that many of his films, but the ones that come immediately to mind are People Will Talk (1951 ) and Shadow of a Doubt (1943), an excellent celebratory birthday pairing if I do say so.

In People Will Talk, Cronyn plays a weasley little college professor who, jealous of his colleague's success and popularity, sets out to destroy his reputation and strip him of his medical credentials. Written and directed by Joseph Mankiewicz and starring Cary Grant, Jeanne Crain, Finlay Currie, Walter Slezak, and Margaret Hamilton, the film is full of witty one-liners, thoughtful philosophic insight, and delightful characters. Cronyn's character and the confessions he forces from his victims provide the necessary tension to a film that would be too idyllic otherwise.

Cronyn's character in Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt is less cruel, but far more disturbing. Next door neighbor to the Newton family in peaceful Santa Rosa, California, Cronyn comes over every evening during their dinner to discuss various strategies for knocking off the head of the family. Relishing each gruesome detail, Herbie (Cronyn) follows crime stories in the paper as if murder were something abstract and benign, feeling far removed from their reality in his remote California town. Cronyn plays Herbie as both naive and ghoulish and, though his role is small, it helps to drive home Hitchcock's point that no place is safe, no matter what it looks like from the outside.

If you enjoy Hume Cronyn's particular brand of weird charm, you may want to watch some of his other films, such as Lifeboat (1944) with Talulah Bankhead and Walter Slezak or The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) with Lana Turner and John Garfield.

Movie Kitsch on KDOC

It took a long time, but KDOC has finally realized that their success as an all-reruns all the time station lies in its ability to tap the retro/vintage crowd. Their programming is still eclectic (what politeness!), but on the whole they are closing in on quality camp, kitsch, and nostalgia, giving less airtime to bad shows from the 1980s like Matlock and Saved By the Bell and focusing more on the 1970s and beyond. Though their programming is definitely improving, it is still quite apparent that they don't totally get it. Their new graphics, though objectively better than before, have lost a certain je ne sais quoi that emphasized their unique low budgetness. My favorite was how their ads for Kojak always used surf guitar in the background as though, in their admiration for Quentin Tarantino, they hadn't noticed that surf guitar and crime are an LA thing, incongruous when paired with the mean streets of New York. A KDOC fan from way back, I remember how by 9pm their re-run programming used to be replaced by hours and hours of Dr. Gene Scott mumbling on about no one knows what and scribbling obscure and occult-looking symbols from a variety of ancient languages on a whiteboard. As nostalgic as I am, I'm glad those days are gone. Instead, we have Universal horror movies and countless hours of The Endless Summer, Elvis, and Annette Funicello/Frankie Avalon beach movies. Mini-marathons of Twilight Zone, Bewitched, and The Partridge Family. It's an improvement no matter how you look at it.

This saturday, as part of their series of Saturday night monster movies, they're showing The Mummy (1932) starring Boris Karloff and directed by Karl Freund. Sunday night's selection from retro surf culture is Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1966) with Frankie Avalon, Dwayne Hickman, and Vincent Price in a daring crossover role. It is my own rather worthless opinion that the beach movies are much less of a sure bet than the old monster movies. Last week, I watched The Wolf Man with Lon Chaney, Claude Rains, Bela Lugosi, and Maria Ouspenskaya, and the most troublesome thing about it was that I couldn't honestly believe that Claude Rains was supposed to be Lon Chaney's father. Bad special effects, corny lines, none of those things bothered me, but Lon Chaney as an Englishman? It was a minor irritant to my enjoyment of the movie.

On the other hand, I tried to watch Beach Blanket Bingo the next night and I didn't last 10 minutes. Almost immediately, Annette and Frankie go surfing for a few minutes and, of course, when Annette comes back to the beach after wiping out her massive and immovable flip is still intact! Wasn't she, you know, under water? Shouldn't that have had some effect? If that wasn't bad enough Frankie spent all his time ordering these "girls" (a hapless troupe of bikini-clad bimbos) around as if he were a sultan and they his harem. What made it even worse was that they were only to happy to satisfy his every wish. I would have popped him one!

