The Greene Murder Case (1929)

The Greene Murder Case was the second of Paramount’s Philo Vance murder mysteries and the second of four outings for William Powell as Philo Vance. Many other actors later got to play the role but truly there was only ever one screen Philo Vance and that was Bill Powell.

The detective story had been around for quite a while but in the early 1920s a new variant appeared - the fair-play puzzle-plot mystery. It was understood that the clues had to be there to allow the reader to solve the mystery. It was up to the author to provide enough misdirection to make sure this didn’t happen. This new type of murder mystery first appeared in Britain. S. S. Van Dine (real name Willard Huntington Wright) has a strong claim to having introduced the form to American readers. He was certainly the one who popularised this new type of detective story in the United States.

It didn’t take long for Hollywood to get interested. Van Dine’s first novel was published in 1926. The first movie adaptation, The Canary Murder Case, came out in 1929.

It’s worth pointing out that this movie was released before the Wall Street Crash. At this stage Hollywood was still booming and it’s obvious that Paramount spent quite a bit of money on The Greene Murder Case. It’s technically quite ambitious with some rather nifty shots. I love the overhead shots of the roof garden. The sets do not look cheap. There’s a well-conceived well-executed action finale.

The Greene family is very rich and clearly very dysfunctional. Old Tobias Greene left one of those nasty wills calculated to cause his heirs a lot of inconvenience and misery. To inherit his money they have to live in the Greene mansion for fifteen years, not a very pleasant prospect since they all hate each other. Old Tobias’s widow is paralysed. She’s miserable and querulous. The elder son, Chester (Lowell Drew), is a good-for-nothing layabout. The younger son, Rex (Morgan Farley), is a neurotic mess. The elder sister Sibella (Florence Eldridge) is a bit of a party girl. The younger sister Ada (Jean Arthur) is adopted. She’s sweet but nervy. There’s also the family doctor Dr Von Blon who seems to spend most of his life at the Greene mansion.

Now somebody seems intent on killing off the family one by one. Gentleman dilettante detective Philo Vance handles difficult cases for District Attorney John F. X. Markham on a semi-official basis. He is invariably assisted by Detective Sergeant Heath (Eugene Pallette). Lots of things about this case puzzle Vance. The killer seems to be staying one step ahead all the time.

It’s a neat plot. Anybody in the Greene household could be a suspect, given that they certainly all hate each other enough to start killing each other. This is pretty much a fair-play mystery. The clues are there.

William Powell is of course marvellous. Not everybody likes the Philo Vance of the novels but Powell softens the character a bit, taking the edge off his arrogance. And he has that William Powell charm.

One thing I really like is that the film resists the temptation to make Sergeant Heath a comic relief character. Heath is often wrong but his reasoning is far from foolish. He’s a competent policeman and Vance clearly respects his professionalism. At no time does Vance make Heath the butt of jokes. It’s obvious that despite their very different backgrounds these two men like each other.

Jean Arthur is good as the perpetually somewhat frightened Ada. The supporting performers are all quite good, with Morgan Farley as Rex being the only one who goes a little over the top at times.

Director Frank Tuttle is sometimes dismissed as a hack which is a bit unfair. He handles things here with reasonable skill and he keeps the pacing taut.

The Greene mansion itself becomes a character in the movie. The layout of the house is important, as is the atmosphere.

Very early talkies have a reputation for being clunky, with too many excessively static shots. That’s not the case here. Frank Tuttle’s directing is rather lively. The actors on the whole seem quite comfortable with the new sound format.

The Greene Murder Case is a fine murder mystery. Highly recommended.

This movie is included in Kino Lorber’s three-movie Philo Vance Blu-Ray boxed set. The Greene Murder Case gets a very nice transfer. As is usually the case these days the audio commentary is best dispensed with.

I've also reviewed the wonderful The Kennel Murder Case, also with Powell as Vance.

Judex (1963)

Georges Franju’s Judex, released in 1963, is based on Louis Feuillade’s famous and influential 1916 serial of the same name. Judex is a mysterious vigilante crime-fighter. 

Franju made the decision to keep to a period setting. It was a good decision. There is a hint that the movie in fact takes place in 1914. He also decided to shoot the movie in black-and-white. The intention was clearly to capture both the tone and the look of the original serial.

The movie starts slowly so you have to be a bit patient at first. Then we get to the masked ball scene, with all the bird masks. It’s a bit creepy and disturbing and the way it’s filmed makes it feel more odd. This is where the movie starts to get interesting.

The story begins with rich banker Favraux (Michel Vitold) receiving a letter from the mysterious Judex. Favraux is to give half his fortune to his victims by midnight or face the consequences. Favraux’s fortune has been amassed by decidedly dishonest means.

Favraux also has quite a bit of blood on his hands.

