Books and stories.

Robert Louis Stevenson wanted Treasure Island to be a fun book.  Victor Fleming‘s adaptation (1934) is a fun movie.  Without mugging, Wallace Beery carries the production as Long John Silver.  The love of loftiness and the wise shots prove that Fleming was the right man chosen to direct Gone with the Wind, and yet Treasure Island is free of GWTW‘s deepest artifice.  It’s a robust pic, although I agree with Otis Ferguson about “the extended sentimentality”—goodbye, just desserts—at the end.

The Hanging Tree (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I hope the novel The Hanging Tree, by Dorothy M. Johnson, is better than the Delmer Daves movie adapted from it, for the flick, a Western, is frequently quite dumb.  For example, the Montana townspeople here are willing to execute their only doctor (Gary Cooper) for a killing they know absolutely nothing about (it was done, in fact, in self-defense).

Yes, it is entertaining—it is gripping that Cooper gets rough with a sexual harasser (Karl Malden) who becomes a sexual assaulter (let this be a warning to YOU, Al Franken)—and Nile, Washington, where the film was shot, must be a gorgeous place.  But it’s a wonder The Hanging Tree, available on TV, DVD and Blu-Ray, is still hanging around.

Lafayette Escadrille Memorial Arch, 1928 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the 1957 Lafayette Escadrille, a punk kid (Tab Hunter) at the time of the Great War travels to France to join (with other Americans) an elite air force corp—the Lafayette Escadrille.  The corp is training to fight before the U.S. has entered the war.  In Paris, the young rebel falls in love with a French prostitute (Etchika Choureau) but he also aggressively strikes his drill sergeant and, after being sprung from jail by his Yank buddies, runs away.  He is now a deserter until he is given a second chance.

A personal project for Hollywood’s William Wellman, this is not one of the director’s better movies.  Not only does it seem partly dishonest, it is also rather imperfectly directed and Tab Hunter’s acting is utterly by-the-numbers.  Further, for a long time it makes French men, soldiers and otherwise, look like fools.  By the time it reaches midpoint, however, it gets a bit better.  Its anodyne love story, though it receives too much screen time, assuredly has its moments; and there is some nifty stuff involving the old WWI fighter planes.  But it’s a shame for Lafayette Escadrille to have to be a half-enticing failure.

The Aviator’s Wife (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The 20-year-old college student, Francois, in Eric Rohmer‘s French film, The Aviator’s Wife (1981), needs to find himself a woman other than Anne, the one he is obsessed with.  Anne is generally indifferent and rude to him, even after her married lover (an aviator) goes back to his wife.  It ought to be driven home to Francois that he is essentially empty-handed.  Lucie, an intelligent 15-year-old girl—the actress who plays her looks much older than fifteen—gradually tells him the truth about Anne (based on Francois’s information); but Lucie behaves as though she is attracted to Francois.  Is she?  And should this mean anything to the young man?  Is there still empty-handedness?

The first picture in Rohmer’s Comedies et Proverbes series, this has another impressively written script by Monsieur Eric, notwithstanding I recommend seeing half of it, on disk, at one time and the other half at another time.  There is so much talk I don’t see how boredom can be prevented otherwise.  The film lacks the whimsy and crispness of Rohmer’s best work (e.g. A Tale of Winter), but I do think it’s a smart success.

Marie Riviere (Anne), Philippe Marlaud (Francois) and Anne-Laure Meury (Lucie) are acting and yet not acting; they’re embodying people in a screenplay and it’s magnificent.  Contrast this with the performance of Mathieu Carriere as Anne’s ex-lover, which is less natural, less interesting.

(In French with English subtitles)