A Head in the Hole

Next time you’re found with your head in the ground
There a lot to be learned, so look around

Just what makes that little ostrich
Think he can get his own head lost, which
Anyone knows that nerd bird
Can’t just hide, it’s absurd.

But he’s got high hopes, he’s got high hopes
He’s got high apple pie, in the sky hopes.

(With apologies to James Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn.)

We knew we liked Carolyn Jones a whole lot, but seeing Frank Capra’s A HOLE IN THE HEAD confirmed just how much. It’s a somewhat misbegotten venture, though the fact that it’s the only post-WONDERFUL LIFE feature that’s not a remake of a glory-days hit made me suspect it might have higher hopes than RIDING HIGH or POCKETFUL OF MIRACLES. What it shares with those films is bloat — no way does this slight story need to be two hours long. I feel like Capra was working so infrequently he tended to get clenched and self-important when he DID make a film, and this might have been a decent throwaway 90 minute job if he didn’t have his reputation for importance to think about.

Also, any film with that title and Sinatra and Edward G. Robinson in the leads ought to be a gangster comedy. The title might have worked on Broadway for Arnold Schulman’s play but as soon as you load the cast with hood actors…

There’s some good dialogue and the cast all perform OK but at about half the speed required. Only Keenan Wynn (ably assisted by Joi Lansing and her important breasts) picks up the pace and energy to 1930s levels. But Jones brings something else: eccentricity and even eeriness. In his (very) critical biography, Joseph McBride notes that Capra should have noticed that HERE is where his film was. It’s like Angela Scoular walking off with A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG, seemingly without Chaplin noticing.

Main problem with this gag is Sinatra can’t do pratfalls, necessitating THREE ruinous cuts to get the stuntman in and out…

Jones has it all worked out. She can’t make much of an impression driving through Miami in a sub-Vorkapich montage (as early as MR DEEDS GOES TO TOWN montage editor Don Siegel lamented Capra’s devotion to dated techniques — I don’t see it as that dated in 1936, though I wasn’t there, but by 1959 it’s certainly retro). When Capra shamelessly recycles a Harry Langdon gag with an unconscious Jones, she can’t contribute much. But nearly every other shot is a blinder. Here they are, mostly ~

And that is all I have to say.

A HOLE IN THE HEAD stars Danny Ocean; Dr. Clitterhouse; the Baroness; Morticia Addams; Moe Williams; Col. ‘Bat’ Guano; Boots Malone; Documentary Couple; Wainscoat; and Abe Vogel.

And Still They Dance, To The End of Time

NOTE: The Late Show: The Late Movies Blogathon is not over — as befits its title, I accept (nay, welcome!) late entries, and have a few of my own lined up. Starting here:

I sort of recommend watching A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG on a double bill with THE SHINING. As Kubrick’s spooky hotel seems time-warped back to the twenties, housing a whole temporally displaced dead population from that era, who eternally party, so Chaplin’s tuxedoed waltzers at the start and finish titles seem like refugees from the past — Chaplin wrote the treatment in the thirties as a vehicle for then-squeeze Paulette Goddard — presumably with himself in the Brando role. Now Sophia Loren is the Countess and times have changed, or have they?

Intermittently mildly funny, but mostly just damned odd, this isn’t, to me, an unpleasant watch, but it’s a very queer one. Brando seems to have entered the picture with high hopes that this would finally be his successful comedy (with a master like Chaplin in charge, how could it not?). In fact, he’s funnier in BEDTIME STORY — also, Brando’s sense of humour is that he’s a goof, a face-puller, a prankster. Deadpan sophisticated farce isn’t quite his thing, but he enjoys his few moments of silliness — panicking at the door buzzer every five minutes — and the brazen vulgarity, of which there is much — belching, gargling, sea-sickness, and the unspeakable threat of toilet noises.

Loren, who can do anything and is VERY funny in YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW, is similarly patchy, managing some good physical stuff in a succession of outsized pajamas and dresses which deliberately recall her director’s baggy pants. But the film also veers into melancholy melodrama and she seems slightly more comfortable there.

Brando apparently grew to hate his director, focussing his outrage on Chaplin’s perceived mistreatment of son Sydney, who’s quite good in an undercharacterized supporting role. Syd didn’t feel bullied at all, and thought Dad was just trying to help him be good. It feels like Brando withdraws a bit as the film goes on: he did have a tendency to stop trying when he didn’t feel appreciated or lost enthusiasm for a project.

The same can’t be said for the magnificent Angela Scoular, who is consistently funny regardless of whether she has any comedy material to work with. Sadly, she only makes three little appearances and her role goes nowhere, plotwise. It’s Chaplin’s last film but her first, proving his eye for talent (and the ladies) had not deserted him. Also present, supporting Margaret Rutherford’s all-too brief turn, are Monty Python muse Carol Cleveland and a trio of Chaplin daughters, including Geraldine, who nails her cameo and gets a laugh with a lot less obvious caricature than the ebullient Scoular.

(Scoular could and should have been the sexy version of Joyce Grenfell.)

The movie isn’t spooky like THE SHINING but there is something a bit disconcerting about its time-warped wrongness. It feels a little like a tribute to TRADE WINDS, the film Tay Garnett was shooting location stuff for when he bumped into the Chaplins in Hong Kong. I’m almost convinced Garnett blabbed about his plot and Chaplin made a mental note to swipe it. By the time he got around to it, the story had moved on but so had the world, and in opposite directions.