So get the gang together, mix a coupla Singapore Slings, get some teeny tiny eatables and have yourselves a movie night courtesy of KDOC.

Golden Earrings: Ray Milland Goes Native

Last Christmas my mother gave me the Marlene Dietrich Glamour Collection DVD box set from Universal. Pleasantly surprised that my mother, unlike some, pays enough attention to realize that I am a devotee of crappy, I mean, campy old movies, I have been savoring it ever since, watching each of the films at well-spaced intervals, never gorging myself on so many that I had nothing left to watch. After several delightful visits to Camp Marlene I had seen all the films in the set I felt were worth watching. The one remaining film, Golden Earrings, I had dismissed. What little I knew about it just didn't entice me. I mean, Marlene Dietrich and Ray Milland just being in the same movie is odd enough, but as Gypsies? This could never be good. And while it is no less plausible that Marlene should be an eastern European gypsy than, well, say a Southern Belle or a Spanish femme fatale, it seemed completely impossible to believe in Ray Milland as either a gypsy or a romantic leading man. Well, the other day, in desperation for something, anything, to watch I popped Golden Earrings into the DVD player and watched it. The whole thing. At every cringe-worthy moment, I cringed; at every offensive racial/cultural stereotype, I was duly offended. But for everything that is wrong with this movie -- and there's a lot, believe me -- I have to admit that in some horrible, kitschy, painful, embarrassing way I enjoyed it, which is odd because I can't think of one really positive thing to say about it. It's almost as if I enjoyed this film in spite of myself. Throughout, I felt that I knew better than to enjoy it, that to like it was somehow evidence of some deep seated tendencies I'd rather not delve too deeply into, let alone admit.

At any rate, Golden Earrings is wartime spy thriller mit romantic fantasy about an English army officer who goes to Nazi Germany in order to smuggle out a formula for poison gas. While hiding from the Nazis, Denistoun (Ray Milland) meets up with Liddie (Marlene Dietrich), a Gypsy woman traveling alone who claims that spirits who live in the water told her he was coming and that, though a gadze (a non-gypsy), he is her man. Well, at first, he is disgusted by her filthy Gypsy habits and superstitions. After all, she is an offensive two-dimensional stereotype. But then, so is he. Ever the stiff-upper-lipped Englishman, he is more tightly-bound than nickel-62 and just about as fun. But then Denistoun decides to go with Liddie, traveling incognito as a Gypsy in her flimsy-looking vardo. Dark stained skin, large earrings in his ears, and sporting an eastern European peasant blouse, Denistoun "goes native" and becomes relaxed and carefree in a way that would have horrified his schoolmates at Sandhurst. He steals chickens, develops a ear for cimbalom music, and eats with his hands. What's more, having cast off his whiteness he becomes a gifted fortune teller, beginning to take on the psychic and supernatural world of the Gypsy stereotype (according to this film, the Roma are psychic and follow some sort of animistic earth-based religion. Who knew?).

As is so often the case, the film's point of view is best encapsulated by the trailer, which in this case summarizes the film as a tale about a "man from the civilized world" who comes into contact with the "primitive and passionate" world of the gypsy. If I'd watched the trailer first I would have known what I was in for and may never have watched the movie at all. I don't understand why Universal would have made this film, except maybe to rectify the fact that the Roma were the one minority Hollywood hadn't taken a shot at yet. Anyway, I can't say it isn't offensive or stereotyped or that the love story is so stirring that it makes up for all of its other flaws, but inexplicably, you may, like me, be able to enjoy its kitschiness, camp, and bad acting in spite of it all.

