Five Big Yearnings

The Siren doesn’t usually post about the truly random movie thoughts constantly flitting around her brain, but she’s been pondering this all weekend and wanted to hear what her patient readers had to say. It’s prompted by looking at the schedule for Fritz Lang in Hollywood, an incredible series scheduled for the Film Forum in January/February 2011. Now the Siren has Lang on the brain anyway, what with For the Love of Film (Noir) working to preserve a remake of a great Lang movie, and writing about the terrific House by the River at Fandor--available here, and no firewall anymore. The Siren has a hell-or-high-water must-see series list that includes (but is not limited to) The Secret Beyond the Door, You and Me, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Joan!) and An American Guerrilla in the Philippines, none of which she’s seen yet. But there’s also Moonfleet, which she saw again recently on a very good DVD, but yearns to see on a big screen.

So the Siren got to thinking. Of all the movies she’s already seen on DVD, TCM or VHS, which ones would she most like to see on a big screen in a great print?

Here are five. This list is just for starters, of course, but these are very serious yens. The fact that they’re all black and white is...interesting. And unplanned.




1. The Crowd. The Siren’s twins were about seven months old and still waking up in the middle of the night from time to time. The feed/change/settle routine for a total of two (2) babies usually equaled about 90 minutes of activity, and ended that morning at about 5 am. The Siren was in the habit of putting on TCM during this process. So she gets the last baby to sleep and is about to collapse back in bed, and goes back to the living room to turn off the TV. And noticed The Crowd was about to start. And thought, “Let’s take five minutes to see how this looks.” A little over 100 minutes later, it was time to get ready for work. And when the Siren, so sleepy she was swaying slightly on her feet, ran into an equally movie-mad colleague (we used to share custody of a VHS of Letter from an Unknown Woman), she chattered at him about The Crowd to the point where he put up both hands and said, “I have never seen you like this about a movie.”

Perhaps it isn’t the sort of quote people pick for an ad in Variety, but “So good mothers of infant twins choose it instead of sleep” is one hell of a recommendation.

The Crowd isn’t on DVD. Now the Siren is very, very cognizant of the special issues involved in preparing a good DVD release of a movie as old as The Crowd. She knows she whines a lot. But this isn’t merely the best silent movie the Siren has ever seen. Without hesitation she will name it as one of the greatest movies ever made in this country or anywhere else. So hearing that there is no Crowd on DVD is like planning a trip to MOMA, only to have them tell you that Starry Night has been stashed in the broom closet. Well, let’s hope Warner Brothers is on the case.

If, however, the Siren could see this one on screen, hand on heart, she promises to shut up already about the DVD.




2. The Long Voyage Home. You know who else wants to see this on a big screen? John Nolte of Big Hollywood. The Siren can’t remember his exact words, but the phrase “crawl over broken glass” may have occurred in there somewhere. Mr. Nolte’s love for John Ford, and appreciation for this lesser-known film, is one of those heartwarming instances of cross-aisle harmony that sustain us all in these partisan times. This is another that the Siren watched by chance on TCM, and the brilliance of Thomas Mitchell, the incredible tenderness and sympathy afforded these men doing a spirit-sucking and lonely job, and above all the deep-focus cinematography of Gregg Toland put her in traction. If John should be in town when this one comes on screen, in a gesture of Ford-loving solidarity the Siren will not only crawl with him to see it, she’ll buy his popcorn, as long as neither one of us brings up Obama. Or Jafar Panahi.

(The screen grab above is from a series posted at Six Martinis and the Seventh Art, always and forever one of the Siren's favorite stops on the Web.)




3. Love Affair. Because Christmas is coming, and the Siren yearns to see Charles Boyer give Irene Dunne her present.





4. The Fallen Idol. The Siren regards The Third Man with the same awestruck reverence as everyone else--more, even. There are, she suspects, not that many fans of the movie who went so far as to name their only daughter Alida. And yet, given a choice between Harry Lime and Baines larger than life, at the moment she’d pick Baines. “We ought to be very careful, Phil. 'Cause we make one another.” “I thought God made us." “Trouble is, we take a hand in the game.” This screened last year at Film Forum--while the Siren was in Paris.

(Gorgeous screen grab is from Coffee, Coffee, And More Coffee, where Peter Nelhaus is in the habit of posting coffee-drinking images from all kinds of movies. Patient readers should stop by and thank Peter for this dose of Michele Morgan.)




5. David Copperfield. David Ehrenstein, where are you? Are you still banging the drum for early George Cukor? Because the Siren is right there with you, and she’s never seen an adaptation of Charles Dickens (her favorite novelist) to surpass this one. Nor will there ever be a Micawber to equal W.C. Fields. And Karen shares the Siren’s love for Freddie Bartholomew.

In conclusion, speaking of movies that deserve restoration, big-screen unspooling, DVD cases with luxurious little booklets and just one whole hell of a lot more respect than they have received in the past, let’s talk about Julien Duvivier’s La Fin du Jour. The Siren mentioned that Dennis Cozzalio posted about it, but she didn’t do his splendid essay justice. It’s an elegant, deeply sympathetic and altogether marvelous piece of film criticism that will make you want to bite your arm off at the elbow in frustration if you haven’t seen this tantalizingly hard-to-find masterpiece. Really, please, go read it.

Hey Diddle, the Cat and the Fiddle, This Time I Think We Go Up-a Da Middle

The Siren does not dig team sports, as a rule, although at various points in her dissipated past she has faked an interest in them for unsavory motives of her own (impressing boys, basically). There is one team, and one team only, about which she does care, for the sake of her late lamented father.

Many years ago that team, the Alabama Crimson Tide, lost a football game to Auburn University by one point. Her father watched the blue-and-orange end-zone celebration for about 30 seconds, switched off the TV, walked into the garage, grabbed a pair of hedge clippers and went out to trim the bushes. Under ordinary circumstances, this was about as likely a scenario as seeing Leslie Howard attempt a field goal. My mother followed and watched him for a minute, and when she started to fear that our hedge would soon resemble a petunia patch she ventured, “Gary. It’s only a game.” He grunted, stopped, then turned to her and said, “No, it isn’t. It’s the end of the whole goddamn world.”

Today’s project chez Siren: Find some goddamn hedge clippers.

Note: The Siren welcomes anyone patient enough to read her maunderings, without regard to differences of background or opinion. Republican or Democrat, East or West Coast, George Sanders fan or George Sanders skeptic, she loves you all. However, today she gives fair warning that until further notice, Auburn fans caught gloating in her comments section will be deleted without mercy.

Happy Thanksgiving: The Siren's Request Results

The Siren was quite gratified by the number of requests she received. She ran into a few little problems, such as the tendency of some treasured commenters to respond with lists, which forced her to go all CEO and select just one request per person for the hat. Duplicates were given separate slips under each name. So after placing 84 small pieces of paper in a straw hat, because the velvet was too shallow, and having the Siren's longsuffering husband draw out four, the results are as follows:

Ball of Fire - Bill Wren, Piddleville; Happy Miser; Oshimoi

Village of the Damned - Laura, Who Can Turn the World Off With Her Smile

The Saint's Double Trouble - Yojimboen

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959) - Ted S. Raicer

The Siren would like to assure those of an unduly suspicious nature that she had a large number of requests for George Sanders movies, and therefore the fact that one-half of the selections do, in fact, star Sanders is quite simply not her fault. She won’t claim it made her unhappy, however. The Siren will be writing these up in the order in which she gets her hands on them.

