Category: Film

W. C. Fields

I found this excellent essay on Fields by Roger Ebert.   Fields is so mean-spirited that he’s a perfect fit for our current toxic environment.   As Ebert notes “in “The Bank Dick” Fields plays an alcoholic misanthrope who lies, cheats and steals and is rewarded with wealth and fame.”  (Except for the alcohol, that sounds like Trump except Fields is a lot more entertaining.)

The movies that I have seen don’t usually work as a coherent story line.  This is especially true of his last starring film Never Give A Sucker An Even Break.  It doesn’t matter.  The individual scenes are hilarious and Fields is always amusing.  It’s amazing how mean-spirited he can be.

I would start with The Bank Dick.  One of my favorite Fields scenes is in Never Give A Sucker An Even Break.  Fields is in a malt shop and looks right at the movie audience and says “This scene’s supposed to be in a saloon but the censors cut it out.”

The entire film is here.  The censor line is at 58:46.

This YouTube video has famous Fields quotes.

John Landis on Trailers from Hell for Never Give A Sucker An Even Break

The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)

The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) was the first film directed by Orson Welles after Citizen Kane.  However, unlike Kane, Ambersons was cut and revised by the studio.  It is still a great film.  It is the second best Welles film after Kane.  I would place Touch of Evil third and The Lady from Shanghai fourth.

Here’s the trailer for The Magnificent Ambersons.  Several scenes from the film are on YouTube and it is available on DVD.  I suggested on a Facebook forum that Criterion should issue a Blu-ray version and someone wrote back that they are working on it.

The great funhouse mirror scene from Shanghai is here.  It won’t make a lot of sense without the rest of the film but the effects of the mirrors are fun to watch.

Mexican horror films

I get ideas about films to watch from tweets discussing film series shown in New York and elsewhere.  The Brooklyn Academy of Music showed a series of Mexican Horror Films in late 2017. This column has descriptions and commentary.  I have tried to find them on DVDs and Blu-ray discs and have now seen most of them.  I recommend all of the ones I have seen (in italics in the chart below) but especially The Brainiac.  This is one bizarre film about a character that eats brains.

Film title Year Availability
Santa Sangre 1989 DVD and Blu-ray on Amazon and eBay
La Tia Alejandra 1979 DVD on Amazon and eBay
Cronos 1993 Criterion Blu-ray/DVD
Alucarda 1977 DVD on Amazon and eBay
Veneno para las hadas (Poison for the Fairies) 1984 DVD on Amazon and eBay
Canoa 1976 Criterion Blu-ray/DVD
El espejo de la bruja (The Witch’s Mirror) 1962 CasaNegra DVD
El Vampiro 1957 CasaNegra DVD
La maldición de la llorona (The Curse of the Crying Woman) 1963 CasaNegra DVD
El barón del terror (The Brainiac) 1962 CasaNegra DVD

The CasaNegra DVDs are excellent but are out of print.  They are usually good transfers of the films with fine special features.   They are available on eBay.  Some are also available at Oldies.com.  CasaNegra also made DVDs for other films not on the list above: The Living Coffin (El Grito De La Muerte, and The Black Pit of Dr. M.  There is also a sequel to El Vampiro called El Ataud Del Vampiro which CasaNegra bundled with El Vampiro.  The CasaNegra DVDs are all from the late 1950s and early 1960s and are generally in black and white.  The Criterion Collection always does an outstanding job and their discs contain many supplemental features.

More on Mexican films:

https://twitter.com/Carlos_Film/status/1850596218889728351

Max Ophuls

A retrospective of seven films directed by Max Ophuls is discussed in this column.  It includes films he made in the US and films he made later when he returned to Europe.  His films are well worth seeing both for their style, which features long tracking shots, and their romantic stories.

The writer provides a fine description of Lola Montes which is where I would start if you are not familiar with Ophuls.  It is based on a novel about Lola Montez (1821-1861).  She lived primarily in Europe but is buried in Brooklyn.   I also strongly recommend The Earrings of Madame de… .  I have also seen Caught but not the other four.

The following films in the retrospective are available in the US on discs.

The Earrings of Madame de… and Lola Montes are available on Blu-Ray discs and DVDs from the Criterion Collection.

Letter from an Unknown Woman and Caught are available on Blu-ray discs from Olive Films.

Peggy Cummins

Peggy Cummins, who starred in the 1950 film Gun Crazy, passed away on December 29, 2017.

Gun Crazy is worth seeing.  It’s a low-budget precursor to films like Bonnie and Clyde.  Here’s Ms. Cummin’s first appearance in the film.

update:  Warner Archive will release Gun Crazy on Blu-ray.