Watch List for 8/5/2024

Watched: Young and Innocent, The Mule, Sol Madrid, and The Model and the Marriage Broker

YOUNG AND INNOCENT (1937) --- Beauty of a rewatch for me is realizing a thing thought good or even excellent goes up now in estimation to be "Among Favorites” of a creator, in this case Alfred Hitchcock who in any case never fails to surprise and delight. Young and Innocent of his UK output seemed a runt among them, partly I think because characters are young per title and not worldly sort like Donat or Madeleine Carroll, Leslie Banks, Edna Best, others we expect to be more invested in. Nova Pilbeam was teenaged when she did Young and Innocent, graduated from child part that was hers in The Man Who Knew Too Much in 1934. Derrick De Marney seems barely older, was in fact thirty, the pair convincingly vulnerable dealing with police, a murder rap, resultant chases. Pilbeam circumstance reminded me of Teresa Wright’s in Shadow of a Doubt, not long out of high school it seems and too inexperienced by Hitchcock lights to engage romance as was expected of people-of-the-world caught up ordinarily in the Master’s web. All this obliges AH to go different route toward resolution, expected bumps dropped to favor a girl less alarmed by possible involvement in a murder than disappointing her benign father who is chief inspector for village law enforcement. Wrong man on the run theme as developed by Hitchcock early (The 39 Steps) and onward after moving to the US hinges on a pivotal overcoat that will prove innocence, though I don’t get (nor do I care) why the garment is of such import, early instance I suppose of a “McGuffin” as used for future Hitchcock. We know this boy is blameless so evidence to bear it out never matters, at least to me as watcher. Young and Innocent is humorous and almost gentle toward characters and us, youth in spirited pursuit of justice amidst rural setting where such a thing could still be had, a Hitchcock for optimist admirers happy to see him go easy on chasers and those being chased.

THE MULE (2018) --- Not sure what I was expecting, but hardly something so fun as this turned out to be. Began The Mule on Netflix with intent to sample a first few minutes and was right away captivated. Clint Eastwood has thrived longer than any producer-director in or out of the Classic Era ever did. We expect any talent to diminish with age, slow down certainly by seventy or eighty. Hitchcock at seventy-two directed Frenzy, “back in form” it was said, though by Family Plot three years later, he was understood to have slowed. George Cukor, eighty-one for his last, Rich and Famous, reportedly dozed in his director chair. Eastwood was born in 1930, which made him eighty-eight when The Mule was released, and he has done more since. Press said in-progress work on another feature was stilled by the writer/actor strikes. Eastwood has an economy, a sureness of touch, to humble craftsmen half his age. He time and again reveals uncanny judgment of story values. Just showing up would be enough to remark upon and admire, but The Mule with its star-director-producer in customary full command is efficient like we long expect from Eastwood. There is a soft drink in North Carolina called Cheerwine, popular since introduced in 1917. I am inclined to dub The Mule “Cheer-noir” for consistent good humor against backdrop of crime and drug runners that for all their humanity still mean business. So does law enforcement seeking contraband, this all based on truth, so say writers and Eastwood. Let’s then put The Mule in happy category with The Big Clock, His Kind of Woman, and rarefied company of noirs always a pleasure to re-watch for ladling fun with undercurrent of threat to an old, old man at target’s center. Eastwood back in 2008’s Grand Torino told young thugs to “Get off my lawn.” Now he deftly manipulates them by device of advanced age and apparent enfeeblement. There’s not been an Eastwood like The Mule before. I wish he could do another dozen like it, and who knows, maybe he will.

SOL MADRID (1968) --- “Sol Madrid” was David McCallum’s name in this movie, and here I’ve been fifty-five years thinking it was a place. Did not attend Sol Madrid in 1968 as it smelled faintly of TV as had The Venetian Affair from McCallum partner Robert Vaughn, advantage Venetian for having Karloff support-aboard. Caught Sol Madrid during Stella Stevens day at TCM. It surpassed modest expectation thanks to talent besides McCallum and him as way tougher, ruthlessly so, than ever was U.N.C.L.E case, none of heavies left at Sol Madrid finish because he kills them all, several in cold blood. 60’s spies played for keeps, which we liked and wanted more of, only Illya is not Illya here, but an undercover drug enforcement man cracking Telly Savalas’ empire of tropical-set crime. Telly looks to be rehearsing for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, holding his cigarette the same peculiar way, purring lines as patented Mister Big he’d be for more such occasions over a next twenty or so years. David McCallum was a veteran by 1968, not only for tube effort, but UK drama since he was a teen, but him as rugged disposer of heavier-than-him heavies takes getting used to, and maybe that explains lukewarm response to McCallum as big screen sleuth. Sol Madrid had a negative cost of $2.3 million, brought back worse than tepid $500K in domestic rentals, near as dreadful $737K from foreign. Loss was $1.4 million, no worse really than most other MGM releases that year, but certainly final blow to McCallum prospect at theatres, his previous Around the World Under the Sea and Three Bites of the Apple also losers. The only McCallums generating profit were the U.N.C.L.E paste-ups, so how’s that for irony. Sol Madrid played TCM in HD, and there is a DVD from Warner Archive.

THE MODEL AND THE MARRIAGE BROKER (1951) --- Reminded again of mantra spoke by showmen poised upon slender thread that was theatre-owning in the early fifties. “There’s nothing wrong with our business that good pictures won’t cure,” Civitan-speak they knew for truthless evasion of reality that was industry in decline. Plenty of worthy product kissed the canvas, enough to stop a trade from even trying. They’d not know boom times again, “good pictures” or no. By boom we mean consistent patronage, the moviegoing habit as it were, or was, and would never be again. Many factors were to blame, television a clearest culprit, but so was upped expense and people simply tiring of films, save three-ring spectacles. The Greatest Show on Earth won Best Picture to confirm why smaller fish like previous year's The Model and the Marriage Broker stumbled and fell despite being “That Wonderful Kind of a Story to Make You Feel Like Spring in Your Heart.” This was trailer longhand for output sellers could not sum up in five or fewer words, an always-deadly spot to be. Hollywood liked genres for being like labels in a supermarket, known from down the aisle and tossed casually into baskets. You’d not peg The Model and the Marriage Broker from posters or ads, let alone a preview pleading reason to attend. Twentieth-Fox spent but a million on the negative. Director George Cukor finished it in twenty-nine days of a scheduled thirty, using long but never static takes throughout, The Model and the Marriage Broker like his A Life of Her Own for remaining underrated. Boxoffice failure of both may explain his being dismissive of them later. Above-title billed was Jeanne Crain, but the lead was Thelma Ritter’s, an emerging favorite since All About Eve for being wiseacre frump viewership felt themselves or friends to be. She’s a pro matchmaker who pairs loser prospects with similar sorts to hopeful satisfaction of all, result humor and heart tugs a winner combination when writing is at level of The Model and the Marriage Broker, Charles Brackett Walter Reisch, and Richard L. Breen credited scribes. Narrative merits, in fact requires, attention, thus The Model and the Marriage Broker collapse in era of broadcasters bowdlerizing features for time (103 minutes in this instance). NBC being mindful of Model’s cool theatrical reception passed on the Fox release for Saturday Night at the Movies, an otherwise busy berth for the studio’s backlog. It remains a largely unknown quantity since. You’d take a long walk before finding anyone who’d recognize any of credited cast, which happens eventually to all of oldies. I watched the Fox On-Demand disc and confirmed guess that The Model and the Marriage Broker would please.