The Father’s Day Intertitle

An intertitle from TWINKLETOES, a Colleen Moore vehicle directed, improbably enough, by master of savagery Charles BEAST OF THE CITY Brabin.

But I’m not here to talk about TWINKLETOES, no sir! Since I’m a Raymond Griffith fan and my superb Dad is a cycling fan, Paul Bern’s movie OPEN ALL NIGHT seems the perfect combination of our interests. A would-be romantic comedy set during the Paris six-day cycle race, it also acquires some inadvertent interest by being a virtual paean to the merits of domestic violence…

Adolphe Menjou plays a happily married middle-class chap who shuns the more violent ways of his sex — we learn this as he observes, through binoculars, a neighbour thrashing his spouse with a flail, and shakes his head smilingly. However, his wife Viola Dana, who reads racy novels (ie s&m porn) in the bath, has a yen for a bruising, and taunts her husband as an ineffectual fop.

Enter a busybody friend, who arranges for Viola to be introduced to an authentic brute, France’s bicycling champion, with the idea that she’ll soon tire of such treatment and come rushing back to dear hubby. So we decamp to the velodrome, but by chance Adolphe meets the cyclist’s gal pal, and she’s feeling like a change herself and thinks un vrai gentleman might be just the thing…

For a silent rom-com, the movie features a lot of cycling — here’s the introduction to the sporting arena.

Note the offensive stereotyping of the African cyclist. They might have at least had the American chewing gum and the Brit smoking a pipe to partially compensate…

The six-day race was an odd event. Teams of two cyclists representing each competing nation would take it in relays, three hours cycling, three hours rest, for six days and five nights. This peculiar arrangement, seemingly designed by sadists, was intended to allow professional cyclists to earn a living all year round, and not just in the good weather. But the race was transacted in a smoke-filled velodrome, poisoned by the tobacco fumes of the society audience, who boozed and slept and cheered and booed and generally created a bizarre carnival atmosphere, well-evoked in the movie.

The whole thing ends with Adolphe reunited with his wife, manhandling her mildly, generating a small bruise, and winning her devotion. The muscular Frenchman, whose spectacular mustache suggests a forest fire raging in his nostrils, cheats and is defeated, and his squeeze rushes to his side. Mild brutality carries the day. The whole thing is deeply sinister in its sexual politics.

But! What of Raymond Griffith? Well, this was one of his early movies, after his Keystone period but before he’d garnered leading roles in features, so he’s along for the ride as a drunken Russian waiter from New York who’s planning to become “the next Hollywood sheik.” This allows for some good inebriated schtick, and this memorable final moment for him –

“No emotion!” was Griffith’s motto, which is surprising when you consider how expressive he is. And here he comes very close to being heartbreaking, but it’s all a set-up for making you laugh at him, and then he lets you off the hook by delivering a happy ending so you don’t feel guilty for laughing at that pitiable moment. Clever man.

The sea bird

I spent my time at the New Cinephilia event at Edinburgh Film Fest denying that I write what can be termed “reviews”, and now find myself too washed out from movie-watching to manage anything else. Maybe I can just blame the movies for failing to inspire Profound Thoughts?

ALBATROSS is attractively photographed on the Isle of Mann, boasts engaging performances — a star is born in Jessica Brown Findlay, the Second Coming of Emily Lloyd (can somebody be reincarnated while still alive?). But it doesn’t offer anything particularly new or imaginative. As Michael Powell would fume, “He didn’t teach me anything!” which is a problem in a film partly devoted to teaching, life lessons, education.

Also, while the three main characters played by Findlay, Sebastian Koch and Felicity Jones, are convincing, quirky and appealing, Julia Ormond is forced to play a one-dimensional shrewish wife and the great character actor Peter Vaughan (“Ere I am, JH”) is lumped with a sentimental granddad part that really plumbs the depths of hackneyed rot. Had the film committed to one main character — the story is obviously Findlay’s, but her rightful screen time is devoured by spare protags, which slows the pace — director Niall McCormick might’ve profitably focussed more on his lead without changing the actual script, by exploiting the expressive powers of film, which the film virtually rejects in toto.

Cliff Hanger

I recall seeing bits of MASQUERADE (1965) — always the same bits, too — on TV over the years. Being a moderate admirer of Basil Dearden, I finally decided to see the whole thing. It’s — moderately good. Cliff Robertson is an American ex-serviceman at a loose end, recruited by former comrade Jack Hawkins to protect an Arabian prince from his evil uncle (regular pseudo-arab Roger Delgado, the Master in Dr. Who). Pitched at Hitchcock romp level, and from a novel by FAMILY PLOT’s Victor Canning, it suffers from a major plot twist heavily telegraphed by modern standards, and easily predictable to anyone who’s previously seen Hawkins as a disillusioned soldier turning to crime in Dearden’s THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN.

Bizarre nod to Bunuel?

Still, the cliffhanging is suspenseful, and co-scenarist William Goldman serves up his first reversal in a long career of rug-pulling, when Robertson, imprisoned in a  circus cage, tries to reach a set of keys dangling just out of reach. He espies some bamboo in a neighbouring cage, and hatches the plan of assembling a rod to fish for the keys — trouble is, the cage is occupied by a very nasty vulture. Much agonized pecking later, Cliff does manage to rig up a key-catching stick — only to discover than none of the keys fits his lock. Of course: why would the bad guys leave the keys to HIS cage in plain view?

The reversals come ever thicker and faster, until, like Goldman’s later screenplay for MAVERICK, it becomes rather hard to be surprised anymore. But more damaging is the misogyny, a tonal pain in any ostensibly lighthearted flick. Marisa Mell is a free-spirited circus girl, sporting bruises from hairy ape boyfriend Michel Piccoli. “I don’t mind,” she tells Robertson. “Say, you’re pretty kinky, baby!” he exclaims, thus putting the film’s portrayal of abusive relationships on a psychological par with the apache dance.

His later line, “I’d give you a smack in the face only I’m afraid you might like it,” doesn’t help matters. I still didn’t like the line when it was plagiarised for ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA years later. By all means, abuse masochists, that’s what they like, but don’t make fun of ‘em! One also wants to say to the writers: “She’s your sexual fantasy, mate. Why are you having a go at her?”

Nobody seems too bothered by Goldman’s sexism, which strikes me as a constant in his work. It doesn’t quite spoil THE PRINCESS BRIDE, a truly charming film, but it forms a bit of a stain. Probably less harmful to my enjoyment than the tacky production values, but when you have Wallace Shawn and Mandy Patinkin and Peter Cook etc, and some very very funny jokes and characters and plotting, you can get away with murder. I get the impression that Goldman’s status as some kind of screenplay guru puts him either above criticism or beneath contempt, so nobody looks too closely at the actual strengths and weaknesses. (His analysis of some of his own flaws in Adventures in the Screen Trade is often very telling, though.)

Dearden’s nicest bit of direction comes when a dopey Robertson wanders dazed through a castle at night — sudden Carol Reed infusion of canted angles, vaseline-smeared filter making fairy-tale dream-effect — but it’s all so out of keeping with the rest of the movie, which has totally neglected Hitchcockian POV and expressionist tricks, that it sticks out like a sore, soft-focus thumb.

Still, the sight of Charles Gray dangling from a helicopter is worth anybody’s 102 minutes. Deus Ex machina!

Buy Goldman’s book –

UK: Adventures in the Screen Trade

US: Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting

Eclipse Series 25: Basil Dearden’s London Underground (Sapphire, The League of Gentlemen, Victim, All Night Long) (Criterion Collection)