A Damsel in Distress (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Gracie Allen‘s comedy in the 1937 A Damsel in Distress is easy to take only in small doses, which is what we get (for his part, George Burns is a zero).  Allen, at any rate, is not the movie’s leading lady; Joan Fontaine is, and Fred Astaire the leading man.  Fontaine’s acting, however, is lukewarm, but she has far less to do than Astaire, who is his usual buoyant self.  With his engaging dancing.

The George Stevens-directed Damsel has its shortcomings, but it’s a splendid musical-comedy with Gershwin songs.  Its more or less fun book is mostly a P.G. Wodehouse creation, and its cast (largely American, playing Brits [with accent deficiency]) is winsome.  Stevens does well in maneuvering the dancing Astaire and Fontaine outdoors around multiple trees to the tune of the very pretty “Things Are Looking Up.”  And there is much to like in the wild, comic dance number set in a carnival.  Other Gershwin songs, such as “I Can’t Be Bothered Now” and “A Foggy Day,” are musically and lyrically good.

The best thing about Damsel is that it’s enchanting.

A Damsel in Distress (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Gracie Allen‘s comedy in the 1937 A Damsel in Distress is easy to take only in small doses, which is what we get (for his part, George Burns is a zero).  Allen, at any rate, is not the movie’s leading lady; Joan Fontaine is, and Fred Astaire the leading man.  Fontaine’s acting, however, is lukewarm, but she has far less to do than Astaire, who is his usual buoyant self.  With his engaging dancing.

The George Stevens-directed Damsel has its shortcomings, but it’s a splendid musical-comedy with Gershwin songs.  Its more or less fun book is mostly a P.G. Wodehouse creation, and its cast (largely American, playing Brits [with accent deficiency]) is winsome.  Stevens does well in maneuvering the dancing Astaire and Fontaine outdoors around multiple trees to the tune of the very pretty “Things Are Looking Up.”  And there is much to like in the wild, comic dance number set in a carnival.  Other Gershwin songs, such as “I Can’t Be Bothered Now” and “A Foggy Day,” are musically and lyrically good.

The best thing about Damsel is that it’s enchanting.

Harry Kleiner‘s screenplay for the Samuel Fuller film, House of Bamboo (1955), consists of too many coincidences for the plot to hold up well, but it’s interesting to see American gangsters in Tokyo (post-WWII).  What they’re doing is robbing U.S. ammunition trains, and since the trains are guarded by American soldiers and Japanese policemen, I don’t know why the crooks are so successful.  But they are, and so it’s time for military law enforcement to get really active.  They send a man’s man named Eddie (Robert Stack) to infiltrate the gang, and Eddie’s Japanese lady friend, Mariko (Shirley Yamaguchi), ends up helping in a big way.  At one point we fully expect Mariko to be killed or at least beaten to a pulp, but it doesn’t happen. . . Now that Americans are done fighting the Japanese, they’re having to fight other Americans—hoodlums.

The main hoodlum, Sandy, is enacted with smooth potency by Robert Ryan.  He adds to the high entertainment value of this unique thriller.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Flecks of disrespect toward people who profess to be Christians are found in some of Sam Peckinpah‘s movies (The Deadly Companions, Ride the High Country), and clearly Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) is no exception.  (I’ll give Straw Dogs a pass; it’s different).  But Christians need not be offended by Garrett:  the entire film is unloved pig vomit, not to be taken seriously.

It is easy to mistake the picture for a Bob Dylan musical, with bad songs aplenty—Dylan wrote the, uh, score—but, no, it is of course a Western.  This one, though, is not much enlivened by its scenes of violent action, gripping as these can be.  When it isn’t ludicrous, the material is tired.  The film is inert. . . As many as six film editors worked on it, with Peckinpah typically denied further control of the flick.  If only screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer had been denied any control of it.

Ambrotype of Fanny Brawne taken circa 1850 (photograph on glass) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A nice scene in Bright Star (2009), by Jane Campion, has the poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) choosing to knock on a wall behind which is the bedroom of Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish), who hears the knock.  Then Fanny herself, drawn to Keats, knocks back, with no other response forthcoming.  Shyly neither knocks again, or tries to communicate with words.  This physical separation between the two will become forced and lengthy as time goes on.  A love affair develops, and Keats implacably becomes everything to Fanny; but the couple is parted for long periods of time.

Fanny—the film is more about her than about Keats—is a proud, sometimes haughty dressmaker, who is usually even-tempered and who loves her mother and siblings.  And she gets to love Keats against all odds—such as John’s illness and his skeptical best friend, Charles Armitage Brown—but, woefully, she cannot keep Keats.  He travels to Italy for the sake of his health.  His illness kills him.  Critic Dana Stevens is right that “Campion captures the narrowness of most people’s social worlds [in the early 19th century],” and in her narrow social world Fanny suffers continually.  Though beautiful, Bright Star is an utterly sad film about defeat.  There is little light at the end; life here seems like a cheat.  All the same, the film isn’t too gloomy.

In an earlier review of the work, I praised the performances of Cornish and Whishaw.  They’re not the only ones, though, who convince as 19th century figures, for the instincts of Paul Schneider (as Brown) and Kerry Fox are also winningly sure.  Cornish owns the part of Fanny, especially when she’s lost in anguish.  Whishaw never takes a false step.  The music by Mark Bradshaw is delicate, the cinematography by Greig Fraser is incisive.