Meanwhile, she wishes all her patient readers the very happiest of Thanksgivings.

Announcing For the Love of Film (Noir)

It’s been a good year chez Self-Styled Siren, and Thanksgiving week finds me with many fine things to contemplate. Ask me the best part of 2010, however, and I won’t hesitate for so much as a single frame. It was so spectacular that every time I think about it, I lapse into first person. It was For the Love of Film, the blogathon I co-hosted with the indefatigable Marilyn Ferdinand of Ferdy on Films. It’s a wonderful thing to write about old movies week in and week out, and have people swing by to share the obsession. It is, I have to say, even better to see 81 bloggers come together to write about preservation, and watch reader after reader open their wallets and give money to the cause.

I have had no prouder, happier moment in my five years of running this site than when the National Film Preservation Foundation announced the grand total of $30,000 in donations and matching funds and unveiled the silent shorts that will live on thanks to the people who wrote and gave. I know Marilyn, whose birthday request for preservation donations sparked the idea, and whose energy drove the project, feels the same way. So does Greg Ferrara, who donated the graphics and created a commercial. So, in fact, does every person who wrote a post or threw in some dough.

The 2010 blogathon ended Feb. 21, and by oh, say, 9 am EST on Feb. 22 Marilyn and I knew we’d have to do it again. And so it has come to pass. Today we unveil For the Love of Film (Noir), a blogathon to benefit the Film Noir Foundation.

The first blogathon focused on the earliest days of film, where the preservation issues are often the most pressing, but other films from other eras are in grave danger as well. For the second blogathon, Marilyn and I decided to focus on another part of film history. Led by its president, Eddie Muller, the Film Noir Foundation works to preserve the films that form one of cinema’s most creative and deeply loved genres. The FNF has worked to preserve noirs not only from the U.S., but from many other countries as well.

We'll be doing this for Valentine's Day week again, Feb. 14-21, 2011. I’m going to let Marilyn deliver the best news:

Last year, we didn’t know what films we would be helping to restore, but this year, we do! In 1950, a searing drama was released called The Sound of Fury, aka Try and Get Me. The film recounts the same story Fritz Lang told in Fury (1936) and was directed by Cy Endfield, who would run afoul of the Hollywood blacklist. Its star, Lloyd Bridges, never had a better role, and Eddie told me that when Jeff and Beau Bridges finally saw the film, they were blown away by his performance. A nitrate print of the film will be restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, using a reference print from Martin Scorsese’s personal collection to guide them and fill in any blanks. Paramount Pictures has agreed to help fund the restoration, but FNF is going to have to come up with significant funds to get the job done. That’s where we come in.

The Siren loves this genre, but you knew that, because you do too. Breathes there the cinephile with soul so dead, who never to himself hath said, “Tonight by golly, I’m gonna watch a noir”? And Marilyn, Eddie, Greg and I are hoping this near-universal taste translates into high participation.

Meanwhile, as the holidays approach, think about sharing the loot with the FNF before the tax year ends. Nothing wrong with getting a jump on things--the more money they get, the more noir we have to savor.

There are an awful lot of potential topics connected to noir--the photography, the dialogue, the themes, the social history, the influences that shaped it and the influence it wields today, and on and on--take your pick, buddy. Our Facebook page, For the Love of Film , will be continuously updated with suggestions, discussions and news. (And yes, there will be raffle prizes again this year, and who knows what other twists in the plot.) Over at the For the Love of Film blog, Cinema Styles’ Greg has posted banners you can use on your own blog and Facebook page. There’s more than just Joan, although you realize of course that the Siren can’t look at a Bennett and not itch to post her picture.

Like the detective said, it's the stuff that dreams are made of.

***

And so you may be thinking, “Hey Siren, I could have sworn I spent last week asking you to write about approximately three hundred different movies of varying degrees of popularity, obscurity and eccentricity. What’s up with that, lady?” Well, the drawing was done by the Siren’s husband, the films are selected and the Siren is rustling up copies. It’s just that contemplating film noir set her to thinking about Out of the Past and now the Siren has gone all cold and hard and Jane Greer, figuring if she couldn’t be all bad she’d come close.

No, seriously, today is about the blogathon. Tomorrow is Requests Day.

Meanwhile, Dennis Cozzalio of Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule has written up his own request assignment, La Fin du Jour, and a cracking good job he’s done, too. Please mosey over and have a look.

The Siren by Request

Once in a while someone asks the Siren to write about a particular movie. Like the one friend who wants a flapper movie, any old flapper movie, and another friend who wants the Siren to write up Demolition Man (he hasn't lost his mind, the Siren told him she likes that one). The Siren's usual flip response is that she doesn't do requests. She isn't trying to be difficult, honest. It's just that the Siren scrambles to maintain posting around here and besides, she has the cinematic attention span of a cocker spaniel, always rushing from one obsession to the next.

Now we have the holidays coming up, the season of giving, and the Siren had a thought. Maybe she should spend December writing about things other people want, as a change of pace, instead of assuming that everyone will be thrilled to bits to read about Joan Fontaine or Constance Bennett for two weeks running.

So here's the big idea. Email the Siren (address is in her profile) or leave a request in comments. Twitter or Facebook message works too, or even Western Union--the Siren has always wanted to get a telegram. One movie per person please, one she hasn't written about before. Please make it something that is either easily available, or that you happen to know is hanging around the DVR or the DVD closet chez Siren (maybe because you, um, sent it to her).

The request line closes at 8 pm EST, Thursday Nov. 18th. Sometime that evening or the next day the Siren will print out the results, toss them in a hat (yes, a real hat, circa 1950, it's velvet and it has a feather) and draw four. And over the next few weeks the Siren will write 'em up. The total of four is designed to match her usual once-a-week posting pace.

The Siren isn't going to limit this to her favorite eras, but please, do remember her delicate sensibilities. Wags requesting the likes of Cannibal Holocaust or Freddie Got Fingered will not be taken seriously. And listen, if you're dying for another George Sanders movie, speak up, don't be bashful…

Alert: Rare Joan Fontaine

The Siren got another email from a pal late last week, this time alerting her to a YouTube rarity: Something to Live For (1952). "I've been wanting to see this practically my whole life," said her correspondent; "it's never shown anywhere, at any time." Why should it be, really, directed as it was by Hollywood small fry George Stevens, sandwiched between two pieces of indie esoterica called A Place in the Sun and Shane. Seriously, the Siren has no flipping idea why this one is rare, since it appears to have been written directly for the screen, and come on, George Stevens?

But of course, we know why the gentleman emailed the Siren, and it wasn't to stoke any latent auteurist leanings, although the Siren is a Stevens fan: "It stars Joan Fontaine. As a drunk."

Naturally the Siren watched in one quick hurry, and she suggests her fellow Fontaine obsessives do the same, since who knows when Something to Live For will turn up again. The version posted has Spanish subtitles and one of those cable watermarks that never fail to inspire murderous thoughts in the Siren. The recording is decent, no more, although the Siren warns there are a couple of scenes in darkened theaters that may make you think you're watching The Light That Failed. But overall it's good enough and the film is worth your while, with a warmth and sincerity that grew on the Siren.

Although there's plenty of Fontaine, and she's in good form, it's really Ray Milland's show, a pendant to The Lost Weekend that shows what Don Birnam might have been facing 14 months after going on the wagon. Milland plays Alan Miller, an ad executive whose participation in AA leads him one night to the shabby Times Square hotel room of Jenny Carey (Fontaine), an actress whose crippling insecurity and busted romance have contributed to her drinking. He's drawn to her immediately. Although Jenny's able to stop drinking soon after Alan comes on the scene, her fledgling struggles to stay off the sauce mirror the trouble he's having with his own sobriety.

