staircase (1969)

Prompting a renewed haste to my recovery was the agony of watching 1969's Staircase on Sunday afternoon. What Turner Classic Movies deems "a fascinating mess," is really just a tepid, soulless melodrama starring two completely unsympathetic characters. There is nothing, NOTHING, to like about this film. From the overlong drag show opening to the prissy, self-congratulatory nature of the film itself, I could find zero reasons to be remotely interested in this movie. Richard Burton and Rex Harrison play an aging gay couple, but both are such ridiculous caricatures that it doesn't matter. This is as ugly and superficial as scriptwriting gets.

Boo.

Being Sick...

Being sick affords one the unique opportunity of watching more films in a day than he would normally be able to see in a week. With my lovely respiratory flu came the chance to view a few treasures from Turner Classic Movies:

The Sea Hawk (1924) - One of the best silent films I've seen. After being framed for murder by his brother and sold into slavery to Spaniards, a British society man renounces the cruelty he sees in Christianity and becomes a Muslim bent on revenge. Though the film is light on moralizing, the story arc does suggest that the anger toward Christianity because of the hypocrisy of the slave-driving Spanish is not easily cured in by the solace of another religion. The main character's adoption of Islam finds him in equally duplicitous hands and engaging in his own shameful deeds. There is no religious reconciliation in the end, but romantically things work out just fine. Lead actor Milton Sills should really be remembered more readily.

The Irish in Us (1935) - All of the Irish stereotypes get mashed into one film: James Cagney, Pat O'Brien and Mike McHugh are brothers doted on by their loving ma. Include boozing, boxing, occupations in the police and fire departments, loud arguments and family brawling and you've got a movie that embodies everything America in 1935 knew about the Irish... thanks in no small part to movies like this. Still, the character performances and a young Olivia de Havilland make this film hard to dislike.

Terror on a Train (1953) - Glenn Ford is the best, especially when his nag of a wife leaves him, convincing him that diffusing a train full of rigged explosives is the best thing to do with his washed up life. Makes Jack Bauer look unnecessary and Harrison Ford look tired.

The File on Thelma Jordon (1950) - I actually watched this pre-illness, but it was this week. Barbara Stanwyck proves herself the greatest femme fatale ever to grace the screen. Pasty Wendell Corey gets tangled in her web, leaving the working family man an emasculated shell. Double Indemnity certainly comes to mind, but veteran noir director Siodmak errs by letting both of his characters off too easily; something Billy Wilder never had the heart to do.

summer and smoke (1961)

Based on a Tennessee Williams' stageplay and lacking a DVD release, Summer and Smoke was mercifully shown on TCM recently.

Peter Glenville, primarily a stage director, only directed 7 films. Summer and Smoke preceded his most famous film, Becket, but is consistent with his acute strength in directing small casts in character roles that wrestle with repression and internal conflict. Laurence Harvey and Geraldine Page play John, a fast-living doctor's son, and Alma, a prudish spinster. Alma and her crazy mother languish under the iron fist of her minister father while John lives in the shadow of his father's humanitarian medical work. Both characters respond to their own unique repression, often using the other as a vent for their conflict.

After the film was released, Williams rewrote Summer and Smoke as Eccentricities of a Nightingale, focusing a bit more on Alma's drug addiction and the way in which the female characters are trapped, but I don't think a careful study of the film warrants further emphases of these points. Clearly Alma and her mother have both been crushed by the repressive fundamentalist Christianity and create their own escapes. In the end, John credits Alma with his 'conversion,' but his expression of his newfound faith varies greatly from Alma's prudence. By continuing his father's work, John is led to sanctified action, not prideful piety or mannered repression. When Alma laments that the two have traded places, she is unable to see that John has not adopted the mannerisms and platitudes of religion that she has finally broke free of. John's conversion does not yield the same idleness, but is humanitarian and compassionate; something that neither the repressed or reformed Alma has any true concept of.

Highly recommended.