The Trouble with Harry: Movie & DVD Review

Hitchcock--experimenting with comedy

(Originally published 2005)

Alfred Hitchcock's 1955 movie "The Trouble with Harry" is a sly, subtle black comedy in the British vein that's laced with sexual innuendoes, an enthusiastic skewering of Puritanism and fringe New Englander characters that resist caricature.

As written by John Michael Hayes, screenwriter for "Peyton Place" and "Butterfield 8" as well as several of Hitchcock's best films - "Rear Window," "To Catch a Thief," "The Man Who Knew Too Much" - the movie finds Hitchcock experimenting with comedy, turning it on its side as he did with suspense, infusing it with his dark sense of humor, twisting it into something unique and unexpected.

As such, "Harry" is an absurdist's dream, with a few nice laughs and good performances tucked within a screwy story about a bothersome corpse named Harry who can't seem to stay buried and whose death could be attributed to any number of people.

When we first see him, Harry is lying stiff in a Vermont field, toes pointed toward the heavens, perhaps dead from malicious means, perhaps not. His body allows for a series of misunderstandings to unspool, with John Forsythe, Shirley MacLaine, Edmund Gwenn, Jerry Mathers, Mildred Natwick and Mildred Dunnock all playing characters who factor into the mystery. Who is responsible for Harry's death? That's part of the trouble here - not that any of these chilly people are particularly moved by his death.

Of the film, Hayes once said that "Hitchcock wanted to do the movie just for fun, for relief from what he was doing regularly." Hitchcock himself noted that the film was "an expensive self-indulgence, though it went over quite well whenever it reached an audience."

Essentially, that's the director's tongue-in-cheek way of saying that it didn't really connect at all - the movie bombed in the States and in England (Paramount refused to push it), with Paris alone serving as its most enthusiastic supporter. There, the movie ran an astonishing six months to sold-out shows.

While it's true that "Harry" isn't the best of the Hitchcock lot and that nobody should come to it expecting raucous laughs - you won't find them here - it's also true that like all of Hitchcock's films, it has its indelible moments.

Among them are the unforgettable scenes in which Jerry Mathers ("Leave it to Beaver") finds his favorite toy in a dead rabbit, and also there's the bonus of seeing MacLaine in her first feature role. This isn't the brassy MacLaine we've come to know over the years - she was just 20 here, still an ingenue. Still, watching her spar with Forsythe, who would go on to star in the television series "Dynasty," allows for flashes of the robust actress MacLaine would become.

Grade: B+

The Asphault Jungle: DVD & Movie Review

High-end noir in a low-end world

Nominated for four Academy Awards, John Huston’s 1950 noir-caper “The Asphalt Jungle" is high-end noir in a low-end world.

It’s among the most urban and hard-boiled of the genre. Tough and menacing, its lack of humor deepening the dysfunction, the film has an air of urgency that consumes it.

Everyone here is on the make, desperately muscling their cut of the action so they can have the means to break free from their lives of crime.

In this case, the action involves a heist devised by ex-con, Doc Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe), a mousy man recently sprung from prison who has an ingenious plan to steal $1 million worth of jewels from a swank jeweler. To do so, Riedenschneider enlists the help of several men necessary to pull the job.

Chief among them is Emmerich (Louis Calhern), the bankrupt lawyer financing the deal while trying to keep his middle-aged wife (Dorothy Tree) happy, and his demanding young mistress (Marilyn Monroe, brilliant in her first screen role) a wee bit happier. If he looks exhausted, there’s good reason--these two keep him running.

Doing the grunt work are Louis (Anthony Caruso), a family man and gifted safe-cracker caring for an ill child; Gus (James Whitmore), who knows how to drive a car with the sort of nimble swiftness needed in a getaway; and Dix Handley (Sterling Hayden), the film’s emotional center, who smolders as the enforcer of the heist.

Dix is in love with Doll (Jean Hagen), though he never shows it. Ruined by a life’s worth of disappointment, he’s soured by the sort of self-loathing that tends to turn good men into crooks. When the heist goes wrong, Dix and the others find themselves in a fix, with the cops suddenly “crawlin’ all over,” as the ever-worried Doll succinctly puts it.

