Spruce Goose as a flying ocean liner

 NON-STOP NEW YORK (1937)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Starting off as a noir piece about a mob killing amidst the Depression-era of New York, "Non-Stop New York" doesn't settle long enough for a thriller dynamic with a love story and some sociological tension. The movie is a non-stop roller coaster ride filled to the brim with wit, pungent casting and a futuristic-looking plane that seems to be years ahead of Howard Hughes' own Spruce Goose. Except of course that this Spruce Goose is seemingly a mini-ocean liner with propellers!

A zestful English actress, Jennie Carr (Anna Lee), is penniless and is eager for at least a cup of coffee. Thankfully she has enough change for a coffee, which she promptly drops on the floor when bumping into a guy named Billy (James Pirrie). Billy is a mob attorney and wants out of the business, only Jeannie doesn't know that. She is invited to Billy's apartment and then ejected when the mob boss Brant (Francis L. Sullivan) and some goons arrive and a shot rings out. Jennie had seen the men but not the murder, and there is a vagrant who witnessed it and is charged for a crime he didn't commit. You see, it looks as if the film is building to another noir until we enter Hitchcock terrain via a Trans-Atlantic flight from New York to London.

What is delightfully escapist fun about "Non-Stop New York" is the eclectic cast of characters including the aforementioned Anna Lee's Jennie Carr, who's a little on the naive side. John Loder is the disbelieving Scotland Yard inspector who takes an interminable time to believe Anna's story (I would have trouble with her version of events too). There's also a bespectacled young musical prodigy (Desmond Tester) who annoys all passengers with his saxophone (which leads to a great joke about a parachute); Jerry Verno as a steward who has his share of double entendres, and the grand villainy of Francis L. Sullivan as Brant who pretends to be a Paraguayan general named Costello (isn't Costello normally an Irish or Italian surname?) 

"Non-Stop New York" has a wildly contrived plot (why all the shenanigans to put Jennie in jail briefly and then have Brant follow her back to New York?) Still, I did not mind and found the film fluffy yet never less than breezy fun. Wait till you get to the parachute joke!

One of the liveliest action-adventure chase films of all time

 THAT MAN FROM RIO (1964)
An Appreciation by Jerry Saravia

The sheer joy from one exacting frame to the next, from one dazzling action-filled sequence to the next, is evident in Philippe de  Broca's "That Man From Rio." Context is needed here for a 1964 international production so think of it as the Charlie Chaplin movie that was never made - a high-spirited, frenetically paced action-adventure movie with a sly wink to the audience containing an unusual hero who flies, glides and runs across the screen much like Chaplin would've. Maybe even a dash of Fred Astaire is here as well.

Jean-Paul Belmondo is Adrien Dufourquet, a simple French Air Force pilot who loves his Agnes (the elegant and luminous Francoise Dorleac), his fiancée, and witnesses her being kidnapped and runs after her as he jumps through a window! He finds a motorcycle and chases her, finds her at Orly airport, has no ticket yet he finds entry with an old man in a wheelchair that had me rolling with laughter! This is just the beginning, and never mind that the movie opens with a museum robbery where an antique Brazilian statue is stolen. "That Man From Rio" never lets up, taking us from Paris to Rio de Janeiro to Brasilia and finally the deep corners of a jungle where three antique statues need to be placed in their proper places to allow the sunlight to reveal the location of priceless diamonds! (Yep, "Raiders of the Lost Ark" reference that also harks back to 1954's "The Secret of the Incas"). We also got a shoeshine boy named Sir Winston (Ubiracy De Oliveira, who has a contagious laugh) who figures in the action in the most unexpected and hilarious ways. We also have time for energetic Brazilian dancing and some bossa nova music, and a scene at some dive with a tremendous singer (Simone Renant) that evokes Old Hollywood that leads to a spectacular barroom brawl.  

It helps that Belmondo is a hell of a hopeless romantic hero who wants nothing more than to find and be with Agnes - he could care less about antique statues or villainous men dreaming of wealth beyond their dreams (Adolfo Celi as a rich industrialist and Jean Servais as a museum curator round out the incredible cast but I wont' say which one is the bad guy). Adrien will fly a plane uncontrollably and, thrillingly, upside down. Adrien will run across unique landscapes in Brasilia such as several seemingly empty Modernist buildings and towers and a construction site with scaffolds that results in one of the biggest laughs of the entire movie (I would not dream of giving it away). The daring escapades and car chases (including driving a pink car with green stars) are dizzying and breathless, all as well executed and perfectly timed as any "Mission: Impossible" flick. Belmondo's Adrien has a Harold Lloyd moment on a building facade that goes way beyond what Lloyd ever accomplished (and that's saying something). Belmondo and De Broca always try to one-up previous cinematic stunts and every shot seems to hold on long enough so that we see Belmondo accomplishing death-defying moments that will make you fear for his safety and wince. 

