THE PHILADELPHIA STORY - Review by Greg Klymkiw - Dazzling Cukor Dazzling Criterion

The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Starring: Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, James Stewart, John Howard
Ply. Philip Barry
Scr. Donald Ogden Stewart
Dir. George Cukor

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There are three significant men in the romantic life of socialite Tracy Lord (Katherine Hepburn). Born into wealth and privilege, she's dumped the irascible rich boy/playboy C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant) and has rushed into the complacency of marrying George Kittredge (John Howard), the dweeb-ish self-made millionaire.

But, there is a dark horse for her affections charging across the horizon of romance.

Tracy, however, is a force to be reckoned with - perhaps one of the most dazzling, significant female characters in the entire history of Hollywood romantic screwball comedies. Each of these men adore and appreciate her, but for very different reasons. It's these reasons, or rather, declarations, that brilliantly say as much about the individual male characters, as they do about Tracy herself.

Tracy is a walking, talking, living, breathing contradiction. In that sense, she's a full-blooded human being - one we could all do well aspiring to.

Perhaps the most interesting observation comes from Macauley "Mike" Connor (James Stewart), the reporter charged with Tracy's upcoming high society wedding. He's as full of contradiction about Tracy as Tracy is herself when he says (during one of the most romantic/funny scenes in movie history):

"You're wonderful. There's a magnificence in you, Tracy... a magnificence that comes out of your eyes, in your voice, in the way you stand there, in the way you walk. You're lit from within, Tracy. You've got fires banked down in you, hearth-fires and holocausts... No, you're made out of flesh and blood. That's the blank, unholy surprise of it. You're the golden girl, Tracy. Full of life and warmth and delight."

Ah, but the man she is about to marry, sees no real mystery. He declares:

"You're like some marvelous, distant, well, queen, I guess. You're so cool and fine and always so much your own. There's a kind of beautiful purity about you, Tracy, like, like a statue."

A statue? Uh, she's really going to marry this clown? He likens her to an inanimate object - albeit an objet d'art, but an object nonetheless. Worse yet, Kittredge adds that it's these inanimate qualities that "... I first worshipped you for from afar".

Tracy's having none of it:

"I don't want to be worshipped," she declares. "I want to be loved."

It's the philandering scoundrel C.K. Dexter Haven who seems to nail Tracy to the cross of self-discovery when he charges:

"You'll never be a first class human being or a first class woman until you've learned to have some regard for human frailty."

Dexter's quips, as rendered so cuttingly by the epitome of romantic male leads, Cary Grant, cut especially deep. This one in particular gets to the core of Tracy's journey throughout the film, an odyssey in which she learns that class, in all the meanings of the word, should intimately be all about examining and accepting the frailties of all humanity (including one's own).

In so doing, love is indeed the ultimate goal, but that's the genius of this film. We're not just talking about romantic love, but love and acceptance in all its forms. Directed within an inch of its life by the peerless George Cukor and gorgeously adapted by Donald Ogden Stewart from Philip Barry's hit play, The Philadelphia Story has all the nuttiness, romance and machine-gun-fire dialogue one would want from the genre. However, it goes that extra distance. It has heart, soul and the kind of intelligence that makes it universal.

The picture might have been made in 1940, but it speaks to all ages for all time.

I guess that's why they call 'em masterpieces.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** (5-Stars)

The Philadelphia Story is available on a gorgeous Criterion Collection Blu-Ray that includes a new 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray, an audio commentary from 2005 featuring film scholar Jeanine Basinger, In Search of Tracy Lord, a new documentary about the origin of the character and her social milieu, a new piece about actor Katharine Hepburn’s role in the development of the film, two full episodes of The Dick Cavett Show from 1973, featuring rare interviews with Hepburn, plus an excerpt of a 1978 interview from that show with director George Cukor, the Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of the film from 1943, featuring an introduction by filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille, a restoration demonstration, the trailer and an essay by critic Farran Smith Nehme.

REBECCA - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Hitchcock/Selznick Classic on the Criterion Collection

Joan Fontaine, Laurence Olivier, Judith Anderson
in creepy crawly Hitchcock/Selznick romance.

Rebecca (1940)
Dir. Alfred Hitchcock
Prd. David O. Selznick
Nvl. Daphne du Maurier
Scr. Robert E. Sherwood, Joan Harrison
Starring: Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, Judith Anderson,
George Sanders, Gladys Cooper, Nigel Bruce

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"She was incapable of love or tenderness or decency." - Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca

Rebecca is a creepy-crawly romance. Make no mistake, though - it is indeed a romance, but damn (!), the picture makes your flesh squirm and the cherry on the sundae is that it's often so suspenseful that you occasionally feel like being one big screaming-sissy-pants-baby.