As written by Huston and Ben Maddow from W.R. Burnett’s novel, “The Asphalt Jungle” differs from other film noirs in that Huston (“The Maltese Falcon,” “Key Largo,” “The African Queen”) doesn’t demonize his criminal characters or their behavior.

The film is essentially an American tragedy, with Huston trying to understand his characters and their choices, knowing that most are conflicted men waging interior wars with their morality and their conscience. They may lose, but Huston doesn’t exploit any of them. He allows them their mistakes, then quietly, without malice, takes the world away from them when they go too far.

“The Asphalt Jungle" begins on the mean streets of some unnamed, grimy, mid-western city, but when it ends, it ends in the plush countryside. There, hope stretches deep into a field where life is meant to begin. It’s a haunting finish to a terrific film.

Grade: A

Bogie & Bacall: The Signature Collection DVD Review

Bogie and Bacall: The Signature Collection

The legendary chemistry between Bogart and Bacall showcased in four movies--"To Have and to Have Not," "Dark Passage," "Key Largo" and "The Big Sleep," the latter of which is one of the finest examples of the noir genre.

Saturated with shadows, style and cigarette smoke, the movie follows Bogart's Philip Marlowe, a private dick trying to get to the bottom of a blackmail case involving socialite Carmen Sternwood (Martha Vickers).

Since Carmen is a conniving kitten, all isn't what it seems with her. Neither is it with Carmen's equally mysterious sister, Vivian Rutledge (Bacall), a gorgeous femme fatale who deepens the dysfunction by adding her own bad habits to the mix, which Marlowe inevitably finds himself fixing.

With the exception of the World War II drama “To Have and to Have Not,” the cheap sort of slum hustling that goes on in these movies either would bring down a red light district or brighten it, depending on how you view the world.

Nobody talks as they do in noir, which is a great deal of the fun. And nobody--nobody--spoke it with such a heated undercurrent of lust as Bogart and Bacall in their prime.

Grade: A

Literary Classics Collection: DVD Review

Literary Classics Collection

Six movies, all adapted from their respective books--1962’s “Billy Budd,” with Peter Ustinov successfully tackling Melville; 1950’s “Captain Horatio Hornblower,” with Gregory Peck and Virginia Mayo drenched amid the swashbuckling madness; and the 1937 and 1952 versions of “The Prisoner of Zenda," the latter of which is a shot-for-shot, Technicolor remake of the former (which stands as the classic.)

Also included is 1948’s “The Three Musketeers” with Gene Kelly, Lana Turner and Angela Lansbury, and Vincente Minnelli's 1949 version of “Madame Bovary," with Jennifer Jones, of all people, famously battling against Bovary's unwanted provincial life.

Every one of the movies holds up.

Grade: B+

Tennessee Williams Film Collection: DVD Review

The Tennessee Williams Film Collection

The boxed set to beat this year. Five films, some among our best, inspired by the great playwright, Tennessee Williams.

Included are 1951’s “A Street Car Named Desire,” with Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh; 1958’s “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” with Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman and Burl Ives (“The mendacity!”) and 1964’s “The Night of the Iguana” with Richard Burton, Ava Gardner and Deborah Kerr.

Also included are Elia Kazan’s 1956 film, “Baby Doll,” with Karl Malden; 1961’s “The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone,” smoldering with Vivien Leigh and Warren Beatty; and 1962’s “Sweet Bird of Youth,” with Paul Newman, Geraldine Page and Rip Torn. Includes a bonus DVD, “Tennessee Williams South,” which cuts to the heart of the complicated, fascinating Williams.

An excellent set.

Grade: A

Warner Tough Guys Collection: DVD Review

Tough Guys Collection

From Warner, a collection of six films, all dipped in noir and featuring some of the major players of the genre.

The standouts are 1940's "City for Conquest," with James Cagney, Ann Sheridan and even Elia Kazan before he turned to directing; 1936's "Bullets or Ballots," with Edward G. Robinson paired opposite Humphrey Bogart; 1935's "G Men," again with Cagney; and the 1938 gangster comedy, "A Slight Case of Murder,” with Robinson awash in farce and corpses.

Less effective are Bogart's underwhelming turn in the 1937's "San Quentin" and Cagney in the 1939 prison drama, "Each Dawn I Die."

Still, for the value, the excellent commentaries and the extensive extras alone, it's a solid set.

