mark my words ...

Keyes, Ralph. The Hidden History of Coined Words. Oxford University Press, 2021.  

    This much welcome tome is a delightful survey, focusing on new or rogue words’ often deceptive and complex origins. (Even Shakespeare, often credited as the ne plus ultra among creators of new words, hundreds, even thousands of them, was in truth more a conduit and discoverer of words that already existed rather than a creator of novel ones). There’s pretty much something juicy on every page of Hidden History, and as a result it’s a joy to linger over the contents, which are perhaps better inhaled in small amounts – the (sub)chapters are of modest length, a page or two usually. I especially liked the chapter titled ‘Nonstarters’ which, as the title suggests, focuses on coinages that, for whatever reason, didn’t catch on.

    Also commendable is the Notes section which lists in somewhat excruciating detail the sources, though it would have been helpful if the citings had been better identified, i.e. with page numbers or actual footnote references. More successful is the detailed and much welcome index, the lack of which would have been criminal in a book like this. I say this because it’s impossible not to notice the disconcerting trend of index-less nonfiction books these days, a sign of the times perhaps. But as the man said, don’t get me started.

    While many of the usual suspects are present in Hidden History, gathered and presented in the nicely concise chapters, the necessarily selective nature of such a broad brushstroke compendium will inspire some head scratching. To wit, some of my favorites, seemingly obvious choices I dare say, didn’t make the cut: blonde bombshell, Wagnerian, slippery slope, ass-kicking, film noir, camp, campy, high camp, cult classic, stream-of-consciousness, cloak and dagger, Orwellian [1], hit-man, gumshoe, under-the-radar, scapegoat, fall guy, apparatchik, do-it-yourself, schlock, schlockmeister, B movie, mole, dish, blown away, auteur, pulp fiction, exploitation film, blacksploitation, anything by Raymond Chandler [2], to cite some of the more conspicuous absences.

    In similar fashion, I would have preferred greater emphasis on the ubiquitous influence of the movies on world coinages. Ditto for cyberspeak [3], especially the text shortcuts and acronyms, which receive rather short shrift. I was also disappointed that there was no mention of language maven John Simon (even in the extensive reading list), who had a special antipathy to word coinages. On the positive side I was delighted to see good coverage of Milton, Dickens, Kipling, Damon Runyan, Lewis Carroll, Dr. Seuss, Walter Winchell, the Alsop brothers, and various other luminaries, literary and otherwise.

    Ultimately one may object to what he includes, emphasizes, or leaves out, but make no mistake, Ralph Keyes is one fine writer, and his smoothly readable prose makes Hidden History a fun read and rare treat for wordaholics and language buffs.

  [1] Orwell does get a paragraph which discusses 1984-inspired coinages, but the term Orwellian is nowhere to be found.

  [2] Not so surprising, there’s a substantial section on the creation and evolution of the word google, along with the word’s metamorphosis into the capitalized Google of the all-too-familiar company and search engine we know today by the same name. However, there’s no mention of the ever-impish Raymond Chandler’s appropriation of the term. Contrary to some accounts, Chandler didn’t invent the word. Indeed, Keyes’s tome lists citings as far back as 1913, when ‘google’ was used to describe a monster in a children’s story.
    But as regards Chandler, in a letter to his agent H.N. Swanson, March 14, 1953, Chandler parodies science fiction novels with his usual trenchant wit:

    "… the sudden brightness swung me round and the Fourth Moon had already risen. I had exactly four seconds to hot up the disintegrator and Google had told me it wasn’t enough."

    The ‘Google’ in this ditty is presumably some kind of intelligent entity. However, and as much as Chandler has aged well, it’s certain he didn’t foresee the search engine/mega-company that emerged nearly a half century later. Whether the ‘Google’ of Chandler’s story is human, human-like, cyborg or replicant remains a little vague. 

   [3] The term cyberspeak actually appears, in passing, in the aforementioned Orwell paragraph, but technology and -like coinages are in short supply. 

brief candles: Lola Montez (1821-1861)

    Lola Montès [videorecording (DVD)]. Gamma-Film prèsente un film de Max Ophuls; scenario de Max Ophuls; adaptation de Annette Wademant et Max Ophuls; dialogue de Jacques Natanson; une co-production Gamma, Florida, Union Films; producteur délégué, Albert Caraco. Criterion Collection, 2009. 2 videodiscs (114 min.). Based on the novel by Cécil Saint-Laurent. Originally produced as a motion picture in 1955.

