Big Day

Yesterday —

9am THE ROAD BACK — major James Whale, a rediscovered director’s cut. Huge production values and a brilliant script by R.C. Sherrif which mingles humour with the tragedy. “It was nice to see Andy Devine being given big things to do.” If it has a flaw, it’s an over-literal approach to emotion, an on-the-nose quality, so that if a character is written as wistful, Whale casts the most wistful guy he can get and has him play it wistful. This cuts down on the humanity you get in something like THE MORTAL STORM or (showing here later) LITTLE MAN, WHAT NOW?

10.45am SHERLOCK HOLMES. Kept my seat and let them project another movie at me. This was William K. Howard’s 1931 tongue-in-cheek travesty, with Clive Brook dragging up and Ernest Torrence hamming it up. I’d seen a very fuzzy copy in which it was clear Howard was trying interesting things, mainly montages in between the scripted pages — on the big screen, in splendid quality, his direction seemed even more dazzling. Second John George sighting this fest.

12 DESTINATION UNKNOWN. Early thirties Tay Garnett is a mixed bag, but after HER MAN wowed everyone last year, we had high hopes for this. Visually, it doesn’t deliver anything like the same panache, but it fascinates by its oddness. A semi-wrecked rum-runner drifts aimlessly, becalmed. The gangsters, led by Pat O’Brien’s mild wheedle, have control of the water supply. The sailors, led by Alan Hale’s ridiculous Swedish accent, want to get it. Nobody is sympathetic. Then Ralph Bellamy turns up, effulgent. Everyone seems to think they recognise him — from long ago when they were innocent. A religious parable is clearly being palmed off on us, but we’re also tempted to anticipate the line, “He looks like that guy in the movies, what’s his name, Ralph Bellamy.”

The creepy Jesus pulls off one startling miracle, changing wine into water.

Very spirited work from Chas. Middleton (Ming the Merciless), who actually throws in a dog bark at the end of a line, out of sheer joie de vivre.

Fish and chips for lunch, with Charlie Cockey.

14.15 KINEMACOLOR — running late I missed the explanation of how this miracle process worked, but the results are striking, and became even more so when I remembered to take off my sunglasses.

16.00 I remained in my seat to see MILDRED PIERCE, stunningly restored — better than new? “I’m so smart it’s a disease.”

18.15 THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD. In a way, I was remaining in my seat to see the thing that terrified me on a small black and white screen as a kid. Here it was on a huge colour screen and I was front row centre, looking right up that cyclops’ nose. I guess they’ll never be able to get the grain remotely consistent — that would be remaking, not restoration — the cave entrance, which I assumed was a matte painting, looks very granular indeed, as do the titles. During monster bits, the monsters are much finer-grained than their backgrounds, but oddly the matte shots with tiny Kathryn Grant seem very sharp. All this will be less problematic on a smaller screen and if you’re not front row centre, of course. The efforts to get the film looking as good as it can (faded Eastmancolor negative — the image is now vibrant again) are appreciated.

Dinner with friends Nicky, Sheldon, et al.

22.15 CARBON ARC PROJECTION. More early colour processes, two vintage projectors. Beautiful. I was very tired and snuck away before the end.

The Sunday Intertitle: Backchat

Tay Garnett, based on his terrific autobiography, Light Your Torches and Pull Up Your Tights, could either be said to have led a charmed life — a long and frequently successful career, narrow escapes from death — or an unlucky one — a long and just as frequently UNsuccessful career, narrow escapes from death that left him with serious injuries. The big missed opportunity for me seems to come in the early thirties when, with HER MAN and PRESTIGE, Garnett showed himself to be visually just about the best director in town. The former film is also a very good movie, seemingly inventing a lot of the roughhouse comedy John Ford would come to specialise in.

For whatever reason, Garnett soon tamped down his photographic flamboyance, and made his best-known movies in a more anonymous style. A shame.

But all this made me very curious to see even earlier TG films. The only silent I could source was THE SPIELER, which came heavily recommended by The Chiseler’s Danny Riccuito, who praised its slangy intertitles. Here’s a fairly late silent movie whose title and concept are predicated upon speech, that of a carnival barker, played with characteristic and wearisome ebullience by Alan Hale (above). “You sure print a mean waffle,” he tells Renee Adoree. But it’s the scenes with bad-guy crook Fred Kohler (of UNDERWORLD) that get all the best slang.

“Listen, Red — the twist caught me pinchin’ a pigskin. She aired me.”

It’s forgotten today, but this movie caused a Hollywood-wide apostrophe shortage, so informal were its intertitles.

Maybe my expectations were too high, but sadly THE SPIELER does not supply the wheeling, whooshing and arching camera moves of the Garnett pre-codes. There are a few snazzy bits, but they’re parceled out cautiously in key moments. The good crooks versus bad crooks in a crooked world approach does seem to anticipate the Warners worldview of later years, but I find all that more compelling with actual audible gab. Still, there’s a quaint thrill to be had from a prolonged closeup of Hale moving his lips rapidly, displaying the kind of verbal dexterity a movie of this era simply has to leave to the audience’s imagination.