Tag Archives: Hollywood

Thank You, Jeeves! (1936)

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What I didn’t like about this film:

Yes, I am breaking with tradition: this is not going to be the usual type of blog post format I use for film reviews on Dustedoff. For the simple reason that this travesty of a film doesn’t deserve that much time and effort.

So, what I didn’t like:

The mockery they’ve made of a Wodehouse story. Writers Joseph Hoffman and Stephen Gross, and director Arthur Greville Collins, give credit to Wodehouse but all that remains in the film that is even vaguely connected to Wodehouse and his style are the two main characters: Bertie Wooster (David Niven) and his gentleman’s gentleman, Jeeves (Arthur Treacher). Nothing else, not the elements of the story, not the language, not the story, is anything like the Jeeves-and-Wooster stories.

The characters are insipid. Wooster isn’t a chump; Jeeves is. In fact, Jeeves is such a moron, he doesn’t even realize he’s literally on the edge of something big. He is distinguished only by that stiff upper lip; no brilliant brains, no coming up with genius schemes to haul the young master out of the mulligatawny. In fact, when Jeeves eventually does come to Bertie’s help, it’s with fists flying. It’s Jeeves’s fighting skills, not his brainpower, that comes in use here.

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Walk Like a Dragon (1960)

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I don’t know how many of those reading this post know about the actor James Shigeta. Shigeta, a third-generation Japanese American, was one of the first Asian-Americans to really make a mark in Hollywood, playing roles that were different from the (till then) standard supporting characters. I first saw Shigeta in the excellent noir The Crimson Kimono, and then in the delightful (and unusual) Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Flower Drum Song, but this is one film I’ve been wanting to watch for a while. I finally discovered it on YouTube, and so here’s a review.

Walk Like a Dragon is set in the 1870s, in California. Linc Bartlett (Jack Lord) owns a freight line and is headed home to the town of Jericho when he stops en route at San Francisco, to collect a consignment. The old Chinese man from whom he takes the goods asks him for a favour: with him is a young Chinese fellow, newly arrived from China, who needs to go to Jericho. Will Linc take him along? 

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The Bishop’s Wife (1947)

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For the first few years of blogging, I marked each Christmas with a review of a Christmas-themed film: The Shop Around the Corner, A Christmas Carol, Christmas in Connecticut, The Holly and the Ivy, and so on. Then, somewhere along the way, I fell out of the habit (I am, in some ways, not a creature of habit: I get bored too easily).

But this year, wondering what I should post next—after a slew of tributes—I decided that since Christmas was coming up, and there were several Christmas films I hadn’t yet watched, why not? Therefore, this: a film starring Cary Grant as an angel. Yes, you read that right. Cary Grant as an angel sent down on Earth at Christmastime to help out a beleaguered bishop.

The bishop in question is Henry Brougham (David Niven), a harried man because he’s trying to raise funds for the construction of a new cathedral. As the story progresses, we learn that Henry used to once be a kinder, gentler man, the sort of man who had time to go out for walks and meals with his wife Julia (Loretta Young), who could take time to visit his old parish and listen to the boys’ choir. A man less obsessed with the grandeur of a new cathedral…

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Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

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RIP, Robert Redford.

I will not pretend that Robert Redford was my favourite actor. In fact, offhand, I’d be hard put to remember how many (or, embarrassingly, how few) of his films I’ve watched. All the President’s Men, yes; A Bridge Too Far, yes. A few others, none of them (like Captain America: Winter Soldier) films for which he’s known.

Mea culpa. It isn’t a reflection on Redford, but on me, because most of my life has been spent watching Hollywood from the 30s to the 50s; my favourite era in Hollywood was over by the time Redford burst upon the scene. But it says a lot for him that despite that, I liked him in the few films of his that I watched. A great actor (and so handsome!). Deeply committed to the cause of environmental conservation, and by all accounts, a genuine, warm-hearted person.

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Where the Boys Are (1960)

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RIP, Connie Francis, the voice of my teenage years.