   Performers: Martine Carol, Peter Ustinov, Anton Walbrook, Henry Guisol, Lise Delamare, Paulette Dubost, Oskar Werner, Jean Galland, Will Quadflieg, Helena Manson, Germaine Delbat, Jacques Fayet, Friedrich Domin, Werner Finck, Ivan Desny. Summary: The life of the notorious showgirl who had affairs with kings, became a courtesan, and traveled the world trying to fit in. Charts the course of Montès's scandalous past through the invocations of the bombastic ringmaster of the American circus where she has ended up performing


whatever Lola wants ...

   The woman we know today as Lola  Montez was actually of impeccable British pedigree, having been born in Ireland as Eliza Rosanna Gilbert to well-to-do upper middle class parents: her father was a career officer in the King’s army and her mother’s father a member of Parliament. Most decidedly she did not descend from a Spanish noble family, as she later would claim. But somehow along the way the deception stuck, and she metamorphosed, spectacularly, into the more modish and exotic identity of ‘Lola Montez.’

   She was best known as a notorious dancer but from all accounts wasn’t very good. As if to compensate she cometimes danced naked. She was also an actress but apparently couldn’t act. More to the point, she was the century’s most notorious femme fatale before the term existed. Indeed some sources say the phrase had to be invented to describe Lola.

   If contemporary portraits and vintage photographs are any indication she was an attractive woman but not really a great beauty, at least by Twentieth and Twenty-first Century ideals of female physical perfection. But like Cleopatra she had something that inspired various male suitors – rich, famous and otherwise – to seek out her company, often with unfortunate consequences for the suitor, Lola too sometimes. Anyhow, and to invoke Twentieth Century comparisons further, Lola might be described as a Nineteenth Century version of Marilyn Monroe, Bettie Page and Eva Peron all rolled into one, with more than a touch of the Gabor sisters. In a word she was famous for being famous.

   Accordingly Lola’s life had numerous permutations, convolutions, confluences and connections. Classical music buffs glimpse her as one of Franz Liszt’s many amours. Other liaisons included author Alexander Dumas, newspaper publisher Alexandre Dujarier, and King Ludwig I of Bavaria. Herein another, albeit tenuous, connection with Liszt. Ludwig’s grandson, later King Ludwig II, was a near fanatical admirer of Richard Wagner’s operas. Wagner just happened to be Liszt’s son-in-law, having married Liszt’s daughter Cosima. Indeed some sources claim that Lola had a fling with Wagner himself, though this is doubtful. By all accounts Wagner met Lola only briefly and didn’t much like her.

   Her liaison with Ludwig I created a furor at court and resulted in the king’s eventual abdication. Thus with her star fading fast in Europe Lola in the early 1850s moved to America and eventually made her way to the bawdy environs of San Francisco in the Gold Rush days. Lola was an immediate succès de scandale in America, with one of the more sensationalist stories about her being, apropos her fiery ‘Latin’ temperament, that she whipped a German policeman who had offended her. She later disowned the story but it’s a great story all the same, so much so that she always carried the horse-whip onstage during performances to discourage men from treating her disrespectfully. As her popularity waned she took her shtick to smaller mining towns in northern California and eventually made a tour of Australia.

   Lola returned to the United States again in 1856. At this point, only 34 years old and in poor health she turned to spirituality and lived quietly in New York, mostly doing charity work for homeless women, until her death from complications of pneumonia and syphilis at age 39 in 1861.

   Lola’s tempestuous life and career has been essayed by most every art form and entertainment medium, but film connoisseurs best remember her from the 1955 widescreen extravaganza Lola Montès, directed by legendary German auteur Max Ophuls, with Martine Carol in the title role.

   Mirroring the woman herself the film Lola Montès has had a bumpy evolution. From its riotous, scandalous premieres in 1955 – accompanied by mixed, mostly negative, reviews – to its gradual comeback, it has survived various studio-imposed cuts and revisions, finally receiving a glorious and much deserved full restoration in 2008. Still, Lola has polarized fans and critics since its first screening nearly seven decades ago. Jacques Rivette and Francois Truffaut praised the film on its initial release, and in 1963 the eminent American critic Andrew Sarris famously proclaimed it the greatest movie of all time [1], surely an exaggeration but not that far off the mark. Moreover Lola is getting further, more recent, critical love: in 2012 the film received five votes in the BFI/Sight and Sound poll of the greatest films of all time, which might place it as a low grade honorable mention but nonetheless a sign of its growing critical acceptance.

   Today Ophuls is the cult director par excellence and Lola Montès his cult movie of choice by devotees (even if his The Earrings of Madame de … remains the critical darling). Indeed if we grant that Lola Montès is an art movie then it’s not hyperbole to describe it as one of the half dozen or so greatest art movies ever.
   Hitherto best known for appearing in French boudoir farces in the 1950s, Martine Carol is the perfect embodiment of Lola, a little too much as it turned out. As though providence itself had been tempted Miss Carol was struck down by cardiac arrest in 1967 at the youthful age of forty-six.