Grade: B+

His Girl Friday: Movie, DVD Review

A girl worth loving

(Originally published 2004)

It's the energy of "His Girl Friday" that grabs you, its heated lines of dialogue that leave you satisfied and spent. Howard Hawks directs with such surefooted ease, he blasts through his film with an air of precociousness. There's the sense that he's showing off here, with a "look at what I can do" attitude that might have sunk a lesser film if it didn't have the goods to back it up.

This movie has the goods.

The film is dense and complex, with scenes stacked against each other with such admirable speed, much of the movie's pleasure comes down to the sheer craft of its production.

This is a movie about the art of moviemaking, made by people who love movies. Excellence rings through its direction, Charles Lederer's script, and the lead performances by Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, who are backed by one of the best supporting casts in an American movie.

Based on Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's play "The Front Page," "His Girl Friday," released in 1940, is one of the great newspaper satires, with Grant as Walter Burns, managing editor of New York's Morning Post, and Russell as Hildy Johnson, his star investigative reporter and former wife who is on the verge of moving on with a new life -one that happily doesn't involve newspapers or Walter.

But Walter isn't having any of that. He and Hildy may be divorced, but in his own way, he still loves her, and really, who can blame him? Headstrong, attractive and smart, her cutting barbs right in line with his, Hildy is indeed his girl, with Walter deciding upon seeing her soon-to-be husband, the perfectly nice but perfectly benign insurance salesman Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy), that he won't do for her.

Hildy has other ideas about that, but soon is lured back to the job she loves when the film, dipping into the noir movement of the time, extends to include Earl Williams (John Qualen), a convicted felon about to be put to death for killing a black policeman. It's the timing of his lynching that raises eyebrows. Just days after it takes place, the current sheriff and mayor will be up for re-election. Should they succeed in hanging Williams before then, they presumably will appeal to minorities and thus garner their much-needed vote.

It's the very sort of story that a good reporter, backed by a good editor, could expose and wash clean, particularly with such dirty politics involved - and the idea that Williams might have shot the cop accidentally. What ensues is slapstick comedy struck through with moments of dark drama, the likes of which give "Friday" surprising depth and, somehow, heartier laughs.

Sustaining the peak she achieved in 1939's "The Women," Russell is terrific here - her mouth deserves a ticket for the speed it breaks. She nicely complements a very sly and dapper Grant, who would sail through 1940 with one of the best years of his career - he also would appear in "The Philadelphia Story." Watching them eat up the screen and spit it out for each other's pleasure is pure dessert for them, yes, but also for us.

Grade: A

A Night at the Opera: Movie & DVD Review by Christopher Smith

The Marx Brothers sing

(Originally published 2004)

The classic 1935 Marx Brothers hit "A Night at the Opera," which came out two years after their best film, "Duck Soup," bombed so badly at the box office, it provoked their studio, Paramount Pictures, to drop them.

After a period in which it seemed as if the brothers' film careers were finished, they were picked up by Irving Thalberg at MGM, whose idea it was to balance their slapstick with a romantic element that audiences could connect with, while in the process rounding out their notoriously thin plots.

The result is "Opera," with Sam Wood directing from a sharp, funny script by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, who wrote the brothers' Broadway smash, "Animal Crackers." What they created is a movie that allowed the brothers a high-end backdrop for their low-end antics. It was the right move, perfect for the times, then and now.

The movie stars Groucho Marx as Otis B. Driftwood, a shameless promoter who finds in the wealthy Mrs. Claypool (the wonderful Margaret Dumont, a mainstay in many of the brothers' films) the sort of stool who agrees to pay $200,000 for a shot at high society.

According to Driftwood, the best way into this closed world is by financing the New York Opera Company. Decked out in her diamonds and sandbagged by more cash than she can manage, the steadfast Claypool decides to go for it, braving Driftwood's rapid fire bon mots with a haughty air that creates something of a shell around her. The woman is impervious to the subplot building along the fringes.

In it, Kitty Carlisle and Allan Jones are Rosa and Ricardo, wannabe opera stars in the making who are dumbstruck by their love for each other. Preventing them from achieving their dreams are the cruel head of the opera company, Hermann Gottlieb (Sig Ruman), and the preening opera star Rodolpho Lassparri (Walter Woolf King), who wants Rosa for himself in spite of all signs suggesting that he'd be happier waxing cute with Ricardo.

