Review - Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939 - Dir. Frank Capra)

I thought James Stewart had fluffed it in his attempts to triumph in his first round FA Cup of Actors match against laughing boy, Gael Garcia Bernal. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is so saccharine sweet in the opening scenes that I thought I was in danger of redecorating my fine room with regurgitated Super Noodles. The children in particular are completely cringeworthy, almost making it unwatchable. Luckily things improve.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington tells the story of what happens if you take an ordinary bloke (James Stewart in one of his many 'everyman' roles) and make him a senator. (A similar idea was explored in Harold Lloyd's The Cat's Paw albeit with the added threat of beheadings.) Jefferson Smith is chosen by a group of corrupt politicians and businessmen led by Jim Taylor (Edward Arnold) and Senator Joseph Paine (Claude Raines) who need someone naive to go along with them and vote as they do. They especially need him for putting through a bill for building a local dam that will provide a fair bit of work (and money) for Taylor's company. Smith has different ideas.

Being a Frank Capra film you can pretty much tell where it's going right from the off. Yet I couldn't help but getting carried along with Smith's plight. He's got a bit of a Naruto type personality in that even when the odds are completely stacked against him, he won't give up. The latter half of the film has him holding the floor of the senate for hour after hour to prove his point. The rules state that as long as he doesn't leave the room or sit down he can carry on speaking. Which he does. For a long time. The whole issue of toileting never comes up. Maybe he just has a sneaky little trickle like the woman in Threads. 

The script is great and has moments of brightness followed by everything going wrong with Smith getting hammered by the Taylor political machine. (His goons go so far as to use their trucks to ram paperboys off the road. Not polite or particularly pleasant.) There's also time for a small portion of love story with Smith and his aide Saunders (Jean Arthur) who initially is in league with Senator Payne but - amazingly enough - gets won over by Smith's boyish charm.

Supposedly on its initial release it didn't go down too well with the Senate. They didn't like the fact that it made them all look like corrupt mouthpieces led by outside industries and vested interests. Erm, surely that's the definition of the word 'politician'? 

James Stewart is perfectly cast in this role. Now I know he goes a bit creepy and obsessive in Vertigo, but from this performance it is hard to imagine him having a single corrupt bone in his body. My favourite moment has to be when he gets settled in for the long haul in the Senate, takes out a flask and sandwiches from his bag and proceeds to eat them as the Senators return to listen to his rather long speech. I chuckled.

So despite having a massively shaky start I was won over by this tale of one man going up against the might of politicians and big business. As relevant now as ever.
7/10
evlkeith

(So that puts James Stewart through to the next round and Gael Garcia Bernal is out. Hooray! To say that I was gutted in the first minutes of this film, what with the prospect of having to watch another Gael Garcia effort, is an understatement. But quality shone through. Phew.)

If you like this you could also try:
Anatomy of a Murder, Mr Deeds goes to Town, You Can't Take It With You.

Review - White Zombie (1932 - Dir. Victor Halperin)

I've tried this 'Zombie Grip". Doesn't work.

I thought it was probably time to have a look at possibly the first zombie film, (seeing as though we're drawing near to the end of this mammoth season) and very different it is to the usual films containing our beloved flesh-eating chums we're used to. 

Charles Beaumont is in love with a beautiful lady, Madeline, alas she is engaged to be wed to another, a charming man called... Neil. As anyone would in this situation, Charlie turns to the local voodoo practitioner, the aptly named 'Murder' Legendre (Bela Lugosi) to sort the problem out for him. His solution involves turning Madeline into a zombie. Problem sorted. Time for tea and cake.

Not content with using minimum wage zero-hours contractors in his sugar mill, Mr 'Murder' uses his zombies to do all his sweet goods related work, in a similar fashion to The Plague of the Zombies. The zombies look the part with their white faces and gormless expressions but they're not much of a threat. (Bizarrely the best zombie acting is performed by Neil when he's had a few and he's staggering about in a graveyard.) Only in the closing scenes do the zombies cause any kind of grief when they try to push Neil off a cliff. (Blimey, you can't take them anywhere.) I was surprised at the amount of tension that I felt during that scene though. Slow moving zombies inexorably encroaching on the hero's position seems to have been a winner right from the very origins of the zombie species. 