[1] Mr. Sarris seems to have had second thoughts given his subsequent reflections on the ‘greatest films.’

the devil to pay: Mephisto (1981)

   Mephisto. Kino Lorber Repertory presents; a film by István Szabó; a Mafailm Objektiv Studio production in cooperation with Manfred Durniok Production; screenplay by Péter Dobai and István Szabó; directed by István Szabó. New York, NY: Kino Classics, 2020. Based on the novel by Klaus Mann. Originally released as a motion picture in 1981. Bonus features: audio commentary by film historian Samm Deighan; 'The central Europe of István Szabó'; Remembrance of production designer József Romvári; trailer.
   Performers: Klaus Maria Brandauer, Krystyna Janda, Ildiko Bansagi, Rolf Hoppe, Peter Andorai, Karin Boyd. Summary: the story of a stage actor’s dilemma in 1930s Germany as to whether he should cooperate with the Nazi regime or assert his independence. Eventually a Faustian bargain is reached.


“What do you want? I’m only an actor . . . ”

   István Szabó has never received his due in the pantheon of cinematic auteurs, and similarly his opus maximus Mephisto hasn’t gotten the respect it deserves. The film’s current semi-oblivion is a long way from its initial release and subsequent, albeit short-lived, apotheosis as evidenced by its being the first Hungarian movie anointed with the Oscar for best foreign film. Thus the very recent Kino DVD is all the more welcome [1].

   To me, the film that most resembles Mephisto is Cabaret [2]. Yes, Cabaret is a musical, more or less, and Mephisto is not. More important, in Cabaret the personal story receives more emphasis than the historical context, and in Mephisto the reverse is true, at least in the second half of the film. In any case, both Mephisto and Cabaret have the dark undercurrent of impending fascism that overlays every scene, and like Cabaret, Mephisto is arguably more satisfying in small doses rather than full gulp – for all its virtues the whole never quite equals the sum of the parts. Mephisto then is a vignette-rich affair, laden with period detail, sumptuous production design and fine acting, but like our hero, lacking a true center of gravity.

   Although it’s set in the early, though no less dark, years of National Socialist Germany, Mephisto is really a timeless meditation on: how far will we go for temporary success, power, admiration? It explores the existential nuances that creative – and performing – artists find themselves enmeshed in when working in a totalitarian regime. As a result, some artists thrive, some barely survive, and some lose everything. As a consequence, deals with the devil have to be made. One might – a bit self righteously perhaps – make the comparison to the absolute power of the dollar in otherwise democratic countries, and the attendant encroachment of bourgeois consumerist culture, where image making, promotion and management assume a ruthless prominence. A softer form of totalitarianism, if you like, but the principle still applies: what price glory, success, artistic opportunism? Thus an extra layer of pungent irony in our hero Höfgen’s association with a Bolshevik theater troupe in his up-and-coming years in Hamburg: Russian style communism was eminently, and equally, repugnant to both fascist and capitalist sensibilities.

   Still, thanks to Klaus Maria Brandauer’s miraculous performance, we relate to the flawed main character; we actually sort of root for him, compromised as he is. He gets our sympathy, perhaps because he’s been co-opted by forces far more adept at the deadly game than he. Thus he is, maybe not quite a victim, but in any case very much out of his league, and we recognize this.

   In a curious sleight of hand Szabó and the writers manage to brilliantly conjure up a 1930s German zeitgeist without ever mentioning real people, or for the most part real events. You’ll listen in vain for the words Hitler, Führer or Goebbels. You’ll hear no Wagner music. Moreover, real events tend to be obscured or misrepresented. Yes, they get the Reichstag fire correct, but there’s a reference to the Nazis polling a majority of the vote in an election. Actually the best the Nazis ever did was a middling 37 per cent, a plurality to be sure, but far from a majority [3].

   Along the way we meet a Herman Göring-like General [4] who also serves as ‘prime minister.’ He fancies himself an aesthete and benevolent patron of the arts. No surprise then that he loves pomp and ceremony, especially when it’s in his honor. With icy malevolence he delivers his words with an undercurrent of the threat of violence even when he’s affecting his most silky exterior. And he doesn’t hesitate to brutally, in both the literal and figurative sense, put artists in their place when they stray, even his protégé Höfgen. There’s also a sculptress who specializes in hideous massive nudes the type of which made Nazi officials salivate. The woman suggests Leni Riefenstahl though the connection isn’t made explicit. Otherwise the various characters – officious bureaucrats, elegantly dressed SS officers, high society beau monde – function more as types than substitutes for real people.