Judex means to bring Favraux to justice and he obviously intends this justice to be swift and final, without the tiresome necessity to involve the proper authorities. Judex is however a just man and he is determined that no harm should come to the banker’s daughter Jacqueline (Edith Scob). She has given proof of her honesty and virtue. Jacqueline has a little girl.

Favraux has been pursuing the little girl’s governess, Marie Verdier (Francine Bergé). He wants her to be his mistress. If necessary he will even marry her.

Having Judex coming after him is bad enough but Favraux has other problems although he isn’t yet aware of them. Judex is not the only one targeting him. There are others, and they are targeting him for other reasons.

As the movie progresses the plot gradually becomes more outrageous and more reliant on coincidence and just generally much more fun, and much more in the spirit of the original serial. There are all the plot devices you could ask for. There are secret passageways, kidnappings, hidden cameras, people being drugged, narrow escapes, and rooftop chases.

Also involved is private detective Cocantrin (Jacques Jouanneau). At first we assume he’s going to be a stereotypical bumbling private eye but he turns out to be at least moderately competent.

Initially I felt that Channing Pollock was perhaps a little bit bland as Judex but I’m inclined to think that may have been deliberate. Judex is after all an enigma. Interestingly Channing Pollock was a very successful stage magician before trying his hand at acting. He gets to do some magic tricks here. I would still have preferred a hero with a bit more charisma.

It’s the women who stand out. Edith Scob brings a fragile beauty to the role of the virtuous heroine Jacqueline ad she’s likeable.

Sylva Koscina is a delight (and looks totally gorgeous) as Cocantrin’s circus acrobat friend Daisy.

But what a movie like this really needs is a fine sexy bad girl. And Francine Bergé as Marie Verdier delivers the goods in great style. She gets to wear a variety of rather wonderful costumes and even disguises herself as a disturbingly sexy nun. She totally dominates the movie. We’re shocked by her wickedness but we love her for it. All the world loves a bad girl.

It’s amusing to see one of the characters reading one of the Fantômas novels of Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre, Fantômas being the great French pulp fiction arch-criminal. Louis Feuillade made three ground-breaking serials between 1913 - Fantômas, Les Vampires and Judex.

On the whole this is enjoyable stuff although perhaps it needed just a tad more energy, and a tad more visual flamboyance. It’s the wonderful villainess who is by far the film’s biggest asset. Recommended, and Francine Bergé is enough to promote it to the highly recommended category.

The Criterion DVD looks good once you manage to remove it from its case, a task that is easily accomplished with the aid of a crowbar and gelignite.

The Canary Murder Case (1929)

The Canary Murder Case is both an incredibly important movie historically and an oddity. Its importance lies in the fact that it’s one of the first detective story movies made with sound, and you can see the way the challenges presented by the genre were approached. Its oddity lies in the fact that it’s a hybrid - it was shot as a silent movie and then turned into a sound picture. That accounts for its peculiarities and its weaknesses.

S. S. Van Dine (real name Willard Huntington Wright) was the most significant pioneer of the new style of detective story - the fair-play puzzle-plot mystery - in the United States. Paramount saw the cinematic possibilities immediately. In 1929, just three years after Van Dine’s first novel was published, they released the first cinematic adaptation.

The opening sequence is fascinating. It introduces us to the Canary (Louise Brooks) but it was shot for the original silent version so instead of hearing her sing we see her on a swing, sailing above the heads of the audience. It works superbly. It’s unusual and striking and it’s a fantastic way to introduce Louise Brooks and to show off her glamour and seductiveness. This is a girl who likes to play. We’re not at all surprised to find out that she likes to play with men.

The Canary is nightclub star Margaret O’Dell (Louise Brooks), and she’s a very bad girl. At the time the Canary would have been described as a vamp but she is in fact a figure who would become familiar in movies in the 40s - the femme fatale. The Canary is a blackmailer but it’s not money that she wants. She’s more ambitious than that. She intends to blackmail the young and foolish Jimmy Spotswoode into marrying her. Jimmy is heir to a fortune but more importantly he is part of the social elite. And the Canary is determined to be part of that social elite.

She is also blackmailing a number of very rich middle-aged men.

This leads to murder and since the plot contains some rather cool elements I will be very very vague about it. There are at least five suspects.

The very early sound pictures have a reputation for being clunky, with too many excessively static shots. Various technical problems initially experienced with the sound recording technology made static camera setups necessary. It also meant that if you wanted to shoot a movie fairly quickly it was desirable to use very few sets, and very simple sets.

It took a while to find an easy convenient solution to that. The Canary Murder Case does suffer from having very static camera setups which gives it a stagey feel. And there are too many scenes shot on the same one or two very bare sets (such as the District Attorney’s office) using the exact same camera angles.