In fact, what's most interesting about the plot and characters isn't that they fall in love. It's the way the movie bypasses the initial battle to quit drinking in favor of looking at just how hard it is to stay quit. Alan's advertising job is yet another forerunner of "Mad Men" and that show's take on the industry's socializing, so often more grisly than anything that goes down at the office. The hard-drinking nature of the era and the job test Alan constantly--the people who press him to drink a toast, the maitre d' who keeps telling him to wait at the bar where a visibly irritated bartender repeatedly asks him for an order, the office party where the same boss who was gossiping over whether he was "nipping again" pours him a drink. And when Alan goes home, his loving and supportive wife still jerks bolt upright if he happens to stumble on the way into the bedroom. It helps that the wife is played by Teresa Wright, who could make simple feminine decency more interesting and moving than just about any other actress.

Still, it's logical that Alan would fall hard for Jenny, who understands his ordeal in a way no one else does. Plus, Fontaine looks so beautiful that you believe a man would fall in love with her even when she's so sloshed she can barely raise her head off the pillow. Fontaine's part is harder than Milland's--her sobering up is abrupt, her psychology isn't explored as much and the script asks her to go from alcoholic defensiveness to gentle adoration without much of a way station in between. Her talent enables her to pull most of it off, however, and Fontaine's pained reactions at a chic party are especially wonderful.

Downsides include a certain predictably of plot and dialogue and a saccharine, repetitive score that irritated even the Siren, who usually thinks any decent screen kiss should include a full orchestra. The opening is marvelous, with some of the most interesting visuals--lots of "cage" shots through the paned windows and the grille of the elevator. And as the Siren's email pal pointed out, the movie is full of luxurious dissolves and many close-ups of Fontaine and Milland. There's a couple of beautiful process shots of the old Penn Station that will make New Yorkers weep.

AND, at the end, you get Joan Fontaine's bare midriff, with a jewel in her navel. If that doesn't make you click through, the Siren doesn't know what will.

Advice from the Siren

A gentleman has emailed the Siren:

I think you should start an advice column. Here's my first question:

Dear Siren,
I don't understand why Charles Boyer would prefer Olivia de Havilland over Paulette Goddard in "Hold Back The Dawn."
Please advise.
Signed, Cinematically Conflicted


Dear Conflicted,
The Siren is always happy to oblige her patient readers, although she warns some questions are beyond even her mythological powers. Happily, this one she can illuminate, if not solve.

In the studio era, it was occasionally assumed that what a man wants in a life's companion is wholesome sweetness and naïveté, not red-hot rafter-rattling sex. That hasn't been the Siren's personal experience, but then again, she never tried to conduct a love affair under the watchful eye of the Hays Office.

De Havilland was gorgeous, but given her prim character in the movie, Olivia over the much livelier Paulette joins some other puzzling choices. These include Dick Powell even realizing Ruby Keeler is alive when he is right there in the same movie with Ginger Rogers or Joan Blondell; Judy Garland over sultry Angela Lansbury in The Harvey Girls; Janet Leigh over Eleanor Parker in Scaramouche (and in case you're wondering, no, the Siren is never going to get over that one); Donna Reed over Lana Turner in Green Dolphin Street; the Catholic Church over Ingrid Bergman in Bells of St. Mary's; the Welsh church over Maureen O'Hara in How Green Was My Valley; and Margaret Lindsay over Bette Davis in Jezebel.

You may notice a number of these are literary or theatrical adaptations; indeed, this quandary has classic antecedents, e.g. Ivanhoe. Given free rein many, if not most, scriptwriters got it right. Clark Gable, for example, almost always managed to pick Jean Harlow by the last reel.




In an unusual example of Hollywood reverse sexism, this problem is rarely encountered when women are doing the choosing. Rosalind Russell prefers Cary Grant to Ralph Bellamy, Irene Dunne prefers Cary Grant to Ralph Bellamy, and in one that must have really stung, Carole Lombard preferred Fred MacMurray to Ralph Bellamy in Hands Across the Table. The Siren can think of two examples where she questions a heroine's taste, although in both cases there are extenuating circumstances. Joan Crawford goes for Henry Fonda over the decidedly more sensual Dana Andrews in Daisy Kenyon, but as Andrews' character is something of a heel, and it was Fonda's job up to 1968 to be a mensch, you see it coming. And in How to Marry a Millionaire, the large age difference between William Powell and Lauren Bacall can be taken as explanation of why Bacall picks Cameron Mitchell, although the Siren always mutters, "I don't care how old he is--woman, are you nuts?"

There's one that will stump the Siren to her dying day, however. In Walk Don't Run, the remake of The More the Merrier, Samantha Eggar picks Jim Hutton over a never-in-the-running Cary Grant. That flaming chunk of crazy was part of what made Grant decide being a cosmetics executive was a much better deal.

In real life it is a toss-up as to who would have won a Goddard/de Havilland Hold Back Your Man smackdown. They both had It. And How.

Best regards,
T.S.

Halloween with Joe Breen

The Siren's patient readers know she is, not to put too fine a point on it, a wuss when it comes to horror movies. She'll do "subtly creepy," "atmospheric," and "ghostly" all day, but when we get to "utterly freaking terrifying," let alone "physically nauseating," she starts coming up with excuses. Like, "I can't watch Zodiac because Alida was counting on seeing Stand Up and Cheer." Yes yes yes, the Siren knows it's a procedural, but she'd been told it was a horrifying procedural.

Perhaps it will gladden the hearts of Trish and David E. and Filmbrain and Noel Vera and Tom Shone and and Glenn Kenny and Tony Dayoub and Kent Jones and oh, pretty much much her entire blogroll to hear that the Siren ran out of excuses last night and she watched Zodiac. Alone, with the kids in bed, curled up on the couch with a flannel blanket, a box of Kleenex for her head cold and a small glass of brandy to keep the beasties at bay. And yes guys, she liked it, more than The Social Network even, and the Siren liked The Social Network quite a bit.

The Siren had a dilemma, however. She was going to write about something scary for Halloween, and Zodiac didn't scare her. Creeped her out, yes; made her clutch her blankie during violent scenes; showed her that Robert Downey Jr. is sexy even with a ghastly '70s beard; made her reflect that if she were ever to be picked off by a serial killer, and harbored hopes that the wheels of justice eventually would run the guy over, she really had better not get bumped off on the border between police jurisdictions. But scared, no. The Siren didn't even need the brandy, although she drank it anyway.

So here it is, Halloween eve, and everybody else is doing scary stuff. The Siren wants to play too, so she came up with a solution. You what's scary?

This guy is scary. Joseph I. Breen, dean of the Hays Office, enforcer of the Production Code, scourge of toilet-flushing, decolletage and the word "lousy."

So grab your blankie and your brandy and return with the Siren to the days when the Great Bluenose From Philadelphia stomped through Hollywood, leaving in his wake piles of balled-up script pages and discarded film stock, as well as filmmakers rubbing their temples and reaching for the bicarbonate.

Let's see how Breen sought to protect us from too much sex in our horror movies, because isn't that the first thing you think about when deciding which one to watch? That's the Siren's first concern with every horror movie, no matter the year: "Gee, I hope there's no sex."