There aren't many American feature films as great as this one - it's in a class all its own. The finished product is the result of easily the most combustible producer-director partnerships in movie history. Auteur American producer David O. Selznick (Gone With The Wind) teamed up with auteur British director Alfred Hitchcock to adapt the wildly best-selling gothic romance novel by Daphne du Maurier and in so doing, yielded a film that was as modern and sophisticated for its period that has also stood the test of time - so well, that it's still more dazzlingly original than most films made these days, or for that matter - ever!

Hitchcock, however, seemed to downplay the worth of Rebecca, going so far as to say that "it's not really a Hitchcock film", but rather David O. Selznick's picture. Hitch couldn't have been more wrong, though. The movie is pure Hitchcock. He just didn't realize it.

The story that unfurls is one of obsession and on the surface, pure gothic romance. When the ultra-rich widower Max de Winter (Laurence Olivier) meets a plain, nameless (yes, nameless!) travelling companion (Joan Fontaine) at a Mediterranean seaside resort, he falls madly in love with her and whisks the young woman off to be his wife and preside over his mansion Manderley. Of course, the rambling old estate is haunted - mostly by the lingering memories (and perhaps even the ghost) of de Winter's dead first wife Rebecca.

Once ensconced in the stately manse, Max is often busy with business matters and it's up to his fresh new wife to take up her duties as "lady of the house". This is easier said than done. The house is still adorned with all the touches bestowed upon it by the late Rebecca (who died tragically in a boating accident on the raging seas that the mansion overlooks). Even her bedroom, with all its clothing and accoutrements has been preserved as she left it the night she died.

The creepy old housekeeper Mrs. Danvers (the chillingly dour Judith Anderson) does everything she can to remind the young woman what a pale shade she is to the deceased former lady of the house. The new bride assumes Max wants her to replace Rebecca, but in actuality, the title character, as we are reminded constantly, can never really be replaced. If the young bride is to keep both her sanity and her new husband, she needs to create herself in her own image, not that of a dead woman.

As the film progresses, more and more hints are dropped that things, as they so often are in life, are never what they seem. Madness, infidelity and, perhaps, murder most foul lurk in ever dark corner and the picture stealthily makes its way to a climax that is as nail-bitingly suspenseful as it is wildly and gloriously romantic.

This was indeed a great producer-director collaboration. Many of Selznick's instincts about the material were right and he insisted upon fidelity to the original writing of Daphne Du Maurier - something Hitchcock had a clear distaste for, but ultimately acquiesced to. Good thing. What this resulted in was not only a great picture, but whether Hitchcock could ever admit it or not, Rebecca proved to be an important transition picture in his development as a filmmaker and led the way to his rich period during the 50s and eventually gave way to the other great and perfect tale of obsession, Vertigo. I'd go so far as to suggest that without Selznick, Vertigo might have never eventually happened, or at least not as successfully.

Selznick was a filmmaker. A real filmmaker. So too was Hitchcock. The combination was explosive, but yielded a work of lasting value.

Rebecca is available on a new Criterion Collection Blu-Ray/DVD and easily one of the greatest home entertainment triumphs in years. This stunning new 4K digital restoration of the Hitchcock/Selznick classic features an audio commentary from 1990 featuring film scholar Leonard J. Leff, an isolated music and effects track, a new conversation between film critic and author Molly Haskell and scholar Patricia White, a new interview with film historian Craig Barron on Rebecca’s visual effects, Daphne du Maurier: In the Footsteps of “Rebecca,” an extraordinary 2016 French television documentary, a making-of documentary from 2007, footage of screen, hair, makeup, and costume tests for actors Joan Fontaine, Anne Baxter, Vivien Leigh, Margaret Sullavan and Loretta Young, a casting gallery with notes by director Alfred Hitchcock and producer David O. Selznick, Hitchcock interviewed by Tom Snyder on a 1973 episode of NBC’s Tomorrow, a Tomorrow interview with Fontaine from 1980, audio interviews from 1986 with actor Judith Anderson and Fontaine, three radio versions of Rebecca, from 1938, 1941, and 1950, including Orson Welles’s adaptation of the novel for the Mercury Theatre, the theatrical rerelease trailer, an essay by critic and Selznick biographer David Thomson and selected Selznick production correspondence, including with Hitchcock and on the box, a gorgeous cover painting by Robert Hunt.

HIS GIRL FRIDAY and THE FRONT PAGE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Legendary Newspaper Comedies from Howard Hawks & Lewis Milestone - perfect Criterion Collection bedfellows.

The Criterion Collection Blu/Ray and DVD release of His Girl Friday is an extra-special treat for lovers of the great Ben Hecht/Charles MacArthur play The Front Page. It's two for the price of one. Lewis Milestone's 1931 original + gender-substituting 1940 screwball romance by Howard Hawks.

