BACHELOR’S AFFAIRS, a 1932 Fox comedy, woke us up on Monday morning at the aptly-named Cinema Jolly (where the air conditioning now WORKS, making consciousness a joy rather than a distant possibility). It stars Adolph Menjou, Joan Marsh. Minna Gombell, and Alan Dinehart, even funnier and more Matthauesque than he was in THE BRAT. A very witty script and a glamorous deco look — ocean liners and masqued balls, a theme of the festival established in DAINAH LA METISSE, present and correct.
The New Year’s Eve party motif introduced in this one was picked up in the next entry, John Stahl’s silent melo THE WOMAN UNDER OATH, which dressed May McAvoy as a Columbine, a look also on show in CAROSELLO NAPOLETANO. The plot was ludicrous, the performances enjoyably theatrical, the lighting and framing at times extremely striking. Pamela Hutchinson introduced it with aplomb, setting the context admirably.
Getting up at this point seemed all too ambitious, so we experienced the ecstasy of Erik Charell’s CARAVAN again. Our second Charles Boyer film of the fest (he’s an aging roué in LUCKY TO BE A WOMAN, dubbed in Italian, those luscious lips moving much more slowly than the dialogue assigned him). Phillips Holmes is so good they named him twice. Loretta Young received today’s spanking, on horseback no less. Will there be a daily spanking? It’s shaping up that way.
Doing our laundry took longer than expected, but apparently Rene Clair’s LE SILENCE EST D’OR was packed out — Chevalier! — so we’d never have made it. Lovely film, but I have seen it, so I guess it’s less of a heartbreaker than some of the stuff I’ll be missing today…
Luciano Emmer’s LA RAGAZZA IN VETRINA was astonishing, and deserves a big long installment of The Forgotten all to itself — next week, I suspect. Star Marina Vlady, still stunning and charismatic, introduced it in person. Emmer is being retrospected all week, and now we know we must check out as many of the others as possible.
And then we finished with another John Stahl, IMMORTAL SERGEANT, which felt like the ur-text of HOW I WON THE WAR, a British army WWII tale with an unlikely assortment of accents. Featuring Tom Joad, Uncle Billy, Esmeralda, Hilary Aimes, the High Sheriff of Nottingham and a very young Heironymous Merkin.
We were back at the hotel before midnight, for once, and yet again failed to sleep soundly — I never do when traveling, and Fiona has a complicated releationship with sleep at the best of the time. So we’ll be out again today, two happy zombies, caffeinated and confused…