The Hays Office did a great deal of its work before cameras ever turned, going through scripts and tossing out whatever ran afoul of the Code and their interpretation of it. What follows are some excerpts from correspondence about the 1940 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, directed by Victor Fleming; they're taken from Gerald Gardner's The Censorship Papers: Movie Censorship Letters from the Hays Office, 1934 to 1968. These script notations are part of Joe Breen's memo to Louis B. Mayer, Nov. 12, 1940:

Page 38: The scene of the girl taking off her stocking must be done inoffensively and without any undue exposure. Please also do not overemphasize the garter…

Page 47: The line 'I want you--want you every minute' is not acceptable…

Page 49: Omit the underlined words in the expression 'the little white-breasted dove'…

Page 63: The following broken line must be changed: 'Underneath I'm as soft as your white--'

Page 56: The dialog that ends the scene beginning 'I'm hurting you because I like to hurt you--' is unacceptable by reason of containing a definite suggestion of sadism…

After the script had been edited to the censors' satisfaction, often a movie would be screened so they could be sure a director wasn't trying to screw them (a verb the Hays Office was striking as late as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?). Screening Dr. Jekyll resulted in the following memo:

In the scene where Jekyll carries Ivy up to her room, delete the large close-up where Ivy's breasts are unduly exposed…

In the first montage, delete all scenes [of Hyde] lashing the two girls.

In the second montage, delete all scenes having to do with the swan and the girl, and the stallion and the girl… [Note from the Siren: Damn, I would have liked to see that.]

In the scene in the cabaret, delete the crotch shot of the dancing girls...

Breen, ever ready to do a good deed, also warned the filmmakers that the British Board of Censors would probably delete a reference to Buckingham Palace. Fleming & Co. still managed to turn in a great S&M horror flick, even if the Siren prefers Rouben Mamoulian's 1931 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Let us turn now to James Whale's very great Bride of Frankenstein, which began life in 1934, the year the Code came into full effect. Sex wasn't so much the problem with this one, although Whale received notice that the term "mate" was unacceptable as it implied that the monster "desires a sexual companion…we suggest that you substitute the word 'companion.'" No, the real trouble with the script was intrinsic to the very theme of all Frankenstein pictures, the idea of a scientist usurping the role of God--although some sex still had to be scissored, as well as icky words.

From a memo sent by Joe Breen to Universal Pictures, dated Dec. 5, 1934, about the script then called The Return of Frankenstein:

Page A-12. We suggest changing the word 'entrails,' as it will be offensive to mixed audiences.

Page A-16. We also suggest omitting this scene of the rat, as its portrayal has in the past proved offensive…

Page B-7: We suggest omitting the line 'It was like being God.' This line in the past has proven somewhat blasphemous.

Page B-20: For the same reason, we suggest omitting the line 'as they say, "in God's own image."'

Page B-25: This scene of the miniature mermaid should be handled in such a way as to avoid any improper exposure. [Note: This may well be the Siren's all-time favorite Hays Office line.]

Page B-26: You should omit the line 'If you are fond of your fairy tales' as a derogatory reference to the Bible.

James Whale responded to each point, changing the word "entrails" to "insides," for example, and altering the B-7 line to "it was like being the Creator himself." Whale also told the office that the mermaid was going to have very, very long hair.

It's worth noting that the Hays Office was, unbelievably, often more lenient than other censors. Despite all those protracted negotiations and extensive changes, Bride of Frankenstein was banned in Trinidad ("because it is a horror picture"), Palestine and Hungary, and shown only with extensive deletions in Japan, China, Sweden and Singapore.

The Siren adds that Mr. Gardner cleared up her confusion about the poison in Ivy: "The word 'arsenic' was struck from many scripts on the theory that, deprived of this information, the moviegoer would never realize that arsenic was a lethal substance."

Happy Halloween! The Siren, confident that she has fulfilled her obligation to frighten her readers, adds links with the same aim:

Kim Morgan on Strait-Jacket. The Siren can't think of another film writer anywhere who could use this giddily bizarre flick to anchor the most respectful and deeply affectionate tribute to Joan Crawford that any fan could desire.

They Came From Beyond Hollywood, at Peter Nelhaus' place.

Flickhead visits the Hot L Whitewood, with a side trip to Chiller Theater.

The Futurist has been doing a lot of scary stuff for Halloween, but this takes the biscuit.

Jacqueline T. Lynch reminds us of what might have been frightening people on other radio channels during that War of the Worlds broadcast. Complete with a newsreel of Orson Welles saying "Sorry, guys," a rundown on the 1953 movie and advice on how to handle a Martian invasion.

Every day is Halloween at Obscure Hollow. Just click over and bask in all the incredible screen grabs. The Siren may not be a horror connoisseur, but she loves this site to bits and pieces.

Intimacy at the Movies

A couple of weeks ago I was two-thirds done with the New York Film Festival. Certified Copy and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives were mind-blowing, especially the former, I loved Another Year, and my favorite, Mysteries of Lisbon, was so good I'd sit through all four-and-a-half hours again. (The camerawork reminded me of Ophuls. I am still trying to write that one up.) It was glorious, it was rejuvenating.

But my old-movie habit wasn't being fed. Sometime around the two-week mark the withdrawal became too much and I posted on Facebook and Twitter that I was going to dig up a pre-1960 movie and watch it to the last frame. Maybe some followers thought I was being cute about how much I needed to do this. I was as serious as All Quiet on the Western Front.

And I watched Ivy. And it was good. So good I started to wonder if this was simple addiction. It did feel uncomfortably like I was one of those people who went to sleep in Shreveport and woke up in Abilene. "Come on, Oscar nominee from 1934, let's you and me get drunk." But surely nobody ever wound up in rehab because they couldn't stop quoting Bette Davis movies. I can, in fact, stop anytime I like. Don't look at me like that. I have a Netflix copy of Zodiac right there on my dressing table, you just can't see it because it's under the eyeshadow palette. I've had it three weeks and haven't watched it yet, but I'm telling you I could watch it right now if I felt like it and if my daughter weren't already downstairs watching the 1940 Blue Bird. I just don't want to. I'll watch Zodiac this weekend. Right now I need to keep watching old movies, I have too much else going on to quit something that isn't harming me anyway. Hey, did anybody else notice some benevolent soul has posted Hold Back the Dawn on Youtube?

I'm not going to quit--I don't have a problem--but I often have stretches of wondering why I do this, aside from the prestige of attending swank parties and announcing that I blog about movies a lot of people have never heard of, let alone seen. And I have had a small moment of clarity.

When I find a blog I like, I often read through the archives, and I was going through Tom Shone's blog, Taking Barack to the Movies. He writes mostly about contemporary movies and some politics, in his graceful and very witty style, and I love it even when he's making me feel guilty for not watching Zodiac. I found a post called "Best Films of the 1930s." Not that I am necessarily more interested in that topic than Sam Rockwell or anything, but I read it, and pulled up right here:

The films I most prize are the ones that look normal, and sound normal, and feel normal, but unfurl with the sinuous, sneaky logic of a dream. Movies that cast a spell. I don't mean surrealism — not a fan. I mean a big-budget studio picture that despite the involvement of hundreds of people, from money-grubbing producers to eagle-eyed costumiers, seems to have bloomed from the unconscious of a drowsy Keats...I recently had a spirited debate with my friend Nat about my theory that one cannot know and enjoy a picture made before you were born with quite the same casual intimacy of a film made in your lifetime. That older film can be 100 times better but it still doesn't breathe the same air you do in the same way that even a cruddy picture produced yesterday can.