   Trivia: Mephisto ostensibly is based on the career arc of Gustaf Gründgens, a prominent German actor in the 1930s, but in an ironic twist the film anticipates Brandauer’s eventual film career, which, like Höfgen‘s, peaked early on.

   [1] Special mention is also due to film historian Samm Deighan‘s insightful commentary, which is almost as good as the film itself.
   [2] Sometimes it conjured up The Last Metro, also overtones of Das Leben der Anderen.
   [3] Contrary to popular opinion, Hitler didn’t seize power, nor did he win in a fair and open election. Actually power was handed to him: in 1933 a group of conservative politicians, including former chancellor Franz Von Papen, with the acquiescence of President Hindenburg, agreed to make Hitler chancellor in the misguided calculation that they could control him.
   [4] Rolf Hoppe does a wonderful job in the role of the general, though he doesn’t particularly resemble Göring physically.

no exit : D.O.A. (1950)

Noir-heads are only too familiar with the genre’s favorite tropes: doomed heroes, back-stabbing femme fatales, visual flourishes, fatalistic plots, thunderous music. But D.O.A. stands out amongst the noir oeuvre for its totally sui generis status. Yes, it has virtually all the noir themes and characters, in abundance. But its premise, and to some extent, underlying psychology, is unique. I can’t think of any film, noir or otherwise, that has as its main plot point a guy that’s been murdered and he’s still literally alive [1], not just alive but trying to solve the case. Probably the closest is Sunset Blvd., in which we have a wise guy narrator who talks to us from beyond the grave. But it’s not quite the same thing; the William Holden character in Sunset is already dead and is just retelling the story. In D.O.A. the murdered hero is still alive, kicking, and trying to figure out what’s going on in a spiritual and existential morass that spirals out of control to a degree that’s extreme even by noir standards.

   The basic issue is not whether Frank Bigelow will die or not – that’s been pre-ordained – but why. Our hero’s eventual discovery, far too late, is more in the nature of the how instead of the why of his murder. As for the real reason, well, it’s merely the vicissitudes of fate, or to put it more bluntly, and quintessentially noirishly, for no good reason at all. Yes, there is a technical reason – notarizing a bill of sale. But the ultimate consequences are hardly proportional to the transgression, if one may put it that way. Again we have a classic noirish message: it’s an unfair universe, fella. Get over it.

   As the movie whirls and twists its way through the maelstrom we become more, not less, confused amongst the myriad receipts, bills, sales, aliases, spiked drinks, false leads, photographs, love letters, philandering and threats of philandering, and we never quite know the full story. But who cares? Best to sit back and enjoy the wild ride and delight in the dream-like excess. Indeed the whole production is awash in over-the-topness, especially the earnest B level acting that verges on camp but never quite gets there. My guess is that all involved were playing this totally straight as just another B movie, Ed Wood with a bigger budget and more talent, if you like.

   But first, let’s get to the only real misstep, and dispense with it straight away. It’s of course the hokey and hopelessly in-bad-taste (to current sensibilities anyway) wolf whistles while Frank ogles the ladies upon his arrival at the hotel. The whistles are especially incongruous given that the women Frank admires look singularly unappetizing, adorned as they are in frumpy, Forties-style garb. The only other, arguable, misfire is the prolonged romantic scene between Paula and Frank toward the end of the film. Now moving on to the good stuff: there’s great on-location scenes in San Francisco and Los Angeles (you can’t go wrong with the Bradbury Building for a thriller). Maybe the best sequence in the film is the scene at the jazz club (appropriately named The Fisherman) [2], shot in an orgiastically expressionist manner with alternating hopped up audience and wild-eyed musicians performing a bobsled ride of a jazz tune at an ever frenzied pace. By the way the proto-Beat clientele is mostly white but if one looks closely we can see hints of a multi-racial crowd, something quite unusual for a late Forties film, even an under the radar product like D.O.A. Oddly enough, and contrary to popular opinion, jazz features little in noir either as background or source music [3]. Jazz clubs are even scarcer, and this is one of the best sequences ever. The more conventional film music for D.O.A. is, in its different way, just as good. The manic pace and sweltering, claustrophobic feel throughout the story is perfectly complemented by Dmitri Tiomkin’s intrusive, bombastic score.

   Anyhow, as to the cast, Edmund O’Brien is perfect in the role of Frank Bigelow, in many, and sometimes surprising ways. For a hefty guy he shows some pretty fancy footwork skipping down steps and sprinting to avoid the bad guys chasing him. And as much as O’Brien more or less dominates the film as the frantic, frazzled Bigelow, it’s the women who steal the show.

