Fleshy rogue

It was rather unfair of me to suggest Ray Milland as good casting for the as-yet-imaginary David Cameron biopic THE TAPIOCA LUNGFISH. It doesn’t reflect the warmth with which I regard Milland, one of cinema’s finest Welshmen. Mainly it was due to his uncanny ability to suggest shiftiness, a quality I controversially suggested was due to his ever-so-slightly bulbous face, another point of comparison with Cameron. As a paunchy, bloated character myself, I felt qualified to judge.

Milland wasn’t always a trifle chubby — we see him in the excellent Cagney vehicle BLONDE CRAZY as a near starveling, his face a sort of skin tent erected on a knobby stick framework. It’s a shock just to see this unconvincing impersonation of human physiognomy, and a second shock to recognize Milland, somehow concealed behind it. His wan and wispy features look like they might snap off in a moderate-to-high wind, and his overall appearance suggests some dust that’s got on the celluloid. Where is the beloved roly-poly cad we know and love?

Actually, revisiting the film, I find both shocks have paled — seeing Milland stripped of his apple-cheeks was initially alarming, and it’s weird seeing him in the more noticeable cosmetics of the 1930s, but he doesn’t actually look bad. Just not himself.

Flash back further, to THE FLYING SCOTSMAN, his 1929 debut, and we see a perfectly balanced flesh-to-Milland ratio. The fellow’s probably just out of the Guards, at his physical peak. It looks like he starved in Hollywood for the first couple of years, then made a success and started eating rather too well.

Anyway, thanks to a recommendation by the Self-Styled Siren, in a typically delightful piece running down her most enjoyable vintage viewings of 2011, we watched SO EVIL MY LOVE, which is prime Milland untrustworthiness, giving the lie to Billy Wilder’s rather harsh assessment of his former collaborator (“Not an Oscar-winning actor” — expressing his view that it was his own script for THE LOST WEEKEND which won for Milland). He’s paired with Ann Todd, whose somewhat icy demeanour is extremely well-used.

It’s a gaslight melodrama with shades of noir, and forms a nice trio of Lewis Allen-directed fog thrillers, along with ghostly THE UNSEEEN and THE UNINVITED. Mutz Greenbaum (AKA Max Greene) shot it, with the glossy and pellucid shadows of his German origins. This may be what got him the gig on NIGHT AND THE CITY.

Chronology — Milland was having a very good year, with THE BIG CLOCK also on his schedule. Weirdly, we watched Moira Lister’s previous movie, another tale of homicide in London, WANTED FOR MURDER, the previous evening. She makes little impression in her fleeting appearance there, but she’s wonderful in the Allen film, seizing the chance to embody a zestful, venal slut.

The movie also has great work from Geraldine Fitzgerald, whose fate calls to mind UNCLE HARRY in the same way that Todd’s evokes MADELEINE, and from Raymond Huntley, whose wonderfully dislikable face (dis)graced innumerable British films but very few Hollywood productions.

Anyway, so inspired by it was I, I immediately dashed off a couple of limericks, which after suitable analysis and manipulation by the excellent Hilary Barta, are available to view at Limerwrecks, here.

At that same site, some more poetic appreciation of DR PHIBES, a fellow who will long be celebrated in song and doggerel. This one’s a collaboration with Hil, this matched pair is by me, and here’s another. But there are others, occasionally with titles by me — scroll around and enjoy!