THIS JUST OUT: Banacek Season One

Though I am probably in the minority here, I am excited about the recent release of Season One of Banacek on DVD. A cop drama from the early 1970s, Banacek starred George Peppard as a Polish-American insurance investigator with a penchant for reciting obscure Polish proverbs while smoking a cigarillo and wearing far too form-fitting turtlenecks and leisure pants. My primary joy in Banacek has been that, though set in Boston, the entire series was filmed either on the back lot at Universal or on location in Los Angeles, and I have enjoyed it as a sort of treasure hunt of LA streets and neighborhoods, much the way I do Rockford Files and CHiPs. But in watching reruns of the show during its short stint on KDOC, I have become familiar with certain elements of the Banacek character. Several things remain constant throughout: Banacek always solves the impossible to solve case, always has leggy women simply falling all over him, and is always self-consciously enjoying the most expensive of everything. So I ask myself, whose fantasy was this? It seems to me that the entire series is simply a middle-aged man's dream life escape from his ordinary humdrum existence. While Banacek is decidedly unbelievable as an irresistibly handsome millionaire genius, this is exactly what we are asked to believe of him. In its original pitch to the network the series must have been intended as a prolonged dream sequence framed within two explanatory episodes in which the mediocre, lonely, insurance salesman Banacek is knocked unconscious by a rogue pot of African violets only to wake up after a delicious fantasy of beautiful women, witty one-liners, and fantastic wealth to find that he is, once again, just a common wage slave. At least this is my reading and, I have to say, the series is much more believable this way.

Though you might want to just rent this one, it can be bought at Amazon and though you won't find much in the way of unqualified praise for this show, there are some fans out there. Check out these clips from YouTube:

Decompressing with Doris Day

The semester is finally over and I have finished college. Audible sigh. This year has been the hardest of the four (actually more like five) that I've spent in college and I feel as though, through all of it, I have had either a cold or a migraine. But let's not forget that marathon ear infection last Fall, that was fun. I don't know if I've ever been so tired in all my life. I've been achy and crabby and sleepy and on Sunday morning the prospect of leaving the house left me in tears. You notice there have been no posts and if you extend that sort of inactivity to all other areas of my life you'll understand that the dishes need to be done, the floors cleaned, the car washed, the laundry done, while appointments must be made for oil changes, eye exams, etc. etc. etc. The list of things on the back burner is extensive. All semester long, with every new chore to be done I would just shake my head, raise my hands up and say, "I can't deal with that right now; I'll take care of it after graduation." Well, here it is. It's time to take care of it all, as well as all the new things that are now on the list, like look for a job, consolidate my student loans, consider running away to a graduate program, that kind of thing. I'm beginning to feel overwhelmed just putting it all down. Which brings me to my point: I am overwhelmed and, as with the end of every semester, my way of coping has been to escape into some thematically-arranged marathon film or TV watching. Last Spring it was Bob Newhart, last winter it was German Expressionist Horror which metamorphosed into Conrad Veidt (that one was long lived!), now it is Doris Day.

I think that the fact that it's Doris Day points to the seriousness of my condition. Nothing less than complete collapse could make me engage in such behavior. For weeks now I have watched Doris Day and Rock Hudson/James Garner/Rod Taylor pretend their way through early 1960s bedroom comedies and the effect is highly therapeutic. These films are like comfort food, like macaroni and cheese, for example. They're comforting and familiar and completely bad for you.
So far, I've watched Doris Day play fumbling feminine idiots against Rod Taylor's dominant male superiority in Do Not Disturb and The Glass Bottom Boat, Doris Day play the little wife to James Garner's friendly-but-slapstick-in-love-with-her-ness in Move Over Darling, and Rock Hudson in a variety of completely unbelievable roles: a nogoodnik advertising exec out for corporate blood until he is reformed by Doris' cuteness (Lover Come Back), and a hypochondriac business man with a fertile imagination and a hilarious side kick (Send Me No Flowers).

No matter what you're procrastinating, there's a Doris Day sex comedy just right for the occasion. Coming up in my near future: The Thrill of it All! and Pillow Talk. It's gonna be great!

