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But Sister Ruth Is Ill...

4/16/2015

4 Comments

 
Black Narcissus, Great Villain Blogathon
Winner of Two Academy Awards in 1948: Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction

Kathleen Byron
This will scare you after you see the movie.

Black Narcissus (1947)

In short, Black Narcissus is a film about a handful of Anglican nuns who open a mission school and clinic in a remote Himalayan village, so yes, it is exactly what you'd expect: a technologically masterful erotic thriller. 

Deborah Kerr plays Sister Clodagh, a moderately arrogant thirty-something nun, who is sent by her mother superior to lead a new mission in an empty palace set high in the mountains of Darjeeling. The palace was once home to a bygone General's extra women; indeed, the walls are decorated with images of beautiful bathing girls in various poses and stages of dress. The heir to this palace, the current General, tried to establish a school and dispensary the year before by installing a band of monks, but they only lasted five months. It is a windy place, full of ghosts after all, and no one thought to paint over the pictures.

Sister Clodagh is given four women of the order to take with her:
Sister Briony (Judith Furse), a sturdy, no-nonsense nun; Sister "Honey" (Jenny Laird), a happy, glass-ever-half-full kind of gal; Sister Phillipa (Flora Robson), the landscaping nun; and finally Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron), a sharp-edged, unhappy woman who is prone to illness and complaining, because a trip to the Himalayas 'round about monsoon season might be just the thing to perk her up.

The troupe is met on location (more on this later) by the General's British agent, Mr. Dean (David Farrar), a handsome, dissolute rogue with wavy hair and a manly swagger, who dresses in short-sleeved cotton shirts (all unbuttoned), a battered alpine hat, and high-waisted, Magnum, P.I. man-shorts. He is both helpful and discomfiting to Sisters Clodagh and Ruth (if for different reasons) and he makes no secret about Mopu not being a good fit for them. He tells the nuns the locals are like children who don't know from modern medicine, so the nuns better not try to help any of them if they get really sick, because if one of 'em dies, they'll all think the magic is bad.

Dean rides a Shetland pony, so he should know.

As the girls settle in, the raw, earthy beauty of their surroundings seeps in, upending each of them in different, but profound ways.
In spite of the "clear air" and ceaseless wind, they get the clinic and school up and running. Sister Clodagh develops a collegial tolerance of Mr. Dean, Sister Briony remains sturdy, and Sister Honey remains cheerful. Poor Sister Phillipa, who spends much of her time outdoors, seems so easily distracted and Sister Ruth, when she isn't carping about the stupidity and smell of the children, seems to brighten a bit whenever she sees Mr. Dean.
Dean helps with the plumbing and whatnot, and even hands them a disturbingly beautiful girl of seventeen (the gorgeous, walnut-tinted Jean Simmons) who has been hanging around Dean's doorstep to keep her out of trouble, if you know what I mean.

Enter the Young General
(Sabu), the nephew of the Old General, who has been called from his studies in London to take his place in Mopu. Sister Clodagh reluctantly agrees that he can study with the girls for the time being. She's not such a bad egg, really, as we learn from flashbacks to her time as a flaming red-headed lass in Ireland before she took the veil and had a handsome boyfriend. She's not the only nun to be remembering things from the Before Time: poor Sister Phillipa couldn't resist planting flowers where the practical vegetables ought to be and is very distressed about it, and Sister Ruth, getting paler and more angular by the day is clearly pining for Mr. Dean and his Shetland pony ways.

Then one day, a villager brings in her feverish, dying baby. Sister Briony sends the woman home, knowing the baby will die, but Sister Honey secretly gives the mother medicine, which doesn't work. The next day, after the baby dies, no one comes to clinic or school and the nuns suddenly find it dangerous to venture outside their garden. The Young General has run off that same night with Jean Simmons, and Sister Ruth is about to open that mysterious package she received from Calcutta. Left with her troubling thoughts and "that something in the atmosphere that makes everything seem exaggerated," Sister Clodagh finds herself in for a rough evening.

An evening I won't spoil with too much detail, but suffice it to say that Sister Ruth has been harboring a deep hatred of Sister Clodagh, whom she sees as a rival for Mr. Dean's affections. After a disappointing encounter with Mr. Dean, Sister Ruth emerges feverish and mad, wanting nothing more than to terrorize Sister Clodagh for the remaining minutes of the picture, which she does, magnificently.

I can count the number of times on one hand when one person actually touches another in this picture, but so much is suggested through color, sound, atmosphere, and those rich, intimate close-ups, that you'd swear you'd seen Everything, All of It. Perhaps the greatest illusion of all is the fact that the entire film was shot in the studio, using models and hand-painted, black-and-white photographic mattes. The only thing authentically Indian about Black Narcissus is Sabu and the plants used in some of the exteriors.

