Cover of All the King’s Men

The 1949 All the King’s Men is crisp and fluid as it tells of a flatly indecent governor (Broderick Crawford‘s Willie Stark).  It has a better, if blemished, script than Citizen Kane, another film about a powerful man, because it’s adapted from Robert Penn Warren’s novel.  There is recklessness and perfidiousness that remind us of Jack Kennedy and Ted Kennedy (Chappaquiddick), and demagoguery that reminds us of many of the most offputting politicians.

I would declaim to my dying day that the remake of King’s Men starring Sean Penn is a stupid movie, but that is not my opinion of the ’49 original.  Moreover, most of the chief cast members in the ’49 film actually outact the later chief cast members, with a Crawford who is not mannered at all, purveying a Willie Stark who is not a caricature.  For all this, why the former newspaper reporter (John Ireland) stays with the naughty Stark to the end is anybody’s guess.

The Drowning Pool (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

With the car washing scene in Cool Hand Luke, director Stuart Rosenberg was a bit of a sexist, but not in The Drowning Pool (1975), which hardly means it is a good film.  The fault is not Rosenberg’s, though, but that of the writers, including, I assume, Ross MacDonald, whose novel is the source for this.

A detective movie starring Paul Newman as Lew Harper, The Drowning Pool serves up two villains, one of whom is an inadequate actress and hard to swallow as a villain, the other of whom is an appalling oil man.  (Ho hum.)  The oil man is so stupid he makes it possible for someone to rip off an incriminating account book of his (he’ll kill to get it back).  It’s pretty underwhelming material, made in such a way as to make it seem more than that.  But underwhelming is all it is.  From car wash to drowning pool—not a step up.

Two English Girls (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Francois Truffaut‘s fine 1971 film, Two English Girls, seems intent to tell us that young men and women cannot be close friends, that personal sacrifice cannot withstand non-conjugal physical desire.  Based on a novel by Henri Pierre Roche, just as Jules and Jim is, it revolves around two women (sisters) and one man, unlike the two men and one woman of Jules.

Stylistically Truffaut is probably a bit over-imaginative, but he also proves what an excellent eye he has.  He gives us a likable overhead shot of Claude (the man) and Muriel (one of the women) atop a high hill with the tiny figure of Muriel’s sister Anne—before she disappears in an iris-out!—at the bottom of the hill.  He provides a smart scene in which Muriel, a thirty-year-old virgin—circa 1900—has her full-cover 19th century apparel slowly removed from her by the aforementioned Claude, whom she loves.  Standing at last with her attractive mammaries exposed, she virtually symbolizes all humanity poised before an era of gradual sexual freedom (and all its unfortunate consequences).

In an earlier review of Two English Girls, I said it is inferior to Jules and Jim.  Not so.  Girls is not tedious.  It is sad, which indeed is connected to its real feeling for suffering (mostly Muriel’s).  It remains what I called it earlier:  guileless and humane.  If I live to be very old, chances are I’ll read the novel.

(In French with English subtitles)

The Earrings of Madame de… (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In my view, the Max Ophuls film The Earrings of Madame De . . . (1953, a.k.a. Madame D . . .) is not art, but rather a lovely, outstandingly directed and edited work of craft.  Adulterous love arises in French aristocratic culture, as it does in Renoir’s The Rules of the Game, but here there are no lower class folks playing the game as well.  Plus Ophuls keeps a certain distance from his characters, going in for tragedy instead of sardonic farce (as in Renoir).

Charles Boyer, as a general, knows how to enact a man who can both express love and keep his dignity.  Danielle Darrieux keeps hers too, and is right for romantic tragedy.  Also just fine as an aristocrat is Lia de Lea, the general’s mistress.  Vittorio de Sica, as Madame de’s lover, might have been inspired enough by this film to direct his own male-female stuff (e.g. Marriage Italian Style).

(In French with English subtitles)

Guys and Dolls (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Brando sings!  Yes, and he spoils the song “Luck Be a Lady” in the 1955 movie adaptation of Guys and Dolls.  He is miscast as a crooning illicit gambler, whereas Frank Sinatra clearly is not.  It’s a pleasurable role he is in, with Vivian Blaine, as his inamorata, holding her own.  Musically, that is, Betty Boop voice and all.

Songsmith Frank Loesser did himself proud, although I truly do not know whether “If I Were a Bell” is a good ditty or not.  This is because Jean Simmons—an embarrassment—loses the melody by shouting rather than singing the song.  It’s a disastrous performance, and the entire sequence with her and Brando in Havana is unamusingly poor.  Over and above, the musical’s book (adapted by Joseph Mankiewicz) lacks any real charm, any cakes-and-ale sparkle and bounce.  Music, singing and dancing manage to entertain, though.