Most weeks when I scour the schedules I notice several films which I have seen previously, although most often not for some time, and I wonder whether they might deserve a place in my ever-growing collection of films on disc. Too often they are something of a disappointment on this second or third viewing -- and the same may well be true of those currently in my library, but that doesn't stop my reconsidering them. There were three such movies last week and here are my comments:
Houseboat (1958): This Cary Grant starrer has him as a feckless divorced father suddenly lumbered with his three kids on his ex-wife's death. Like "Father Goose" which I have written about previously, the mixture of Grant and troublesome children is not necessarily an ideal combination. However, the USP of this movie is Grant's co-star, the 24-year old Sophia Loren in her first English-language role, playing the spoiled daughter of a famous Italian conductor who gets taken on as a Nanny for the sprogs, despite having no home-making skills whatsoever. To add to their problems, the house Grant was planning to inhabit gets run over by a train (don't ask) and the whole kit and caboodle end up living on a derelict houseboat. While certainly very decorative, Loren was not really much of an actress at this stage of her career and her inexperience next to the debonair Grant makes her character hard to believe. However the film tootles along nicely to the inevitable conclusion, and I am happy to watch Grant do his double-takes until the cows come home.
Whirlpool (1949): I've seen this one by director Otto Preminger from a screenplay by Ben Hecht several times, but never quite remember it. It's the "usual" psychological tale of repressed anxiety, hysteria, kleptomania, hypnotism, and homicide, but never quite takes off. The lovely Gene Tierney plays the troubled wife of psychiatrist Richard Conte, while a very stagey Jose Ferrer is the womanizer who has her under his suggestive spell. He uses her to take the fall for the murder of a dowager who was threatening to expose him and establishes his own unchallengeable alibi by being in hospital recovering from a serious operation. However all is quite apparently not what it seems. None of the cast is really believable enough to carry off the high hokum of the plot and I just couldn't imagine wanting to have this movie on tap, as it were, for subsequent re-visits.
The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946): The great French director Jean Renoir sat out the war in the United States and many pick this film as his greatest achievement during his Hollywood years. I just can't agree since the film is far less successful than Luis Bunuel's 1964 version, and for my money nothing outshines the director's "This Land is Mine (1943) -- if only because it stars the daddy of all screen actors, Charles Laughton. The screenplay was adapted from the French novel by actor Burgess Meredith who also appears as a nutty captain, in tandem with a blonde Paulette Goddard (they were married at the time) as the eponymous chambermaid. She is the cheeky servant in the anti-Republican household of Judith Anderson and Reginald Owen, used as a ploy to attract their sickly son Hurd Hatfield from leaving home, and coveted by the nasty valet Francis Lederer (who let it be said makes a fine villain). While Renoir nicely evokes the feel of French country life of the period, the standard of acting amongst his cast is so very variable that the film has little hope of succeeding. Bunuel's film is, at least in my not so infallible memory, far more sly and subtle in playing out the tale, but perhaps I need to have another look at that one as well.
So you may ask, did I take any copies? It will come as no surprise to learn that yet another Cary Grant film joins my collection -- but when I will watch these 4700-and-growing-odd films is one of life's unanswerable questions.
5 comments:
Just a comment about this:
"The great French director Jean Renoir sat out the war in the United States"
This sounds as if Renoir had unlawfully fled out of duty (which I hope was not your intention), so just in case:
Renoir had been an officer during the First World War. He was in the trenches and, after being wounded, he eventually trained to be a pilot and served in the French air forces. During World War two he rejoined the French Army, but due to his professional experience, the Army wisely relocated him at the Service Cinematographique de L'Armée, where he would be in charge of French Propaganda films. When Nazi Germany invaded France he had two options: stay in an occupied country or leave and live in exile. It's obvious that the men who would later directed "This Land is Mine" didn't regard the first option as an acceptable one.
So he didn't sat out, he served and then he had to exile himself, which is abit different, and then he had served actively in the previous war. His son, BTW, jouined the US army and served in the Pacific
correction gracefully accepted!
Hi Patty, I hope you excuse the vehemence of my previous post, but I had previously read sentences about people who "sat out the war" who were highly unfair to the people referred.
For instance... Two colleagues of our appreciated Laughton threw at him a similar accusation during WW2... And the funny thing is, they were not only horribly wrong (young Laughton, as Renoir, had served in the trenches during WW1) but incredibly harsh, all the more considering that the two colleagues who made such remarks were never near a frontline (even if one of them conspicuously wore a uniform in front of press photographers).
I have, in fact, devoted some effort to research Laughton's WW1 whereabouts (as
here, here and here ) in order to demonstrate clearly that the two idiot's remarks simply hold no water.
'Houseboat' struck me as rather a poor effort even though Grant is in it - at times I thought he was
walking the part but that may be a reflection of his
ability to appear effortlessly in his later roles. The
children were even more annoying than usual and
Loren was out of her depth. Martha Hyer did a
reasonable job in an underwritten support.
'Whirlpool' is also a title of a 60s low budget film
better known as 'She Died With her Boots On' whose only claim to fame is the appearance of Vivien Neves (the original nude from the London 'Times'). What little I saw of the film you reviewed was stagey beyond belief and I would be hrd pressed to say which of the two films was the lesser - possibly this one in view of it casting and
pedigree.
'The Diary of a Chambermaid' is an example of a great director being let down by his cast and, to some extent, the script - dare I make the parallel with 'Gideon's Day'? As you say, 'This Land is Mine' is far superior though Laughton reading the telephone book would be better than most other actors trying to act their way to the Oscars!
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