Bickering reporters in love!!!
What a difference a decade makes!!!

The Front Page (1931)
Dir. Lewis Milestone
Starring: Adolphe Menjou, Pat O'Brien, Mary Brian, Mae Clark, Frank McHugh,
Edward Everett Horton, Slim Summerville, Clarence Wilson, George E. Stone,
Frank McHugh, Maurice Black, Clarence H. Wilson, Gustav von Seyffertitz

His Girl Friday (1940)
Dir. Howards Hawks
Scr. Charles Lederer
Ply. Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur
Starring: Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy, Alma Kruger,
John Qualen, Helen Mack, Gene Lockhart, Clarence Kolb, Abner Biberman

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Everyone knows and loves the Howard Hawks-directed screwball romantic comedy His Girl Friday, a great picture about shady Chicago editor Walter Burns (Cary Grant) and his attempts to keep ace reporter Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell) from getting married and leaving the newspaper business just as a big story is breaking; the hanging of a convicted murderer (John Qualen) who claims innocence, escapes and hides in the courthouse press room.

Of course, Walter loves Hildy and deep down she loves him too. If anything, Walter's real modus operandi is to scuttle the marriage of Hildy to her straight-laced fiancé played by Ralph Bellamy.

Not to put too fine of a point on it, but His Girl Friday is probably the best romantic comedy of all time - bar none. The writing is first-rate, the dialogue sizzles with the top-of-the line proficiency of a T-fal full-immersion deep fryer, said dialogue is paced (and spat out by the pitch-perfect cast) with the velocity of a Belgian BRG-15 machine gun and the sturdy direction of Howard Hawks keeps most of the action to his solid, almost-trademark eye-level medium shots and longer takes with minimal cuts, respecting the frame like a proscenium that can occasionally be molded and moved when necessary.

This is filmmaking that has seldom been matched. These days, most comedies try to pathetically replicate what Hawks created so brilliantly by resorting to dull TV-style sit-com shot-coverage that's been unceremoniously goosed by ADHD back-and-forth editing. They're not fooling anyone - save for boneheads.

Make no mistake: His Girl Friday is dazzling, romantic and thrillingly original.

It didn't come first, though.

Walter loves Hildy. Hildy loves Walter.

The grand love story twixt Walter and Hildy hit the silver screen in a decidedly different version nearly a decade earlier than the Hawks masterpiece.

How many of you are familiar with The Front Page (1931)?

Based on the hit play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur and directed by Lewis (All Quiet on the Western Front) Milestone, it's a great picture about shady Chicago editor Walter Burns (Adolphe Menjou) and his attempts to keep ace reporter Hildy Johnson (Pat O'Brien) from getting married and leaving the newspaper business just as a big story is breaking; the hanging of a convicted murderer (George E. Stone) who claims innocence, escapes and hides in the courthouse press room.

Walter loves Hildy and deep down he loves him too.

YES!!! HE LOVES HIM, TOO!!!

If anything, Walter's real modus operandi is to scuttle the marriage of Hildy to his straight-laced fiancé played by Mary Brian.

Bro-o-o-omance, nothing really gay about it
Not, that there's anything wrong with being gay
Ay-ay-ay!
Bromance ,
Shouldn't be ashamed or hide it
I love you in the most heterosexual way.
- Chester See & Ryan Higa

Even though The Front Page falls within the relaxed pre-Code days and all manner of not-so-subtle homoeroticism could have crept into the film, this is never the intent (well, not mostly). The Front Page might well be the first BRO-mance in American cinema. Manly Walter and Hildy have no intention of sucking face or slamming their respective schwances up each other's Hershey Highways (though if given half the chance, they might). But nay, no corn-holing on the immediate horizon.

They love each other, like men - REAL MEN! And not to disparage homoeroticism at all, but to describe Walter and Hildy's love, allow me to present a few more lyrics from the See/Higa song:

If I loved you more I might be a gay
And when I'm feeling down
You know just what to say
You my homie,
Yeah you know me
And if you ever need a wingman
I'd let any girl blow me off
Cuz you're more important than the rest.

And that, in a nutshell (as it were), describes the manly love of The Front Page.

Milestone's film, produced by Howard Hughes, is a picture many have tried to watch (myself included) in the decades following its original release. Alas, it was almost impossible to sit through. The movie fell into public domain and was duped and duped and duped, again and again, from dupes made from dupes and then from other dupes, so many times over the years, that inferior copies had a clear effect upon making the picture seem creaky and vaguely unwatchable.

Not anymore. With this restoration we can now delight in what really makes this picture tick. And boy, does it tick. Like a time bomb and then some. (As a special bonus, the Criterion restoration comes from a recently discovered print of director Lewis Milestone’s preferred version - WOW!)