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Charley’s Aunt (1941)

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Two young men in Victorian England, eager to propose to their respective girlfriends, fix up a lunch date with the ladies, expecting that the aunt of one of the young men will oblige as a chaperone for the girls. However, the aunt, who has just arrived in England from Brazil, is called away elsewhere and sends a wire pleading her inability to come. Desperate, the young men seek a substitute as chaperone—and pick a friend of theirs, who then ends up spending the day juggling costumes, personas, and more.

That is the gist of Charley’s Aunt, a three-act play written by Brandon Thomas and first performed onstage in 1892. It’s a play I’d heard about often enough, but only got around to reading a couple of years back—and once I’d read it, I wanted to watch at least one cinematic adaptation of it (and yes, there are plenty of adaptations, including silent films as well as films in various languages, ranging from English to German to Arabic, the last-named in a couple of Egyptian versions of the film). Luckily enough, the best-known English adaptation of Charley’s Aunt, starring American comic actor Jack Benny in the lead role, is available even on YouTube (here).

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It Happened One Night (1934)

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Last week, to commemorate the 100th birth anniversary of Raj Kapoor, I reviewed my favourite film of his as an actor: Chori Chori, which was a remake (uncredited) of It Happened One Night. I had seen Chori Chori before; I had also seen It Happened One Night before, though in both cases, I had not reviewed the film in question.

Since I’ve finally reviewed Chori Chori, it seemed to me about time I reviewed It Happened One Night as well (which is why there’s also a comparison with Chori Chori further along in this post). Directed and co-produced by Frank Capra, this film was based on a short story, Night Bus, by Samuel Hopkins Adams. It is generally regarded as the first ever screwball comedy, having pretty much invented the genre; it was also the first of only three films so far to have won all five major Oscars: Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.

But, to start at the beginning: on a private yacht moored off the coast at Miami, where Ellen ‘Ellie’ Andrews (Claudette Colbert) has been confined by her banker father (Walter Connolly). Mr Andrews disapproves, unreservedly, of Ellie’s having gotten married to a man named King Westley (Jameson Thomas), whom he (Mr Andrews) is convinced is a rotter: only interested in Ellie’s wealth, nothing else.  

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The List of Adrian Messenger (1963)

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YouTube suggested this film to me, and when I looked up a synopsis, it sounded fairly interesting. A man asks a favour of a friend who is ex-MI5: here is a list, of ten men, living in various parts of Great Britain, nothing seemingly to tie them together, no similar occupation, no similar background, nothing. But find them , ask each of them if all is well, whether they’re still living at the addresses given in the list.

The important word here being ‘living’. Because, when the friend—Anthony Gethryn (George C Scott) sets about tracking down the men, it doesn’t take him along to find out that most of the men on the list are already dead, killed in accidents over the past five years. They couldn’t really be accidents, could they?

Very interesting. Rather like And Then There Were None (which, by the way, is referred to more than once in the course of The List of Adrian Messenger). I decided this was a film I had to watch.

When the credits began to roll, I sat up, because suddenly here were familiar names, one after another. Tony Curtis. Robert Mitchum. Burt Lancaster. Kirk Douglas. Frank Sinatra. Why on earth hadn’t I heard of this film before, I wondered. Tony Curtis, Kirk Douglas and Robert Mitchum, especially, are among my favourites, and even if I haven’t seen all their films, I am mostly at least aware of many of the films they worked in. And one that seemed like such a casting coup? How come I hadn’t known about this?

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The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

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This is one film I’ve known of for a long time, but have always had conflicting views on whether I wanted to watch it or not. On the one hand, I usually enjoy Westerns (more the escapist adventure kind, I will admit; but also, increasingly, those which go just beyond that). On the other hand, Humphrey Bogart is not one of my favourite actors. Then, again: I knew that this film (unlike another ‘seeking-gold-in-the-West’ film I love, McKenna’s Gold) was more gritty, more real. So Bogart—whom I do acknowledge as a good actor—might have done well in it.

The only way to find out, I guessed, would be to watch it for myself.

The story begins in a small Mexican town, Tampico, where a broke American, Fred Dobbs (Bogart) is wandering about, trying to make ends meet. Dobbs seems to have no set idea in mind of what he wants to do: he doesn’t seem to make any attempts to get a job, and all his energies are directed towards relatively prosperous-looking fellow-Americans who might be able to spare him some money to buy a meal.

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