Saturday, 8 February 2025

Missing (1982)

Director: Costa-Gavras
Writers: Costa-Gavras and Donald E. Stewart, based on the book The Execution of Charles Horman: An American Sacrifice by Thomas Hauser
Stars: Jack Lemmon, Sissy Spacek, Melanie Mayron and John Shea

Index: 2025 Centennials.

Jack Lemmon was nominated for an Oscar on eight films. The first was for Mister Roberts in 1955, for which he won as Best Supporting Actor, and I coincidentally watched that this week as prep for its sequel in Jack Nicholson’s First Thirty. Now I’m watching Missing for his centennial, as it was the last of the eight nods, this time as Best Actor. He lost to Ben Kingsley for the year’s biggest picture, Gandhi.

It’s also a rather timely film, given the news of late, as it’s the true story of a coup, in Chile in 1973, when the U.S. aided the removal of the democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende, in favour of a brutal military regime run by Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

More specifically, given that most of those names, like Allende, Pinochet and even Chile, are carefully never mentioned in the film, it’s a look at the effect of such a coup on a family. The missing man is Charlie Horman, a writer from New York state, and much of the movie is dedicated to the search for him by his wife Beth and his father Ed, the latter of whom has flown out specially after not getting answers he likes from the powers that be back home.

The Lost World (1925)

Director: Harry O. Hoyt
Writer: Marion Fairfax, based on the novel by Arthur Conan Doyle
Stars: Bessie Love, Lewis Stone, Wallace Beery and Lloyd Hughes

Oh, I’ve been looking forward to this one! I have seen it before, probably more than once, but not for a couple of decades and I’m unsure as to the completeness of those versions. Now, I’m watching as complete a version as exists, a 92 minute composite of eight prints.

It’s the Arthur Conan Doyle story, of course, a pivotal 1912 novel that didn’t invent a genre but did give it a name. It stands up very well as a smooth read free of the excesses of Victorian literature and as an archetypal adventure.

Of course, Hollywood ached to adapt it but a crucial detail needed to be squared away. How were they going to depict the dinosaurs? Well, enter Willis O’Brien, who had been animating them in stop motion since The Dinosaur and the Missing Link in 1915 and the far more advanced The Ghost of Slumber Mountain in 1918. He’s best known today as the animator of King Kong but his work here was just as pioneering.

Friday, 7 February 2025

The Crazy Ray (1925)

Director: René Clair
Writer: René Clair
Stars: Henri Rollan, Albert Préjean, Madeleine Rodrigue, Louis Pré Fils, Antoine Stacquet, Marcel Vallée, Charles Martinelli and Myla Seller

Less than a week after Josef von Sternberg’s debut with The Salvation Hunters, another film legend of the future, René Clair, debuted with this short and unusual science fiction feature, although I believe his second picture, Entr’acte, was released first, in 1924.

It’s usually titled The Crazy Ray in English, a much edited version released as At 3:25, but its original French title translates to Paris Asleep, which carries a lot more depth. As French film tends to do, it asks many questions, but it isn’t particularly interested in answering any. It’s a happy and very cinematic curiosity.

Initially it’s a curiosity because of its dream of a location. Albert wakes up one morning to look out over Paris from a singular point: he’s at the very top of the Eiffel Tower, where he’s presumably working as a night watchman. The views of 1924 Paris from this height are magic andshots of the tower are even better still. The one of him walking down the spiral staircase at its heart while the camera slowly descends alongside him is a thing of beauty indeed.

Monday, 3 February 2025

A Raisin in the Sun (1961)

Director: Daniel Petrie
Writer: Lorraine Hansberry, from her play
Stars: Sidney Poitier, Claudia McNeil and Ruby Dee

Index: 2025 Centennials.

It’s Black History Month, whether Trump’s administration is willing to acknowledge it or not. It therefore seems appropriate to review this film now, even though I’m actually doing so for a white actor, in fact the one and only white actor in the entire movie. He’s literally the token white guy.

He’s John Fiedler, who would have been one hundred years old today. While he only has a supporting role, it’s a notable one. The entire closing monologue, a tearjerking showcase of a monologue, is delivered to him and he walks out utterly silenced. Well, for now, at least.

A Raisin in the Sun is a powerful film indeed and part of its success is that it was based on a powerful play, the first Broadway production by a black woman, Lorraine Hansberry, as well as the first by a black director, Lloyd Richards. It didn’t win a Tony from its four nominations but it was the New York Drama Critics’ Circle’s best play of 1959. It ran for 530 performances.

Crucially, almost the entire cast transferred over to this feature version, as did the writer, so they were all well and truly invested in the roles they played and the relationships their characters had with each other.

Saturday, 1 February 2025

The Salvation Hunters (1925)

Director: Josef von Sternberg
Writer: Josef von Sternberg
Stars: George K. Arthur, Georgia Hale and Bruce Guerin

After precisely no notable new feature films in January 1925, February started off with one from a complete unknown of a director, Josef von Sternberg.

He was Austro-Hungarian, born in Vienna in 1894 and he would become a major filmmaker, often credited for inventing the gangster film, with 1927’s Underworld, and lauded for a string of important films starring Marlene Dietrich, not least The Blue Angel, Morocco and Shanghai Express, the latter two landing him Oscar nods. Talking of Oscar, he’d also direct Emil Jannings in what would become the very first Academy Award-winning performance for Best Actor, in 1928’s The Last Command.

Needless to say, this picture isn’t up to those standards, but it’s an interesting one, notably artistic and feeling much more European than American, though it was made in Hollywood.

It’s a depressing picture but it’s meant to be. The Great Depression didn’t happen until 1929 but times were tough in the twenties and this film makes them seem even tougher. Tellingly, everything is kept vague, none of the locations or characters given names, and stripping their identities helps us to realise not only that they could be anyone anywhere but also that they simply don’t matter to the world at large.