   Pamela Britton as Paula usually gets the brunt of the bad reviews, both for the performance and the character. Okay, Miss Britton may not be the best actress in the world, or even the best in this movie. Similarly the character Paula is usually savaged for being a stereotypical clinging, whiny girlfriend/wife wannabe. But upon repeated viewings, and from the perspective of seventy years on, Paula (and Miss Britton’s performance) becomes something of an acquired taste, growing more appealing, human and sympathetic each time [4]. Indeed a case might be made that she’s the only admirable character in the story. She’s attractive, loyal, steadfast, speaks her mind (albeit sometimes impulsively and not too wisely), wants to love and be loved, and moreover is a darn good secretary. She actually looks pretty good next to the various specimens of womanhood – grifters, schemers, low-lifes, alcoholic nymphomaniacs, jazz freaks, double crossers, and who knows what else – Frank encounters on his quest. This doesn’t excuse his unchivalrous penchant for roughing up women along the way. No sympathy points for Frank here. To his credit he reserves even rougher treatment for the men, most of whom, happily, have it coming.

   1950s B movie scream queen Beverly Garland (here billed as Beverly Campbell) has a small role but registers a wallop with her bulging eyes. Ditto for a snarling Laurette Luez as the duplicitous ingénue – why didn’t this woman have a bigger career? [5] We talk more about Virginia Lee as the jazz obsessed ‘Easy’ in the footnote, below. But maybe best of all among the ladies is a 26 year-old Lynn Baggett playing, very convincingly, a fortyish grieving widow with something to hide. Her real life saga is only too noir-like: her career and life were cut short in most untimely, and most cruel, fashion. (After a tumultuous life she died in 1960 at the age of 36 from an overdose). Then there’s salon stylist and small town femme fatale Kitty (Carol Hughes) who has the eye for Frank. Alas she departs the story much too soon. Finally, how can we overlook Cay Forrester as Sue, the woman who likes to dance, and likes her alcohol. She comes on to Frank a bit too strong, much to her husband’s disapproval.

   The spot on remainder of the cast sparkles, even – especially – the supporting and bit players, who include some familiar faces in the noir universe. Peter Graves lookalike William Ching makes for a wonderfully smooth bad guy. The suave, always delightful Ivan Triesault, so memorable as the sinister Mathis a few years earlier in Notorious, here is reduced to a cameo as the manager of the photography studio where Frank goes to track down ’George Reynolds.’ Nonetheless he’s a welcome touch of Old World savoir faire. Which reminds me, yes, I have to give props to Neville Brand as Majak’s psychotic enforcer Chester. His is a chillingly overwrought take. By contrast, Luther Adler as the aging capo Majak oozes calm, sinister elegance. Trivia: IMDB credits Hugh O’Brian and John Payne for bit parts in D.O.A., but darned if I see them.

   So … is there a moral to D.O.A.? Indeed a case can be made that all films noirs are at heart morality plays, in which the (anti)-hero, or –heroine, eventually learns the folly of their ways, at great remove, i.e. too late, usually accompanied by a very steep, sometimes irreversible, price. Such is the case with Frank Bigelow. To his credit he passes by several temptations, thus implying that, perhaps unconsciously, he was really more committed to Paula than he realized. But for Frank, the epiphany comes much too late, with the resultant cost being very high indeed. If there is a moral to D.O.A. it’s perhaps this: to know what we’ve already got, and be grateful for it. It may not be too much of a stretch to see a mythic quality to D.O.A.: Frank’s loss of Pamela and subsequent, alas far too late, appreciation of just how much he’s lost has overtones of the Orphic legend.
  
   The seemingly inevitable, nowhere near as good, remake appeared in 1988. There was also an unofficial remake, Color Me Dead (1969).

   [1] D.O.A.’s murder plot exists in a sort of reverse-retroactive time frame: the crime of murder has been committed but the hero’s death will actually take place in the future. This is distinct from the similarly plotted ‘spectral incognizance’ story, in which the unbeknownst protagonist has been dead or is in the process of dying all along, and it’s only revealed to the audience, and the protagonist, at the end. The early Sixties cult classic Carnival of Souls is a good example. The trope was also done for at last one Twilight Zone episode.