The Canary Murder Case was in fact shot as a silent picture. It was directed by Malcolm St. Clair. Reshoots were needed to turn it into a sound picture (these were done by Frank Tuttle). Those very static scenes are presumably among the reshoots. Dialogue was also dubbed over silent footage. The biggest problem was that Louise Brooks refused to do any of the reshoots. As a result her voice was dubbed (horribly) by another actress. The Canary Murder Case destroyed Brooks’ career in Hollywood, which is sad because it was a great role that should have boosted her career.

It’s interesting to compare this movie to the next in the Paramount series, The Greene Murder Case, released just six months later. The technical problems associated with sound had been solved. The second movie was directed with energy and flair by Frank Tuttle. The Greene Murder Case has none of that clunky static early talkie feel. It also had a bigger budget and some very cool sets. Progress in sound picture production was breathtakingly fast.

One thing needs to be said about the detective hero of the story, Philo Vance (played by William Powell). Vance is not a rich American. He is an upper-class American. He is from a family who are very much Old Money. He is American aristocracy. As such he has had an education and upbringing very much like that of an English gentleman of that era. He is highly cultured. Like Willard Huntington Wright himself he is an aesthete. He has the exquisite manners of a gentleman. But it would be a mistake to think that he is effete. He is entirely masculine, but in the self-assured manner of a gentleman. He is an upper-class American of a type that no longer exists, which can cause the character to be misunderstood.

Many actors went on to play Vance. William Powell is the only one who counts. Powell was born to play Philo Vance. He is a joy to watch.

Eugene Pallette as Detective Sergeant Heath is always fun. The other actors are competent but a bit stiff, probably because when this movie went into production in 1928 no-one was quite sure how to approach acting in this new medium, the talking picture. Louise Brooks looks fabulous but as I mentioned earlier her voice was dubbed which somewhat ruins her performance.

For all its problems The Canary Murder Case has its virtues. It has an excellent plot with some clever and ingenious elements. The poker game is a fascinating example of the use of psychology in crime-solving. There are plot devices that might seem clichéd today but in the late 20s when the novel was written and when the film was made these were fresh and exciting plot devices. And they’re executed pretty well.

If you can ignore its technical flaws The Canary Murder Case is quite enjoyable and it’s recommended.

This movie is part of Kino Lorber’s three-movie Philo Vance Blu-Ray boxed set. It gets a very nice transfer.

I’ve also reviewed The Greene Murder Case and The Kennel Murder Case (1933).

Top Hat (1935)

Top Hat was the fourth of the RKO musicals featuring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers but it is the first real full-blown Astaire-Rogers film. They’d played supporting roles in movies like Flying Down To Rio (a fun movie in its own way) and Roberta (an awful movie redeemed only by their presence). Top Hat was conceived right from the start as an Astaire-Rogers picture and a star vehicle for the duo. It’s extraordinary that it took so long for RKO to figure out that yes, these two could effortlessly carry a movie between them.

We don’t need to trouble ourselves too much with the plot. It’s standard farce (albeit superbly executed). Jerry Travers (Astaire) is in London to star in a new show promoted by Horace Hardwick (Edward Everett Horton). Jerry meets Dale Tremont (Ginger Rogers) under inauspicious circumstances. She thinks he’s incredibly irritating. He’s besotted by her. The main plot point is a case of mistaken identity. Dale thinks that Jerry is Horace and that he’s a married man. She’s attracted to him but Dale does not steal other women’s men. There is no way she is going to get involved with him.

There’s more confusion regarding Alberto Beddini (Erik Rhodes). Horace suspects that Dale is a kept woman, that she is Beddini’s mistress. In fact their relationship is quite innocent. He’s a fashion designer and she is his top model.

Much romantic confusion ensues.

Astaire and Rogers demonstrate why they were such a dazzling movie couple. The chemistry is there between them right from the start. RKO’s doubts about Astaire had a lot to do the fact that he was balding and did not have conventional matinee idol looks. But he had charisma, charm, vitality and style and these are things that women go for in a big way. We have no difficulty understanding why Dale is fascinated by him and attracted to him. Rogers had plenty of charm and charisma herself and her likeability factor was off the scale. We have no difficulty understanding why Jerry is crazy about her.

The contribution of Ginger Rogers to this movie must not be underestimated. She’s Astaire’s acting partner as well as dancing partner. There’s the dancing chemistry but the chemistry between them goes much further. There’s emotional chemistry and Ginger Rogers has a way of subtly letting us know that there’s erotic chemistry as well.

And of course there’s the dancing. Astaire had complete control over that - not just the dances but the way they were shot. What really made the dancing memorable in these movies is that Astaire used the dances to tell the love story. These are courtship dances. This is a man and a woman gradually figuring out how they feel about each other, through the dances.

The fact that Astaire had total control over not just the staging but the filming of the dances gave him in effect a huge degree of creative control over the movie. What made Top Hat important is that this control allowed Astaire to revolutionise the movie musical.