Around all of this whirls Chico and Harpo Marx, serving no real purpose other than to join Groucho in generating mayhem. But what mayhem. "A Night at the Opera" boasts scenes and dialogue that are so consistently alive and clever, they would fall apart if explored in print because what lifts them--nuance--would be lost.

What matters is their presence in the movie, how they are delivered by the brothers, and how the rest of the cast reacts. It's a delicate balance--and not one that was achieved without some work. Before a frame of the movie was shot, Wood and the brothers perfected the material on the road in audience rehearsals, tweaking the script to achieve the greatest number of laughs.

What's impressive is that in spite of being so wholly manufactured, the movie doesn't feel manufactured. It's quick and effortless, its energy never lagging in spite of having every reason to collapse.

What comes through in "A Night of the Opera" isn't just that the brothers came to have fun, but also to succeed. Fresh off the failure of "Duck Soup," this was their comeback movie. The effort shows.

Grade: A

Young Frankenstein: Movie & DVD Review by Christopher Smith

Exhuming a corpse, finding a classic

Written by Mel Brooks ("Blazing Saddles," "The Producers") and Gene Wilder, "Young Frankenstein" is an affectionate send-up of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel, James Whale's 1931 movie version, and all of the dozens of horror movie spin-offs they inspired.

It stars Wilder as Dr. Frederick Frankenstein - or, more specifically and phonetically, Dr. Frahnkinshteen, as he insists to be called in an effort to put as much distance as he can between himself and his grandfather, the venerable Dr. Victor Frankenstein.

When his grandfather reaches out to him from beyond the grave by way of his will, Frederick reluctantly leaves behind his high-strung fiance, Elizabeth (Madeline Kahn), to travel to Transylvania. There, outside his grandfather's castle, he meets his new assistants, wall-eyed Igor (Marty Feldman) and buxomly Inga (Teri Garr), before coming in contact with Frau Blucher (Cloris Leachman), a chilly reed of a woman whose pinched face suggests that somewhere in her mouth, likely beneath a forked tongue, are tucked a clutch of lemons and bitters.

But what lemons, what bitters. With her hooded eyes and impervious air of haughty detachment, Leachman thrives in her character's neuroses, embracing the camp role of the tight-bunned Blucher as if she were Nosferatu re-animated after a sex change.

Gradually, hauntingly, hilariously, Frederick is drawn into the family business of re-animating dead tissue. Circumstances lead him below castle, where he finds his grandfather's helpfully titled book, "How I Did It," and begins his own connect-the-dot path to monsterdom.

With John Morris' spooky score joining Gerald Hirschfeld's stunning black and white photography in giving the proceedings weight, a corpse is exhumed, the wrong brain is implanted and life is given to a creature played by Peter Boyle - who, it should be noted, was a Christian monk before he became an actor.

You wouldn't know it here. In "Young Frankenstein," Boyle is on a slow burn, joining Brooks, Wilder and the rest of the cast in spoofing the genre while never condescending to it. Here is a comedy that loves horror movies (just as "Blazing Saddles" loved Westerns). If it didn't, the film would have lacked the necessary substance on which to hang its laughs. But Brooks, a master of the form, knows that good satires are only good satires if they can stand up to the real thing. "Young Frankenstein" stands up to the real thing. The exception? It happens to be standing on its side.

Grade: A

Sleeper: Movie & DVD Review by Christopher Smith

Slapstick and anarchy fueling the laughs

The sleeper in Woody Allen's 1973 screwball farce "Sleeper" is Allen himself.

Here, as Miles Monroe, Allen plays a former health food store owner who was accidentally cryogenically frozen in 1973 after an operation to remove an ulcer went awry. Now, 200 years later, he is awakened in 2173 to find a brave new world filled with robots, riots, idiots and corruption.

Considering that Miles left this world during the declining years of the Nixon administration, one would think that he would feel right at home in 2173. But no. Unfortunately, not even living through that era could prepare him for this era.

Somehow, the world has gotten worse. The restraints on our freedom have tightened. Nobody seems particularly happy. We live in a dystopian police state led by an unseen totalitarian ruler.

And sex, among the most basic of human needs and pleasures, has become the responsibility of a machine called the orgasmatron, in which you lock yourself inside a metal cylinder for a few rocking minutes while God-knows-what happens inside.