In the play, all of the action takes place in the courthouse press room. Director Milestone and screenwriters Bartlett Cormack and Charles Lederer (the latter being the scenarist responsible for His Girl Friday) stay relatively true to the play, but occasionally open things up, but only in the most naturalistic manner. The dialogue blasts a few million miles per second and the milieu is appropriately grungy, replete with plenty of garbage strewn about and clouds of cigarette smoke.

The cast is full of terrific character actor mugs, wrapping their lips around the sharp-edged lines with all the snap, crackle and pop money could by. These men are inveterate bad husbands, gamblers, drunks, lice of the highest order, BUT they are great journalists, laying in wait for the kill like a pack of hyenas.

Milestone's camera brilliantly captures the claustrophobic atmosphere of the setting without choking us on theatrical sawdust. His camera moves deftly and fluidly, but when he needs to, he lets it sit to let the great dialogue do the talking - knowing full well that there's nothing more cinematic than scintillating banter. On stage, the importance of the telephones connected to the reporters' various outlets could not be stressed enough, but with Milestone's direction, it's not only paramount, but his coverage of moments when the men all grab the phones has the rat-a-tat-tat power of automatic gunfire.

Walter loves Hildy. Hildy loves Walter.

Pat O'Brien, who spent most of his career as a happy go lucky Irishman and/or priest, gets a rare opportunity here to indulge in his manner-than-manly qualities as Hildy. The dapper Adolphe Menjou is easily matched with Cary Grant's eventual shot at the role of the scurrilous newspaper editor Walter Burns. A supporting standout is the persnickety Edward Everett Horton as the fey reporter with a cleanliness fixation. Mary Brian acquits herself beautifully as O'Brien's lady in love and Mae Clark (known as the Baron's wife in James Whale's Frankenstein and as the moll whom Chaney pulverizes in the face with a grapefruit in The Public Enemy delivers one of the film's best performances as Molly Malloy, the hapless hooker with a heart of gold who desperately attempts to protect the innocent killer. She's so moving, it's hard not to get choked up over her selflessness and kindness.

Where The Front Page really crackles is its deeply black humour and satirical jabs at the entire business of both the media and politics. One hilariously nasty scene has reporter Frank McHugh questioning a woman victimized by a Peeping Tom while all the other guys in the press room bellow out catcalls and lewd, rude remarks. Another scene has a boneheaded Austrian psychiatrist (a great little cameo by Gustav von Seyffertitz) ordered to do a final examination of the falsely convicted killer. He wants the killer to recreate his crime and moronically requests the sheriff's gun (who even more moronically gives it up) and then hands the loaded pistol to the condemned man who, partially in fear and partially under hypnosis, fills the court-appointed psychiatrist full of lead. Even more hilarious is when Walter gets his hired thug Diamond Lou (a deliciously sleazy Maurice Black) to kidnap Hildy's future mother-in-law to keep her trap shut when she discovers the secret behind the big scoop the boys are onto.

Bitingly funny and oddly prescient is the fact that the poor condemned man is being railroaded by the Mayor and Sheriff to garner the African-American vote since the murder victim was one of Chicago's very few Black police officers. Neither clearly cares about any of this, save for getting re-elected. To see a film 85 years old, a comedy no less, dealing with such charged political material makes one realize just how bad and empty most comedies are today.

Dark political humour aside, The Front Page, like its gender-switching remake His Girl Friday IS about love: love for the newspaper business, love for the company of other men and most of all, love between Walter and Hildy. Don't get me wrong, though. The Front Page allows us not one, but two cakes that we can have and eat too: male-female romance in addition to the aforementioned manly BRO-mantic hijinx. That said, the machinations of Walter Burns to keep Hildy Johnson in the newspaper business, as well as a remarkable scene where the two men begin to reminisce about all their adventures together, IS downright warm, funny AND romantic.

For those who know and love His Girl Friday, The Front Page makes a lovely companion piece. You might even learn to love it just as much. (I know I do.) If you don't know either of the films, watch Milestone's film first, then the Hawks and then, cherish BOTH forever.

THE FILM CORNER RATING:
(Both Films and the Criterion Blu-Ray/DVD) ***** 5 Stars

The Criterion Collection Blu-Ray and (if you must) DVD of His Girl Friday (and, yes, The Front Page in the same package) might well be one of the best home entertainment releases of the new millennium. It is replete with the standard Criterion bells and whistles including a new high-definition digital restoration of His Girl Friday (like The Front Page, it also fell into public domain and needed major sprucing up), an uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray, a new 4K digital restoration of The Front Page, made from a recently discovered print of director Lewis Milestone’s preferred version, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack, a new interview with film scholar David Bordwell about His Girl Friday, archival interviews with Howard Hawks, featurettes from 1999 and 2006 about Hawks, actor Rosalind Russell, and the making of His Girl Friday, a radio adaptation of His Girl Friday from 1940, radio adaptations of the play The Front Page from 1937 and 1946 (one of which stars the legendary Walter Winchell), a new piece about the restoration of The Front Page, a new piece about playwright and screenwriter Ben Hecht, trailers, essays and gorgeous new cover art by Randy Glass.

