New Short Film: "Daydreams"

 New short comedy I made, just in time for Valentine's Day:

HE Who Gets Slapped (1924)

 

"A clown may be amusing in a circus ring, but what would be your reaction to opening you door and finding that same clown on your front step at midnight?" -- Lon Chaney

Directed by Swedish master Victor Sjostrom (billed as "Seastrom" during his Hollywood tenure), this silent thriller stars Lon Chaney as a scientist whose groundbreaking research is stolen by his wealthy patron, and his life spirals out of control as he is reduced to performing as a circus clown whose act consists of being repeatedly slapped in the face. 

Chaney delivers a typically fine performance as the tragic clown. Newcomers John Gilbert and Norma Shearer appear in early supporting roles, and former Keystone Cop Ford Sterling plays one of the clowns. Chaney would again appear in a story of a Pagliacci-style clown in 1928's Laugh Clown Laugh. The character provides a rich contrast between his inner torment and outward appearance

This was the first film produced under the newly-formed MGM studio, in 1924.

Busy Bodies (1933)

One of the all-time, greatest two-reelers Laurel and Hardy ever produced. The idea of the Boys working in a saw mill is the perfect set-up for one great sight gag after another -- truly too many to list here. A great example of how the team could take slapstick situations that you could imagine being played by other comedians -- but make them entirely their own.

It's also a great example of how much their supporting players brought to these comedies: Tiny Sandford is the mill foreman, and their old nemesis Charlie Hall is their bedeviled coworker.

I remember this was one of the first Laurel and Hardy films I saw -- I had it on a VHS tape along with The Music Box, Helpmates, The Chimp and Chickens Come Home. 

Thicker Than Water (1935)

One of just three shorts that Laurel and Hardy made in 1935, their final year of producing two-reel comedies. Thicker Than Water is a fine situation comedy, with some of the team's best verbal comedy routines (the business with the rent money being passed around, and the auction scene). It seems that by this point in their films, the Boys were taking a more relaxed approach to their comedy, moving away a bit from the extended slapstick of their two-reelers from even just a couple years prior. There is a great scene of Hardy washing dishes, and Laurel placing them right back into the washbin after drying them off, which has a great payoff when Laurel puts the dishes on the hot stove flame to dry.

Daphne Pollard plays Hardy's wife, and James Finlayson is the landlord.

Another Fine Mess (1930)

Perhaps the origin of their frequently-misquoted catchphrase, Another Fine Mess is one of the more unusual Laurel and Hardy shorts, though one of my favorite. It's based on a stage sketch by Stan's father, and as such contains a bit more plot than usual, being a farce of the kind that normally didn't lend itself to the Boys' slapstick style of humor.

Laurel and Hardy had filmed this same sketch once before, as the first film in which they appeared as a team (Duck Soup, back in 1927). But the addition of sound, and the developments of their characters in the intervening years, make the 1930 version a much more fully-fleshed out comedy. It also gives the Boys a rare chance to engage in more verbal humor than usual, as well as playing characters that go beyond their usual "Stan and Ollie" personas, with Hardy impersonating Col. Buckshot with the aplomb of a Southern gentleman, and Stan dressing as both butler and maid.

Contains one of the funniest sight gags I've ever seen -- with the Boys tripping and sliding down the front steps while disguised in the hide of an antelope, and then riding a tandem bicycle down a busy street.

Features James Finalyson as the real Col. Buckshot, Charles Gerrard as Lord Plumtree, and the great Thelma Todd as Plumtree's wife.

Blue Jay (2016)

One of the great things about Netflix is the trove of independent films available on the service. They're just buried pretty deep in the algorithm sometimes, so you just have to do a little digging to find them.

One film that I came across recently was a poignant romantic drama called Blue Jay, from 2016, directed by Alex Lehmann, and starring Mark Duplass and Sarah Paulson. Duplass has become one of my favorite actors to watch recently, both in his own independent productions as well as in Hollywood films and series (I'd just seen him in "Manhunt: Unabomber", playing Ted Kaczynski's brother who turns him in to the FBI). 

In Blue Jay, he plays a middle-aged man who returns to his hometown to sell his recently-deceased mother's home and spends his time there sifting through the pieces of his life. While there, he runs into an old friend from high school (Paulson), and the two end up spending the day, and eventually the evening, together, reminiscing about old times in Duplass' childhood home. As the day wears on, and old memories come to the surface, it's revealed that there is much more to their relationship than initially was apparent.

