What classics did you see last week? (3 Dec to 9 Dec 2017)

What classics did you see last week? (3 Dec to 9 Dec 2017) Dec 12, 2017 23:05:22 GMT Salzmank, spiderwort, and 1 more like this

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Post by Doghouse6 on Dec 12, 2017 23:05:22 GMT

Dec 12, 2017 20:41:29 GMT Salzmank said:

I finally got to see (thanks, TCM!) Lady on a Train, a whodunit (I certainly wouldn’t call it a “noir”) that I’ve wanted to see ever since Everson praised it in The Detective in Film (and I think it was recommended to me here, in the whodunits thread?) Lots of fun, and Deanna Durbin is as cute as a button. I guessed the murderer from the moment

SPOILER: Click to show

his

name appeared in the credits, but that’s no real flaw: it’s fast-paced and entertaining, with some great set pieces (the Circus Club, recalling the West Indies Club in Another Thin Man). Oh, and it’s set at Christmastime! My one real criticisms were its underuse of the great Edward Everett Horton, funny (as always) though he is, and its doubtlessly-required-by-producers lulls for Miss Durbin to sing (her rendition of “Silent Night” is beautiful, but the other songs only serve to stop the film in its tracks). Ah, and the story was written by Saint creator Leslie Charteris (and borrowed wholesale [stolen?] by Agatha Christie for 4.50 from Paddington).

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I also got to see another picture I’ve long wanted to watch, James Whale’s The Great Garrick, which was also lots of fun (and also featured Edward Everett Horton, amusingly enough). The story and camerawork are pure Whale; if the picture is never quite as funny as it thinks it is, it remains an enjoyable farce, Olivia de Havilland delivering a very sweet and sympathetic performance. (The Great Garrick himself, Brian Aherne, comes across as a bit of a popinjay, making the viewer almost sympathize with the efforts of the Comédie-Française to ridicule him!) The whole thing also features Whale’s ability to handle an ensemble cast; there are frequent similarities with Bride of Frankenstein, Remember Last Night?, Show Boat, and Man in the Iron Mask, especially in managing to be always theatrical but never stagey. Very good indeed.

Would you believe I'd never seen a Deanna Durbin picture until this year? Lady On A Train was only the second (caught Can't Help Singing a few months back). I'm not sure what I was expecting; maybe something like a junior league Jeanette MacDonald. Instead, I was treated in both to a feisty, saucy and very appealing screen presence.

I'm keeping LOAT on the DVR for the next time hubby's in the mood for a light whodunit. We, too, play the "casting game" when watching Perry Masons (from the '50s-'60s or '80s-'90s), Diagnosis Murders and the like (if Ronny Cox is in the cast, for instance, he's almost certain to be the guilty party), and keep an eye peeled as well for those benign-appearing characters played by lesser names who at first seem incidental to the plot ("He's serving no purpose, so it's gotta be him"). I found I didn't at all mind Durbin's performances of standards like "Night and Day" and "Give Me A Little Kiss," things I much prefer to the operetta tunes I suppose I'd anticipated. And the cast was quite well rounded out with reliables like Ralph Bellamy, Allen Jenkins, George Coulouris, Patricia Morison, Dan Duryea, Elizabeth Patterson, Samuel S. Hinds, William Frawley, Thurston Hall and the amiable David Bruce (one of those second-tier leading men like James Craig, Robert Paige or Turhan Bey who had their brief moments in the sun during the war years while bigger names were away in service).

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I passed on The Great Garrick this time around. The last time TCM ran it, their broadcast dub looked like it had come from something mastered from a 10th-generation source, with audio so muffled, muddy and variable that I found it impossible to get through. Was it any better this time?

They ran another James Whale that had always eluded me: One More River (1934), with stoic Diana Wynyard endeavoring to bear up under the psychological and physical abuses of sadistic estranged husband Colin Clive (in a sort of preview of his penultimate screen role in History Is Made At Night), along with wonderful players like Reginald Denny, C. Aubrey Smith, Henry Stephenson, Alan Mobray, Lionel Atwill, Jane Wyatt, E.E. Clive, Kathleen Howard and the estimable Mrs. Patrick Campbell (in one of her few screen appearances) and scripted by frequent Whale scenarist R.C. Sherriff from a James Galsworthy novel. Most noteworthy was the lengthy and climactic courtroom sequence enlivened by John Mescall's elegant, fluid and varied camerawork full of unexpected angles and movement that accentuated the otherwise static drama, and further facilitated by kinetic editing credited to Ted Kent. Full of great Whale touches and worthy viewing.