There is one mild disappointment here.

In 2015, Kino-Lorber released a fine Blu-Ray of The Front Page. It included two extras that I wish Criterion had tried to spring for including on this disc. Firstly, there was a great little documentary about the Library of Congress film restoration program, but secondly, and perhaps most importantly, the Kino release features one of the best commentary tracks I've heard in years for any classic motion picture. Filmmaker, historian and home entertainment producer Bret Wood delivers a track that's entirely free of the usual crap on these things: no stupid anecdotal stuff, tons of great info about the film that even I didn't know before (and that takes some doing) and I thoroughly appreciated the variety of sources he uses (including whether they're corroborated or not). Wood's track is not only superbly researched, but his delivery is also terrific: clear, enthusiastic, but without sounding like a fanboy and NOT (thank God) sounding dry and academic.

REMEMBER THE NIGHT - Review By Greg Klymkiw - - The TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX series "Ball of Fire: The Films of Barbara Stanwyck". Curated by TIFF Senior Programmer James Quandt.

Remember The Night (1940)
Dir. Mitchell Leisen
Scr. Preston Sturges
Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, Fred McMurray, Beulah Bondi, Sterling Holloway, Elizabeth Patterson, Georgia Caine

Review By Greg Klymkiw

A fine script from Preston Sturges, solid Mitchell Leisen direction and an undeniably wonderful cast are what keep this It Happened One Night wannabe reasonably diverting. This ball of well-used yarn involves an inveterate kleptomaniac (Stanwyck) and the State Prosecutor (Fred McMurray) who's determined to bring her to justice. The picture then blossoms into an unlikely romance on the road.

All the requisite romantic comedy tropes of the period merge with Sturges's signature American Renoir microscope upon the values of middle class America as McMurray's character brings his criminal charge to spend the holidays with his family upstate, only to face an eventual conflict of interest when the reality of throwing the book at her legally, looms its ugly head.

This charmingly familiar item adds to the pantheon of Old Hollywood Christmas movies. Even in 1940, though, it must have felt a tad derivative, but there's no denying its first-rate entertainment value.

The Film Corner Rating: *** 3-Stars

Remember The Night plays Sunday, February 22 at 3:15 p.m. at TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX in James Quandt's amazing series "Ball of Fire: The Films of Barbara Stanwyck". The film is presented in 35mm. For further info, visit the TIFF website HERE. The film is also available on DVD and Blu-Ray via Universal Pictures replete with a phenomenal set of extra features. As well, there are many other Stanwyck films from this TIFF series which can be ordered directly below and, if so, you'll be contributing to the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner.

In Canada - BUY Barbara Stanwyck Movies HERE, eh!

In Canada - BUY Remember the Night HERE, eh!

In USA and the rest of the WORLD - BUY Barbara Stanwyck movies - HERE!

In USA and the rest of the WORLD - BUY Remember The Night - HERE!

In the UNITED KINGDOM - BUY Barbara Stanwyck Movies - HERE!

In the UNITED KINGDOM - BUY Remember The Night - HERE!

DR. CYCLOPS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Fun addition to work of great fantasy-adventure director Ernest B. Schoedsack

Dr. Cyclops (1940) dir. Ernest B. Schoedsack
Starring: Albert Dekker, Thomas Coley, Janice Logan

***1/2

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The director of Dr. Cyclops, Ernest B. Schoedsack, had a life that rivaled the adventures experienced by many of the characters that populated his motion pictures.

At the age of 12, Schoedsack ran away from home. By the age of 17, he was a motion picture cameraman for the legendary comedy producer Mack Sennett. At the tender age of 23, he joined the signal corps as a cinematographer and spent much of World War I in the thick of the most horrendous battles, photographing their every detail. After the armistice was signed, he paired up with another young adventurer (Merian C. Cooper) and the two of them became involved in the anti-Bolshevik movement in Russia, Ukraine and Poland.

And this was all before he became the groundbreaking director of some of cinema’s greatest adventures.

While it’s not necessary to know the breadth of Schoedsack’s considerable life experience in order to enjoy his motion pictures, there’s something that’s both moving and admirable to know that adventure fantasies such as King Kong, The Four Feathers, The Last Days of Pompeii and The Most Dangerous Game came from an imagination that was tempered with having seen and done so much as a young man. Schoedsack’s work is imbued with a sense of wonder, adventure and, most importantly, exploration. What’s especially amazing about Schoedsack’s work on Dr. Cyclops is realizing that it was made in 1940.

