The Rare Review - Movies, books, music and TV

A British Psycho In “Fright”

On September 4, 2024

The British picture Fright (1971) is only for horror buffs, if even for them. Peter Collinson (The Italian Job) directed respectably except for the early footage when he tries too hard to be suspenseful. The story itself, by Tudor Gates, is not very good. It takes an eternity, for instance, for the police and others to make the urgent moves to defeat a hair-raising psychopath, mesmerizingly acted by Ian Bannen.

Honor Blackman is in the movie, solid as a worried wife, but even better is the screaming Susan George. Miss George’s Amanda can be an endearingly quiet talker, a persevering soul standing up for herself, a terrified target, etc. She is never false and is sexily lovely to boot. Online critic Peter Hanson observes that “the atmosphere [of Fright] is laden with sex,” and this is chiefly because of George. She and the other actors have nothing to do with the film’s being rather weak.

Meet “Monsieur Vincent,” A Priest (A 1947 French Film)

By EarlD

On August 29, 2024

In General

Cover of Monsieur Vincent

The year is 1617, and a new priest, Vincent de Paul, arrives in a French town which has had no priest for a long time.

It shows. One of the themes of the 1947 biopic, Monsieur Vincent, is the demanding struggle of the clergyman to tame the unchurched, the brutish, the shallow. Father Vincent’s first stop in the little town is the filthy, abandoned local church, an enormous hovel with cobwebs. Many, not all, of the townspeople are dirt poor, and Vincent, formerly a priest in Paris, wishes to live with and help them. At first they are also sorely afraid of a nonexistent plague. The sequence in which Vincent holds a funeral service for a woman thought to have had the plague, while a crowd of reluctant people walks up and starts crossing themselves, points up a European Catholicism still perfectly imperishable, of course, in the seventeenth century. Director Maurice Cloche handles this scene, and all the other scenes, as he ought to have.

The best handling is by the playwright Jean Anouilh, who wrote the script, purveying such other themes as the question of what to devote one’s life to and the rich’s responsibility, if any, to the poor. With flair Pierre Fresnay enacts Vincent, and the good costumes make us wish the film was in color. All in all, a worthy motion picture.

(In French with English subtitles)

Cynical But . . . “Diary of a Mad Housewife”

By EarlD

On August 26, 2024

In Movies

Carrie Snodgrass is properly restrained as the repressed and anguished Tina Balser in Frank Perry‘s Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970), adapted from a novel by Sue Kaufman. Richard Benjamin is exactly right as her nagging, self-serving husband and Frank Langella does a “natural” job as the arrogant writer Tina accepts as a lover. The movie deplores the depersonalizing of women by men and is rather cynical about the shallowness of human beings.

Diary is a bit too brazen, a bit daring in a bad way. The sins of the men are laid on thick, and people’s insipidness never ends. Though Snodgrass is interesting and has a fine voice, she doesn’t look good in the nude. None of this wrecks the movie, though, notwithstanding I liked Perry’s Doc and probably Last Summer (I need to see it again) better.

“Easy Living” Is Another Great Comedy Of The Thirties

By EarlD

On August 19, 2024

In General, Movies

Cover of Easy Living (Universal Cinema Classics)

He had a literary source, but Preston Sturges wrote the screenplay for the 1937 film Easy Living (directed by Mitchell Leison), and one is pleased to note that as farce it is pure Sturges. Sure, it’s devoid of the idiosyncrasy of The Palm Beach Story but is no less winsome than The Lady Eve as it tells of a woman, Mary Smith, mistaken for the mistress of a rich, married financier. Business operatives are corrupt enough to lavish gifts on Mary in the hope that the financier will show them his good will. He, however, is faithful to his wife, and in point of fact Mary meets and falls for the rich man’s independent-minded son.

The lines in the film offer no belly laughs but, in my view, the slapstick does. The American Depression (never mentioned) contrasted with American wealth paves the way for such footage as the chaos-at-the-automat sequence. With genteel ability, Jean Arthur (as Mary) supplies most of the pic’s charms. Edward Arnold, I’m afraid, supplies the histrionics. Leison deserves praise for his directing, but it is Sturges’s film.

Sad Fact: “First Love” (“Primo amore”)

By EarlD

On August 16, 2024

In Movies

To my mind, Italy’s First Love (1978), early on, threatens to be charmless and distasteful, and here and there it is. Charm does arrive, though, as do some laughs; but Dino Risi‘s film is not what it ought to be. It concerns a vaudevillian, Ugo, who stays for a while in a rest home for old artists and becomes amorously involved with Renata, the maid there. The theme is the sad fact of aging.

First Love fails because the character of Renata is thoroughly subverted. Risi and co-writer Ruggero Maccari have no idea what they’re doing with her. The woman who plays her, Ornella Muti, is the most gladdening thing about the film. She is likable and gorgeous, but can’t make much headway with this role. A close second among the movie’s assets is the unbeatable performance of Ugo Tognazzi as Ugo. But I strongly doubt that Primo amore occupies primo place among Risi’s films. It is not as good as The Easy Life. In fact, without Muti it would be strikingly drab.

(In Italian with English subtitles)