Noir City: Los Angeles vs. New York

The Noir Festival at the Egyptian Theatre is back again and LA noir is dukin' it out with New York. Though they're showing a great collection of films, my prejudice leans to the films set in Los Angeles, especially those featuring location shots in downtown neighborhoods. I've been writing my senior thesis on the relationship between booster rhetoric and downtown narratives in fiction and film so, of course, this is right up my street. Two films in particular, fit the bill: Sam Fuller's 1959 Crimson Kimono set in Little Tokyo and Robert Aldrich's Hollywood noir The Big Knife (1955). The Big Knife screened on April 14 (woops!) but you can rent it from Netflix, contrary to what American Cinematheque says and Crimson Kimono is showing on Friday April 20 at 7:30 pm.

Check out their website for a complete list of what's showing here.

Joan Crawford: They called her a scar-faced she-devil!

Not really. That's just the tagline for A Woman's Face. Today is Joan Crawford's birthday and in honor of that fact what could be better than a film that pairs her with Conrad Veidt? Directed by George Cukor, A Woman's Face (1941) stars Joan Crawford as Anna Holm, a scheming con woman shut off from society because of a disfiguring facial scar. When a plastic surgeon (Melvyn Douglas) removes the scar, Anna is determined to start over but a chance at love from dashing playboy Torsten Barring (Conrad Veidt) draws her into a murder plot and a return to her criminal past.

Though I must confess I'm not a huge Crawford fan, I do have several favorites. Here's a short list:
The Women (1939)
Joan is Crystal Allen, a shopgirl having an affair with husband of society matron Mary Haines (Norman Shearer). When Haines hears the gossip around town she hops a train for a Reno divorce and Crystal marries the ex, but when Crystal steps out on her meal ticket with cowboy singer Buck Winston its back to the perfume counter for her!
Mildred Pierce (1945)
After her cheating husband leaves her, Mildred Pierce (Joan Crawford) proves she can become independent and successful with her own chain of restaurants, but in order to please her money hungry daughter she must sell out and marry a man she doesn't love. Blackmail, murder, revenge!
Johnny Guitar (1954)
Joan is Vienna"Gun-Queen of the Arizona frontier." When four men hold up a stagecoach and kill a man, the town officials come to Vienna's saloon to grab four of her friends. Vienna stands strong against them and is aided by the presence of old acquaintance Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden), who is not what he seems.
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
Joan plays Blanche Hudson a crippled actress living as a recluse in a Hollywood mansion with her aging child star sister Jane (Bette Davis). A combo psychological thriller, black comedy, and all out camp melodrama. Watch Crawford and Davis duke it out!

TO DO IN LOS ANGELES: Some Like It Hot

Is it your fondest dream to watch the greatest American comedy on the big screen and in the presence of an appreciative audience? If it is, you're in luck because Wednesday night Some Like It Hot is showing at the ArcLight. Written by I. A. L. Diamond and directed by Billy Wilder, Some Like It Hot (1959) stars Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Joe E. Brown, and George Raft in one of the greatest of all screwball comedies. A spoof on 1920s gangster films and slapstick, Some Like it Hot plays with gender, identity, and disguise and was condemned by the Catholic League of Decency (a heck of a recommendation in itself) for challenging the production code with its use of innuendo and controversial sexual and social themes.

Two struggling musicians, Joe and Jerry (Curtis and Lemmon), are on the run from a Chicago mob boss after witnessing the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Spats Columbo (Raft) orders their execution but they escape and in desperation join an all-girl band on their way to Florida. "Brand new" girls Josephine and Geraldine, er...Daphne, run into "Sugar" Kane Kowalczyk (Monroe), the band's Polish-American ukelele playing singer and it only gets more improbable from there.

