Present Joys

In my ongoing effort to remember all the movies I watch, here is a list of the things I’ve seen since my last list:

• The Mystery Man, a b-movie from 1935 starring Robert Armstrong as a newspaperman who ends up broke and in an unfamiliar city. Probably the most absurd film I’ve ever seen. The plot was totally incoherent, but it was short and funny.
• Dead End, a 1937 film starring a very young Humphrey Bogart as an unsympathetic gangster who returns to his hometown. Spoiler: everyone hates their lives! It was adapted from a stage play, which means this film was boring as well as depressing!
• The Fallen Idol, a 1948 British film about a murder mystery. Annoying child actor notwithstanding, this was a really great movie. Thrilling and cinematographically attractive.
• The President’s Mystery, a disappointing 1936 movie about a man (Henry Wilcoxon) who fakes his own death. Wilcoxon was great as the lead, but the movie itself is facepalm-inducing New Deal propaganda.
• Hidden Fear, a typical 1957 noir with a twist: it’s set in Denmark. This turns out to not really be a twist, since it’s just like any other mid-50s noir. I just can’t get into cheaply-made noir films from the 50s.
• Les Diaboliques, a classic horror film 1955, in French. Fantastic in every way. Watch it with the lights off.
• Dark City, a thriller from 1950 starring a very young Charlton Heston (who is really a terrible actor) as a stony con man opposite Lizabeth Scott, his sycophantic female companion. Contains gambling and gratuitous cabaret songs! As far as b-movies go, though, this is the best one in the list. Lots of laughs.
• Faust, F.W. Murnau’s classic 1926 silent film. Aesthetically beautiful but very long! Emil Jannings, the actor who played Mephisto, was spectacular.
• Pandora’s Box, a 1929 silent film starring Louise Brooks, who plays an annoying floozy (shocker, huh?!). There are lots of interesting garments to look at, at least.
• Dinner at Eight, a 1933 pre-code drama about upper-middle-class life during the Depression. Lots of great actors: Lionel and John Barrymore, Edmund Lowe, Billie Burke, Marie Dressler! also, the always-awful Jean Harlow. This was an excellent, excellent film, like a black comedy with less comedy and lots more black. Edmund Lowe is an unrepentant womanizer; Billie Burke is too preoccupied with entertaining guests to notice her husband is dying of heart disease; the always-glamorous John Barrymore commits suicide on-screen. Exactly what a pre-code film should be like.

If you haven’t noticed, I watch a lot of old movies, and I’m trying really hard to keep track of them. In chronological order, here’s a list of all the movies I’ve seen in the past month or so:

• The Spanish Cape Mystery, an Ellery Queen mystery film from 1935. Donald Cook played an absolutely fantastic Ellery Queen: suave yet eccentric. Cute plot, glamorous west coast setting, really witty repartee between characters—just what I’d expect from a mid-30s mystery film.
• 5 Steps to Danger, a 1957 thriller featuring the inimitable Sterling Hayden, who wears a big-shouldered odd jacket and drives a cool car across America with a strange woman who may or may not be mentally unstable. The “thriller” component in this movie relies on fear of the Cold War and doesn’t have the same dramatic punch 50 years later. Despite this, it’s worth watching only to see Sterling Hayden Act Like a Man™.
• Black Sheep, a charming 1935 film set on a trans-Atlantic cruise. There are a lot of 30s-cut dinner suits and it is all perfectly glamorous. The fashion kept my interest more than the plot, though, in which Edmund Lowe plays a kind, lonely man who takes a young gambler under his wing. This film was my introduction to Edmund Lowe, who I’ve grown to like quite a lot.
• The Trial, from 1962. What can I say about this one? It’s an Orson Welles adaptation of a Franz Kafka story, so obviously it’s about as weird as it can get. Absolutely stunning cinematography, set design, and storytelling. In addition to directing, Orson Welles also plays a character and does a really great job. The plot is difficult to follow and the end is really unsatisfying, but that shouldn’t scare anybody away.
• The Star, a fantastic 1952 film starring Bette Davis as a washed-up movie star, constantly trying to break back into the limelight. Sterling Hayden plays his usual role of the sensible, dependable man, and is fantastic. Bette Davis’ performance is incredible. Highly recommended.
• Mr. Moto’s Last Warning, from 1939, starring Peter Lorre playing a Japanese detective. The plot centers around interwar European geopolitics and is thus very difficult to follow. Because the film is set in Suez, there are some cool sets, but besides that it wasn’t really worth watching.
• The Hurricane, from 1937, which was so good I wrote a whole post about it.
• Plunderers of Painted Flats, a 1959 western in color! A good reminder why I really don’t like westerns. Edmund Lowe is in this but even that does little to save the boring plot and cheesy, anachronistic costumes.
• Wolf of New York, a 1940 movie starring Edmund Lowe as a crooked lawyer turned honest. There is a funny car chase scene and Edmund Lowe is great throughout. A tender movie about redemption and forgiveness with a tiny bit of intrigue.
• Bulldog Jack, a British thriller from 1935. No real stars except for Fay Wray, but a really cute little adventure movie. More slapstick than I expected it would be, with great characters.
• The Killer is Loose, a 1956 thriller about a boring guy (Wendell Corey) who goes psycho after his wife is killed by a police officer. A really good performance by Corey (who was also in The Big Knife), and, as always, Joseph Cotten was great.
• Diary of a Lost Girl, a German silent film from 1929, starring Louise Brooks. This movie was too long (2 hours), and—even without sound—Louise Brooks, the archetypical flapper, was gross and unappealing. I enjoyed the story, though, and I loved the whole bizarre German silent film aesthetic. Seeing this made me want to watch a bunch more Weimar-era silent films, something I will probably end up doing this summer.