The other outstanding feature of the RKO Astaire-Rogers movies is their visual magnificence, and this is very much because they were shot in black-and-white. Filmed in colour they would have looked gaudy and cheap and vulgar. They needed the cool crisp elegance that can only be achieved by black-and-white cinematography.

And by this time the black-and-white aesthetic had been perfected. Everything, from the sets to the costumes to the makeup, was done to look stunning when filmed in black-and-white. Black-and-white also adds to the Art Deco feel. To make this work you don’t just need cinematographers who understand black-and-white. You need set designers and costume designers and makeup artists who understand how to make the movie look stunning in black-and-white. That’s why you can’t do black-and-white today. By this time Hollywood had a couple of decades of experience making feature films in black-and-white. That expertise is long gone.

The other thing I love is the extreme artificiality. There are scenes that take place in Venice. It’s not just that we don’t believe for one second we’re in Venice, what’s great is that we’re not supposed to. These scenes are supposed to look like they’e shot on a sound stage. We are not supposed for one second to believe that this movie takes place in the real world. The rejection of realism is uncompromising. This is a fantasy world.

There were of course other very talented people making huge inputs into Top Hat. Von Nest Polglase as head of ROKO’s art department got the art director’s credit but it appears that the magnificent sets were the work of Carroll Clark. David Abel’s mastery of black-and-white cinematography didn’t hurt. Astaire had a close and amicable working relation with director Mark Sandrich and producer Pandro S. Berman and they made their contributions.

The gowns designed by Bernard Newman don’t just make Ginger Roger looks fabulous, they follow the evolution of her feeling. In the dance in the gazebo she is trying to keep Jerry at a distance. She is wearing a cute feminine riding habit but she’s all buttoned up tight, as if she’s wearing armour. In the climactic dance she wears the famous feather dance. She has discarded her armour. She is ready to give herself to him as a woman. Nothing in this movie is accidental.

Edward Everett Horton, Erik Rhodes, Eric Blore and Helen Broderick are wonderful in supporting roles.

Top Hat was a massive box office hit, the most successful of all the Astaire-Rogers movies. It was RKO’s biggest hit of the 30s.

Top Hat is a delight from start to finish. This is the Astaire-Rogers formula at its most perfect. Very highly recommended.

Lady of Burlesque (1943)

Lady of Burlesque is a 1943 comedy/mystery directed by William A. Wellman and starring Barbara Stanwyck. It’s a murder mystery set in a burlesque theatre.

Dixie Daisy (Barbara Stanwyck) is the headliner at S.B. Foss’s burlesque theatre. There are the usual backstage dramas. There are romantic entanglements between the girls and the male comics. One of the girls is involved with Louie Grindero (Gerald Mohr), a slightly shady ex-racketeer. The stage manager doesn’t like burlesque artistes. The haughty Princess Nirvena (Stephanie Bachelor) is no princess but she has plenty of attitude and doesn’t get along with anyone. Dixie and Lolita La Verne (Victoria Faust) don’t get along at all. Comic Biff Brannigan (Michael O’Shea) is crazy about Dixie but she doesn’t share his feelings.

But these are all just the usual dramas you expect in any theatre. They’re not likely to lead to anything serious. They’re certainly not likely to lead to murder.

But something does lead to murder.

Almost everybody in the theatre is a suspect. There are performers and stage hands constantly wandering about all over the place so anyone could have entered the dressing room at the time of murder.

With so many romantic dramas and jealousies almost anyone could conceivably have had a motive. And there are plenty of suspects without rock-solid alibis.

The murder weapon was a G-string. A G-string that has now mysteriously disappeared.

This is nothing startling in the plotting department but it’s a perfectly decent murder mystery.

As you might expect the movie’s biggest asset is Barbara Stanwyck. This is a semi-comic movie and Stanwyck can handle that sort of thing with ease. She also gets to be sexy. She has no problem with that either. She can certainly be a sassy wise-cracking dame. And she does some remarkably energetic dancing.

The movie’s biggest problem was of course the Production Code. An inherently sexy story had to be made squeaky clean. Burlesque was all about pretty girls taking most of their clothes off. In this movie we have pretty girls who don’t take off any of their clothing at all.These are the most over-dressed strippers you’ll ever see.

Burlesque was also about risqué comedy (it was often lame but it was always risqué). In this movie the onstage comedy routines are both lame and tame.

On the other hand once the performers are offstage we do get some hardboiled dialogue and some very amusing bitchy exchanges.

One thing I really love about this movie is that every single scene takes place in the theatre. It gives it an atmosphere that is claustrophobic but also emphasises that this is an entire separate world with its own rules.

The movie was based on the novel The G-String Murders by Gypsy Rose Lee. For some years there was controversy about the authorship of the novel, with claims that it was ghost-written by Craig Rice. It’s now generally accepted that Gypsy Rose Lee did indeed write the novel, with Rice perhaps doing a little bit of polishing. The novel’s great strength is that it was written by one of the great burlesque queens and she was writing about a world she knew intimately, and a world she loved. It vividly captures the seedy-glamorous world of burlesque.