1940!!!

Schoedsack, endowed as he was with a great eye and a knack for special effects was – to put it mildly – one hell of a photographer and filmmaker. His work in this picture laid the visual groundwork (as Kong most certainly did) for generations of films and filmmakers to follow.

Dr. Cyclops is the fun and thrilling tale of a truly mad scientist (deliciously and brilliantly portrayed by the bald and coke-bottle-lensed Albert Dekker) who uses radium to shrink people and animals alike in a crazed attempt to rule the world. The picture not only features staggeringly gorgeous three-strip Technicolor photography, but a variety of eye-popping special effects that, for their day, would have knocked people on their buttocks and which are, even by today’s standards, quite magical.

The heroes and heroines of the piece pale, of course, beside the tragically obsessive central character who is both literally and figuratively blinded – as the title even implies – but this too is par for the course in a sci-fi melodrama on the scale of this one, and while familiar, it fits comfortably like a comfy, old sweater.

Dr. Cyclops is not the masterpiece that King Kong was, but in its own special way, it was definitely ahead of its time in terms of both special effects and political/historical considerations and it amply provides solid entertainment to anyone who loves genre pictures. The picture’s exploration of a “foreign” enemy wanting to experiment upon and ultimately subjugate American interests also pre-dates that attitudes so prevalent over one decade later during the sci-fi pictures made during the Cold War.

Dr. Cyclops is a most welcome addition to the second volume of Universal’s magnificent DVD box-set entitled The Classic Sci-Fi Ultimate Collection. It’s a gorgeous transfer of a fine little picture and while it’s certainly worth renting, the price point on this box is so reasonable that fans would be well advised to just buy it.

CHARLIE CHAN and the genius of Norman Foster - forgotten auteur: Reviews By Greg Klymkiw of CHARLIE CHAN IN RENO, CHARLIE CHAN AT TREASURE ISLAND & CHARLIE CHAN IN PANAMA

A CINEMATIC 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS, EASTERN-RITE NATIVITY AND FEAST OF THE EPIPHANY: Join me in this special celebration of cinema as each day I will be publishing a review in honour of this season of good will and focusing on films and filmmakers who have made a contribution to both the human spirit and the art of film.

For the NINTH DAY OF CHRISTMAS, Klymkiw Film Corner gives to you…

WHO THE HELL IS NORMAN FOSTER? You dare even ask? Well, it wouldn't surprise me. Norman Foster was, without question, one of the most overlooked and underrated directors of American cinema.

Foster began his career as an actor - a dashing light leading man who was married to the ravishing Claudette Colbert until the mid-1930s when they divorced and he turned his attention to directing. Foster was a natural on the set and as a contract director at 20th Century Fox he sometimes delivered up to five feature films per year.

Foster's richest output was for Fox and the studio's wonderful "Mr. Moto" series which featured Peter Lorre (a Hungarian-Jew) as the Asian adventurer-sleuth. Lorre utilized his natural odd looks to such good effect in the title role of that series, that many have mistakenly assumed his eyes were taped back to give them and Oriental slant and that he'd been outfitted with a magnificent set of gleaming buck-tooth choppers. Foster's direction of this series of films was crisp and often thrilling. He reinvented the second feature mystery thriller by imbuing his hero with the personality and prowess of an adventurer. (One sees many Foster touches in the works of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.)

When Warner Oland, the beloved star of Fox's hit Asian sleuth series "Charlie Chan", died after a long illness, the studio needed to find some way to keep the successful franchise going. They hired Sidney Toler to replace Oland and after a successful debut, Fox looked at the stellar box office of the "Mr. Moto" series - a result of Norman Foster's thrilling direction - and they brought the dashing stylist on board for the second Chan of the Toler era and then, several others.

Foster proved to be the right man for the job. He infused life into the old chestnut and also contributed to making a huge star of Sidney Toler.

Foster's career after being Fox's go-to guy for Oriental sleuth thrillers was equally stellar and one wonders why he's been forgotten.

It’s possible Foster has been passed over for serious critical scrutiny and regard because much of his work was buried within the world of second features of the 1930s and 1940s. It might also be due to rumours that it was Orson Welles who designed and mostly directed (un-credited) the noir classic "Journey Into Fear". Welles was the star and Foster is officially credited with directing and while Welles’s influence in that picture is obvious, one can easily look at Norman Foster’s early work in the Fox second features he directed, note his exciting use of low-key stylings and crisp pacing and furthermore argue that he was possibly one of the many influences Welles himself "borrowed" from with both skill and abandon.