Some Like It Hot will be shown at 8 pm on Wednesday March 21 at the ArcLight Theatre in Hollywood. Tickets are $11, $10 for ArcLight, AFI and Skirball members, on-site parking is $2 for four hours with validation. To order advance tickets, go to www.arclightcinemas.com, call 323.464.4226 or visit ArcLight Hollywood's box office at 6360 W Sunset Blvd. (at Ivar). Admission prices may vary depending on event.

Conrad Veidt as Ivan the Terrible in Waxworks

Paul Leni's 1924 film Waxworks (Das Wachsfigurenkabinett) stars Emil Jannings as The Caliph, Conrad Veidt as Ivan the Terrible, and Werner Krauss as Jack the Ripper in a story about a young writer (William Dieterle) who is hired by a carnival promoter to write stories about each of his wax figures. The first story about the Harun al Raschid and a young Baker's wife is wonderful, primarily for its set design, which depicts a fantasy Arabia of mushroom-shaped houses connected by miniature stairways and catwalks. The second story is about Ivan the Terrible who, habitually sentencing his enemies to death, orders the execution of the court chemist. The chemist decides to get his revenge by poisoning the Czar, but is interrupted after writing his name on an hourglass. Seeing his name there, Ivan is driven insane by the idea that he is about to die. The final story is not written by the young writer, but dreamt by him. Having fallen asleep while writing he dreams that the carnival promoter's beautiful daughter is being pursued by Jack the Ripper.

I rented this movie primarily to see Conrad Veidt's performance as Ivan the Terrible since I've been on this jag lately to see everything he ever made. You may have noticed this. The film itself is not bad. Like many silents it's a little slow in spots, but Veidt's performance as Ivan the Terrible is really extraordinary. The scene where Ivan finds his name written on the chemist's hourglass is fascinating. You can see him going mad as he keeps turning the hourglass over and over in an attempt to prolong his life. It's the kind of thing lesser actors would have turned into satire, but in Veidt's performance it is truly magnificent.

THIS JUST OUT: The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

A great example of British kitchen sink realism, Tony Richardson's 1962 "angry young man" film, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, has just been released on DVD. Colin Smith (Tom Courteney) is a bitter young man from a working class family. Uninterested in school and determined not to follow his father into factory work, Colin and his friend Mike (James Bolam) make their pocket money through petty crime. When they're arrested for the robbery of a bakery and sentenced to reform school, the Governor of the school (Michael Redgrave) takes a keen interest in Colin, but he cares less for his rehabilitation than his gifts as a broken-field runner. Colin finds himself torn between the need to please his captors and play the game and his determination not to participate in what he sees as a corrupt system.

Considered an example of British New Wave filmmaking, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner owes a lot to the innovations and themes of French New Wave films (The 400 Blows especially), such as long tracking shots, jump cuts, and the use of handheld cameras, but it also shares its focus on themes of individual angst. Having watched his father work for the local factory all his life only to die of a work-related illness, Smith has a clear understanding of working class oppression. Smith expresses a Marxist view of class inequity. As a member of the working class he feels that whether by working or by spending money his actions only go toward enriching the powerful and assisting his own oppression. The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner is a thoughtful film, socially engaged, artistically skillful, and extremely relevant in today's corporate/consumer culture.

Douglas Sirk: The Far Side of Paradise at American Cinematheque

Imitation of Life, All I Desire, Magnificent Obsession, All That Heaven Allows, melodrama never got any better than in the hands of "weepies" master Douglas Sirk. In celebration of Sirk's "ability to transform often ludicrous material into sublime, multi-layered narratives" American Cinematheque will be showing nine of his films from March 1through March 4 at the Egyptian in Hollywood and from March 15 through 21 at the Aero in Santa Monica. Though they're showing all of Sirk's most famous melodramas, they're also showing several of his earlier and lesser known films as well, many of them not available on DVD. Bring your hanky!