It is sad that the story had to be toned down so much. One of the cool things about the burlesque of the golden age of strip-tease (which was over by the mid-1950s) is that we know exactly what these burlesque shows were really like. We know because of the existence of large numbers of burlesque movies which were actual filmed burlesque shows. We know that burlesque in its heyday was a whole lot sexier than anything in this movie. These burlesque movies are easy to find, they’re worth seeing and I’ve reviewed a bunch of them including Midnight Frolics (1949), 'B' Girl Rhapsody (1952) and Everybody’s Girl (1950).

Despite being toned down it’s an enjoyable lesser murder mystery and Barbara Stanwyck is in sparkling form. Recommended.

The good news is that Lady of Burlesque is very very easy to get to see. The bad news is that it’s public domain and the prints are not great. It really needs a restoration and a Blu-Ray release.

Les liaisons dangereuses 1960 (1959)

Les liaisons dangereuses 1960 (Dangerous Liaisons 1960) is a very early Roger Vadim film, released in 1959. It is based on Choderlos De Laclos’s scandalous 1782 novel.

Roger Vadim is one of the greatest and one of the most despised of French film directors. Critics who doted on the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) directors regarded Vadim with contempt. He was a skilful director who made polished professional movies with style and wit. Directorial skill, polish, professionalism, style and wit were things that enraged the devotees of the Nouvelle Vague.

To compound his already numerous sins Vadim has no interest in making overtly political films. He had no ideological axes to grind. Les liaisons dangereuses 1960 is not about politics, and it is not about sexual politics in the way that feminists and ideologically driven film critics understand the term. Vadim is interested in a much more important subject - love. It’s about how love turns to hate and hate turns to love, it’s about the joys and sufferings that men and women bring each other. It’s about love considered as a game. It’s the most dangerous game of all, and therefore the most exciting. It’s certainly about sex, but it’s more interested in the exquisite pleasures and pains that treating love and sex as games can bring.

Valmont (Gérard Philipe) and his wife Juliette (Jeanne Moreau) are expert players in these games. Their favourite games involve adultery and seduction. You cannot hope to understand this movie unless you realise that they are both predators. They are predators of a peculiar type - they hunt as a pair. They both participate in the hunts, and they both get equal pleasure from making the kill. Juliette is not a victim of so-called gender roles or gender expectations. She is a ruthless huntress.

Both Valmont and Juliette ignore all the established social, sexual, more and cultural rules. That is the theme of the movie - what if the game of love could be played without any rules? What if we freed ourselves from these rules? What if the only objective of the game was pleasure? Not just sexual pleasure, but the pleasure of playing the game.

Juliette is of course having an affair. Naturally she tells her husband all the details.

Valmont has his eyes on some promising prey, in the person of Cécile (Jeanne Valérie). Cécile thinks she is a sophisticated young woman of the world. She has two fiancées. She is however a mere child compared to Valmont and Juliette. They’re both going to enjoy this hunt.

Then even more promising prey appears on the scene - Marianne Tourvel (Annette Vadim). Marianne is a happily married young woman who is faithful to her husband. Valmont’s seduction of her will be even more exciting, for both Valmont and Juliette. Juliette loves hearing all the intimate details of the chase and the kill.

But even for expert players this game can be hazardous. That of course is its appeal. Without the danger there would be no thrill.

This movie has nothing whatever to do with gender. Juliette is not rebelling against traditional gender roles or gender expectations. Both Valmont and Juliette are rejecting ALL moral, social and sexual roles. The original novel was written in 1782, which happens to be the year that the Marquis de Sade began his literary career. This is no coincidence. Both Choderlos De Laclos and de Sade were expressing the scepticism about moral rules that was increasingly popular among intellectuals. This was the beginning of a new attitude towards morality - that nothing mattered other than the pursuit of pleasure. They were not in revolt against bourgeois morality because bourgeois morality did not yet exist, for the very good reason that the bourgeoisie did not yet exist. Choderlos De Laclos and de Sade were expressing what was essentially an aristocratic contempt for moral rules.

This is quite evident in the movie. The outlook of Valmont and Juliette is essentially aristocratic. The movie actually has a strong Sadeian flavour. It has quite a bit in common with some of Jess Franco’s later de Sade-influenced movies such as Cries of Pleasure.

Of course by the time the film was made bourgeois morality did exist. Valmont and Juliette are certainly rejecting that morality, but their rebellion is from an aristocratic standpoint, not a modern ideological standpoint. This is not a feminist film, although modern critics twist themselves into knots trying to apply anachronistic feminist interpretations to movies of the past.