   [2] The scene at The Fisherman is probably the most unvarnished portrait of a jazz club in a mainstream film up to this time. A few years later the Brit noir Sleeping Tiger did a pretty good job of a realistic depiction of a jazz club, as did Kiss Me Deadly (1955), I Want to Live (1958), and Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), with KMD presenting a fairly sedate, otherwise all-black club where Mike Hammer likes to hang out. Like The Fisherman, the club in Odds Against Tormorrow is multi-racial, rare for films of that era. The jazz club in the below mentioned Sweet Smell of Success (1957) is a low-keyed, well scrubbed affair. Another depiction of a 1950s jazz club, this one another fairly bland, clean cut example, can be seen in the Perry Mason tv series, ‘The Case of the Jaded Joker,’ episode (1959).
    One of the aficionados of The Fisherman is an uptown, enigmatic blonde with a hint of the femme fatale. She seems to use jazz as an opiate and naturally she catches Frank’s wandering eye. Anyhow she’s played perfectly in mildly flirtatious, come-hither form by Virginia Lee. IMDB lists her character’s name as Jeannie (actually Bigelow addresses her as such), but I swear she calls herself ‘Edie’ or ‘Easy.’ In either case Miss Lee, whether as ‘Easy’ or ‘Jeannie,’ goes uncredited in the final print. By the way, the character of 'Easy' recalls the unnamed woman (memorably essayed by Joan Miller) who also sat at the end of the bar in Criss Cross of a few years earlier, though her thing was strictly alcohol, not music.
    Trivia: In D.O.A. the bartender at the club chastises Bigelow for not being very hip. Surprising that he uses this term given ‘hep’ was more in fashion in the Forties and even Fifties. Interestingly, in Sweet Smell of Success, which appeared nearly a decade after D.O.A., Hunsecker lectures the senator that any hep person could see that he and the young woman who accompanies him are an item. In the 1946 film Ziegfeld Follies Judy Garland performs “The Great Lady Gives an Interview,” in which she declares that she wants her fans to know she’s really hep. In 1958 Ann Miller essayed a live TV version of the same number and also used the word ‘hep.’

[3] Joel Dinerstein, The Origins of Cool in Postwar America, Univ. of Chicago Pr., 2017, pp.198-206.

[4] Miss Britton was woefully underutilized in the movies, and in the Fifties and Sixties she confined her work mostly to theater and television, most notably as Mrs. Brown on the tv series My Favorite Martian. Panela Britton was only 51 years old when she dies of a brain tumor in 1974.

[5] Miss Luez plays the femme fatale Marla Rakubian in D.O.A. Marla's a bit of a mystery woman since her status in Majac's criminal organization, as well as her ultimate fate, is murky. (Perhaps she used that ticket to Buenos Aires after all). We can assume she's 'George Reynold's'/Ray Rakubian's cousin, sister, or, most likely, widow. She seems to have a cozy, albeit non-romantic, relationship with Majac: he treats her in the manner of an affectionate uncle; he seems more fond of his brutal protégé Chester.

What are the best art movies of all time?

   There’s no shortage of postings on the ‘Net of the best arthouse movies, but when I take a look at some of the titles listed I confess a certain dismay, not unlike my incredulity when I heard Bob Dylan had won the Nobel Prize for literature. The Truman Show? Mulholland Drive? Really?! It’s not only a matter of taste, but one of definition. For example, the estimable Wikipedia chimes in with:

   “ … an art film (or art house film) is typically an independent film, aimed at a niche market, rather than a mass market audience. It is intended to be a serious, artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal, made primarily for aesthetic reasons rather than commercial profit, and contains unconventional or highly symbolic content."

   Long winded as this definition may be, I more or less agree. My only dissent is with the notion that an art movie is the same as an arthouse movie. Perhaps the confusion, at least in my own mind, is in the term ‘arthouse’ and its resemblance to the term ‘grindhouse’. Since grindhouse theaters have largely passed into history, perhaps the comparison is not apropos. Still, the similarities beyond just the terms themselves are noteworthy: both arthouse theaters and grindhouse theaters are/were frequently located in a marginal part of town; the repertoire is offbeat, experimental, subversive; the clientele is loyal and small; the building that houses the theater is frequently vintage and in disrepair. There was also, to some extent, a conflation of the type of content screened: some arthouse cinemas played grindhouse material, and vice versa [1].

   The venerable OED follows the same drift in its definition as it offers a pithy: “a film that is artistic or experimental in its primary intent.” I rather like their uncharacteristic brevity, as it gets closer to the crux of the matter. Of course we could go full contrarian and point out that any number of commercial films made today and in the past sprang from intentions that were, at least in part, artistic or experimental. Be that as it may, by some definitions an art-/grind-house movie could be anything from Herschel Gordon Lewis to Rainer Werner Fassbinder, from Ed Wood to Val Lewton to blacksploitation to film noir, all of which have their respective … merits, but in many cases fail miserably in the test of a true art film. By example, any number of horror films, from the early Thirties to the present, have arresting visuals, but does that make them art movies?