During the filming of this picture. Kathleen Byron and director Michael Powell frequently argued about how to play Ruth. Powell envisioned Ruth as a crazed, hysterical monster, whereas Byron wanted to play Ruth...oh what's the word...human, as though her actions might be motivated by sincere inexperience and regretted decisions. You can judge who won that argument in the scene where Ruth goes to Dean's quarters. Their disagreement was complicated by the fact that Byron and Powell were having an affair at the time, and that Ruth's principal rival was being played by the director's recent ex-lover, Deborah Kerr. So maybe the villain of this film isn't so much Sister Ruth, whose frustrated passion drove her to madness, but how frightening women's sexuality can be...at least to men.

It certainly was villainous by the standards of the Catholic League of Decency, who thought the picture obscene on account of the nuns succumbing to various forms of sensuality. The film was not allowed to be released in the United States until those nuns were turned into Anglicans.
As scary (and trope-y) the voracious, crazed, needy female monster in movies is, give me Black Narcissus over Basic Instinct or Fatal Attraction any day.

However you feel about nuns, the Raj, or what a player Michael Powell turned out to be, Black Narcissus is a hot work of art from beginning to end -- and Kathleen Byron is terrifying.

The Great Villain Blogathon 2015
This post is my contribution to The Great Villain Blogathon, hosted by Speakeasy, Shadows & Satin, and Silver Screenings.

Please take a moment to read about the other dastards, creeps, and nogoodniks you love to hate.

4 Comments

Ear-Way Innay the UNNY-May

4/3/2015

7 Comments

 
Gold Diggers of 1933
It's the Depression: Let's put on a show!

Featuring

  • Ginger Rogers' Pig Latin
  • Aline MacMahon's delivery
  • Ned Sparks' enthusiasm
  • Busby Berkeley's bird's eye view
  • Warren William's drunken snob
  • Joan Blondell's big, blue, righteously angry eyes
Joan Blondell, My Forgotten Man
So. Good.

Gold Diggers of 1933

I have no such thing as "favorite old movie," so when asked what mine is, I either deflect or go on too long in too many directions.

However
. Among the handful of pictures I can see any time in (almost) any mood, Gold Diggers of 1933 is high on that list. It's got everything: snappy dialog expertly delivered; beautiful girls in great clothes; weird Dr. Seussian musical numbers; and an adorably silly self-awareness that brings me joy every time.

The gold diggers in question are a group of girls trying to make a living in the show business: ingenue Polly Parke
r (Ruby Keeler), comedienne Trixie Lorraine (Aline MacMahon), torch singer Carol King (Joan Blondell), and hoofer Fay Fortune (Ginger Rogers). The film opens on Fay in dress rehearsal for a big musical number backed by a bunch of chorines dressed in nothing but their Sheer Energies and some strategically placed cardboard coins, singing "We're in the Money." Right in the middle of the number, a bunch of goons barge in and start breaking down sets and gathering coins, claiming the creditors are closing the show due to lack of payment.

This throws producer Barney Hopkins
(Ned Sparks) into a rage and the girls out of work -- again -- this unnamed show being the latest in a series of productions they've rehearsed for but never opened in. Some weeks later, there is a rumor that Barney is casting for a new show! Great news for the girls and for Polly's crush across the way, a young composer and crooner called Brad Roberts (Dick Powell). Barney tells the girls all about this great new show. It's about the Depression, see, with men marching marching marching, can't you hear it? Brad starts playing a doleful march; Barney loves it. Polly thinks Barney should use Brad's music. Barney thinks so too, and Brad will do it if Barney gives Polly a feature role. There are parts for everyone, especially the comedienne, because it's a show about the Depression and it's going to go on for six months, easy!

That is, as soon as Barney gets the money.

Not to worry, Brad says, he can get them the $15,000 they need, no problem, as long as he doesn't have to appear on stage. The girls, presuming him to be just as poor as they are, think he's making a cruel joke. Everybody is annoyed and saddened, but when Brad shows up at Barney's office the next day with stacks of cash, all is forgiven. But the girls (especially Polly) fear that Brad is in trouble with the law or the mob or something: where else would anyone get that kind of money, and in such neat little piles, and why won't he appear in public?

Because Brad Roberts is in reality, Robert Bradford, the youngest son in a wealthy family whose fortune is held in trust by Brad's elder brother, Lawrence (
Warren William), that's why. Brad/Robert wants to make it in the musical theater, a profession disdained by his class, and is living incognito on the poor side of town. So the show goes on, with Brad at the piano, Polly in the lead, and Busby Berkeley at the drawing board. On opening night, however, the "juvenile" lead gets an attack of lumbago (he's been a juvenile for 18 years) and Brad MUST go on in his stead, which he does. The show is a SENSATION but Brad is immediately recognized by a society reporter (Charles Lane), who rats him out in the newspaper the next day. Enter angry brother Lawrence and family lawyer, Faneul Peabody (Guy Kibbee), who insert themselves into Brad's happy life.

Now that we've met all the principal girls and boys, the rest of the film is about how each of them wind up with each other. Lawrence mistakes Carol for Polly, falls in love with her (Carol, not Polly); Trixie latches onto Faneul (who's an established big, fat sucker for showgirls) beating off Fay once or twice in the process; and the real Polly and Brad, already in love anyway, wait for all the dust to settle.