And Vadim upsets modern critics and film scholars by not actually condemning bourgeois morality. The villains in this movie are the ones who reject such rules and pursue only their own pleasures.

All of the performances are impressive. Gérard Philipe and Jeanne Moreau have the more showy roles but Jeanne Valérie and Annette Vadim give beautifully judged subtle performances.

Like a lot of Vadim’s movies this one confuses modern critics by ignoring ideology. A complex intelligent provocative movie. Very highly recommended.

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951)

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman stars James Mason and Ava Gardner. It is one of those movies that challenges easy genre classification. It’s certainly a romance movie, albeit an unconventional one. Is it also a fantasy movie? Whatever it is it’s strange and disturbing and very unusual.

This is a movie in which the ending is revealed right at the beginning but given people’s sensitivities about spoilers I will still try to avoid them.

This British movie takes place in Spain during the early 1930s, in the Mediterranean seaport of Esperanza. The story is mostly seen through the eyes of middle-aged literary-art historian/archaeologist Geoffrey Fielding (Harold Warrender). Pandora (Ava Gardner) is a singer, but mostly she breaks men’s hearts. Men have died for love of her. Literally died. It would be tempting to see her as a wicked temptress and her odd reactions to things lead many people to see her as a heartless bitch. Pandora is however more complicated than that.

She is a very complicated woman indeed. She has never loved a man but she is in love with love. She is also perhaps in love with death.

Stephen Cameron (Nigel Patrick) is in love with her. He is a racing car driver. He has built a car with which he hopes to break the world land speed record. His car means more to him than anything else in the world, except for Pandora.

Then a yacht arrives in the harbour. Pandora does what any normal woman would do. She takes off all her clothes and swims out to the yacht. She hasn’t been invited but is it likely that anyone will be annoyed to have a nude Ava Gardner suddenly emerge from the sea?

The strange thing is that there is no crew. Just the yacht’s skipper, a Dutchman named Hendrick van der Zee (James Mason). Hendrick is just completing a portrait of Pandora although he has never set eyes on her before. He almost seemed to be expecting her arrival, which is of course impossible.

Coincidentally Geoffrey has just come across a manuscript written in 17th century Dutch purporting to be the memoirs of the fabled Flying Dutchman. He can read Dutch but he is having trouble with this archaic form of the language. Oddly enough Hendrick can read it with ease. In fact it’s as if he doesn’t need to read it. He already knows what it contains. Which is impossible.

Geoffrey knows that Hendrick cannot possibly be the Flying Dutchman. That’s just a legend. But he is puzzled and disturbed.

Pandora accepts Stephen’s proposal of marriage. Stephen does have a rival, matador Juan Montalvo (Mario Cabré).

With Hendrick’s arrival there may be another rival on the scene. The attraction between Hendrick and Pandora is obvious, but it’s a mysterious sort of attraction. It’s as if they both have a destiny they cannot escape.

James Mason is excellent as the troubled rather tragic Hendrick, and playing troubled tragic romantic leads was certainly something Mason did well.

This picture however belongs to Ava Gardner. Hers is the standout performance and Pandora is the most interesting character. She perfectly captures the disturbing quality of Pandora. She is clearly attracted to men who flirt with death, such as racing car drivers and matadors. Whenever one of these men is in danger of sudden violent death Pandora is visibly excited. It’s obviously sexual excitement, but perhaps more than that.

There’s a wonderful scene early on in which she asks Stephen to make a sacrifice for her, a very big sacrifice. She doesn’t love the man. It is simply a test of the strength of his love. Or perhaps it is a test of the power of love. This is in fact the theme of the whole movie - how much will a person give up for love? Stephen makes the sacrifice. Pandora’s reaction is orgasmic. The scene is charged with dangerous unhealthy obsessive eroticism. Gardner handles it superbly. She makes her excitement obvious without being crass.

Do not get the idea that Pandora is evil or a femme fatale. It’s not that simple. She is the woman she is. She is perhaps driven by fate. She is driven by the need for love, and it has to be overwhelming love. She never loses our sympathy. We are unsettled by her, but fascinated.

Jack Cardiff did the cinematography which is, as you would expect, magnificent. He really brings out the feline quality in Ava Gardner.

The big question of course is whether there is really anything supernatural going on. Is Hendrick really the Flying Dutchman? That question is answered but obviously I’m not going to reveal the answer.

This is an insanely romantic love story but it’s a movie about death and fate as well as love.

This is a strange but brilliant movie. Very highly recommended.

The Screenbound Blu-Ray is barebones but looks pretty good.

Le Boucher (1970)

Le Boucher (The Butcher) is a 1970 Claude Chabrol film.

Chabrol was associated with the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague). He was a fanatical admirer of Hitchcock. You’ll often find him described as the French Hitchcock. Having seen half a dozen of his movies I have no idea why anyone would see him as a French Hitchcock. In the films of his that I’ve seen Chabrol’s approach does not even slightly resemble Hitchcock’s.

