In the 1946 Hitchcock picture, Notorious, Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) is a woman of scandalous character whose German father gets his comeuppance for treason.  Then she is recruited by the U.S. government agent (Cary Grant) who will fall in love with her for the mission of discovering what her father’s Nazi associates are up to in Rio de Janeiro.

The free-floating romance between Alicia and Devlin, the agent, no longer holds up (if it ever did) in Ben Hecht’s highly unlikely plot.  Devlin behaves like a fool over Alicia’s fake relationship with once-smitten Nazi, Alexander Sebastian (Claude Rains), one of her father’s associates.  One would think he’d be grateful to her.  All the same, Bergman and Grant do have chemistry, and as usual with Hitchcock, Notorious is deftly, splendidly shot.  Plus it’s nearly as engaging as, say, Shadow of a Doubt.

Cover of Notorious

For all his talent, Anthony Hopkins’s—and Oliver Stone’s—Richard Nixon in 1996’s Nixon is simply weird, naught but a man with his demons.  The film itself has its stylistic demons to boot, what with all its flashiness and now-color, now-monochrome silliness.  Yes, there are a few strong scenes and some bright dialogue, but . . . well, to have Nixon discuss policy and procedures while his cabinet men frequently look as though they’re baffled and suspicious is deeply stupid.  I didn’t buy it for a second.

Of course this is not the Nixon of history, but who is he, really?  Only another unscrupulous but unfortunate, semi-tragic figure.  And he is used for a movie with basically inconsequential meaning.

Nixon (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the William Wyler film version of Wuthering Heights (1939), starring Laurence Olivier, gone is the slow working out of Heathcliff’s ugly revenge and his final casting-off of it.  Gone is the focus on death following error and disillusionment.  Gone are the countervailing values of Catherine’s daughter, Cathy Linton, and Hareton; there are no Cathy Linton and Hareton in this film.  Gone is most of the novel’s morality.  This is not what Emily Bronte intended.  One could never get any idea of the brilliance she demonstrated in Wuthering Heights from watching this inadequate film.

Cover of Wuthering Heights

I suppose children over the years have enjoyed the animated Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003) but I, an adult, grew tired of it.

The moral story is not that bad, but midway the disaster action gets too hokey, in my view, for grownups—something a big-screen animator really ought to avoid.  Its unexpected raciness hardly matters; Cowboy Bebop: The Movie it ain’t.

It’s rather fun watching Sinbad, voiced by Brad Pitt, sparring with Miranda, voiced by Catherine Zeta-Jones, as though the two were in a 1930s screwball comedy.  Mark Steyn of the British Spectator (formerly) is right, though:  there are too many Wonder Women in today’s action movies.  That’s what Miranda is.  Why isn’t Sinbad the hero of this thing?

Cover via Amazon