Welles denied he had anything to do with directing "Journey Into Fear", but still the rumours persisted. Given that Welles was working at RKO, a studio noted for its many low budget efforts, it's not a stretch to assume he had his eye on the work of someone like Foster who created veritable mountain chains out of ant hills - using a myriad of in-camera effects and opticals to extend the scope of his pictures. Foster, in turn and no doubt, had his eye on Welles. In fact, one could even argue that after his terrific work in "Journey into Fear", Foster’s direction of the great noir-ish melodrama "Woman on the Run" might well have given Alfred Hitchcock an idea or two for "Strangers On A Train."

In later years, Foster was responsible for directing a lot of extremely cool television drama in the 50s and 60s including a huge number of live television dramas, "The Loretta Young Show", Disney’s fantastic "Davy Crockett" dramatic specials with Fess Parker, the thrilling Disney "Zorro" series and he even dabbled in directing episodes of "Batman" with Adam West and "The Green Hornet" with a very young Bruce Lee as Kato.

Norman Foster, to my mind, is a great and unfairly neglected talent.

Here then, for your pleasure and interest are a few reviews of Norman Foster's entries in the magnificent series of mysteries that featured everyone's favourite epigram-spouting detective of the Oriental persuasion - CHARLIE CHAN!

Charlie Chan in Reno (1939) dir. Norman Foster
Starring: Sidney Toler, Ricardo Cortez, Phyllis Brooks

***

By Greg Klymkiw

Reno, Nevada.

What a glorious setting for a movie.

It was also the setting for many a divorce when our parents and their parents’ parents and their parents' parents' parents needed a quickie nuptial-severance in that fine, old age when family values ruled over the more modern conceits of me-first selfishness. Even in those days, though, divorce, while less common than in contemporary times, was a reality and Reno was the town to do it - in the middle of nowhere, away from prying eyes and remote enough to avoid the shame and scandal of attacking the vestiges of Holy Matrimony.

Charlie Chan in Reno was officially the second entry in Fox’s Charlie Chan series reboot starring Warner Oland’s replacement Sidney Toler. It also happened to be Norman Foster’s first kick at the directorial Chan-can and the picture's definitely a fun little mystery with Chas and Number Two Son amidst a bunch of hot babes in Reno waiting to make their divorces legal. It’s a bit like George Cukor’s The Women, but with lots of laughs and dollops of suspense.

Plot-wise, it's simple stuff. Against the seedy backdrop of furtive divorce, one of the aforementioned babes is accused of murder and it’s up to Chas to wade through the massive number of other suspects to find the true killer.

The cast is first-rate. Toler delivers his epigrams and theories with considerable Cheshire-Cat-like aplomb while [Victor] Sen Yung as Number Two Son Jimmy stumbles and bumbles his way through Reno with his usual comic flair. In support of our leads, there are a number of terrific performances – mostly of the comic variety. Slim Summerville, the wonderful character actor who is most memorable in films like All Quiet on the Western Front, The Front Page and the numerous silent and sound comedies he appeared in, stars as the irascible and often befuddled Sheriff Tombstone, a local Reno law enforcer who can’t make head nor tail out of the methods of the sly Asian dick. He's an inbred hick Inspector Lestrade to a poker-faced Asian Holmes.

Also gracing the screen is comic stalwart Eddie Collins as a dopey cab driver whose gift for gab is, for most of his clientele anyway, a curse, not a blessing. The bevy of beauties adorning the picture include the earnest, but gorgeous suspect Pauline Moore, the slobber-inducing guttersnipe murder victim Louise Henry, the ravishing Phyllis Brooks and the sultry Kay Linaker (who in the 50s would write the screenplay for the classic creature feature The Blob).

While this picture is blessed with Foster’s visual panache, it’s a bit closer to the earlier Chan pictures and doesn’t reach the dizzying heights that would follow in Charlie Chan at Treasure Island. Foster appears to be getting his sea-legs with the series. In spite of this, it's still a terrifically entertaining mystery and like much of Foster's work, never feels like the second feature it was meant to be.

Like many of the Fox second features directed by Foster, it’s A-list entertainment all the way.

Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (1939) dir. Norman Foster
Starring: Sidney Toler, Victor Sen Young, Cesar Romero

***1/2

By Greg Klymkiw

Norman Foster directed this third entry in Fox’s Charlie Chan series reboot and this is one of the best of all the Chan pictures. Charlie Chan at Treasure Island, starring Sidney Toler, the man who filled Warner Oland’s shoes when Oland died, is an extremely cool mystery set against the backdrop of the San Francisco International Exposition wherein our venerable Asian detective investigates the death of one of his best friends.

Charlie’s sleuthing leads him into the mysterious world of magicians, psychics and other eccentrics of San Francisco high society. With the help of Number Two Son (the wonderful Sen Yung) and a magician (played with high camp flair by Cesar Romero), this is a really juicy mystery thriller with many moments of genuine suspense.

