Showing posts with label period piece. Show all posts
Showing posts with label period piece. Show all posts
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| Randolph Scott and Margaret Sullavan; guess who loves whom |
When the Civil War breaks out it deeply affects the Southern Bedford family, run by patriarch, Malcolm (Walter Connolly), who is married to Sally (Janet Beecher), with whom he has two sons (Harry Ellerbe; Dickie Moore) and a daughter, Val (Margaret Sullavan). Val is in love with a distant cousin, Duncan (Randolph Scott), but he seems completely unaware of her feelings whereas George Pendleton (Robert Cummings) has affection for Val. At first Duncan tries to be neutral, which prompts Val to accuse him of cowardice, not exactly the right way to get a romance off to a good start. But then Duncan joins up with the confederacy and off to war he goes ... This is a more or less forgotten Civil War epic made four years before Gone With the Wind, but it's a creditable film, bolstered by fine performances by Sullavan [The Good Fairy], Connolly, and others; Elizabeth Patterson [Lady on a Train] overacts a bit as old Mary Cherry but is also good. On the debit side is a lot of phony glory and the depiction of rebellious slaves as being both lazy and criminal. Johnny Downs [Trocadero] plays a Yankee soldier, a mere boy, who is temporarily hidden by the Bedfords. The film is well-photographed by Victor Milner -- one especially striking shot shows Sullavan running past a tree into the sun.
Verdict: Anything with Sullavan in it is of interest, but this is not a bad movie despite flaws. ***.
Dona St. Columb (Joan Fontaine) is tired of the way her witless husband Harry (Ralph Forbes of Convicts at Large) keeps throwing her at the slimy Lord Rockingham (Basil Rathbone) -- who keeps making passes -- so she takes off with the children to a summer retreat where she finds the cuddly old servant, William (Cecil Kellaway), waiting for her. She also finds a notorious pirate named Jean Aubrey (Arturo de Cordova) who claims he's really not such a bad guy as pirate's go. It isn't long before Dona is smitten with Jean and vice versa and longing for a romantic and adventurous life at sea. But can she forsake her children to go off with the man who has so aroused her fiery passion ...? Fontaine, as good as ever, has probably never looked more gorgeous and indeed the whole movie is expertly filmed in especially ravishing technicolor by George Barnes. Rathbone sparkles in his scenes as Rockingham, and the film's highlight is a rousing battle he has on a staircase not with Jean but with a desperate Dona. Mexican actor Arturo de Cordova is not terrible, but this part needed a sexier fellow, like maybe Errol Flynn, to make it believable; de Cordova was a major star in Mexico and South America, however. Victor Young's score sounds like ersatz Debussy. Based on a novel by Daphne Du Maurier.
Verdict: Stick to Rebecca. **.
DOWNTON ABBEY Season One. 2010. Seven episodes. Created and [co-] written by Julian Fellowes.The male heir to the British estate, Downton Abbey, is lost on the Titanic in 1912. Since Robert Crawley, the Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville), and his wife, Cora (Elizabeth McGovern) have no male offspring, and the heir must be male, Cora and her oldest daughter, Mary (Michelle Dockery) are faced with the prospect of losing a fortune. Haughty Mary has two sisters, the comparatively plain Edith (Laura Carmichael), who is basically treated like crap by the rest of her condescending family, and budding feminist Sybil (Jessica Brown Findlay), who tries to help one of the ambitious maids get a job as a secretary. The new heir is a cousin named Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens), and everyone hopes that he and Mary will make a love match and solve all of their problems, but things get a little complicated. Matthew has a mother, Isobel (Penelope Wilton), who proves an irritant to Crawley family matriarch, the Dowager Countess Violet (Maggie Smith), although on occasion they have the same goals. Violet forms an alliance with Cora.
In the meantime, there's drama amongst the servants as well. The new valet, Bates (Brendan Coyle) is not only lame, but has an unsavory history. He has raised the everlasting ire of Thomas (Rob-James Collier), who had hoped to get his job, and who teams with the sour Sarah O'Brien (Siobhan Finneran) to scheme to get rid of him. [More on Thomas in a bit.] Sarah mistakenly believes Cora plans to replace her as personal maid and wreaks a terrible vengeance. The butler Mr. Carson (Jim Carter) and head maid Mrs. Hughes (Phyllis Logan), run the household with the help of cook, Mrs. Patmore (Lesley Nicol), who is losing her sight; young William (Thomas Howes), who is losing his mother; and Daisy (Sophie McShera), who has a hopeless crush on Thomas. Then there's the "radical" chauffeur Branson (Allen Leech), who talks politics with Sybil.
Downton Abbey is handsomely produced and well-acted for the most part. Smith sometimes overdoes the cutesyness of her character, and McGovern, while not a bad actress, simply seems miscast and uncertain of how to proceed. The show begins quite reasonably, but in the second episode turns into a slightly absurd soap opera when it introduces a handsome young Turkish character who dies in unexpected circumstances not much later, suddenly turning Downton into Dynasty. Much more problematic is the character of Thomas, who is gay, and while the actor wisely doesn't play him too stereotypically [aside from arched eyebrows and the occasional pursed lips], it's hard not to notice that Thomas is like an old-fashioned nasty "faggot" being fairly horrible to everyone. Gay characters are welcome in programming, but surely Fellowes could have come up with a less odious creature than this, whose inclusion even seems homophobic. [Not that all gay characters have to be perfect, of course, but this man's evil doesn't quite seem divorced from his homosexuality.] Another odd thing is that some of the characters talk "wisely" about Thomas as if it were the 21st century and not 1912! Why the hell would the unsophisticated cook know of his sexual orientation -- in 1912 no less!