That’s not intended as a criticism of Chabrol. Just because he admired Hitchcock does not mean that he wanted to slavishly copy Hitchcock’s techniques. Chabrol had his own ideas on how to make movies. Whether or not you think they were good ideas is up to you, but they were his own ideas.

Hitchcock’s approach to suspense was invariably to give the audience vital information denied to the protagonist. That creates fear by making us fearful on behalf of the protagonist - we know he is in danger but he doesn’t know that.

In this movie we know only what the protagonist knows. We discover things as she discovers them.

Helen (Stéphane Audran) is the school headmistress in a small French town. At a wedding she meets the local butcher, Popaul (Jean Yanne). They flirt in a tentative way. A day or so later they have dinner together. There’s obviously some attraction there, and they like each other. Helen is not the sort of woman who jumps straight into bed with a man. Popaul is not the sort of man who expects a woman to do that. He behaves like a perfect gentleman. They start to become fond of one another but they’re both taking things slowly. We slowly come to like both of them as well.

What I like is the way Chabrol focuses for so much of the movie on this slowly blossoming romance between Helen and Popaul. The unsettling elements are introduced in the background and appear to have no connection whatsoever with these two people.

We get a wonderful idyllic scene of the children playing in the schoolyard supervised by their pretty young headmistress. She obviously loves the children and they love her. This is a peaceful harmless sleepy little town.

Then we see the two black police vans pull up in the background, and the gendarmes have a police dog with them. A police dog always means something very bad - perhaps a missing child, perhaps a search for a body.

We find out, purely because one of the kids has heard this from his dad, that the dead body of a woman has been found in the woods. This has nothing to do with our two tentative lovers but we are now just a little uneasy.

The unease slowly builds as Helen discovers something that may be a clue or it may not be. We know no more about it than Helen does.

But we are getting worried. There are more murders.

There are a couple of lovely visual moments - the dripping blood scene is superbly done.

While it’s not a Hitchcock-style thriller there is an intriguing echo of Vertigo - the shots of the back of Stéphane Audran’s dead, focusing on her hair, mirroring those famous shots of Kim Novak in Vertigo. Given Chabrol’s fondness for Hitchcock it’s a certain that he added these shots as a playful reference. Chabrol liked playing cinematic games.

And Stéphane Audran is the Hitchcock Ice Blonde type, so it works.

This is very much a slow-burn thriller.

There isn’t much actual suspense, in fact hardly any. But there is a growing sense of dread. In that respect this movie perhaps functions more like a horror movie than a thriller.

Don’t think of this as a Hitchcock-style thriller. Just enjoy it as a Chabrol movie. It’s a very good Chabrol movie. Highly recommended.

The old Pathfinder DVD offers a perfectly acceptable 16:9 enhanced transfer. The availability of Chabrol’s movies in English-friendly versions has always been rather spotty.

I’ve also reviewed Chabrol’s fascinating but eccentric The Champagne Murders (1967) and the extremely interesting Innocents With Dirty Hands (1975).

To Have and to Hold (1963)

To Have and to Hold is a 1963 entry in the Merton Park cycle of British Edgar Wallace B-movies. This one was scripted by Jimmy Sangster and directed by Herbert Wise.

Sergeant Fraser (Ray Barrett) is an ordinary cop, a detective. He’s given a very easy job to do - to convince a woman that her ex is not really intending to murder her. But Claudia (Katharine Blake) sounds so convincing and she’s clearly genuinely frightened. Fraser allows her to persuade him to stay for dinner. They agree to meet for lunch the next day.

Fraser hasn’t done anything seriously wrong but taking the risk of becoming personally involved in a case like this is perhaps a little unwise.

Fraser had no intention of getting personally involved at all but sometimes a man meets a woman and he just gets drawn into things. He’s not even sure why Claudia fascinates him. She is charming but perhaps it’s something else. Perhaps its’s just a natural masculine reaction - a frightened woman who may be in danger and he starts to feel protective.

The involvement proves to have been very unwise. This was not such a trivial routine matter after all. And Fraser is in the middle of it and his life is getting just a bit out of control.

Then the plot twists start to kick in. Fraser is really in a muddle now. He thinks he knows what is going on but he is personally involved and he could be totally wrong.

His boss, Detective Inspector Roberts (William Hartnell), isn’t overly pleased with him. Roberts believes Fraser is a good cop and he doesn’t want to see the younger man doing anything to wreck his career.

Fraser also has Lucy (Patricia Bredin) to consider. Lucy is his girlfriend, or was his girlfriend and maybe still is.

Jimmy Sangster was always a reliable writer and he’s come up with a very solid screenplay here. Herbert Wise was already an experienced television director and while the low budgets on these Edgar Wallace movies didn’t allow much scope for doing anything fancy he shows himself to be perfectly competent.