Series Schedule at the Eqyptian Theatre
Series Schedule at the Aero

"…the word ‘melodrama’ has rather lost its meaning nowadays: people tend to lose the ‘melos’ in it, the music…Most great plays are based on melodrama situations, or have melodramatic endings…but craziness is very important…This is the dialectic – there is a very short distance between high art and trash, and trash that contains the element of craziness is by this very quality nearer to art." – Douglas Sirk

Imitation of Lifelessness at Bright Lights Film Journal
All That Heaven Allows and Written on the Wind at Images
Weepies at GreenCine
Home is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Women's Film

The Further Adventures of a Conrad Veidt Devotee: Contraband

Contraband (1940) was the first movie Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger fully collaborated on after making The Spy in Black the year before. A comic thriller set in a London blackout, Conrad Veidt plays Captain Andersen, a stern, imposing man who has a taste for adventure and a liking for smart, “troublesome” women. Captain Andersen commands the Helvig, a Danish freighter that's been delayed in port by British customs agents on the lookout for military contraband. While the ship is docked, two passengers slip ashore, though they've been ordered to stay aboard, Mrs. Sorensen (Valerie Hobson) and Mr. Pidgeon (Esmond Knight). The Captain has already had trouble from Mrs. Sorenson, a willful Englishwoman who believes that rules are made for other people, and his blood is up. Affronted by his passengers’ disobedience and, by law, responsible for his passengers while in port, Captain Andersen goes ashore to find them. After catching up with Mrs. Sorenson in London, circumstances reveal that she’s a British spy who, with Andersen, falls into the hands of a Nazi cell operating out of the basement of a Soho nightclub.

While the plot is reminiscent of early Hitchcock, the style and tone of the film is pure Powell. Rather than take itself seriously, Contraband’s thriller plot is constantly lightened up by tongue-in-cheek humor and romantic badinage (as well as a fair amount of what Ken Russell has called "bondage overtones"). Though it's not as developed visually as some of his later films, you can see the beginnings of certain stylistic tendencies in the film. Contraband contains several shots and sequences that appear in his later films, such as the eerie, fog enveloped men working on ships in the harbor, for instance, and the combination of a rapid close up of a clock face and the blaring of a train whistle from I Know Where I'm Going!.

Contraband seems to be overlooked by most viewers, even fans of Powell and Pressburger, as a pale imitation of a 1930s era Hitchcock thriller, but though it may be one of their lesser films, I thoroughly enjoyed its humor and felt it had all of the elements, whether fully developed or not, that one expects of an Archers film.

Senses of Cinema Review by Alexander C. Ives

Get Your Art House On: Fifty Years of Janus Films at LACMA

From March 2 to April 7 LACMA will be showing new 35 mm prints of 23 of Janus Films' essential art house collection. All your favorites from film studies are here: Rashomon, The 400 Blows, The Seventh Seal, L'Avventura, and Knife in the Water as well as some films you may have missed. The selection focuses mainly on films from the 1950s and 60s, but also includes films from beyond, such as The Rules of the Game and, oddly, Pygmalion. Double Features on Friday and Saturday evenings start at 7:30 pm at LACMA's Leo S. Bing Theatre.

Tickets & Information
$9; $6 for museum and AFI members, seniors (62+), and students with valid ID. Price includes both films in a double bill, except where noted. $5 for the second film only with no advance purchase.

Please note: many programs sell out. Tickets are on sale now and may be purchased at the museum box office. For information call the box office at (323) 857-6010. Purchase of a film ticket includes entrance to the galleries.

Conrad Veidt in The Indian Tomb

In answer to your question...No, I haven't tired of Conrad Veidt yet. I'm still enthralled. My most recent experience was the 1921 epic The Indian Tomb written by Fritz Lang, but directed by Joe May. Conrad Veidt stars as the vengeful but brooding Ayan III, the Maharajah of Bengal, who has a diabolical plot against his unfaithful wife (Erna Morena) and her British lover (Paul Richter). Ayan vows to build a tomb to his dead love and hires English architect Herbert Rowland (Olaf Fonss) to build it for him. Sworn to secrecy Rowland leaves abruptly, but his fiancee Irene (Mia May) follows him to India where danger and adventure begin.

