Merrily they live in the 1938 Merrily We Live, directed by Norman Z. McLeod. The members of the rich family in this screwball comedy do what they darn well please and never genuinely suffer for it. That is, they don’t until at first Constance Bennett‘s Jerry is denied the love of a handsome man believed to be a tramp (Brian Aherne)! How topsy turvy things become.

Reportedly the picture is a lot like My Man Godfrey, a work I have not seen in full. Although this may be to its disadvantage (derivativeness?), Merrily is wholly amusing and boasts a fun cast. Such actors as Clarence Kolb (the family patriarch) and Alan Mowbray (the butler) are talented farceurs. The women are delightful. Still, the film is not very good at leading us to see what its raison d’etre is.

Available on Tubi.

Since the flick Sunset Pass (1946) is based on a Zane Grey novel, can it be regarded as a good Western? Yes.

I’m not quite sure why the movie’s hero, Rocky the cowboy detective, and his sidekick fail to protect from thieves a load of bank cash on a train, but they do. Acted by James Warren (not much of a Western lead), Rocky’s not a loser, however, and is determined to get the cash back. Along the way he romantically falls for the sister (Nan Leslie) of one of the thieves, Ash (Robert Clarke), a comparatively decent guy. In fact two of the thieves, both cold, try to pin a murder on Ash, now on Rocky’s side.

Seen by me on Tubi, the movie is only 59 minutes long, and though surely a low-budget product, it is without a cheap or crude look. With action scenes which were state-of-the-art for 1946, it is acceptably directed by one William Berke. Also, Jane Greer is on hand with her lovable good looks, and both she and Harry Woods, as the criminal Cinnabar, give agreeable performances.

Bertrand Blier‘s film Going Places (1974) is vile. His Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, from 1978, is better; it’s merely obtuse and somewhat offensive, with some lousy characterization. Gerard Depardieu stars as a man who cannot understand his depressed wife, Solange. A comedy, the movie at least tells us something about the constant effort to find hope (even through listening to Mozart), but it conveys another message as well: that women are inexplicable and generally weak.

Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere are fine actors. Carole Laure is okay but nothing more as the often naked Solange. On the subject of male-female relationships Handkerchiefs is poor. Thus it is a pretty poor film.

(In French with English subtitles)

I heard on the radio an old, hedonistic Katy Perry song, “Last Friday Night” (2010), which deals with a night of debauchery, and of course drinking is included.

“I smell like a minibar,” the singer sings. Does the girl in this song have a boyfriend, and if so, is he disappointed? I would think that any lass who contentedly admits she smells like a minibar would provoke a boyfriend to say, I sure can pick ’em.

Cover of The Story of Qiu Ju

Unlike his other major films of the Nineties, Zhang Yimou‘s The Story of Qiu Ju (1993) is set in contemporary China and is thus not a period piece.  It is, however, a film that enables him once again to censure authoritarianism (read Communism) while unassumingly focusing on other subjects and themes as well.  The elusiveness of justice, the problem of persistence without thought, the alien nature of the big city to a rural denizen—these are the most important themes.  The struggle to win an official apology is Qiu Ju‘s subject.  The struggle is undertaken by a pregnant peasant woman (Gong Li), and the movie ends sadly enough to further buttress Zhang’s vision.

(In Mandarin with English subtitles)