Witty, hysterically funny, sporadically spoofing James Bond, and showcasing Belmondo and Dorleac as true, genuine, charismatic movie stars who happened to be good actors as well, "That Man From Rio" is bound to entertain anyone who wants pure escapism and breathtaking vistas with a hero you can root for. Its popularity certainly paved the way for Indiana Jones and most other tongue-in-cheek action-adventure flicks. This film is also special to me because my father introduced me to it over 40 years ago, and I am eternally grateful. It is one of the stepping stones to my growing interest in international cinema. Bravo!  

Unreliable witnesses

 RASHOMON (1950)

An Appreciation by Jerry Saravia

"Rashomon" is an institution, not just a unique film for its time. Its title is part of the lexicon, though I rarely hear it nowadays. I would call it one of Akira Kurosawa's greatest films as it stirs the soul and is remarkably provocative. It establishes a murder with motive but we are never sure how it really occurred. We hear eyewitness accounts and those who participated in the murder, yet can we trust the eyewitnesses or the participants? 

The presumed first eyewitness is the sorrowful woodcutter. He walks through the woods with an axe and finds a dead body. The woodcutter (Takashi Shimura) runs away to find the police and gives his testimony to the court. There is a slight problem: his account of what occurred varies from what he tells the court versus his admission to a commoner. Was it a sword that was thrust into a samurai's chest or was it a dagger with the pearl inlay? The rough, tough, maniacal bandit Tajomaru (Toshiro Mifune) claims to have killed the samurai, but did he? And what of the samurai's wife (Machiko Kyō)? Under a trance where her dead husband's spirit is summoned, the claim changes to suicide and the samurai used a priceless dagger to kill himself. The samurai, Kanazawa (Masayuki Mori), couldn't live with his wife's virtue taken by the bandit so he offed himself. Is this a reliable version of events? Is any version reliable in terms of how the rape and murder occurred? We know with certainty that the wife left the bandit and her husband, and we know the samurai is dead. 

Who is telling the truth of such a bizarre incident? I can't say which is the most truthful account yet one wonders why the woodcutter suddenly confesses to the monk and the commoner that he witnessed the actual murder! There's the issue of the missing dagger and writer-director Akira Kurosawa starts cleverly building the narrative to include multiple versions told from multiple people yet the incident never occurs the same way. It is a fascinating, complex structure that incorporates the time-honored literary tradition of flashbacks within flashbacks. We start piecing it together and realize that detailed truths are evasive - the murder is real but the telling is all fabrication and contradiction.  

"Rashomon" is based on a 1922 Japanese short story titled "In a Grove" by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa and it deals with similar themes but the most telling is unreliability. As it reaches a riveting conclusion involving the monk, the commoner and the woodcutter's raging discussions on truth and selfishness (they are in the present time structure discussing this most horrific crime), "Rashomon" touches us with hope that shoulders on its ambiguities. There are also shades of honesty, most tellingly Kanazawa's wife who says, "To have my shame known by two men is worse than dying." Not disclosing her shame and asking two men to fight to the death with the sole survivor remaining with her is indicative of her making sure the event unfolds her way. Exemplary vital cinema, and one of the few films that truly challenges the idea of truth.

No eternal damnation, just eternal love

 FAUST (1926)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

F.W. Murnau had done something unusual with his crossbreed of Marlowe's "Dr. Faustus" and Goethe's "Faust" versions and earlier literary texts - he has made it terrifying. The notion of selling your soul for all the riches in the world is not exactly what is explored in this "Faust" film. Sure, Faust, the lead protagonist (Gösta Ekman), does sign his name on a contract with Mephistopheles and sells his soul yet it is mostly for the people in town dying from the plague. When that doesn't seem like enough, Faust wishes to do away with his whiskers and old age and become young again. When that is accomplished, Faust falls in love with Gretchen, a virginal young girl who runs away from Faust. Naturally, Mephistopheles can help cure that romantic problem with a tasteful golden necklace.