Slapstick and anarchy fuel the film's laughs.

As written by Allen and Marshall Brickman, the film is a funny sci-fi send-up that lampoons a number of films - "2001: A Space Odyssey," "1984," "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "A Clockwork Orange" chief among them - while also echoing the physical comedy of the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton, and Chaplin, without embracing the latter performer's cuteness.

The film is early Allen, which is to say that the director is in a far more loose and playful mood than the movies that would come after his Academy Award-winning "Annie Hall." He's in his right mind here - working out the one-liners, allowing his wit free rein - but he's also way out of his mind, just as he should be.

When we first see Miles, he is covered in tinfoil, still loopy from his long slumber, with two desperate doctors-cum-revolutionists trying to wake him before armed men take them away. The gist of it is this: These revolutionaries and others like them want to overthrow the government. Since Miles is unknown in this world, he allegedly has the ability to infiltrate it and give the revolutionaries the information they seek - whatever that may be.

Chaos is a bullet that rips through "Sleeper," with Miles eventually finding himself in the company of Diane Keaton's Luna Schlosser, a greeting card poet and enthusiastic supporter of the orgasmatron who is rather happy with this world and can't understand why anyone would want to do away with it. It's their romantic bombast - and the bizarre situations that uncurl around them - that make "Sleeper" the silly, freakish hit that it is.

Grade: A-

The Thin Man: Movie & DVD Review

Beaufifully shallow, sophisticated and smart

W.S. Van Dyke’s “The Thin Man” was an enormous hit upon its 1934 release. It caused a sensation, earning four Academy Award nominations--including Best Picture and Best Actor--and spawning a series of five additional “Thin Man” films, the last of which appeared in 1947.

Not bad for a movie shot in just 12 days.

Based on Dashiell Hammett’s novel, the film is beautifully shallow, sophisticated, and smart; there’s no keeping it down. It’s pure slapstick noir, a breezy social comedy whose likable characters are consistently half in the bag, which is much of the fun.

As written by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich, the film is a post-prohibition potboiler that slyly thumbs its nose at the end of a ridiculously restrictive era, with the robust, non-stop drinking of its main characters fueling an atmosphere that’s at once giddy and infectious.

The movie follows Nick and Nora Charles (William Powell and Myrna Loy), two high-flying millionaires who love their martinis almost as much as they love solving crime. With their dog, Asta, at their side, these two are a gas, so loaded with booze, bitchy bon mots, swanky digs and couture, you’d think the movie was shot in the 1920s rather than the Depression. But of course that’s the point.

With the exception of a few hangovers--and the occasional dead body turning up for good measure--there isn’t a trace of hardship here, just grand living punctuated with rounds of clever repartee. Is there anything better? Not here. This is an escape movie of the first order, with Van Dyke and company boldly taking the world with them.

The plot is almost secondary to the chemistry blistering between Powell and Loy--theirs was one of the great screen romances. Still, a primer is helpful. In the film, Nick and Nora find themselves involved in the disappearance of the wealthy inventor Clyde Wynant (Edward Ellis), who may or may not be responsible for several grisly murders.

What begins as a way to pass the time for couple-- they’re spectacularly bored and only enter into this whodunit because Wynant’s daughter, Dorothy (Maureen O’Sullivan), is a friend of Nick’s--quickly becomes all-engrossing as they set out to learn the truth. Several shady characters add dice to the mix, but then so do the conniving high society types. It’s the final clash between those two groups at a dinner party thrown by the Charleses that gives “The Thin Man” one of cinema’s best climactic moments.

Grade: A

The Big Sleep: DVD Movie Review

"The Big Sleep"
Directed by Howard Hawkes, written by William Faulkner, Jules Furthmann and Leigh Brackett, based on the novel by Raymond Chandler, 114 minutes, not rated.

Howard Hawkes' 1949 noir classic, "The Big Sleep," is a baffling yet wildly entertaining movie based on Raymond Chandler's 1939 novel.

The movie is one of the finest examples of the noir genre, a film enjoyed more for its individual scenes than as a whole.

As written by William Faulkner, Jules Furthmann and Leigh Brackett, the movie stars Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe, a private dick who makes the mistake of getting caught in the throes of a ruthless, confounding case. For his trouble, he makes $25 a day, plus expenses.

