S.O.B., 10, THAT’S LIFEThree guys go a little nuts in La-La Land

These three Blake Edwards-directed movies, though decades old, are repeatedly watchable. 10 is about a hugely successful song writer (Dudley Moore) consumed with middle age angst who temporarily abandons his level-headed, longtime love (Julie Andrews) to pursue to amazing lengths the perfect woman of his fantasies (Bo Derek). Alas, in the flesh, Bo turns out to be totally Bo-ring. The wildly farcical S.O.B.(Standard Operating Bullshit) is about a hugely successful film director (Richard Mulligan) whose monumental box office flop drives him to four unsuccessful (and very funny) suicide attempts. In a burst of creativity, he figures out how to re-edit the nursery rhymish film starring his ex-wife (Julie Andrews) into a soft porno in which she bares her boobs for the first time in her career. (Scuttlebutt at the time was the film was Edwards’ F.U. to Hollywood for typecasting Andrews, his real-life wife, as a perennial virgin, and there are many “in” references to this throughout,) THAT’S LIFE! is about a hugely successful architect (Jack Lemmon) whose middle-age hypochondria blinds him to his wife’s (Andrews) truly serious medical crisis. As was Lemmon’s specialty, he makes laugh and cry, sometimes in the same scene. What these films have in common, besides their wealthy, successful main characters, is a peek at Hollywood navel gazing by a director who knew where all the lint was buried, blurry lines between comedy and pathos, and wonderful acting by A-list actors including Lemmon, William Holden, Robert Preston, Robert Webber and others, plus a host of lesser-knowns with small parts who enrich every scene. Rent one, rent all.

Orson Welles: The Commercial Years

Listen to the Great Orson Welles, reduced in later years to voicing badly written commercials about peas and prairie-fed chopped beef, mouthing off to his British directors during a recording session

DODSWORTH (1936)

DODSWORTH is an astute and refreshingly mature drama about love, marriage and divorce. Middle-aged Midwestern Magnate Sam Dodsworth (Walter Huston) is head of an automobile manufacturing company. His slightly younger wife Fran (Ruth Chatterton), a shallow and vain woman in obsessive denial about her age, talks him into retiring and taking her to Europe. Immediately, she begins to view herself as a sophisticated world traveler, and Sam as boring and unimaginative. Craving excitement and attention, she begins a series of flirtations which Sam patiently indulges until she announces she’s leaving him for a titled gentleman. Heart-broken, Sam roams to Italy where he runs into Edith Cortright (Mary Astor), a divorcee whom he’d met en route to Europe. The two fall in love and Sam agrees to let his wife divorce him. But then Fran’s engagement is foiled by the nobleman’s Old World mother (she refuses to give her consent, calling Fran too old, an irony that hits her hard). She calls off the divorce and begs Sam to take her back and take her home (where their first grandchild has just been born, another ironic twist). He agrees – more out of loyalty than love – but in the climactic scene moments before the ship sails for America, Sam realizes the marriage is over. DODSWORTH was perhaps the first Hollywood film drama (based on a novel by Sinclair Lewis) of the sound era that so forthrightly addressed the complexity of a failing marriage and impending divorce, made especially compelling since Sam Dodsworth is such an admirable and upstanding character who means well and tries so hard to uphold the ideal of marital commitment. Sharply directed by William Wyler and wonderfully acted (Huston had done it on Broadway), the film is still relevant after 77 years. (Trivia note: Watch for the brief but memorable appearance of 20-something David Niven in one of his very earliest film appearances, as a shipboard Lothario.) Clip

AMERICAN MADNESS (1932)Haven’t we learned anything about the economy in 77 years?

The first of director Frank Capra’s dramas dealing with tough social issues, AMERICAN MADNESS takes us inside a mid-size bank during the Depression years. Wonderful Walter Huston (the grizzled prospector in THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE 16 years later) is the amiable, deeply caring bank president with a lot on his plate including a hostile Board trying to stop his making loans to customers whom they consider to be bad risks, a dishonest employee who steals and an honest one with a record for stealing (Pat O’Brien), a robbery, a bored wife who appears to be having an affair, and a massive run on his bank that threatens to wipe out his 25 years of faithful service to his bank and community. You’ll see echoes of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, which Capra made more than a decade later. Dated as it may look, it raises banking and economic issues eerily similar to current ones. Click here for an excellent overview/review. (Trivia note: Capra was a well-known stickler for detail. Example: in several scenes, his camera treats us to an inside look at the mechanics of locking and unlocking a giant valut, and how cash was hand-delivered and allocated among the tellers. I found this stuff quite interesting.)

GABRIEL OVER THE WHITE HOUSE (1933) Boy, could Obama use an angel now!

In GABRIEL OVER THE WHITE HOUSE, set in the Great Depression, Walter Huston plays newly elected president “Judd” Hammond, an affable but apathetic and mildly corrupt party hack with little else on his agenda besides coddling his nephew, romancing his secretary, and ignoring the plight of the unemployed. But when he is seriously injured in an auto accident and wakes from a coma, Hammond has been totally transformed by the angel Gabriel. The now driven President Hammond becomes an outspoken advocate of integrity and economic justice, regarded as a hero by some, a dictator by others. Unilaterally enacting strong measures, he makes powerful enemies, yet manages to right many wrongs before abruptly dying. To this day GABRIEL is controversial for its frank acknowledgment of political policies based on scripture and its association of policies too “liberal” by some and with religious beliefs too “conservative” for others (sound familiar?). Nonetheless, the film is astonishingly prophetic in its portrayal of the failures of Wall Street and government, and its sincere commitment to Biblical principles is fresh and interesting. (Trivia notes: Remember the dying sea captain in MALTESE FALCON who brings the Black Bird to Sam Spade? That was Walter in an unbilled cameo in his son John’s first directorial effort. He was also the grandfather of actress Angelica. Walter, John, Angelica Huston – three generations of Oscar winners of whose contributions to American cinema no critic ever said, “Hustons, we’ve got a problem!”).

FALLEN (1989)Demon-strably unsettling

Immediately after a sadistic serial killer named Reese is executed, the cop who captured him, John Hobbes (Denzil Washington), is tasked with finding a killer who seems to be copycatting Reese. But this is no copycat, Hobbes discovers; it’s the concentrated evil that escaped Reese’s body upon his death – a demon called Azazel that is now hopping from one body to another to continue killing, and to terrorize Hobbes and his family. Some reviewers called this thriller less than thrilling, but I found it intense and unsettling.