This is no surprise. Foster’s direction in the Toler Chan films really injects life into the series and they rival and at times, downright beat even some of the better Chan films from the Warner Oland period. This film, in particular, moves like a speeding bullet and it's probably one of the earliest serial killer movies.

The Fox Cinema Classics Collection DVD release of Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (part of Volume 4 of the Chan Collection) includes a full commentary track and a couple of terrific documentary featurettes. The most amazing of these mini-docs trace the potential influence of this film upon the notorious Zodiac killer. It's a most convincing and chiller postulation. Great directors have been known to influence a plethora of psychos and the arguments put forth in the doc are not without merit.

And it's no surprise that Norman Foster was one of the first directors in film history to place a magic bean deep into the mind of a real-life whack job - a bean that sprouted into one major twisted beanstalk within the diseased psyche of a notorious killer.

Charlie Chan in Panama (1940) dir. Norman Foster
Starring: Sidney Toler, Sen Yung, Lionel Atwill, Jack La Rue and Jean Rogers

****

By Greg Klymkiw

Charlie Chan in Panama crackles with excitement and it bears Mr. Norman Foster’s exquisite individual stamp of always-effective key lighting, his rich and crammed to the brim frame compositions and pacing (in narrative, action and dialogue) that careens with the ferocity of a rollercoaster. Foster always delivered the goods and this picture is no exception as it is truly the greatest Chan of them all.

Along with Erle Ford’s delightful Charlie Chan’s Murder Cruise and Lynn Shores’s eerie Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum, this thrilling Panamanian-set mystery adventure is one of three terrific Chan pictures released by 20th Century-Fox in 1940. It is also a wonderful entry in the various series-styled pictures that brought their heroes into the world of war and espionage. During this time it was not uncommon for characters such as Tarzan and even Sherlock Holmes to be in the thick of battling Nazis and other assorted evil threats to the American – and by extension, democratic Western way of life.

Here we have Chan assisting the American “secret service” to thwart a potential terrorist action to destroy the Panama Canal. Sidney Toler, the more genial Chan thespian to the fabulous, but decidedly dour Warner Oland, is on undercover assignment in the guise of an Asian entrepreneur who runs a small shop specializing in – I kid you not – Panama hats. A murder occurs right in Chan’s store that sets the wheels in motion for an action-packed and downright suspenseful mystery-thriller set against an exotic world of back-alley stores and markets as well as a nightclub jammed with American and European expatriates (pre-dating, but not unlike Rick’s Café Americain in Casablanca). That Foster comes close to recreating this world semi-realistically on a Fox back-lot is one of many testaments to his considerable prowess as a filmmaker.

The Chan pictures are always replete with magnificent acting. Toler, as usual, delivers Chan’s Cheshire grin and epigrammatic sayings with humour and considerable aplomb. Sen Young, also as per usual, bungles about hilariously as Number Two Son Jimmy. The supporting cast offers the expected delicious mixture and we are treated to the demented Lionel Atwill (Son of Frankenstein’s oft-parodied wooden-armed Inspector Krogh) as a novelist with more than a few secrets. Jean Rogers, the luscious beauty queen and former Flash Gordon battling babe Dale Arden, appears as a slinky songstress with a mysterious past and lest we forget, Charlie Chan in Panama features the ever-delicious scumbag Jack La Rue as the sleazy club owner Manolo who is blackmailing the aforementioned dish into spying.

Manolo’s club is also a marvel of atmosphere. Then again, the whole film is overflowing with atmosphere – ceiling fans galore, bright nightclubs with marimba bands, shadows aplenty and oodles of evocative single key lighting effects. Not only is director Foster on the ball; he is aided by stunning production design and the unparalleled cinematography of Virgil Miller. Miller was the pioneering Director of Photography on the early Technicolor extravaganza Garden of Allah in addition to numerous Moto, Chan and Sherlock Holmes pictures. Interestingly enough, it wasn’t until the 50s when both Foster and Miller were recognized with Oscar nominations – but for a movie far removed from the magical, stylized studio worlds they were known for, but the vérité-styled semi-documentary Navajo which was closer to the tradition of Flaherty’s Nanook of the North.

All in all, Charlie Chan in Panama is a first-rate entry in the Chan series – so much so that one does wish that Foster and his numerous collaborators had more critical and awards recognition. At the end of the day, however, they had the greatest recognition of all – audiences. With this film and many others, Foster and company generated hit after hit – proving, of course, that audience recognition should ultimately be the highest form of recognition for filmmakers.

Who else would and should they be making pictures for if not the audience?

Charlie Chan in Panama is available on DVD as part of Volume 5 of the Charlie Chan Cinema Classics Collection from 20th Century-Fox Home Entertainment.