Interesting. Absolutely bloody fascinating, in fact, because it's the precise opposite of the way I react to new versus old movies. It is this:


Some contemporary films do cast a marvelous spell for me; Avatar, the aforementioned NYFF films. I want to see more that can do the same. But if I want a film to speak to my most secret Siren soul, something to forget my life and the venue and possibly even the day of the week and whoever is sitting next to me, I'm looking at immensely better odds if I go pre-1960. Casual intimacy for me usually comes in black and white or Technicolor. Or sepia. Or Color by Deluxe. I've been intimate with sepia and Deluxe.

I don't want to argue (much), I want to attach an endnote. Clearly, it's true for Tom. Today we had coffee and I told him I was thinking about writing this and he's already got a lovely, lucid response right here. (This has got to be a personal best in terms of slow composition. I am now so slow that someone responds before I post.) His observation is probably true for most moviegoers. A chart based on the moviewatching feelings of the public as a whole might look like this:

Item 1. Percentage of People Who Feel Casual Intimacy With a Cruddy Picture Produced Yesterday

Item 2. Percentage of People Who Feel Casual Intimacy With a Movie That's 100 Times Better But Is Older Than They Are

Item 3. Percentage of People Who Feel Casual Intimacy With Anything That Was Shot Before 1960 and/or Has Bette Davis

But the Siren is smack in the middle of Item 3, with most of her patient readers, god love 'em.

What is with us?

There is a certain Charlie Brown impulse at work for me, definitely. The Social Network is all over the Web, so I don't feel a need to write it up when every major critic and at least a dozen highly talented bloggers got there first. But see this one over here, gathering dust on IMDB with just two cursory external reviews? Not enough people are watching it. This movie needs me, Linus.

I hope nobody brings up nostalgia. I realize I am touchy on this issue, but gad I hate having that word attached to my movie tastes. Here's the moment from my girlhood when I realized nostalgia was bunk. I had just watched some damp-eyed TV documentary about this great swingin' party that I missed called the 1960s. And I said something to Mom along the lines of "Gee, you must have loved the 1960s, it looks like so much more fun than right now." And Mom (she might not even remember this) looked me in the eye and said, "What I remember about the '60s is that every time I got to liking a musician he died. And every time I got to thinking here's a person who can make the world a better place, somebody went out and shot him."

Nostalgia is for people who don't read much history, I think.

I could blame my parents, and have, like when Dennis brought up early viewing a few months back. They left me alone with the TV and gateway drugs like Busby Berkeley and John Ford and Vincente Minnelli and Shirley Temple (is Alida done with that one yet? OK, she's still watching). I could watch anything I wanted if it was old, but if I wanted to go to a current movie, my mother in particular was convinced that explicit sex or excessive screen violence would warp my mental development. See Raging Bull at too tender an age and the next thing you know I'd be under the patio torturing chipmunks or something. I need hardly add that this wasn't ironclad reasoning by my mother. I would watch the original Scarface or Busby Berkeley pushing the camera under the chorus girls' legs and believe me, I got it. My father was a great deal more laissez-faire; when I was about 12 years old he caught me carefully dog-earing the dirty parts of Lady Chatterley's Lover and all I got was a couple of raised eyebrows and "Time for dinner." But when they were deciding what I could go see at the local cinema he deferred to Mom. I'm pretty sure that I am one of the only film writers in captivity who didn't see an R-rated movie until they were actually, chronologically 17 years old.

Result was that I grew up watching old movies and thinking this was the way movies were supposed to look, lush or spare, shadowy or sparkling, the camera lingering or gliding and no such thing as acne or pores. And this was how a movie was supposed to sound, resonant, highly individual voices speaking wonderful dialogue against the gentle sonic hiss of the soundtrack, a score trailing the action like a cloud of perfume. Without those things, I can still be enthralled. But sometimes the lack of them is a small barrier to intimacy. "I see you have pores. Gosh no darling, of course it doesn't matter. I've seen them before. Is that a lamp on the side table, sweetness? You know, if we switch it on, we'll have light coming from three points…"

As usual, I wind up going to my commenters for the real insight. There's the friend who said simply, "There's something in the rhythms of these movies that's in tune with your own." There's David Ehrenstein, who maintains that "the 30s, not the 70s, was the great period for American commercial filmmaking," citing James Whale, Dorothy Arzner and George Cukor as directors doing genuinely experimental work. And there's Arthur S., who once remarked here that it isn't nostalgia if what you're watching is actually more daring and more radical than what's playing at the multiplex. There's an overarching style to classic cinema, but within it you can see astonishing variation and innovation, like poets ringing changes on sonnets or terza rima.

It is, essentially, an aesthetic preference like any other, one that was probably imprinted early by the circumstances of my childhood. Which brings me to my own children, now safely asleep. They watch a lot of Pixar, which is fine--Up and Wall*E? Brilliant. Spell-casters for sure. And heavily influenced by classic Hollywood. I haven't watched that many old movies with my kids. At ages seven and four they are already more in tune with popular culture than Mom. That's good in a lot of ways. Dragging Astaire and Rogers into everyday conversation didn't exactly make me queen of the Alabama schoolyard. Maybe I should just let my brood continue like that.

Fat chance. I'm ordering Chaplin at Keystone for them, and then I'm going to bed.

NYFF 2010: Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff

Let's say you've just had a nasty personal shock, and whoever happens to be with you at the moment wants to console you. A New Yorker will keep you company on a subway platform as you stand in a fog, patiently waiting as you let three trains pass. One of the Siren's fellow Southerners will offer you a Coca-Cola or, as they say in Alabama, Co-Cola, and that means the kind with sugar, hon, you need the sugar to perk you up. An Arab will make you coffee and make sure your cup is poured from the top so you get the foam. A French person usually offers the Siren a pastis, one of the many things that endears that country to her.

A cinephile, probably, would offer you Jack Cardiff, and that was what the Siren got the first day she went to the New York Film Festival, a day that already had announced itself as the rotten climax of a personally trying September. And she sat and drank every image to the dregs and felt a bit better, at least until the lights came up. So it feels churlish to say, as the Siren must, that the film is a rather pedestrian affair that will give a Cardiff fan little fresh insight. It's like telling the consolatory Frenchman there's too much ice in the pastis. All the same, despite its having provided much balm for the Siren, it's an odd duck of a documentary.

Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff gives you the work with Powell and Pressburger, zips back around to cover the Hollywood period with The African Queen, Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, The Barefoot Contessa, War and Peace, The Vikings and Errol Flynn's hell-raising. It then goes into Cardiff's work as a director, giving pride of place to Sons and Lovers and a bit of Young Cassidy before trailing off at the end with the likes of Rambo: First Blood Part II.

The film sticks almost entirely to the professional aspects of Cardiff's life; the one personal revelation is a brief discussion of his actor parents and his stint as a child actor. The Siren confesses to disappointment with this approach, although she knows she's supposed to pretend not to care. Cinematography is, to the Siren, the sexiest job on a set, and plenty of stills attest to the fact that Cardiff was a handsome devil. There must be more to tell than the old story about Ava Gardner wanting to be well-lit when she had her period. Oh well; Magic Hour didn't have much of the off-set life either.