By the end of the movie, Marlowe has good reason to question whether he's charging enough.

Saturated with shadows, style and clouds of cigarette smoke, the movie, in its most streamlined form, follows Marlowe as he tries to get to the bottom of a blackmail case involving the saucy socialite, Carmen Sternwood (Martha Vickers).

Since Carmen is a conniving kitten, all isn't what it seems with this cookie. Neither is it with Carmen's equally mysterious sister, Vivian Rutledge (Lauren Bacall), a gorgeous femme fatale who deepens the dysfunction by adding her own bad habits to the mix, which Marlowe inevitably finds himself fixing.

He also fixes Vivian with a kiss, but that comes later, after several characters are either gunned down, drowned, poisoned or pummeled in a handful of genuinely thrilling scenes.

What I love about "The Big Sleep" is that everyone here acts as if they're in the know when really they're out of the loop. The cheap sort of slum hustling that goes on in the film would either bring down a red light district or brighten it, depending on how you view the world. Max Steiner's brassy score charges the atmosphere with worry and dread, but Hawkes counters with a rush of dialogue that's so witty and racy, it generates big laughs.

Nobody talks like they do in noir, and that's a great deal of the fun. In "The Big Sleep," they bite off their words with a mince that's hypnotic in its rapid-fire rhythm. An early exchange between Marlowe and Gen. Sternwood, whose daughters prove so problematic to Marlowe, is a good example:

Sternwood: "How do you like your brandy, sir?"

Marlowe: "In a glass."

Sternwood: "I used to like mine with champagne. Champagne as cold as Valley Forge and with about three ponies of brandy under it. I like to see people drink."

Marlowe: "Hmmm."

Sternwood. "What does that mean?"

Marlowe: "It means, hmmm."

Or, my favorite from Marlowe: "She tried to sit in my lap while I was standing up."

Lines like that sell "The Big Sleep," but so do the sexual innuendoes, most of which take place between Marlowe and the bevy of tart young women who relentlessly hit on him. Not one female character in this movie behaves as if they weren't the product of some aroused man's fevered imagination, his most lurid of dreams. They are constantly turned on and ready for sex, so brazenly on the make, they give the movie a satisfying, electric snap.

The costume design follows suit, so to speak, accentuating harsh, angular lines over soft, rounded curves. The reason? If any character in this movie looked even the slightest bit soft, they'd be shot in the opening credits.

"The Big Sleep" isn't a perfect film--it becomes too convoluted as it unfolds (Chandler himself admitted he couldn't grasp his own ending). Still, there is so much happening onscreen, not the least of which is the legendary chemistry between Bogart and Bacall, that the movie becomes less about its muddled plot and more about just sitting back and enjoying the performances, listening to the dialogue, feeling the gumshoe grit as Marlowe gets in too thick, and getting wrapped up in the characters, all of whom have personalities that slash at the screen and leave their mark.

Grade: A

Strangers on a Train: Movie & DVD Review

"Strangers on a Train"
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, written by Raymond Chandler and Czenzi Ormonde, 101 minutes, not rated

Alfred Hitchcock’s “Strangers on a Train” is about weakness crisscrossing with evil, with evil pushing hard for the upper hand.

Nobody comes away unscathed.

As written by Raymond Chandler and Czenzi Ormonde from Patricia Highsmith’s novel, the film is smashing. It’s another way to look at noir, as conceived by a master of the medium, with a thrilling climax that mines all of Hitchcock’s perverse humor and sense of the absurd.

It’s dark and it’s funny, awful and spot on. No blockbuster this summer matches the whirling audacity Hitchcock unleashes at the end of this movie--and he wasn’t working with a fraction of their budgets.

What he had was something deeper than their pockets--the theme he carried through most of his movies. As Hitchcock saw it, in every man is evil. Touch the right button, rub one the wrong way, and watch evil bloom.

The movie tells the story of fey Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker) and good-looking tennis star, Guy Haines (Farley Granger)--strangers who meet on a train.

The flirty, well-informed Bruno takes an immediate shine to Guy, eventually proposing how tidy it would be if they swapped murders, thus assuming Guy wants someone dead. For instance, Bruno says, he’d be happy to strangle the last breath out of Guy’s cheating wife, Miriam (Laura Eliot), if Guy would be willing to shoot Bruno’s wicked, wealthy father (Jonathan Hale) in the head.