At 3 1/2 hours long, I was somewhat hesitant to start watching this film, but it's like a good, old fashioned serial full of chases, danger, and women in distress and since it's set in India tigers, pythons, and yogis. And the key here is to treat it like a serial and watch it over a period of days. There is simply no way to watch it all at one sitting, you'll go mad. That being said, once you get used to the tempo and style of the film it really draws you in. One of the most expensive films of the 1920s, The Indian Tomb has impressive special effects and elaborate and beautiful sets that seem to go on forever.

The best thing about The Indian Tomb, however, is Conrad Veidt. Easily the best actor in the film, his portrayal of Ayan is fascinating and complex. Though clearly the "villain," Veidt imbues his character with pathos, eliciting our sympathy and our interest. Veidt's performance is highly stylized, using slow, almost dance-like movements, making him mysterious and otherworldly in comparison to those around him. With his piercing eyes, almost skeletal frame, jewels, velvet and satin clothes, Veidt portrays Ayan as the western image of a feminized oriental, emotional and irrational, and subject to cruel whims and desires. Though Ayan is never "manly" in the western sense, the scene where he suddenly appears masquerading as an androgynous temple deity emphasizes this representation.

Some reading to complicate your fun:
Orientalism by Edward Said
The Location of Culture by Homi Bhabha

Love Gone Wrong for Valentine's Day

I love a theme and apparently the folks at Kino Video do, too. In order to celebrate the "romance and heartbreak" of Valentine's Day they're taking 30% off their series of "Love Gone Wrong" films. Included are the G. W. Pabst/Louise Brooks classic Diary of a Lost Girl, Fritz Lang's 1945 noir Scarlet Street, and the 1924 Carl Dreyer silent Michael, as well as more contemporary films, such as Wong Kar-Wai's Happy Together, Rajiv Menon's I Have Found It, and Claude Chabrol's Betty. So if Valentine's Day soppiness leaves you feeling bitter and mildly ill, at least you know that the understanding film hounds at Kino Video are thinking of you.

All Through the Night

All Through the Night (1941) is a delightful romp through wartime propaganda. A comedy thriller with Bogart as a wisecracking New York gambler who stumbles onto a group of Nazi fifth colmunists who are planning to sabotage a battleship anchored in the harbor. Bogart rallies his small group of lovable underworld gangsters in a sudden burst of patriotism to overthrow a rather large group of Nazi operatives. All Through the Night is a rather generic wartime film that relies almost completely on its major characters playing parts they'd played in many films before. Conrad Veidt is the suave, almost friendly, but dangerous Nazi leader, Bogart plays his usual fast talking tough guy slightly more tongue in cheek than usual, and Lorre is a somewhat scummy lower echelon bad guy in the vein of Joe Cairo or Senor Ugarte. Likewise, Judith Anderson, Jane Darwell, Frank McHugh, and William Demerest all play parts we've all seen them play in better films. As a result, All Through the Night is a very comfortable, familiar experience, along the lines of the Bob Hope/Bing Crosby movies they used to show on Tom Hatten's Family Film Festival when I was a kid. There are several good lines in the film, mostly spoken by Bogart and his cronies, which taken with the performances themselves make the film worthwhile.