   In present writer’s opinion, no, a horror film, however visually striking, is not automatically an art film. Yes, an art movie has to look (and sound) beautiful. But there are other qualities, especially mood and atmosphere, along with a certain, frequently Euro, je ne sais quoi. But it’s mostly the visual element that makes said films arty. (As intimated above, a great music score adds immensely, thus the case for Death in Venice).

   But for our rather arbitrary definition here, for something to be an art movie it first and foremost has to stand on its own merits as a work of art: to be a great art movie a film has to be at minimum just plain beautiful to look at. It’s no coincidence then that the subject matter of some of the best art movies is art itself. And, for better or worse, worse I think, the scripts of these films often include ponderous ruminations of the nature of art, the artist, and the place of both in the scheme of things. One might add, controversially perhaps, that not all art movies are great movies, even good movies, and conversely not all great movies qualify as art movies. However, all (or most) great art movies are also great movies. Perfectly clear?

   Thus, following the format of my post on cinema’s greatest geniuses, I offer my choices of the ten best art movies ever, in chronological order, with an honorable mention section of honorable also-rans. Most of the top tier choices won’t be shockers though a couple may raise eyebrows [2]. Perhaps unfairly, this listing includes only dramatic, i.e. feature, films, not documentaries, though in some cases – experimental and animated films especially – the line gets blurred on what’s a feature versus a documentary. So, drumroll please: 

   Salome (Nazimova version)
   Orphée
   The Red Shoes
   Moulin Rouge (1952)
   Lola Montès
   Vertigo
   Last Year at Marienbad
   Juliet of the Spirits
   Death in Venice
   Frida, Naturaleza Viva

   Honorable mention: The Seventh Seal, All That Heaven Allows, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Cries and Whispers, Meshes of the Afternoon, La Belle et la Bête, Black Narcissus, Suspiria, Snow White, Fantasia, I Walked with a Zombie, The Passion of Joan of Arc, Tokyo Story, Diva, Beauty of the Devil, Blancanieves, Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, Tiefland, Le Notti Bianche, Loving Vincent, Daughter of Horror/Dementia

   [1] David Church, “From Exhibition to Genre: The Case of Grind-House Films,” Cinema Journal, v50 n4 (Summer 2011), 16-17.
   [2] For example Huston’s Moulin Rouge is included in the top ten even though it’s a mass marketed industrial product typical of its era. In this case I made an exception because the film has such an ‘arty’ flavor and it (mostly) puts Toulouse-Lautrec’s work and not his life front and center. Similarly Fellini-ophiles will scratch their heads and wonder, why Juliet and not Dolce Vita, or 8 1/2? Much as Dolce Vita is my favorite Fellini movie, for me Juliet is more visually arresting, and (this doesn’t hurt) has a more offbeat story line.
    And where, pray tell, is Orson Welles? I’m a great admirer of Welles, but it seems that all his movies, the best ones anyway, even Kane, for all their technical razzle dazzle and various other Wellesian touches,* have a (more or less) conventional storyline and Hollywood-like patina (whether made in Hollywood or not) that places them outside the realm of a true art film. Incidentally Kane is often listed as one of the great arthouse films, and here I totally concur.   
   Obviously there’s some inconsistency in my selections: some of the films chosen have a traditional storyline along with an undeniable Hollywood pedigree, and moreover did well commercially. Still, my judgment was that they had sufficient arty flavor to eke out inclusion. In any case, one of the luxuries afforded a film buff in compiling such a list is that commercial success – or lack of it – is not a factor.

     * The Lady from Shanghai is arguably Welles’s most arty film, though Mr. Arkadin ranks a close second. But even with its baroque camera angles, flitty plot and surrealistic montages, Lady fits comfortably into the noir canon as a fairly typical example. By the way not even one classic noir springs to mind as being a bonafide art film: for all their stylish visuals, noirs are driven by other factors – story, character, setting – that place them outside the art movie universe.

In praise of little-known movies

Under-the-radar gems worth a look

What are the exact parameters that define a neglected classic, or semi-classic? For some almost any obscure film noir, especially one with a cult following, would be in the running. Other tastes would lean more to sci-fi/horror or westerns. But, and much as I’m a huge fan of noir, especially the little noirs [1], and sometimes even sci-fi and westerns, to be representative and equitable I didn’t want to focus too much on one genre or historical era.