1926's "Faust" is a mite closer to the original Goethe text (more so than later adaptations) and it has its own distinctive F.W. Murnau peculiarities. For one, the sight of an enormous Satan casting a shadow with his wings over a German town is a terrifying image. There's also the sly Mephistopheles (scene-stealing Emil Jannings in an atypical role) chasing after Gretchen's aunt, Martha (a colorful turn by Yvette Guilbert), that seems to belong to another movie (she also wears a bracelet given to her by the devil yet not much comes out of it). It is genuinely funny and tingles the spine at first, especially not knowing what this devil is really up to, but then it gets repetitious. Faust chasing after Gretchen also goes beyond the tolerable meter as they run circles around the town's children, and keep circling and circling. He clearly pines for her.   

Still, I have to give F.W. Murnau credit where it's due with the depiction of Gretchen's painful scenes (a nerve-wracking turn by Camilla Horn) where she solicits help from the townspeople who ignore her after being named a harlot by her own murdered brother (Mephisto does the deed). The truly tough scene of Gretchen walking in a blizzard and seeking shelter with her newborn is one that will stay with me forever (she conjures an image of a cradle and places the newborn in it, wherein the baby promptly dies). Also powerful are scenes of an older Faust, an alchemist, trying to burn books including the Bible. I was quite touched when Faust seizes upon Mephistopheles to help rescue Gretchen from being burned to the stake. Faust doesn't realize that Mephisto is a trickster and unreliable and, if memory serves, Faust has always been a pathetic literary figure whose temptations outdo his sensibilities. Our sympathy for him is stretched when, earlier in the story, he seduces the Duchess of Parma (Hannah Ralph) resulting in the devil killing the Duke in a duel - all this for eternal sex, I gather, though it is short-lived.

"Faust" is amazingly shot and directed, in particular the use of looming, stark shadows (a major staple of German Expressionism that was fluently used in Murnau's "Nosferatu"). I also love the distorted various rooftops that seem to collide in depth of field shots seen from an ascending road. Jannings is memorably evil with his raised eyebrows and black mane of hair that seems impossible to maintain (of course, he's a devil so he can). "Faust" stands as a sardonic, exemplary, often haunting meditation of Goethe and Marlowe's texts (though I do not see much of Marlowe's influence here). Somehow, in Murnau's and Faust's mind, love beats the demon.   

Wolf Man suffering from amnesia

 THE WEREWOLF (1956)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

What is seemingly another werewolf film trying to conjure memories of Lon Chaney, Jr. and the Universal Monster lot has some other tricks up its sleeve. "The Werewolf" also fulfills what Lon Chaney, Jr. did, build sympathy for a man who doesn't want to transform into that howling creature. The sympathy seems stronger yet less sad and unfortunate than with Chaney, but make no mistake - Steven Ritch as the amnesiac man who is frightened by the prospect of transformation does a helluva job of making us care about his plight.

Most of "The Werewolf" has Ritch running around the mountainside, trying to evade the police after he killed a bully outside a bar. This guy doesn't need moonlight to change - he can transform during the day (some day-for-night scenes get confusing with daylight scenes). It turns out this poor guy was in a car crash, rescued by a pair of doctors who had injected wolf serum into him to help deal with the fallout of some presumed nuclear holocaust. These doctor Moreau-types also have ideas of creating a super race of werewolves!

"The Werewolf" has some decent black-and-white photography yet the werewolf transformations are not nearly as fun as Lon Chaney Jr.'s haunting changes in "The Wolf Man" (the werewolf looks a lot like that sad sack in "The Return of the Vampire," both by the same makeup artist Clay Campbell). Still, the film plays it straight and has subtle sci-fi overtones that lend it a little pizazz. I love the national forest look and the firm sheriff (Don Megowan) who has no time for love with a doctor's assistant - he'd rather hang with some of the residents holding torches. I also love seeing the poor man's family trying to convince the lycanthrope to remedy his sickness and come home. Weak ending is saved by some decent acting and a couple of imaginative werewolf attacks. 

Mild Lycanthropy shocks

 WEREWOLF OF LONDON (1935)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Of all the werewolf movies I've seen (with certain modern exceptions), Henry Hull's botanist character is one of the dullest. Hull has expressive eyes that can show fear and emit some level of pathos but the ill-written screenplay doesn't allow much for dynamism or soul. 

In the rather clunky opening sequence set in some backlot meant to represent Tibet, Hull's botanist, Dr. Wilfrid Gendon, is in search of an uncommon (and fictional) flower known as the Mariphasa lupina lumina. With his trusty binoculars, he locates the flower in record time. Dr. Gendon and his exhausted associate travel through the mountainous region and are almost stopped by an invisible force! They continue on until they find the flower and Wilfrid is attacked by a werewolf and bitten on the arm! Back in London, Wilfrid shows off his foreign plant collection, one of which includes a Venus flytrap and a plant that could easily be mistaken for something out of "Little Shop of Horrors." A certain Dr. Yogami (Warner Oland) is after the same flower that can heal or prevent transformation, likely due to the fact that he's also been afflicted with lycanthropy. 