My obsession with Conrad Veidt continues

In an attempt to deny the fact that school has started again I have provided myself with a pointless obsession, the films of Conrad Veidt. Between those crazy kids at netflix and the used VHS tapes to be found on amazon, I am racking up quite a number of wasted hours watching movies no one even seems to know exist. So far, since The Man Who Laughs, I have seen Different From the Others (Germany, 1919) and All Through the Night (US, 1941). There's a contrast for you! Different From the Others is about a gay concert violinist Paul Korner (Conrad Veidt) who falls in love with one of his students and is blackmailed by a predatory criminal (Reinhold Schunzel) who threatens to expose him to the police. (Under Paragraph 175, Germany's anti-gay legislation, homosexuals could by imprisoned for up to five years) A sort of sex hygiene film, the well meant but didactic lecturing of "Dr. Magnus Hirschfield of the Institute for Sexual Science" tends to interfere with the storyline, being, as it is, only halfheartedly integrated into the plot. It's an interesting film, however, primarily because it reflects that brief moment of openness in Weimar Germany before Hitler came to power. The acting tends to be rather melodramatic by today's standards (Veidt spends rather a lot of time looking woebegone and lost with a hand to his head) and the makeup is a scream (I think we are supposed to intuit from the dark circles around his eyes that Reinhold Schunzel is the bad guy) but there are aspects of the film which make it worth seeing. Censored by the German government and later burned by the Nazis as "degenerate," a print of the film was found in the Ukraine and restored by the Filmmuseum Munchen. Missing sections of the film have been replaced with explanatory intertitles and still photos.

Tomorrow: All Through the Night

Conrad Veidt: The Man Who Laughs

If you’re like me, you’ve only seen Conrad Veidt in a couple of films: as the sleepwalker in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), as the mean, nasty Major Strasser in Casablanca (1942), and the equally evil Jaffar in The Thief of Bagdad (1940). Until now, I had never seen any of the films he’d made in the twenty years between making a groundbreaking German Expressionist silent and playing smug bad guys in British and Hollywood movies. I had some recollection that he’d made some spy flicks for Michael Powell at some point, but I’d never seen them. So while looking for silent horror movies to watch on Netflix, I found the 1928 American silent horror classic The Man Who Laughs.

An adaptation of a Victor Hugo novel, Veidt plays the role of Gwynplaine, a nobleman's son, who is kidnapped by a political enemy and mutilated by a gypsy "surgeon" who carves his mouth into a hideous grin. Left behind by the gypsies as the flee the country, Gwynplaine wanders through a landscape of hangman’s gallows and snowy cliffs surrounding by poor people freezing to death in the snow. After rescuing a baby from her dead mother’s arms, he finds shelter with an old man who takes pity on him and his charge. Years later, Gwynplaine and his “family” have become a traveling circus act, in which he plays a clown, laughed at and taunted by the audience. He and the blind girl (Mary Philbin The Phantom of the Opera) fall in love, but they almost lose each other when Gwynplaine is drawn back into the world of political intrigue. He becomes the plaything of a jaded duchess (Olga Baclanova Freaks), and his enemies renew their efforts to control him.

If silent movies are too remote and melodramatic for you, this film may change your mind. Like many films of the time, it does seem to move rather slowly since we are used to a faster pace and more action, but The Man Who Laughs is visually quite beautiful in the way that German Expressionist films always are and Veidt’s portrayal of Gwynplaine is impressive. Considering that the only tools a silent actor really had were his facial expressions and his body language, Veidt managed to convey a great emotional expressiveness through only his eyes and hands, much of his face maintaining a continuous smile throughout the film. (From the photo, you can see how Veidt’s Gwynplaine must have been the origin for the Batman character The Joker).

Created in the same vein as other Universal successes like The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera (adaptations of other French novels in which a disfigured man looks for love from a sympathetic woman), Carl Laemmle hired two influential artists of the German Expressionist School: actor Conrad Veidt and director Paul Leni (Waxworks). German Expressionist aesthetics, as seen in The Man Who Laughs, laid the foundation for several popular American film genres such as noir and Universal horror films like Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Wolf Man.

The Kino DVD has several extras, but for me the most intriguing was a German short entitled “Filmstadt Hollywood” which contains home movies of Conrad Veidt relaxing with fellow European emigres Greta Garbo, Emil Jannings, Paul Leni, Carl Laemmle, and Camilla Horn.

The German Hollywood Connection