A loving shot in an Istanbul railway station of fruit, seafood and other gourmet treats marks the highlight of Murder on the Orient Express. Like the excesses of first-class fanfare, this vehicle runs mostly on show. Not to knock it: anyone whose gone through a Rod McKuenesque crush on trains, for instance, will drool over the authentic Express that director Sidney Lumet takes across the Alps. But the glamorous actors are obviously doing their bits and picking up their payroll; only Venessa Redgrave stands out for her gigly working girl and widow Lauren Bacall for her embarrassing bitchiness. The experience finishes like a meal of all that luscious food: the idea, and even the indulgence, sound inviting, but too many rich actors leave the film constipated.
Director Stanley Kubrick has yet to show that he can actually direct actors--from a few of his films one gets the feeling he must treat them with the same disdain he harbors for the big bad world. Clockwork Orange (like Dr. Strangelove,) shines, though, because it accommodates both Kubrick's cerebral and perverse artsiness and a free-lance format for Malcolm MacDowell. MacDowell requires no coaching or handholding here; he does for amoral punkdom what the Bowery Boys never could. The union of these two visionary hard-guys still proves chilling, and no amount of humane breath could melt this icicled look at tomorrow.
Flop-houses and failed rock stardom somehow seem to have filed many of our romantic self-images five years ago. Just revisit Performance to bring it all back. If you've ever sensed that Mick Jagger should have thrown n the towel years ago, this film will show you why. The jig has long been up on Jagger's androgonous lewdness. Yet like the seemingly straight lodger who gets sucked into this singer's hallucinogenic world, you may still revel in the decadence. If you think you might still dig it, as the saying went, go freak yourself out.
The British upper crust, the British criminal code and the British bent towards social climbing all bear the brunt of the satire in Kind Hearts and Cornets. But the kidding is all in impeccable fun. Alex Guiness, as the seven (or eight) members of the noble D'Ascoyne clan, gets to be knocked off seven (or eight) times by a commoner who has it in for the family. Sipping poisoned port, crashing in a punctured balloon or sinking with his ship, no one has ever kicked the bucket for so many laughs. A fickle Joan Greenwood finally lands the mass assassin in jail for the one murder he never committed. Bouncing back in his jail cell, though, he chipperly narrates us the story of raucous D'Ascoyne murders. After all, who could regret even betrayal to the tune of Greenwood's inimitable voice?
Paths of Glory. A great film. From the grainy, wide-angled eye we have on the hellish World War I French front, to the glaring, mausoleum-like courtrooms of Versaille, death permeates every frame of this film. There is nothing easy about watching this movie, nothing very happy. Sometimes it is hollow and sometimes it is over-intellectualized in an affected way. But Kubrick, who knows how to make a movie and thinks about it hard, does not let details float wrong. He knows how to mount an assault, and he knows how to do it without taking facile roads. He has been accused, as systematically as he works, of the inability to interiorize, and of treating people like chessmen, even checkers. Paths of Glory serves as an ample refutation to that. He has also been accused of not knowing how to work actors, of demeaning them and consciously turning them into furniture. The old fascist bastard Adolphe Menjou has an answer to that. He said that the only director who worked actors as sensitively as Kubrick was the director of his 1923 film. A Woman of Paris, Charles Chaplin. Kirk Douglas gives a good performance, and Ralph Meeker, waiting for the firing squad, squashes a cockroach with his thumb after his comrade sees it and begins to wait, "That cockroach is going to live longer than I am!" "Now," Meeker says, after performing his own little execution, "you've got the edge on him."
His Girl Friday. Of the two Howard Hawks pictures playing around this weekend, this is the equally triumphant. In his man's world, Hawks and his screenwriter Charles Lederer twisted the tension in Hecht and MacArthur's wildman farce The Front Page by turning Hildy Johnson into a woman, and one who was trying to excise herself from the male society she had tailored herself into. She can't do it. Hecht and MacArthur's play proved that it was not indestructable when Billy Wilder made it move like a sludge barge. His Girl Friday is louder and faster than any other movie ever made. Cary Grant did everything right as Walter Burns; it must have been a great surprise to see him work in this sort of part after the more submissive work he'd been used to. Rosalind Russell talks like a robot with too many "D" batteries in her--and she's a wonder.
The other Hawks picture is Red River, which was made to be a classic and is a classic. Hawks at his prime was an exhilarating director and his prime found its primacy here with Red River. Montgomery Clift, an unusually beautiful young man, and John Wayne, trying to look older than his age, both act with strength. Wayne especially does the kind of work that shows his comfort with the idea of being a man.
The Friends of Eddle Coyle. Tough talk, beautiful Boston, Mitchum's mug. Dynamite.
The Third Man. Directed by Carol Reed and written by Graham Greene with heavy infuence from its star, Orson Welles, this is quite simply the best thriller ever made. The grays and blacks of post-war Vienna provide a perfect backdrop to the machinations of Welles's demonic opportunism, and the expressionist camera angles and bizarvesets sets create a disturbing sense of moral disorder in this divided city. Only Welles could turn a simple shot of a cat licking a man's shoe into a unforgettable avatar of terror and corruption.
The Royal "We" called on The Clock Maker (an unbelievably pretentious bore) to get out of town before sundown a month ago. Yet the sun keeps setting on this tale of a clock tinkerer whose son turns terrorist. Phillipe Noiret is still quivering with emotion for two hours, and anything more has failed to materialize. Director Taverneir is content to focus on Noiret's face forever--who need dialogue, plot, or motivations? Apparently not Taverneir. Noiret has an occasional temper tantrum, which might in some circles pass for character development. We, however, are still not buying it.
To turn around and pat The Welles on the back, though, the theater has begun a matinee series of documentaries that shows great promise. Leni Reifenstahl's riveting, gripping and therefore horrifying Nazi propaganda film arrives this weekend. In the next cinema, Carl Jung gives a filmed interview and Dr. J.B. Rhine, expert on ESP, discusses clairvoyancy. Don't leave the regular matinee crowd to hold up the bottom on this new, needed format.