Another scene that stuck in my head is one where Neil gets a bit depressed and tipsy in a bar. The other revellers are only represented by sounds and the shadows of them dancing. It's a surprisingly effective way to film a bar scene.

One aspect that surprised me about this film is the technical quality. It was only made in 1932 and yet the film makers had already cracked the use of wipes, split screens and matte paintings. (Amazingly the first matte painting appears in Missions of California from 1907.) The compositions are pretty accomplished too. The director often uses other objects the frame the actors, whether it's the lid of a grand piano, the gap between another actors arm and side, or a petal-like mandala pattern that has been cut into a balustrade. Both Madeline and 'Murder' are seen through this pattern, linking them together. Madeline also has the same pattern on her dress, not sure why, but the director obviously had his reasons.

Another surprise is the inclusion of a bit of saucy lingerie. Ooh cheeky. I wouldn't have thought they'd have gone in for any of that malarkey in the thirties.

Something that is not quite as accomplished is the acting. For the most part it is amateur dramatics time. Lugosi shamelessly hams it up, but the worst offender is Neil (John Harron), constantly moaning on and saying, 'Oh Madeline'. Mary's dad obviously took lessons from Neil before embarking on his oscar winning Eastenders performances. Sadly the acting is bad enough to bring down the rating by a couple of points. 

What you have here then is a fairly effective little horror film, with a foreboding atmosphere, that can be proud to have kicked off the zombie genre. Just don't expect anyone throwing up their guts, having their eye punctured or biting their mum's prize begonias.
4/10
evlkeith

If you like this you could also try:
The Plague of the Zombies, Nosferatu.

Review - Duck Soup (1933 - Dir. Leo McCarey)

Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without a bit of the Marx Brothers. Many years ago, Channel 4 had a Marx Brothers Season at Christmas, showing about four of their films late at night. Hence their inclusion in our Christmas Season.

If you've never seen a Marx Brothers film prepared to be baffled, especially by the black painted rectangle that is supposedly Groucho's moustache. The jokes come thick and fast, particularly from Groucho as Rufus T. Firefly. Try to have an ear rest for five seconds and you've probably missed about eight jokes. You've got to work to keep up with him. Here's a sample bit of dialogue from Groucho after hearing that Mrs Teasdale's husband was dead:

Firefly: Will you marry me? Did he leave you any money? Answer the second question first.

Mrs Teasdale: He left me his entire fortune.

Firefly: Is that so? Can't you see what I'm trying to tell you? I love you!

Chico and Harpo are more at home with slapstick. The completely unnecessary scene where they are selling peanuts and fighting with a rival lemonade seller is comedy genius: hats are swapped repeatedly, things are cut off with a large pair of scissors (a recurring occurence throughout the film) and many legs are put into hands (you'd have to watch it to understand).

That's not to say that Groucho can't partake in a portion of silent comedy. Another standout scene is where Harpo is pretending to be Groucho on the other side of a smashed mirror and has to copy his every move. It involves many funny walks and dances. You can see the family resemblance in this scene as Chico also tries his hand at a Groucho impersonation.

By the end Duck Soup descends into something resembling one of Ernie Wise's plays as the four brothers go to war. Everything gets very frantic and random. Not that it hadn't been fairly random before that. But this is as good a place to start as any if you haven't seen any Marx Brothers films. 

6/10

evlkeith

(If you have seen Duck Soup you will be aware that I've seriously contradicted my last review where I had a rant about musicals. It does contain a few songs, but they are funny, especially when Groucho whips out a little piccolo mid song. The musical numbers subvert tradition. In one scene, the four brothers do some really stupid dance manoeuvres that the rest of the cast then copy. Anyway, you need an exception to prove a rule, so leave me alone.)

If you like this you could also try:
Animal Crackers, A Day at the Races, A Night at the Opera.