Along the way there are three more spectacular, bizarre musical numbers: "Petting in the Park," an irritating if catchy tune about furtive groping through all four seasons; "Waltz of the Shadows," an unmemorable love song accompanied by girls in white dresses making jaw-dropping, kaleidoscopic formations while playing neon violins; and the closer of all closers, "Remember My Forgotten Man," a ginormous blues extravaganza that explicates the plight of the Bonus Army in just under eight minutes.

If ever I taught a course on the Depression, I'd anchor it with this picture. It pulls you in with such affable, toe-tapping irony and shows you the door with another: the rousing dirge, a call to action that gives you hope and purpose. So entertaining, so silly, and so much to think about.


In God We Trust


Picture
This post is another contribution to The Pre-Code Blogathon, hosted by Shadows and Satin and Pre-Code.com. Read 'em all, why doncha?

7 Comments

Strictly on the Level, Like a Flight of Stairs

4/1/2015

10 Comments

 
Red-Headed Woman, Pre-code Blogathon
Whaddya been doing, a little racketeering?

Red-Headed Woman (1932)

Any fan of early talkies knows that occasionally you're going to have to adjust your modern-day (post-1933) movie-watching metronome a bit to accommodate the sometimes plodding exposition of an otherwise excellent film, which Red-Headed Woman is not. Nope, sorry. This is a looooong 79 minutes with some fun bits, a few great lines, and a couple of good performances, but Baby Face, it ain't. 

The story is similar: a girl from the wrong side of the tracks uses her ferocious feminine charms to seduce a wealthy married man to improve her station in life. The gold-digger in question is Lil "Red" Andrews (Jean Harlow), an office girl, who has designs on her boss, Bill Legendre (Chester Morris), who famously loves his wife, Irene (Leila Hyams). Lil has her way with the conflicted Bill and the two embark on what the kids call a "situationship," until they are caught by Bill's wife.

Bill and Irene get divorced and he marries Lil, because, I don't know, The Women (1939), while Lil tries and fails to be accepted by the high society into which she has married. To help herself up the social ladder, Lil seduces elderly coal magnate, C.B. Gaerste (Henry Stephenson), convinces him -- somehow through hurl-inducing baby talk -- that Bill is cruel to her and that she'd really rather be happier surrounded by coal. By the way, Gaerste's chauffer is a really hot French guy (Charles Boyer) and it's win-win(-win).

Meanwhile, Bill's father (Lewis Stone), who has been suspicious of Lil from the get-go, finds Lil's hankie at Gaerste's place, shows Bill, and finally exposes Lil for what she is (and in case there was some confusion): a no-good, gold-digging tramp who will never escape the gutter. Bill hires a detective who easily obtains photographic evidence of her multiple infidelities: Bill shows Gaerste; Gaerste dumps Lil; Bill goes back to Irene; Lil shoots Bill, but not fatally. Because this is a romantic comedy -- as the home-wrecking, adultery and attempted murder would indicate-- Bill forgives Lil and she winds up in France with some old rich guy and her French chauffer.  

Fine.

Halfway through this picture I found myself looking up the director, trying to figure out a) if there was one and b) what else he had done. Turns out it was Jack Conway, one of MGM's staunchest company men, a guy "who forsook any pretense to a specific individual style in favor of working within the strictures of studio management (IMDb)," said management being leery of creative types who went over-budget and made films that weren't commercial successes. Conway also made one of my favorite William Powell and Myrna Loy vehicles, Libeled Lady (1936), but now I'm thinking he had less to do with its charm than did its stars -- and the fact that everyone was on the same page.

The screenplay for Red-Headed Woman had originally been adapted by F. Scott Fitzgerald from Katharine Brush's popular novel of the same name, but Irving Thalberg didn't think it was funny enough and had it rewritten by Anita Loos. Except I don't think anyone told Jack Conway or Chester Morris that it was a comedy until they were halfway through the picture -- if the first half were Fatal Attraction and the second The Awful Truth.

As a result, many of the laughs are hard won and weirdly timed. The presence of the wonderful Una Merkel as Lil's best friend is the clearest signal that the movie is supposed to be funny (because Merkel delivers), and Jean Harlow, only 21 at the time, is excellent in the title role. Unfortunately, Chester Morris plays Bill so self-loathing and miserable that in scenes with him, Lil comes across more the stalking psychopath than the charming nogoodnik she is with other characters. It's just creepy. 

That said, this may be the first time I've truly appreciated Charles Boyer as an actor. He is the funniest thing in Red-Headed Woman: subtle, with an understated comic flair and -- I never thought I'd say this --not in the film nearly enough. But Una Merkel and Jean Harlow are. Just prepare for a little tedium while the picture finds its footing.

Pre-code blogathon
This post is one contribution to The Pre-Code Blogathon, hosted by Shadows and Satin and Pre-Code.com. Read 'em all, why doncha?


10 Comments

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