Except for its specious final minutes, 1946’s The Blue Dahlia, written by Raymond Chandler, is a smashing crime picture.  A horrid, unfaithful woman (Doris Dowling) whom no man truly loves is murdered, and Johnny Morrison (Alan Ladd), her husband and an ex-military officer, tries to find the killer.  He himself is a suspect, but so is the smooth club owner Eddie Harwood (Howard Da Silva)—the “lover” of Dowling and the husband of a character played by Veronica Lake (my gosh, he’s cheating on Veronica Lake!?)—and the irritable, mentally unbalanced veteran, Buzz (William Bendix).

With his foursquare direction, George Marshall and his cast have delivered a sober, classy but not too classy melodrama.  Chandler’s fine dialogue means little in the mouth of Alan Ladd, dull and Shane-like as he is, but it means a lot coming from the memorable Da Silva, Dowling, Will Wright, et al.  Lake, who is serviceable, is perfect-looking; Bendix, who is unhandsome, is scary.  Have fun.

Bed and Board (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Francois Truffaut made Bed and Board (Domicile Conjugal, 1970) to show us his autobiographical character, Antoine Doinel—a former juvenile delinquent—as a married man with a child.  Casually he tosses in the revelation that Antoine (Jean-Pierre Leaud) is often selfish, and drama would be absent from the film had he not had Antoine cheat on his wife (Claude Jade) with a Japanese woman.

Less successful than Truffaut’s other Antoine Doinel pictures, Bed is nevertheless pleasurable with its slight goofiness and, well, essentially meaningless high spirits.  It is usually the equivalent of a Paul McCartney love song, except that it’s pretty risqué.  The Story of Adele H. it ain’t.

(In French with English subtitles)

The nineteenth century in Stanley and Livingstone (1939) is much like the twentieth century in that the work that men do takes them far from home and into remote areas, and the men aren’t even soldiers.  One of them, Dr. Livingstone (Sir Cedric Hardwicke), is a missionary who might have died in Africa, but didn’t.  Henry Stanley (Spencer Tracy) is a newspaper man assigned to hunt down Livingstone if rumors of his death are false.

What would be corny in movies today, such as some stuff involving Walter Brennan, was not considered corny in 1939, although there is not that much corniness at all in this absorbing Henry King film.  Much of it is quite mature (there is intelligent talk) and well-meaning, with some captivating, Kenya-provided safari footage.  Even the less than believable hot pursuit of Stanley and his helpers, who have virtually no arms, by many hostile natives is something to see.  As for the acting, a lot of grounded work gets done.  Spencer Tracy is just Spencer Tracy—but this works.  Hardwicke is truly fine as a man of God, while Brennan, Charles Coburn, Nancy Kelly and others are exactly right.  Congrats all around.

Cover of Medium Cool

In the 1969 picture, Medium Cool, Robert Forster skillfully purveys a TV photographer’s calm extroversion and no-nonsense defiance.  He is true, and Peter Bonerz, as the sound man, is even truer.  Verna Bloom (as Forster’s love interest) does everything possible to create a complex character, and shines with authenticity and poise.

There.  I comment on the acting because, seemingly, far less has been opined about it than about everything else in this Haskell Wexler film.  Highly topical in ’69, it is partly about social agitation and, especially, violence in what used to be present-day America.  Its flaws have been well explained by critics like William Pechter, which flaws, I believe, sink Medium Cool.  Though very imaginative, it’s a New Lefty political film which goes almost completely awry.

It is set in Chicago, indeed the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago.  Talk about violence.  Consider today’s violence in Chicago, New Lefties.  Murder on top of murder.

A teacher named Rolfe narrates his older brother’s story in the Russell Banks novel, Affliction (1989), and even if he is not likely to be a wholly reliable narrator, he can surely be trusted in pointing out his brother’s deepening affliction.  Wade Whitehouse, the 41-year-old sibling, is divorced from Lillian, the only woman he has ever genuinely loved, and painfully misses having his young daughter in his care.  He struggles against the wrath of his half-mad father and harbors unreasonable suspicions about the men around him, at the risk, it turns out, of losing his job.

Wade’s life starts going down the toilet.  For him to be is not really to live, for he is living with a “dumb helplessness.”  Or he begins to live with it.  Being is all that Wade has.  A helpless man is not free.  A Christian couple, Wade’s sister Lena and her husband Clyde bring to the family a set of traditional religious beliefs that their relatives don’t know what to do with.  Lena and Clyde can be fatuous, but that they live lives distinctly separate from those of Wade and his father is understandable.  The men’s behavior creates a maelstrom increasingly difficult to control.

Affliction is cohesive, thrilling and mature.  It is better than much of Faulkner, and although it is not as profound as the best of Faulkner, to me it is just as powerful as it.