Day: March 25, 2021

Gangster Gonzo

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This is going to make me sound like some kind of sentimental or undisciplined sap, but the night before last I watched an HD Amazon stream of All Through The Night (’42), and I kind of loved it — fun performances (Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, Conrad Veidt, Jane Darwell and a 25 year-old Jackie Gleason), great-looking, punchy, swiftly paced.

It’s a thoroughly lightweight, second-tier, studio-lot Warner Bros. comedy-thriller about a gang of Manhattan wiseguy gamblers vs. a team of Nazi saboteurs, and it really moves along — runs 107 minutes, feels like 80 or 85. And the Damon Runyon-esque dialogue (“Catch ’em with their panzers down”) really zips along. The writers are Leonard Spigelgass and Edwin Gilbert.

Produced by Hal Wallis and Jerry Wald and completely lacking in substance**, All Through The Night is the kind of par-for-the-course programmer that the studios used to crank out like sausage. But it’s surprisingly smooth and winning…a dopey goof-off flick but very well done for what it is, and stocked with Warner Bros. contract players, and extra enjoyable now because the 1080p resolution is so clean and sharp.

And the spiffy, smooth-sailing Bogart, wearing his Maltese Falcon toupee, looks and sounds great — he’s having fun and doesn’t give a shit. Ditto William Demarest, Judith Anderson, Phil Silvers, Barton MacLane, Kaaren Verne, etc.

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You Don’t Know What It’s Like…

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…to live with a light sleeper with extra-sensitive hearing, a woman who can be woken up by damn near anything. And who chews you out when this happens.

Sleeping modes differ, of course. Some (like me) sink to the bottom of the pond and can’t be aroused by anything less than a 7.0 earthquake, and others (like the CEO of Tatiana, Ltd.) float on the surface of the pond. And I’m telling you that the slightest little piddly-tinkly-twinkly noise…a fork falling off a plate onto our glass-top coffee table, the accidental dropping of an iPhone battery, the mere snapping of a twig…wakes her up, and when that happens it’s like getting reamed out by Vladimir Putin.

I like to watch an old film to settle down with, and I always do so with wireless headphones. My movie time starts when Tatiana dozes off, around 10:30 or 11 pm. From that point on it’s “observe Moscow Rules or die.” If I want to get up for anything (a bottle of water, an ice pop, feed the cats) I’m careful to step extra-gently without shoes and only on the balls of my feet…I’m an angel walking on cotton balls. But that’s not good enough for General Strelnikov because if I walk on top of certain sections of wooden floor a slight groaning or creaking sound results…”you woke me uhhhp!!”

My name is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and I live in the Gulag Archipelago.

Passing of a Great Screen Villain

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Respect for the late Jessica Walter, who passed yesterday at age 80. Walter achieved screen immortality when she portrayed Evelyn Draper, the estranged younger sister of Don Draper (kidding!) and the original psycho-nutso girlfriend in Clint Eastwood Play Misty For Me (’71).

After a single night of great sex with Carmel disc-jokey Dave Garver (Eastwood), Walter/Draper grasped and stalked and terrorized and wound up wielding a large kitchen knife. Audiences cheered when she met her doom at the finale.

16 years later Walter became the second most psychotic and terrifying figure in this realm with the arrival of Glenn Close‘s Alex Forrest in Adrien Lyne‘s Fatal Attraction (’87).

Alex caused blood to instantly drain from the faces of tens of millions of straight American male dilletante infidels…husbands and boyfriends who had once or twice slithered into a little involvement on the side without getting caught. Or had dreamt of this.

The idea with both Evelyn and Alex was that if you become intimate with them just once or twice, for a single night or over, say, a 24-hour period, you need to devote your life to them forever…leave your girlfriend, get divorced, invite her to live with you and become her lifelong partner as she prepares for a coming child, etc.

Walter’s peak feature-film period ran from the mid ’60s to early ’70s — Lilith, Grand Prix, The Group, Bye Bye Braverman, Number One, Play Misty for Me, etc. She kept working and hung in there and won an Emmy or two (she was oh-my-God-so-fucking-great in Arrested Development!…aaagghh wonderful!) all the way to the end. And don’t forget her voice work in Archer.

Anger, Bullying, Racist Taunts

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Here are a few memory snippets about the high-school experience of accused mass murderer Ahmad Al Aliwi Al-Issa in Arvada, Colorado.

Given the prevalence of racism and bullying among high-school adolescents, it goes without saying that post-9/11 a U.S.-residing teenager with that name would be taunted and provoked. Teenagers can be horrible.

If I’d been Al-Issa’s parents, I would have given him an American nickname so his classmates would leave him alone, or at least pick on him less. Immigrants do this in order to assimilate into American society. Issur Danielovitch didn’t keep his name — he adopted another one.

Seen It?

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3.9.11 HE review of Bertrand Tavernier‘s The Princess of Montpensier (IFC Films): “The initial response at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival was not wildly enthusiastic, so I was rather surprised to find that this historical drama of intimacy, set in 16th Century France during the Catholic vs. Huguenot wars, is one of the most intriguing erotic trips I’ve taken in a long while.

“Partly because the occasionally undressed lead, Melanie Thierry, performs in a way that feels rather prim and Grace Kelly-ish, an all-but-extinct vibe or romantic brand in films today. But primarily because the movie is mostly about unrequited desire and hardly at all about consummation.

It’s probably not bawdy or obvious enough for most viewers, but I felt and believed this film without the slightest discomfort, and I never wanted to turn it off or multitask as I watched.

“The story is basically about four or five guys who can think of little else but having Thierry, and who spend most of their screen time being told ‘if only,’ ‘no,’ ‘not now,’ ‘not here’ and so on. I only know that the combination of Thierry, the feeling of sensual restraint or suppression, and the generally realistic and non-movieish atmosphere created by Tavernier and his team (including some excellent hand-to-hand combat and duelling scenes) feels right and believable and on-the-money.

“It’s delightful when a film drops you into an exotic time-trip visitation without making this world seem arch or ‘performed’ or overly prettified or set-decorated within an inch of its life. I’ve never thought of Tavernier as a director who excels or even cares about violent action and/or mercury-popping eroticism, but maybe I need to go back to watch some of his films.

“I didn’t expect to say this, but I felt as stirred and satisfied and convinced by The Princess of Montpensier as I was by Andrzej Wajda‘s Danton (’83), a superb historical drama about the post-revolutionary “terror.”

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Tavernier Gazing Down

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Solemn condolences and melancholy tidings in the matter of Bertrand Tavernier, who has passed at age 79. A great director (Coup de Torchon, Round Midnight, A Sunday in the Country, Let Joy Reign Supreme, Life and Nothing But, In The Electric Mist, The Princess of Montpensier), a brilliant fellow, French to the core but an internationalist, an avid cineaste and warm acquaintance to journalists the world over.

Monsieur Tavernier was simply a magnificent human being and a consummate Renaissance man — warm, gentle-mannered, passionate, knew everything and everyone. I was transported when I realized about 15 years ago that Tavernier was an HE reader, and doubly if not triply elevated when I met him at a journo gathering in Cannes a year or two later. We first chatted at the Algonquin Hotel in ’81 or ’82, during a press interview for Coup do Torchon. Quite the occasion.

We last met almost exactly a decade ago (3.9.11), during a French Consulate press encounter for The Princess of Montpensier, which might be my favorite Tavernier of all. Right now I can hear Bertrand whispering to me from heaven, telling me to stand tall and hold fast against the demonic Twitter jackals (I don’t know for a fact that he hated wokesters but I’m 98% certain of this) and to keep the cinema-love faith.