Beautifully shot in B&W. This was the first of the Duplass brothers' productions made under their deal with Netflix.

They Live by Night (1948)

A young man (Farley Granger) escapes from prison with two thieves (Howard Da Silva and Jay C. Flippen), but desires to leave behind a life of crime when he falls in love with the niece (Cathy O'Donnell) of one of the crooks. The two set out on the road, staying one step ahead of the law as they try to build a life together, but eventually fate catches up with them.

A solid Film Noir that marks the directorial debut of Nicholas Ray, it contains some impressive cinematography, including aerial shots filmed from a helicopter, and a handheld camera from the backseat of the getaway car during a bank robbery that looks forward to the bank robbery sequence from Gun Crazy the following year. 

Based on the book Thieves Like Us by Edward Anderson. Currently available to stream on the Criterion Channel.

The Killing (1956, dir. Stanley Kubrick)

I watched this one shortly after Killer's Kiss, so that earlier Kubrick film was fresh in my mind. I know I must have seen it before, but it's one of those movies that, watching it again, I found myself questioning whether I had in fact seen it before.

It strikes me that Kubrick's first couple of films -- and I may include The Killing in this too -- felt like movies he made for the sake of making a movie. The Killing struck me as a solid genre film (clearly a big influence on Tarantino), but still lacking the kind of cohesive vision that I think Kubrick demonstrated the following year with Paths of Glory. 

Without diminishing what Kubrick achieved on the tiny budgets of his previous two films, The Killing does clearly demonstrate the advantages of the relatively bigger budget he was working with thanks to his deal with UA, benefiting from a solid cast of pro actors and a much better script than he'd worked with before (though still bogged down in clunky narration that may have been imposed to clue audiences in on the time shifts in the action).

Having just seen Killer's Kiss, I was curious why Kubrick didn't suppress that film the way he did Fear and Desire. Part of it may have been purely practical -- because Killer's Kiss was picked up for distribution by UA, perhaps he just didn't have the power to keep it out of circulation (it's always been commercially available). Whereas, since Fear and Desire was out of circulation, it was easier for him to suppress it (although, it eventually fell into the public domain).

Whatever other criticisms one might have of Killer's Kiss, it does have Kubrick's cinematography going for it. I know Kubrick clashed with cinematographer Lucien Ballard on The Killing , but I think that by not trying to do it all, it allowed Kubrick to focus on the direction, which is certainly tighter than in his previous two films.

It also strikes me that James B. Harris is one of the great "unsung heroes" in Kubrick's career, taking a chance on the young director by producing this film, then producingPaths of Glory and Lolita, which as a trajectory made it possible for Kubrick to move from the earliest phase of his career to his status as a visionary, independent artist. It was in no small part due to Harris' belief in Kubrick that he was able to make that transition.

Killer's Kiss (1955, dir. Stanley Kubrick)

Kubrick's second feature film (though often cited as his first "real" feature, as the director suppressed his earlier film, Fear and Desire) is a low-budget, independent production shot in the streets and apartments of New York. Filming on his home terf, Kubrick brings his photographer's eye to composing stark B&W imagery that could have come right out of the pages of his work for LIFE magazine.

It's the story of a slightly past-his-prime boxer who falls in love with a showgirl, but her boss has his own romantic interests in the girl, and tries to stop both of them before they can leave town. The script is by future Hollywood screenwriter Howard Sackler, but it's a slight thread of a story that is padded out with extensive flashbacks and narration that really don't add much that we don't already know.

What the film lacks in plot, however, it more than makes up for in style, and it's easy to see why this film lead to Kubrick's association with producer James B. Harris and a bigger budget for his next film, The Killing, the following year.

Duck Soup (1927)

Laurel and Hardy are a pair of tramps who seek refuge in a mansion while its owner is away, but a wealthy couple soon shows up to rent the place, so Hardy poses as the millionaire with Laurel posing as both butler and maid, in an effort to keep up their ruse.

This was the film in which Leo McCarey recognized the comedians' potential to work as a team. What's remarkable is how fully-formed their characters and interplay are here even in this very early appearance together. The premise was based on sketch by Stan's father and later remade in 1930 as Another Fine Mess. The opening scene, with the Boys evading recruiters looking for men to help fight the California wildfires, was reworked into the opening of Pack Up Your Troubles (1932).

