The Rare Review

Movies, books, music and TV

Travels On “The Wayward Bus”

I’ve never read John Steinbeck’s novel The Wayward Bus and won’t be doing so. I did wish to see the 1957 film version of it and am glad I did. It is an entertaining piece about a driver and his passengers on a problematic, life-changing bus ride. The driver, Chicoy, for example, needs a better marriage to one who eventually becomes a passenger: his perturbed wife, Alice (Joan Collins). The bus ride is one of infatuation, growing or potential love, and reconciliation. Ably screenwritten by Ivan Moffat, the film is about when relationships represent hope—and it’s about waywardness.

Beautiful Collins is not quite beautiful, for some reason, until near the end of the flick. Her acting is a trifle too much on the surface, although the scene where she is at the door of her diner after her frustrated husband zips away in the bus is a poignant one. Rick Jason is pretty effective as Chicoy, and at least passable is gorgeous Jayne Mansfield as a stripper. Dan Dailey never disappoints as a traveling salesman who gets fresh for a while with Mansfield, and elderly Will Wright is a character actor par excellence. The Wayward Bus had an un-wayward, Russian-born director in Victor Vicus, whose work I don’t know.

“Belle de Jour” Means Daytime Beauty

Cover of "Martin Scorsese presents Luis B...

Cover via Amazon

Luis Bunuel‘s Belle de Jour (1967) is so bad it’s riveting.

A French woman (Catherine Deneuve) happily married but sexually unresponsive to her husband gradually becomes, of all things, a daytime prostitute at a brothel.  Repelling kinkiness is shown, but there is also Bunuel’s usual surrealism which, at the end, causes the film to scurry away from, well, real life.  From human catastrophe.

In Belle, at bottom, Senor B. likes neither people nor traditional Western morality (it’s so bourgeois).  Practically the only good thing about the film is Catherine Deneuve’s marvelous beauty.  I’m glad her character is a daytime beauty, a belle de jour, since she’s so easy to see that way.

(In French with English subtitles)

 

“Jungle Fever”: A Fever Dream?

Spike Lee‘s Jungle Fever (1991) is about an interracial illicit romance, and it’s an overwrought joke. Most, but not all, of the black characters here are estimable; including the less than believable architect, Flipper Purify (Wesley Snipes), who cheats on his wife with a white woman (Annabella Sciorra). Nearly every white character is foolish and/or mean. The best sequence in the film presents a group of black young women discussing black men and their relationships. In one of the worst sequences, several Italian-American dudes are blabbing hysterically and are like profane, monstrously racist Jersey Boys. The movie is stupid—with, however, a nifty credit sequence—and even features constantly inappropriate music.

The Movie, “The Lady Eve” Offers Its Fruit

Preston Sturges based his script for The Lady Eve (1941) on a story by one Monckton Hoffe and then directed what was one of the best screwball comedies ever made.  In it, a father-and-daughter con artist team attempts to bamboozle a wealthy young snake expert (Henry Fonda) but, as it happens, a cynic, the daughter (Barbara Stanwyck), falls for a non-cynic, the young man.  She never misses a beat.  Imperturbably she aimed to cheat him at cards, now she imperturbably likes the fellow and says no to cheating him—except that he soon breaks up with her.

The old charmer, Sturges, is at it again—teasing us with hard reality before proving once more that he’s in a romantic mood.  The hard reality is Stanwyck’s elaborate plot to—get even?—with Fonda, who does need to learn a little lesson.

Even more fun than The Great McGinty, Eve is a farce of manners, an unfrothy romp.  Stanwyck is fine in her juicy role, but I like Sturges’s The Palm Beach Story a bit more because Claudette Colbert looks more feminine than Stanwyck.

The Lady Eve

The Lady Eve (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Easy To Be A Pushover For “Pushover”

The 1954 film noir, Pushover, was adapted from two stories by different authors and so, presumably, real credit must go to Roy Huggins for the smooth script. Here, Fred MacMurray is all right but certainly not great as a police detective whom a bank robber-murderer’s girlfriend (Kim Novack) talks into running off with her. Oh, and they’ll abscond with the bank robber’s stolen money. Novack is all short-haired glamor and has an intelligent-looking beautiful face. Her acting is menacingly cool.

I detected nothing wrong with Richard Quine‘s directing. The black-and-white visuals are glossy and thus attractive. The pic is sobering and involving.

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