Over at The House Next Door, Aaron Cutler goes into how the film was digitally projected. This the Siren, with her vast technical knowledge, registered as "hmm, the Powell-Pressburger stuff looked better at MOMA;" but with Cardiff it's an important point. The movies are represented mostly by rather brief clips, too brief for a Technicolor worshipper like the Siren. There's a great deal of Cardiff's musings on the artists that influenced his imagery; a painter himself, Cardiff loved Vermeer, Turner, the Impressionists. You also spend a lot of time with the still photos Cardiff made of actresses over the years, portraits that didn't give you much of the ladies' psychology but did show an unbelievable eye for their beauty. There are plenty of interviews--the Siren is pleased to report that Lauren Bacall looks great--but not much depth to the discussion. Cardiff talks a lot on camera but much that he says will already be familiar to anyone who's read Magic Hour.

The fundamental problem with Cameraman is that it concerns a figure who's a god to movie hounds, but (much as it pains the Siren to say this) is barely known to the general public. The director, Craig McCall, chose to pitch the movie to an audience only vaguely familiar with Cardiff. But the Siren suspects such people might not be watching a movie about a cinematographer in the first place, so why not get more daring? In another documentary screened at the NYFF, A Letter to Elia, Kent Jones and Martin Scorsese took a personal approach. So while A Face in the Crowd might be the consensus blogger vote for Best Kazan at the moment, it gets scant screen time compared with East of Eden, for which Scorsese feels a deep personal attachment. And the Siren didn't feel cheated at all. She felt like she needed to see East of Eden again.

So the Siren feels gratitude for the 86 minutes she spent with Cameraman, as she feels gratitude for the coffee, the pastis and the friend who finally waved her onto an F train. But if someone were to ask her which Cardiff scenes she'd like to see screened and discussed, in defiance of an audience wondering "hey, where's Black Narcissus," here are just three:

1. The love scene on the pier between Horst Buchholz and Leslie Caron in Fanny. The Siren would have loved to ask Cardiff about working with a director like Josh Logan, whose sense of cinematic visuals was, to put it charitably, nowhere near the level of Cardiff's own. Cardiff did say in his memoirs that he thought Logan's film had more heart than the original Pagnol trilogy.

2. The closing of King Vidor's War and Peace, with Audrey Hepburn in her red velvet dress standing out like a torch amidst the blanched ruins of her Moscow home. This movie could use some sprucing up, too, judging by the Siren's anemic-looking DVD.

3. Edmond O'Brien's telephone scene in The Barefoot Contessa, the one where he's trying to prevent a torrent of bad publicity from the title character's father having committed a murder. Shooting Ava Gardner beautifully is a wonderful thing, but getting the light just right on Edmond O'Brien's nerve-sweat is art, too.

More links:

Marilyn Ferdinand on Cameraman.

For balance, the delightful Amber Wilkinson at Eyeforfilm.co.uk, who liked Cameraman more than either Aaron, Marilyn or the Siren.

Glenn Kenny on Cardiff, here, here, here, here and here.

TCM Alert: Constance Bennett All Day, Oct. 22

The Siren can't believe she never noticed this before, but two of her most treasured, obsessive obsessions share a birthday, October 22. One is Joan Fontaine; the other is Constance Bennett. Tomorrow, Turner Classic Movies will be playing Bennett's films all day, and the Siren has several set to record.

And the Siren says, loudly, that the one worth clearing out the whole DVR for is George Cukor's What Price Hollywood?, which the Siren rhapsodized about at great length in May. Go forth and record, at 8:45 am Eastern, because it ain't on DVD.

Before we get into the other goodies TCM is bestowing on us, here is a bit from Brian Kellow's The Bennetts: An Acting Family. It was 1965, Constance had terminal cancer and was being admitted to the hospital for the last time. And did Death's icy outstretched hand cow Constance? See for yourself.

By midsummer, Constance's condition seemed outwardly stable. One evening in mid-July, she suddenly collapsed, and [husband] John rushed her to the nearby Fort Dix Hospital…Constance was quite unresponsive as she was wheeled in to the admitting desk. John began helping the nurse on duty fill out the entrance forms, but when the nurse asked Constance's age, a clear, strong voice called out from behind them, "I was born in 1914"--cleanly shaving off ten years.

The Siren loves this dame.

Here's what on TCM. All times Eastern.

22 Friday
6:00 AM
Lady With A Past (1932)
 
A good girl raises her popularity when she pretends to be bad. Cast: Constance Bennett, Ben Lyon, David Manners. Dir: Edward H. Griffith. BW-80 mins, TV-G

A comedy, which Constance excelled at; Kellow says she has "a special glow" in this one, and quotes one great line: "I talk so much to myself that I'm all worn out when I meet people." On the Siren's DVR it goes.


7:30 AM
Rockabye (1932)
 
A Broadway star tries to hold onto an adopted child and a younger man. Cast: Constance Bennett, Joel McCrea, Paul Lukas. Dir: George Cukor. BW-68 mins, TV-G

One of Constance's mother-love dramas, made the same year as What Price Hollywood? and good, via Cukor, who loved Constance and always spoke well of her: "Constance had one kind of romantic, Scott Fitzgerald look about her. It was the look of the 1930s--or perhaps the 1930s looked like her."


8:45 AM
What Price Hollywood? (1932)
 
A drunken director whose career is fading helps a waitress become a Hollywood star. Cast: Constance Bennett, Lowell Sherman, Neil Hamilton. Dir: George Cukor. BW-88 mins, TV-G

The Siren doesn't need to go on about this one again, does she?

10:15 AM
Outcast Lady (1934)
 
A spoiled rich girl sacrifices her reputation to preserve her dead husband's memory. Cast: Constance Bennett, Herbert Marshall, Hugh Williams. Dir: Robert Z. Leonard. BW-77 mins, TV-G

Oh look, let's see what Constance does to Herbert Marshall, shall we? David Shipman says it's a version of The Green Hat. Recording.

11:45 AM
Topper (1937)
 
A fun-loving couple returns from the dead to help a henpecked husband. Cast: Cary Grant, Constance Bennett, Roland Young. Dir: Norman Z. McLeod. BW-98 mins, TV-G, CC

Written up here. Most of the Siren's patient readers must be well familiar with this one, but it deserves its classic status.

1:30 PM
Topper Takes a Trip (1939)
 
A glamorous ghost helps a henpecked husband save his wife from gold-digging friends. Cast: Constance Bennett, Roland Young, Billie Burke. Dir: Norman Z. McLeod. BW-80 mins, TV-G, CC

Not as good without Grant, but still diverting.


3:00 PM
Merrily We Live (1938)
 
A society matron's habit of hiring ex-cons and hobos as servants leads to romance for her daughter. Cast: Constance Bennett, Brian Aherne, Billie Burke. Dir: Norman Z. McLeod. BW-95 mins, TV-G

All right, so it isn't My Man Godfrey, but it's an awful lot of fun just the same.


4:45 PM
Unsuspected, The (1947)
 
The producer of a radio crime series commits the perfect crime, then has to put the case on the air. Cast: Claude Rains, Joan Caulfield, Constance Bennett. Dir: Michael Curtiz. BW-103 mins, TV-PG, CC

Looking forward to this one. The Siren has a copy of the novel, with a great movie tie-in cover, and it's Curtiz, after all.

Happy Birthday, Joan Fontaine: Ivy (1947)

"It's a perfect fascination, my attachment to that girl. If she were to poison me, I would forgive her."
--Emile L'Angelier's tribute to his lover Madeleine Smith, from testimony at Madeleine's 1857 trial for poisoning him with arsenic.

The Siren has non-film obsessions that she discusses here not at all (scarves, sonnets, Gram Parsons) or not that often (Victorian novelists, perfume). She's mentioned her love of a good vintage murder only once or twice, when discussing David Lean’s fabulous Madeleine, but there’s nothing like a good domestic poisoning case to get the Siren feeling all’s right with the world.

