Criterion Sunday 487: That Hamilton Woman (1941)

This very much feels like a film from 1941. Almost every account of the film seems to want to mention that it was Winston Churchill’s favourite film (even that maybe he wrote one or two of Nelson’s speeches), but that’s the kind of thing that feels apocryphal: it’s a film that is engineered to feed into the war effort, and is thus part of a propaganda machine. If Nelson’s speeches feel Churchillian that’s because they are designed to be a rousing call to arms against a foreign despot hellbent on European domination. Still, for all that, this cannily remains focused on Vivien Leigh’s title character, Emma Hamilton, a Lady but one of dubious morals, it seems. Or perhaps not dubious, but certainly a woman who remains hampered throughout her life by the taint of her class background. You can see it in the aristocratic men who fall for her, falling for an image or idea of her (as a teenager she was the model for a number of paintings, particularly by Romney), but who keep her at arm’s length, never quite admitting her to the centre of society, and thus it’s framed by the story of her sad demise. It also feels a little wayward in its plotting at times, taking us down side roads that don’t seem to add to the drama at the heart, which is about her affair with (real-life husband) Laurence Olivier’s Lord Nelson. It ends up feeling like a missed opportunity with the strong undertow of wartime propaganda, albeit a much more palatable way to spin that.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Alexander Korda; Writers Walter Reisch and R. C. Sherriff; Cinematographer Rudolph Maté; Starring Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier, Alan Mowbray, Gladys Cooper; Length 125 minutes.

Seen at home (DVD), Wellington, Saturday 11 December 2021.

Criterion Sunday 376: 49th Parallel (1941)

I do like a Powell and Pressburger film (here dividing their credited duties between director and screenwriter respectively), and ostensibly this is very much a wartime propaganda effort. That said, it does have its slyly subversive side, given that its protagonists are the escaped Nazis from a sunken U-boat (led by Eric Portman and Raymond Lovell) as they make their way across Canada towards the US border where they believe they will be met with freedom (thanks to America’s neutral position at this time). Not all the Nazis are bad guys, meaning there’s a bit of shading with the characterisation, but the core of the group are of course beyond salvation, hectoring the Hutterites they meet (led by Anton Walbrook) into supporting them, and burning books and stamping on modern art to make it clear where our sympathies should lie. That said, the predominance of the British accent meant it was some time before I even figured out who was supposed to playing the Germans; the alternative to that is provided by this very film also, though, and perhaps the plummy British accent for the Germans is preferable to whatever Laurence Olivier is doing with his voice as a French-Canadian trapper (claims to his acting greatness surely not based on this role).

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Michael Powell; Writer Emeric Pressburger; Cinematographer Frederick Young; Starring Eric Portman, Raymond Lovell, Laurence Olivier, Anton Walbrook, Leslie Howard; Length 123 minutes.

Seen at home (DVD), Wellington, Tuesday 1 December 2020.

Hellzapoppin’ (1941)

The London Film Festival has just finished, which means it’s straight into the BFI’s recent tradition, an in-depth focus on a particular theme that will run until the end of the year. They’ve done sci-fi and Black stars recently, amongst others, and this year it’s musicals, with a big UK cinematic re-release of Singin’ in the Rain (1952) planned for the end of this week. As such, I’m going to be doing a week focusing on that genre too, although as a fan of the genre, reviews have shown up in my other theme weeks (like the Australian 2009 musical Bran Nue Dae for that week, or Been So Long for my British women directors week). Unlike many of my theme weeks, this one may end up featuring more white male directors than usual, but the form has  a long heritage, with women taking key roles more often in front of the camera, or in writing and editing, not to mention (of course) the glamorous costumes and make-up. My first film I want to feature is one I recently saw, which also has a notable  sequence focusing on the lindy hop, a dance with roots in African-American culture.

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This film is undeniably a lot. It is very extra. It revels in cramming gag after gag, absurdity upon idiocy every few seconds, such that even when we get a fairly ‘straight’ sequence — the young man singing a sweet love song towards his enamorata — the filmmakers superimpose cards over the screen asking a member of the audience to go home, that culminates in everyone on-screen turning towards the camera and admonishing this young man for watching. Because, indeed, another of the film’s formal features is the frequent breaking of the fourth wall, whether actors on screen are addressing us or the projectionist (who for some reason controls where the camera is pointed, though it hardly seems fair to quibble). There are throughout moments of inspiration, even as everything else is piling on in an overwhelmingly zany way. For example, there’s the sequence where a male photographer is snapping attractive young women at a pool party and asks blousy Betty (Martha Raye) to step out of the frame, before she seizes the camera and starts objectifying the men diving into the pool instead, pushing the middle-aged guys in suits out of the frame instead. And of course there’s the entire lindy hop sequence, which is almost entirely self-contained, but also just a beautiful bit of pure cinema, capped by the (white) stars and director character scaring them off and then saying they’ll definitely find space for the troupe in their next movie. It’s all so meta that it feels like something conceived in the 90s, like something that must have inspired a generation of absurdist comedians, but yet it’s very much there in the 1940s and it’s a wonder.