The film has some mild atmospheric flavor for its customary Universal London fog and cobblestoned streets, though that does not set it apart from the norm of its time. A lot of the indoor scenes are visually cramped. As for the actors, Hull is inefficient as the insufferable doctor and it is hard to distinguish between the minimal werewolf makeup (the monster's widow's peak is its major distinction) and the doctor - they are practically the same except for the fangs. This werewolf has a predilection for attacking and killing women - our first misogynist werewolf? It also visits a zoo for some reason (housing a couple of wolves - nice touch) where the guard is having an illicit affair! Guess who gets killed? 

I loved seeing the delicate-as-a-flower Valerie Hobson (appearing the same year as Frankenstein's fiancee in "The Bride of Frankenstein") playing the doctor's wife who slowly loses any hope of romance with this introverted man. She seeks the companionship of her old friend and past lover, Paul (the delightful Lester Matthews). Why didn't someone just cast Matthews as the werewolf and give Hull a chance to be charismatic as Paul? 

"Werewolf of London" is sort of entertaining and fascinating to see as the first official full-length werewolf movie before Lon Chaney, Jr. immortalized it. Change the casting of the lead protagonist and they might have made a more impactful horror flick.

War fought on the frontlines of alleged domestic bliss

THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946)

An Appreciation by Jerry Saravia

When World War II ended, it signalled a victory for America after four arduous years of defeating the Japanese and the Nazis. The American war-time propaganda illustrated that soldiers came back from the war virile and ready to dive right back into society without a hitch. They were America's heroes yet the sad reality was that many young soldiers never came back and were killed in action. "The Best Years of Our Lives," a stupendously enlightening and divine motion picture, shines a light on three soldiers who survived and returned from the war. They reluctantly and awkwardly matriculate back into society with mixed results. Director William Wyler and the astute writers Robert E. Sherwood and MacKinlay Kantor have fashioned a relatable story of coming home to a different kind of war being fought - emotional struggles with family and marriages rather than the Germans' piercing bullets. War is hell and so is the homefront.

The three men returning from combat are Air Force Captain Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), a married soda jerk who had lived with his parents in an impoverished neighborhood and married a woman he hasn't heard from in years; Sergeant Al Stephenson (Fredric March), who worked in a bank and is married to the faithful Milly (Myrna Loy) and has two children who have matured; Navy sailor Homer Parrish (Harold Russell) who lost both of his hands and has hooks instead that can be tricky to use. The men have difficulty in acclimating to the environment they left behind for too long. Fred comes home to his apartment only to find his wife is not present and has never written to him. When he tries again, she's home and delighted yet she doesn't comprehend his mental issues, which include PTSD (shell-shock was the term at the time, though you never hear it mentioned here). Al Stephenson doesn't have to rebuild his relationship with his wife or his grown-up children yet he feels the need to imbibe alcohol - to cure his potentially ailing mind and revisit his favorite bar. Homer loves the girl-next-door but he imagines she will not want to spend her life with a wounded man - she may not realize his deeper wounds are in his heart than in his physical handicap. 

"The Best Years of Our Lives" doesn't sugarcoat Fred's trauma but you almost get the sneaky suspicion that he misses the war as far as his relationship with his brothers-in-arms. A scene where he visits an airport graveyard with inoperable war planes is powerful stuff. Fred is battling his vivacious wife (Virginia Mayo) who wants to go clubbing every night - Fred is more comfortable being home. Al Stephenson seems to fare better but that is because he has a family that supports him and a bank job that is seemingly secure, as long as he doesn't give away too many loans to GI's. It is Homer who should be the weakest link to the war, considering his wounds, yet he tries to move forward except he's not sure how. Will that girl-next-door be the ticket to domestic bliss? And what of Fred's obvious love for Al's daughter, Peggy (Teresa Wright)? Peggy reciprocates that love and is willing to break up his unhappy marriage. That is strong stuff for 1946. And let's not get started on that drugstore customer who has the audacity to tell Homer that the war was for suckers! I can imagine audiences getting a little irate over that statement so soon after the war ended.

"The Best Years of Our Lives" is thankfully fussy with character details and nuances over melodrama. This film could've been a high-pitched soap opera and could've featured footage of the war itself with the soldiers on the frontlines. Wyler opts for the war fought on the frontlines of alleged domestic bliss in suburbia and the cities. This is peak cinema of the 1940's.