So she was predisposed to like Ivy, the 1947 film about a poison-wielding Edwardian belle, even had it not starred Joan Fontaine at the peak of her beauty and talent or been directed by Sam Wood and produced by William Cameron Menzies, who probably contributed a great deal to the film's stunning design. Furthermore, it was lensed by Russell Metty, scored by the same man who did Letter from an Unknown Woman, Daniele Amfitheatrof, written by sometime HItchcock collaborator Charles Bennett, and the costumes were by Orry-Kelly, who set off Fontaine's features with wide-brimmed hats and fetching veils. All that, plus Herbert Marshall once more looking at a conniving snake of a woman and deciding, "Hey, she's pretty cute.”

It was, in short, 99 minutes of ecstasy, and the Siren felt the same way as David Cairns, "as if someone had cut me open and inserted a big cake made of happiness.” (The Siren stole some of these screen caps from David, with his kind permission.) Ivy is criminally unavailable on DVD (the Siren’s copy was a gift), so you can take David’s suggestion and start a letter-writing campaign, or you can take a break from reading this and watch Ivy in its entirety, and looking pretty good despite Spanish subtitles, on Youtube (start here)--quick, before somebody takes it down. The Siren recommends the latter course.

Why does the Siren like a good poisoning case, you may well be too afraid to ask? It's psychologically interesting, that's why. Poison is said to be a woman's method, stealthy and nonviolent. Provided you are trying to mimic a debilitating illness, or you don't happen to have a movie-style clutch-heart-and-keel-over toxin in the medicine cabinet, it’s also exceptionally nasty. Poison requires you to eye the pain-wracked victim and muse not only, "Young man, I think you're dying," but also, "Time for another dose." Poison is a vision of Madeleine Smith, everybody's favorite Victorian murderess, listening to her unwanted lover complain about the jagged-toothed animal trying to gnaw through his guts and, with a smile of womanly commiseration, handing him another cup of cocoa. Madeleine, in fact, is the ne plus ultra of female poisoners, remorseless and beautiful, so intoxicating that as Emile L'Angelier lay dying, and maybe knowing why, the closest he came to incriminating her was when he said "I cannot think why I was so unwell after getting that coffee and chocolate from her.” L'Angelier was blackmailing Madeleine, threatening to expose their torrid physical affair just as Madeleine was about to marry a nice merchant. The verdict against her was the classic Scottish "not proven," which someone once translated as "you're not guilty, but don't do it again."

Ivy, based on a novel by Marie Belloc Lowndes, has all sorts of echoes of Madeleine Smith, but the differences make the plot and Fontaine's title character all the more irresistible. Ivy is guilty; some think Madeleine was innocent (although the Siren’s view was well put by F. Tennyson Jesse: "Probably she did it, but anyhow he deserved it").

And Ivy's psychology also veers from that of the sensual Madeleine. As played by Fontaine--and the Siren ranks this among Joan's best performances--Ivy gives every indication of not much liking sex at all. She endures the caresses and importunings of her millstone husband and discarded lover as one might absently pat an overeager Pekingese. When she goes after rich, unsuspecting (wasn't he always, poor lamb) Herbert Marshall, Ivy displays herself like a piece of Wedgewood--not something to be seized with vulgar hands, but rather to be wrapped in tissue paper and taken home to a proper setting in the nicest room in the house. It isn't men who bring a flash to Ivy's eyes and a flush to her cheekbones, but mansions, large boats, feathered hats and, most of all, spangled handbags with cunning secret compartments.

Sam Wood hooked the Siren from scene one, as Ivy, in one of the cloud-like white dresses she wears through most of the movie, climbs the stairs to a back apartment, where Una O'Connor pops in to tell the future. No one in a movie ever goes to a fortune teller to be told "I've looked deep into your soul, my child, and everything is just ducky." No, they go to have the fortune teller start with "I see a journey" or "I see a dark stranger" or, in this case, "I see someone rich"--and then break off, rear back and flinch with dread at a ghastly presentiment. This O'Connor does, and Fontaine also does her duty, as the customer who shrugs off the bad news as a supernatural false alarm, crosses the psychic's palms with silver and hastens off to her fate.

Ivy is married to Jervis Lexton, a happy-go-lucky layabout played by an unexpectedly marvelous Richard Ney. He once had some money, but Ivy ran through it in short order, and now they live in dingy rooms and try to live well on nothing a year. Whatever motivated Ivy to marry him--impulse? infatuation? to get him to quit asking?--is long gone. As Jervis yammers away about how he loves her and they'll get by all right and he wouldn't dream of leaving, Ivy gently pulls at her collar as though she can't breathe. The Siren loved Fontaine doing this so much that she reversed the DVD three times to watch it again.

In addition to her husband, Ivy has an ex-lover who can't get over her, a noble slum doctor named Roger Gretorex (Patric Knowles). Perhaps Ivy once saw Gretorex as an escape, but then she found he lives in a shabby neighborhood and is always attending to injured urchins and what-not and my dear, it's just too dreary. What Ivy needs is a nice multimillionaire, like Una O'Connor promised her in scene one, and soon he appears, Miles Rushworth (Marshall).

Marshall and Fontaine together play two arrestingly gorgeous scenes, including one at a ball where Ivy asks Rushworth to dance, and he says he'd love to in that lovely voice of his. That had the Siren in a tizzy, since Herbert Marshall was (probably) the only man with an artificial leg ever to become a major star. Ivy and Rushworth get waylaid before they reach the dance floor, thank goodness, and play a conversation in front of fireworks. More beautiful still is a scene on Rushworth's yacht, where a thunderstorm comes up and their kiss is shot in silhouette.

And then there's the scene where Fontaine, showing more lust than she does at any other point, spies an expensive antique handbag in a window and deftly manipulates Rushworth into buying it for her. It used to belong to Marie Antoinette, the saleslady tells them, but surely this is a script oversight. L'Autrichienne did play milkmaid while peasants starved, but she didn't run around dosing them with arsenic. Perhaps Lowndes and Bennett were thinking of Madame de Montespan, another of Ivy's lethal sorority. Anyway. The purse has a clasp that opens to reveal a small hollow that's simply perfect for...golly, rouge would fit, or perfumed talc, or maybe face powder…

Ah, that's the ticket. So considerate of Dr. Gretorex to have that lying around his office, just as Rushworth leaves for South Africa and Ivy realizes her husband can't take a hint. (The poison is coyly unnamed, but the Siren thinks it's arsenic, once used to treat psoriasis as well as syphilis, as though the latter diagnosis weren't enough of a problem 100 years ago. And later there's another doctor checking Jervis's fingernails for the telltale white lines.) The moment Fontaine steals the poison is played with her face in shadow, her motivations all in the delicate way she opens the latch on her precious purse. Later, when she's fixing Jervis a fatal drink of brandy and and water, Wood keeps her hands just out of frame, as though sharing Ivy's conviction that it isn't really murder, she's just doing what a woman must, if she wants to be kept in style.

Gretorex tries to see Ivy and winds up making an inadvertent house call on the dying young Jervis, who's complaining about one hell of a hangover. Those factors enable Ivy, who's nothing if not opportunistic, to try to pin the murder on her ex-lover.