Australian actor Ray Barrett was always worth watching and he gives an effective low-key performance here, doing just enough to let us know that Fraser is confused and upset and that his judgment might not be as sound as usual.

Katharine Blake is fine as the woman.

William Hartnell is as always a delight. His inspector is not quite the usual crusty bad-tempered old cop with a heart of gold. Right from the start his attitude towards Fraser is more that of an indulgent uncle. Barrett and Hartnell are terrific in their scenes together.

The one weakness is that the script glosses over a couple of points and that ends up stretching credibility just a little. I found myself mystified that these things were left hanging.

On the whole though it’s enjoyable and nicely twisted.

As usual it’s widescreen black-and-white, a format of which I’m quite fond.

This is included in Network’s Edgar Wallace Collection Volume 5 DVD boxed set. And as usual the transfer is excellent.

Whistle Stop (1946)

Whistle Stop is a 1946 film noir starring George Raft and Ava Gardner.

Mary (Ava Gardner) arrives back in her home town. Ashbury is a small town with the railway station being its only valid reason for existence. Throughout the movie we hear train whistles in the background. Trains play a vital part in the story. This is not a train thriller in the sense of taking place on a train but the railroad is always a presence.

Mary had gone to Chicago in search of glamour, excitement and money. She found those things and she found disillusionment.

She has returned to see Kenny (George Raft). Kenny is a rudderless loser but she has always loved him. Kenny has never been motivated to find a job although he can always summon up the motivation to find a card game or a beer joint. Maybe he wouldn’t have turned out to be such a loser if Mary had stayed. Or maybe he would have. Maybe Mary just couldn’t see a future with him.

There’s a complication, in the person of Lew Lentz (Tom Conway). Lew is a rich businessman. He’s not a mobster but we get the impression that his business methods are ruthless and may be at times just a tad ethically slippery. Lew has always wanted Mary. Given that Kenny and Lew both love Mary it’s hardly surprising that the two men are at daggers drawn.

Another complication is Gitlo (Victor McLaglen). He’s Kenny’s buddy but he works for Lew. Lew knows something about Gitlo which gives him a hold over the man. Gitlo hates and resents Lew, but he grovels to him.

Kenny is convinced that Mary would choose him over Lew if only he had lots of money. Lew has lots of money. He carries large amounts of money on the train to Detroit. It would not be difficult to rob him. Kenny is a loser but he’s not a criminal. But he is tempted. He wants Mary so badly.

So we have a classic film noir setup, with Kenny as the potentially easily manipulated schmuck, the typical noir protagonist. And with Mary as the classic femme fatale.

And that’s why so many people misunderstand this movie and are unable to appreciate it. They want to view it through a noir lens. They forget that nobody in Hollywood in 1946 had the remotest idea what film noir was so they were not conscious of the need to follow the conventions of a genre that did not exist. The makers of this movie were making a movie that combines crime thriller and melodrama elements. The fact that it happens to contain so many of what are now seen as essential noir ingredients does not imply that is is is film noir. It can be seen as conforming to some of the modern expectations of noir, but not all of them. It also conforms to some of the conventions of melodrama.

Director Léonide Moguy and screenwriter Philip Yordan knew what they were doing, but what they were trying to do was not necessarily what modern critics would have liked them to do.

Every online review I’ve read complains that Mary’s motivations for leaving Chicago remain unexplained. I can only assume that these reviewers are used to modern Hollywood spoon-feeding them. They need everything explained in detail, with diagrams. Her reasons are obvious, and are made obvious. She had been a kept woman, and she grew tired of feeling like a whore.

The same reviewers complain that Lew’s motivations for hating Kenny are unclear. They are perfectly clear. He wants Mary. He knows that Mary feels an incredibly strong sexual attraction to Kenny. Lew might be able to buy Mary but she will never want him with that aching desperate sexual need she feels for Kenny. That’s a blindingly obvious motivation.

I’m a huge George Raft fan and he is excellent here. It’s a typical effective low-key George Raft performance. There’s some self-pity in Kenny, some bitterness and plenty of jealousy. But he has settled into a loser pattern of life.

Tom Conway as Lew is fine. He makes Lew sinister but without making him a straightforward villain. Victor McLaglen is quite effective in getting across Gitlo’s simmering resentment, the resentment of a coward.

Ava Gardner gives the standout performance. Mary is a complex woman. She seems to be a femme fatale but we can’t be sure.

Raft and Gardner have no trouble convincing us that for all their doubts and hesitations and conflicts Kenny and Mary just can’t stop wanting each other.

You can see early on where the story is going, but that isn’t where it’s really going. You can see early on what the character arcs are going to be for all the players in this dramas, but the script has some surprises for us.

I liked Whistle Stop a lot. Just try to approach it without getting too locked-in to genre expectations. Highly recommended.