CREDITS
Director H. C. Potter; Writers Nat Perrin and Warren Wilson (based on the musical by Harold Johnson, John Olsen, Sammy Fain and Charles Tobias); Cinematographer Elwood Bredell; Starring Ole Olson, Chic Johnson, Martha Raye; Length 84 minutes.
Seen at home (Mubi streaming), London, Friday 14 December 2018.

Criterion Sunday 214: The Devil and Daniel Webster (aka All That Money Can Buy, 1941)

I was not enthused upon the prospect of watching this Criterion release, but its merits grew on me. It’s a moral fable, taken from the story of Faust, and like other tales of wealth coming to the wrong people (I’m thinking of Barry Lyndon myself), its central character is in some ways the weakest, with Jabez Stone being an insufferable weed of a man who sells his soul to the devil (consarn it!) and finds himself the recipient of untold wealth. It’s interesting though in the way it moralises about the responsibilities of wealth, siding it seems against capitalist exploitation (surely the natural mode of the American industrialist), this perhaps one of the surprising ways in which the wartime mood shifted people’s interests towards the common good. It all has the sheen of a fine picture, with some nice supporting performances, but it’s the film’s strong moral convictions that carries it through.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director William Dieterle; Writer Dan Totheroh and Stephen Vincent Benét (based on the short story by Benét); Cinematographer Joseph H. August; Starring James Craig, Anne Shirley, Edward Arnold, Walter Huston; Length 107 minutes.

Seen at a friend’s home (DVD), London, Sunday 15 April 2018.

Criterion Sunday 118: Sullivan’s Travels (1941)

Of all Preston Sturges’ output — he had a glorious run in the 1940s, in particular — this is the film that tends to get most often featured as his pinnacle. And yet, and yet. I assume I’d be missing the point to say this is a film about an absurdly privileged paternalistic condescending white man, a film director no less, who learns a Truth about poor folk: that comedy films are what the people want and that he’s been wrong to speak down to his audience. I mean, as far as Lessons go, it’s a good one, but it does rather require sitting through a lot of Joel McCrea being a pampered, pompous cretin. After all, he’s been wanting to make a serious work of Art, a disquisition on the plight of Man: O Brother, Where Art Thou? (it was left to the Coen brothers many years later to imagine just how this director character might have fused drama and comedy). Of course, yes, Sullivan’s Travels is a commentary on the operation of class privilege, but yet there’s plenty in the film that still irks me (as just one example, that he showed no contrition whatsoever for assaulting a railway worker with a rock). The ending suggests Sturges’ intentions are good — and the scene in the church with the black pastor is beautifully moving — but as a comedy it has a streak of meanness to it that makes it a frustrating film for me at least. Veronica Lake as “the girl” (nice work with that name) doesn’t impress as a great actor on this outing, but I love her character’s attitude for much of the film, at least, and could have stood to see more of it. I don’t wish to dispute the film’s Great-ness overly, but it just impresses me less than Sturges’ other films upon rewatching.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director/Writer Preston Sturges; Cinematographer John Seitz; Starring Joel McCrea, Veronica Lake; Length 90 minutes.

Seen at a friend’s home (DVD), London, Sunday 4 September 2016 (and earlier on VHS at university, Wellington, March 1998).

Criterion Sunday 103: The Lady Eve (1941)

Preston Sturges has a knack for screwball comedy patter and pratfalls, all of which is very much in evidence here. It’s undoubtedly a very silly story — though that much is not unusual — about a father-and-daughter gambling duo working a cruise ship who spot an easy target in the foolish naïveté of Charles Pike (Henry Fonda), scion to a brewing fortune. However, their plans are complicated in that Jean (Barbara Stanwyck) falls in love with her mark. The action is all infinitely improved by the wittiness of Preston Sturges’ screenplay and the delivery of Stanwyck — a radiant light that keeps the film going through all its plot contrivances. Fonda acquits himself well too, even if he’s called on to be rather too clumsy in his frequent falls, and is supported by reliable character actors like Charles Coburn and the wonderfully gravel-voiced Eugene Pallette as the pair’s respective fathers. It may not be the greatest of Sturges’s films, but it certainly holds up to repeat viewings.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director/Writer Preston Sturges (based on the story “Two Bad Hats” by Monckton Hoffe); Cinematographer Victor Milner; Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Charles Coburn, Eugene Pallette, William Demarest; Length 94 minutes.

Seen at home (DVD), London, Monday 22 August 2016 (and earlier on DVD at a friend’s home, London, Sunday 19 June 2016, and on VHS at home, Wellington, January 2003), and since then at home (DVD), London, Sunday 5 May 2019 [at which point I upped my rating to two ticks].