And here's the best thing about Fontaine in Ivy: As David also notes, it's such a delectable twist on her performance in Suspicion. In that unjustly maligned Hitchcock outing, where Fontaine was terrific, she's the upper-crust, tormented, tremulous wife of a no-good, but non-poisoning, husband. Here, she's the upper-crust, tremulous poisoner, with the same genteel mannerisms turned lethal. Watch Fontaine trying to maneuver her husband into divorcing her, delicately arranging herself on a sofa and moaning that she is no good for him. Catch her exasperation as this impossible sap insists that no, dearest, he wouldn't dream of it. See Fontaine look at Jervis dying, and show a fleeting bit of pity: "Pain should be quick," she reflects. And then, just like Madeleine, Ivy gives her victim another dose, like he's a suffering parakeet.

And there's Ivy, in bed after Jervis finally expires, shrinking back against the pillows as she's questioned by a gruff detective, as Lina in Suspicion cowered in bed with her eyes glued to a glowing glass of milk. Later, when Ivy realizes the law, personified by Sir Cedric Hardwicke and his eyebags, may be catching on to her, her eyelids flutter with repressed impatience at the lack of cooperation; it's like she's turning a key in a lock and the wretched thing simply won't open.

Joan Fontaine, long may she flourish, turns 93 on Oct. 22. Happy birthday, Ms Fontaine. There could be no better way for us all to celebrate than rediscovering Ivy.

DVD Alert: No Greater Glory, Address Unknown, Other Titles From Sony

Boy is the Siren fashionably late on this one--about a month late, in fact--but it is still well worth trumpeting. Following the success of the Warner Archive Collection, Sony has inaugurated a manufacturing-on-demand service that at last turns up some devoutly hoped-for films. Lou Lumenick wrote about it here. They have started with 100 titles, and more are promised each month.

The site itself is fairly easy to navigate, and in a welcome bonus, includes clips from each film. The prices (around $20) are commensurate with Warner Archive.

What follows is a list of films the Siren recommends to her readers, and others she hasn't seen but wants to. She starts with the best.

No Greater Glory. A shimmering masterpiece from Frank Borzage's sound period, this story of the war games played by groups of boys in a warehouse lot comes with the Siren's highest possible endorsement. George Breakston plays Nemecsek, whose yearning for the friendship of a handsome leader in his gang leads him to reckless acts and, finally, martyrdom. A sequence in a lamplit park where Nemecsek tries to spy on the opposing "army" is as haunting as anything in Borzage's silents; Joseph H. August's cinematography is the equal of his work for John Ford. No Greater Glory was taken from a novel by Ferenc Molnar, The Paul Street Boys, published in 1906, and it carries all the intensity of childhood loves and griefs. It is also as wrenching a statement about war as Paths of Glory. Under Borzage's guidance the gifted young cast performs with sensitivity and restraint. In addition to Breakston, the Siren was particularly taken with Frankie Darro, as the leader of the opposition who comes to see the qualities in Nemecsek that his own friends do not. (The fate of Jimmy Butler, who plays the object of Nemecsek's adoration, adds a piercing coda: An artillery private, Butler died in action in France in 1945, aged 24.) The movie deserves a full-fledged restoration and all-out DVD packaging, but if this is the form we've got, we should still pounce. TCM has shown this at least once, to the Siren's knowledge, but it belongs in the collection of anyone with a serious interest in Borzage, black-and-white cinematography, 1930s cinema or indeed the art of film.





Address Unknown. Directed by William Cameron Menzies, a towering figure who needs a MOMA retrospective, a definitive biography and his own damn DVD box set. Until that day, MOD discs will have to do. It's a parable about the friendship between a Jewish art dealer and his German partner, who returns to the Fatherland just before World War II and is drawn, step by ominous step, into Nazism. Whether the German has adopted the full ideology, or is motivated by ambition and greed, is one of the film's central questions, as well as which ties demand loyalty, and which do not. The movie softens up Kathrine Kressman Taylor's memorably dark, bitter epistolary novel, and that's a pity. But the magnificent look of it (that screen grab is the merest taste) will give incredible pleasure. Cinematography by Rudolph Mate. Here's an excellent write-up by primo blogger David Cairns.

10 Rillington Place. Kim Morgan is a fan. That's good enough for the Siren.

Counter-Attack. Screened during the Shadows of Russia series that the Siren co-programmed with Comrade Lumenick, it includes one of Paul Muni's better performances and has wonderfully claustrophobic tension, as Muni, playing a Russian soldier, and a female resistance fighter battle a small group of Germans in a bombed building. But you don't need to know any of that. The only thing you need to know is that the cinematographer was James Wong Howe, as close to a sure thing as Hollywood can offer us in this cockamamie world.

Footsteps in the Fog. The Siren already has an under-the-counter version of this gaslight thriller, which stars her beloved Jean Simmons and Stewart Granger. She hasn't watched it yet, but the pedigree suggests it is well worth a flutter.

Hot Blood. Nicholas Ray, and the clip looks gorgeous, although even ardent auteurists often strain to say something nice about this Gypsy melodrama with Jane Russell and Cornel Wilde. The Siren isn't completely sure she wants to buy this movie, actually, even if she knows Glenn Kenny would say "Siren, it has mise en scène!" But the DVD cover is pretty goshdarned fabulous, isn't it?

Mickey One. The death of Arthur Penn has brought this film back into the blogosphere conversation. The Siren found it deeply odd, but in a good way, and Warren Beatty does great work in it.

The Guilt of Janet Ames. A Rosalind Russell vehicle the Siren has long wanted to see.

Song Without End. Once more, say it with the Siren: James. Wong. Howe.

The Spiritualist. Released in the U.S. as The Amazing Mr. X. A legendary film noir/horror movie that is probably a pip for Halloween. The Siren is definitely buying this one. Cinematography by John Alton; check out DVD Beaver's screen caps.

"Two Grown Men Acting Like...Grown Men!"

Strictly to cheer our Friday, the Siren's favorite Joan Crawford cameo, with Doris Day looking lovely and Dennis Morgan as affable as always. And the great Jack Carson, who's 100% right about that gingham dress.

TCM Alert: Kim Morgan and Lou Lumenick on Critics' Choice (with update)

Update: Kim's piece on Something Wild is up at Sunset Gun. The Siren watched it and testifies that the movie is all she says, and then some. More than worth your time, a highly original piece of filmmaking. And Kim's chat with Robert Osborne showed her far-ranging classic-film chops, and the way she responds to a great film not just with her considerable intellect, but with deep emotion as well.

This month Turner Classic Movies is doing a great series called Critics' Choice. A number of film critics were asked to pick a double feature of favorite films. Two of the Siren's favorite critics--and dear friends--are appearing, and they both made splendid, offbeat choices.

Tonight (Oct. 13) goddess Kim Morgan will be discussing Something Wild, directed by Jack Garfein and starring Carroll Baker, at 11:30 pm Eastern time; and at 1:30 am Thursday morning Kim introduces the superb He Ran All the Way, directed by John Berry, with cinematography by genius James Wong Howe. As the Siren's patient readers already know, it's the last film of John Garfield, an actor Kim and the Siren both yell about from rooftops and barstools and passing convertibles and whatever else is handy.




On Wednesday, Oct. 20 at 11 pm Eastern, Lou Lumenick, the Siren's fearless Shadows of Russia comrade, shows his great taste in classic film with the seldom-screened, exceptionally good The Last Flight, directed by William Dieterle, who deserves a much higher profile. And at 12:30 am Thursday morning Lou introduces All Through the Night, directed by Vincent Sherman, one of the Siren's favorite stalwart studio directors, and starring Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre.

Fire up the DVRs, y'all.