Aside from that, let's get real about Downton Abbey. Its main strength is simply that it's entertaining. It's not really great drama, and it will push the envelope of credulity if it will get people watching. Taken with a grain of salt, Downton Abbey is fun if nothing else. And it does have some marvelous and memorable sequences to be fair [such as Violet being selfless regarding her prize roses].
Verdict: Proof that the British can dumb things down just as well as the Americans when they want to, but it does hold the attention. ***.
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| David Bruce, Richard Crane and John Crawford as Kidd |
THE GREAT ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN KIDD (15 chapter Columbia serial/1953). Directors: Derwin Abbe [Abrahams]; Charles S. Gould.
"Kidd was sacrificed on the altar of greed and politics."
The amazing thing about this cliffhanger serial is that it manages to get the basic facts straight about Captain William Kidd, supposedly a notorious pirate. In the 17th century Kidd was assigned to track down pirates but legend has it that he became a pirate himself; he was hung for piracy and for murder [he did kill a member of his crew, but this may have been involuntary manslaughter or perhaps even self-defense]. Biographers have suggested that Kidd was railroaded, important evidence suppressed, and this serial supports that view [but perhaps tries too hard to make him out some kind of saint].
In 1697 when the U.S. was still under English rule, Captain Richard Dale (Richard Crane) is assigned to investigate the allegations of piracy regarding William Kidd (John Crawford), and he does so with the aid of his colleague, Alan Duncan (David Bruce). Along the way they are shanghaied, become fugitives, wind up on more than one pirate ship, and finally become part of Kidd's crew, although they are confused by the fact that he doesn't act at all like a pirate. If Dale didn't have enough problems, his superior, Robert Langdon (Nelson Leigh), is willing to betray him at the drop of a hat for his own ends, and in general a great conspiracy regarding Kidd seems to be in place. There are a few exciting cliffhangers, angry Mohawks, storms at sea, and more than one mutiny to keep things humming. Our heroes are thrown in a hay cart which is then thrown over a cliff, tossed into a fiery store room, and tied up directly in front of cannons that are just about to be lighted. In perhaps the most startling cliffhanger, Duncan throws a knife in his friend Dale's back.
Crane [The Mysterious Island serial; The Alligator People] gives one of his best performances in this, and both Bruce and Crawford are fine as Duncan and Captain Kidd. [Dale isn't the brightest fellow. Told to keep his assignment secret, he discusses it with Duncan in the middle of a crowded tavern!] Others in the cast include Marshall Reed [Pirates of the High Seas], effective as the pirate Robert Culliford, George Wallace [Radar Men from the Moon], who is quite vivid as the conspiratorial Buller, Gene Roth as a prisoner, Lyle Talbot, who shows up briefly as a Boston jailer, Michael Fox as a scurvy fellow, and even Eduardo Cansino, Jr,. the brother of Rita Hayworth, as a native; he had only a few credits. One assumes that choreographer Willetta Smith must have been a friend of the producers, as she doesn't make a particularly fetching princess in a couple of chapters. Crawford was in a number of serials, as well as Captain Kidd and the Slave Girl [not as Kidd, However]. Bruce was Deanna Durbin's leading man in Lady on a Train and was also in Singapore Woman.
The Great Adventures of Captain Kidd has more of a story than most movie serials, fairly good production values and performances, and is entertaining on top of it.
Verdict: If you like lots of sword fights ... ***.
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| Guy Rolfe [foreground] and David Spenser [behind him] |
Captain Harry Lewis (Guy Rolfe) of the East India Co. has been amassing details about the great many disappearances of people and caravans in Bombay. After heated complaints from merchants about the situation, Colonel Henderson (Andrew Cruickshank), decides a man must be appointed to head an investigation. Although he considers Lewis an expert, he nevertheless assigns the arrogant, insufferable. newly-arrived Captain Connaught-Smith (Allan Cuthbertson) to the job. Meanwhile the stranglers of the cult of Kali continue robbing and murdering with impunity. The severed hand of Lewis' houseman, Ram Das (Tutte Lemkow), who went to get his younger brother, Gopali (David Spenser), away from the cult, winds up on his dining room table to horrify his wife, Mary (Jan Holden). Will Lewis survive to strike down the cult, or are his days numbered? The Stranglers of Bombay is a zesty, absorbing Hammer production with an excellent cast, especially Rolfe [Mr. Sardonicus]; George Pastell as the High Priest of Kali; Cuthbertson as the snooty, hateful Connaught-Smith; Paul Stassino as Lt. Silver, a colleague of Lewis' who secretly belongs to the cult; and Marne Maitland [The Terror of the Tongs] as Patel Shari, who may or may not be an ally. One of the most interesting scenes is a battle between a mongoose and a snake that is on its way to strike at Lewis. Terence Fisher directed a great many films for Hammer studios and others.
Verdict: Hammer hits another home run. ***.