“Crisscross,” Bruno says lightly. “You’ll do my murder, and I’ll do your murder.” The idea is that since neither know their victim, neither will be suspects in their murder.

More bemused than appalled, Guy leaves the train, only to soon be shocked when Miriam is found strangled to death after carousing with two men at a local amusement park. Now the psychotic Bruno wants to collect the debt he feels he’s owed. He wants his daddy dead. If Guy doesn’t do the job, the persistent Bruno makes it clear that he will cause his share of problems for Guy, who is now the chief suspect in his wife’s death.

Released in 1951, “Strangers on a Train” is rich and complex, human and dark. As Hitchcock himself described it, “it has a fascinating design.” The film hit theaters with two versions--the British cut, which heightens the homoerotic interplay between Bruno and Guy, and the American version, which safely downplays it. The American version shows tonight.

Throughout the movie, the suspense is taut, the performances lean and convincing. Ruth Roman is nicely cast as Ann Morton, Guy’s wealthy love interest; and Hitchcock’s own daughter, Patricia Hitchcock, nearly steals the show as Anne’s pushy, pluckish sister, Barbara.

There’s something about her performance that recalls Marilyn Monroe’s turn in “All About Eve,” which opened a year earlier in 1950. Though they look nothing alike, close your eyes when Barbara speaks and you’ll hear her uncanny impersonation of Monroe. It’s so exact, it’s kind of creepy and unsettling. Like the movie.

Grade: A+

Mildred Pierce: Movie & DVD Review

"Mildred Pierce"
Directed by Michael Curtiz, written by Ranald MacDougall, 115 minutes, not rated.

Nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actress, Michael Curtiz’s 1945 noir classic, "Mildred Pierce," features a great, Oscar-winning comeback by its star, Joan Crawford, who was fired by MGM and voted box-office poison before filming began.

Not willing to take that pill lying down, Crawford, ever the workhorse, pulled herself together, signed with Warner Bros., and set out to prove the world wrong. She did so, too, heaving and sighing her way through one of the finest performances of her career.

Based on a screenplay by Ranald MacDougall, the film is smart and brisk, just soapy enough to be as tragic as it is fun. It’s one of the best movies made by Crawford, who is perhaps better known by contemporary audiences for her daughter’s corrosive biography, “Mommie Dearest,” and the subsequent film based on it, than for her 50-year career in Hollywood.

Considering some of the entertaining movies Crawford made, from “The Women,” “Humoresque” and “Sudden Fear” to “Female on the Beach,” “Johnny Guitar” and “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?,” that’s especially unfortunate, but such is the power of a disgruntled daughter with an ax to grind and a public hungry for scandal.

Structured like “Citizen Kane,” with plot elements reminiscent of the maternal self-sacrifice of “Imitation of Life” and “Stella Dallas,” “Mildred Pierce” finds Crawford giving one of her signature, blighted-by-love performances as Mildred, a tough soul saddled with a rotten, money-hungry daughter, Veda (Ann Blyth); a bum ex-husband, Bert (Bruce Bennett); and Monte (Zachary Scott), the debonair playboy she marries for love.

Determined to give the hateful Veda the best that money can buy, Mildred scratches and claws her way to the top of the eatery business. She does so with the help of Wally Fay (Jack Carson), a realtor who wants to get Mildred into bed, and the pluckish Ida (Eve Arden), who teaches Mildred the business of shucking food.

When Mildred hits it big with her popular chain of restaurants, murder strikes and darkens her high, with Monte gunned down in a hail of bullets and Mildred standing tall over the hotplate as the chief suspect. Did she do it? And if so, why? In high style, Curtiz (“Casablanca”) serves up the mystery, with Max Steiner’s busy, masculine score promising great things--and delivering.

Based on James M. Cain’s potboiler, the film is pure chicken-fried gravy, a polished, well-acted melodrama peppered with enough tough-as-nails dialogue to seal a coffin. Even its advertising campaign was a hoot, boasting that Crawford had 14 apron and 21 house dress changes—“a new kind of record for one of the screen’s most glamorous personalities!” Indeed.

It’s tough to live up to that kind of hype, but “Mildred Pierce” follows through with aplomb.

Grade: A