Beau Hunks (1931)

Oliver Hardy has been jilted by the girl he loves, so he decides to join the French Foreign Legion in order to forget her, and naturally drags Stan along with him. At four reels, this one occupies as a unique place between their usual short comedies and their feature-length movies. The extra running time allows for some expanded comedy scenes without dragging on or feeling padded out. Judging from the sets and number of extras, it appears to be a higher-budget production than their usual two-reel comedies of the period.

There's a fun running gag with the other Legionnaires all pining after the same photo of the woman (Jean Harlow) that Hardy is there to forget. Contains one of the Boys' best dialogue bits ("Hello, Mr. Levity?")

The basic plot would be remade by the team as The Flying Deuces in 1939, and the ending would be reworked for the finale of Bonnie Scotland (1935).

Flying Fists (1937)

A lumberjack knocks out a former boxing champ and is quickly promoted into the world of prizefighting. He attempts to distance himself from his reputation as "the most hated man in the ring", and sets himself up as a small town athletic trainer, but considers going in for a fixed fight to earn money to help his girlfriend.

This is another Poverty Row production from Victory Productions and starring Bruce Bennett (still billed as Herman Brix), similar to Amateur Crook which I'd watched recently. Good supporting cast in this one including J. Farrell MacDonald, Fuzzy Knight, and Guinn Williams.

I read that this was one of the first films licensed to television back in 1942, and I watched it on the Pub-D-Hub streaming service on Roku. Amazing to think of the long life films like this have had as reliable entertainment.

The Ghost Camera (1933)

This is an interesting little mystery-thriller "Quota Quickie" from England. A man finds a camera mysteriously deposited in the back seat of his car after a road trip, and processes the film in an effort to identify its owner. One of the photos appears to show a murder, and both the photo and the camera are quickly stolen. He uses the other photos to track down information and investigate the murder himself.

Stars Henry Kendall, who I'd seen in Hitchcock's Rich and Strange, with a very young Ida Lupino and John Mills in supporting roles. Edited by David Lean.

The Criminal Code (1931)

A young man is sent to jail after killing a man in a nightclub brawl. The DA (Walter Huston) who sent him away is the newly-appointed warden of the prison. The warden takes sympathy on the young man, who is given employment as the driver to the warden's daughter. His newfound position is threatened, however, when another inmate is murdered in retaliation for snitching, and the young man refuses to identify the killer.

Reminiscent of The Big House (1930) with its gritty, pre-Code depictions of prison life, and grappling with the social issues of the penal system. 

Boris Karloff has a supporting role as one of the inmates. He commands attention in every scene in which he appears, and it's easy to see why director Howard Hawks thought of him for the role of a rival gangster in Scarface. Peter Bogdanovich used a clip from this film with Karloff in his directorial debut Targets (1968).

Elevator to the Gallows (1958)

This atmospheric French Noir thriller tells the story of a killer thwarted by an ironic twist of fate.

Julien Tavernier (Maurice Ronet) conspires with his lover (Jeanne Moreau) to murder her wealthy husband. Tavernier pulls it off successfully, except he gets stuck in the elevator overnight on his way out of the building. Meanwhile, a young hood and his girlfriend steal Tavernier's car, and end up committing a murder of their own, which ends up getting pinned on Tavernier after eyewitnesses ID the car. When he finally gets out of the elevator, Tavernier is arrested for the murder he didn't commit, and in order to clear his name, has to confess to the one he did commit.

Miles Davis recorded the cool jazz soundtrack that perfectly complements the rich black-and-white images of Paris at night:

Pack Up Your Troubles (1932)

Laurel and Hardy's second feature is also one of their most shapeless comedies. The Boys are stationed at the front during WWI, where they promise their pal to look after his daughter if anything happens to him. After he's killed in action, the Boys go about trying to locate his estranged parents in New York City and reunite them with the little girl, encountering one mishap after another along the way.

There's more plot than usual here, but it's all so crammed into the 68 minute running time that the finished film feels more like a patchwork of sketches and scenes than a solid feature. Their first feature, Pardon Us, was similarly padded with extended scenes, but that one was at least held together by the prison setting. Here, the Boys go from the battlefields of WWI France to New York City and meet at least a dozen different characters who come and go from the story very quickly. It does allow room for appearances by some great character actors (and L&H regulars), including James Finlayson, Billy Gilbert, Grady Sutton, Charles Middleton, Tom Kennedy, the Boys' old nemesis Rychard Cramer (here playing an abusive stepfather in a genuinely menacing performance), and in a cameo appearance as the vengeful Army cook, director George Marshall. Child actress Jacqui Lyn turns in a delightful performance as the little girl, sharing a particularly funny scene with Laurel, who struggles to stay awake as she recounts the story of the Three Little Bears.

Some of the comedy highlights including an opening scene lifted from the team's 1927 two-reeler, Duck Soup, with the Boys attempting to evade a recruiting officer in the park; the Boys being assigned to KP duty and delivering the kitchen garbage to the dining room of General James Finlayson; interrupting a wedding and mistakenly claiming to have the groom's daughter; and an encounter with the mean orphan asylum agent ("How much would you charge me to haunt a house?" Hardy asks him).

Pack Up Your Troubles isn't one of Laurel and Hardy's strongest features, and the really good comedy scenes are just a bit too few and far between to sustain consistently through the hour-plus running time, but it's still a lot of fun, and is a nice showcase for many of the talented stock company that the team worked with throughout their time at Hal Roach Studios.

Amateur Crook (1937)

Bruce Bennett (still billed here as Herman Brix) stars in this mystery-caper about stolen diamonds. He plays an artist who finds himself wrapped up in a plot to retrieve the diamonds from a couple of crooks. He meets up with a young woman whose father left the diamonds with the two loan sharks, and sets out to get them back on his behalf. The two quickly find themselves at the center of an investigation for the missing diamonds.

The last 15 minutes or so takes a complete detour from the plot into some easygoing comedy before wrapping things up. It's a leisurely end to an otherwise tightly-plotted actioner.

Written by Basil Dickey, who had credits on many of the best serials of the era, including the three Flash Gordon serials, and directed by B movie stalwart Sam Katzman for the Poverty Row studio Victory Pictures.

Air Devils (1938)

This is a solid B action film, from Universal Pictures, about two buddies (Larry Blake and Dick Purcell) in the constabulary on a South Seas island, their rivalry over a girl, and quashing a native rebellion. There is a great deal of action packed into its 60 minute running time, and Blake and Purcell have fun with their roles, engaging in friendly competition with a running joke that keeps seeing one of them lose his rank in the constabulary while the other is promoted, and vice versa. 

The producer credit goes to Trem Carr, a king of low-budget productions who normally worked for Monogram, but this film was a production of Universal Pictures. It still has the look of one of Carr's Poverty Row productions. 

The script is based on a story, "The Fighting Marines", by Harold Robert Buckley, a WWI flying ace and recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross, who wrote a number of stories based on his experiences in the US Army Air Service. I haven't seen any of the other films based on his stories, but according to IMDB he has writing credits for 13 films.

The Crooked Web (1955)

The owner of a drive-in diner is pulled into a plot to retrieve some looted gold, buried in Germany before the end of the war. Little does he know this plan is just a ruse to bring him back to Germany, where he is wanted by police for a crime committed there during wartime.

There's a lot of plot packed into this dense little thriller, with plenty of twists and turns to keep you guessing even after you think you've got it figured out, although it does get a bit far-fetched at times. The detectives posing as brother and sister stretch credibility with how close they come to blowing their cover and risk jeopardizing this elaborate mission over and over again, though Frank Lovejoy is suitably gullible as the subject of their investigation.

Inside Job (1946)

A remake of Tod Browning's Outside the Law, which he'd filmed in 1920 and 1930. This version, based on Browning and Garrett Fort's original story, was produced by Universal in 1946, directed by Jean Yarbrough. A reformed ex-convict, working in a big department store around the holidays, is confronted by a gangster who knows his past about pulling off an inside job. The ex-con and his wife decide to pull off the job on their own and start a new life, but the gangster gets wise to their double-cross.

This version suffers from the same problem as the 1930 version -- it turns deadly dull when the couple is holed up in their apartment hiding from the cops for most of the second half of the film. It also lacks the star presence of the previous versions (Lon Chaney in the original, Edward G. Robinson in the first remake), although Preston Foster delivers a solid performance as gangster Bart Madden, and Ann Rutherford and Alan Curtis are sympathetic as the romantic leads.

Although he'd filmed the story twice before, it would be interesting to see what Browning would have done with the material in the post-war era of this version.