Some of the titles listed below are indeed cult classics and regularly show up at second run and arthouse theaters, and they also appear on tv programs that specialize in oddball movies. As such several have loyal if small followings. Some have been critically praised to the skies (and some have not). Admittedly with many films available in their entirety online nowadays and the constant flow of DVDs from prestige labels like Criterion and Kino Lorber, a few of the titles listed below – well, most actually – aren’t quite so obscure as they once were. Even so …

Digression: the term ‘cult’ appears more than once above, thus a word on cult films vs. little known films. A film can be underrated, unfamiliar or underappreciated, which is not quite the same as a film that generates a quasi-religious devotion among its (usually) small coterie of admirers. The titles listed below are of the former category, but as hinted above some of them indeed have become cult classics. Conversely a cult movie isn’t necessarily unknown or under-appreciated, but often is.
In any case, and most important in the context of present ruminations, the entries in this compilation are, in the writer’s humble opinion, just plain good movies, quite apart from their familiarity, lack of it, or cult status. And, in what’s dubbed full disclosure these days, most of them are personal favorites. In contrast, almost by definition a bad film can’t be undervalued or under-appreciated. To wit: there are numerous cult movies that conventional wisdom would deem as irredeemably bad (bad in the sense of being inept or amateurish in concept and execution, apart from being bad in any ethical or moral sense). An example might be the Ed Wood-like The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies. This one certainly has a dedicated, if small, following, but few among us would extol its aesthetic virtues. In other words, it’s just a ‘bad’ movie.

Thus, drumroll please:

Blast of Silence. 1961. A smoky, jazzy minor masterpiece that might well be the last gasp of the classic noir era. Blast of Silence tells the story of a hit-man’s visit to New York to take out a mid-level mob boss. Directed by and starring Allen Baron.

Chicago Syndicate. 1955. Tough guy Dennis O’Keefe goes undercover to get the goods on mob kingpin Paul Stewart. Fetching support from Abbe Lane and Allison Hayes contribute to this taut little thriller that boasts some terrific location work.

A Coffee in Berlin. 2012. CiB chronicles the picaresque travails of a ne’er-do-well slacker and his quest to find the perfect cup of coffee – any cup of coffee – in the big city. Filmed in stylish black and white and populated with lovably eccentric characters, the film serves a snapshot of life in hip Berlin ca. 2010.

Creation of the Humanoids. 1962. Blade Runner meets Forbidden Planet, with a pinch of Metropolis, in this talky sci-fi camp classic. The striking, albeit low budget, visuals and Jack Pierce’s makeup are the true stars of Humanoids. An added bonus is Dudley Manlove of Plan 9 from Outer Space as one of the replicants, who are disparagingly referred to as ‘clickers’ by the self-anointed superior humans. Directed by Wesley Barry.

Curse of the Crying Woman (La Maldición de la Llorona). 1961. Beautifully filmed at night and often described as the Mexican Black Sunday, Crying Woman follows the familiar Gothic formula while throwing in a few, decidedly Mexican, twists and tricks of its own. With references not only to witchcraft but also voodoo, vampirism and lycanthropy, the film is one of the summits of Mexican horror cinema.

Dementia (Daughter of Horror). 1955. My, but this is one strange movie. A mixture of German silent film, urban melodrama, crime thriller, and surrealist fantasy, Dementia chronicles the sinister city hallucinations of a disturbed young woman. This one's like nothing you've ever seen before: a dark night of the soul, and a long night's journey into madness. Trivia: was Orson Welles influenced by Dementia's De Chirico-like visuals of Venice, California. The visual similarities to Welles's later Touch of Evil are uncanny, so it's certainly possible.

Deux Hommes dans Manhattan (Two Men in Manhattan). 1959. The story is of little consequence as mood and atmosphere run rampant in this affectionate tribute to the Big Apple. Truly a hymn to the night. Directed by and starring Jean-Pierre Melville. With: Pierre Grasset and a mostly unknown supporting cast.

Distinto Amanecer (Another Dawn). 1943. Andrea Palma and Pedro Armendariz shine in this tense story of skulduggery in an atmosphere- and night-drenched Mexico City. Directed by Julio Bracho and filmed by cinematographic legend Gabriel Figueroa, Distinto is one of the summits of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema.

The Exiles. 1961. Great on-location work in the Bunker Hill district of L.A. highlights this tale of Native Americans trying to adjust to life in the City of the Angels.

Faubourg 36 (Paris 36). 2008. A real lightweight charmer. Faubourg is director Christophe Barratier's  affectionate recreation of the music hall scene in the between-the-wars years in Paris. Quirky characters and delightful songs combine to make this one a winner. 

Frida: Naturaleza Viva. 1984. Superior in many ways to the far better-known Salma Hayek version, this Frida features Ofelia Medina, who bears a striking resemblance to the great artist. She delivers a knockout performance.

From Hollywood to Deadwood. 1989. FHtD is an amiable neo-noir in which two second-rate private detectives are hired to find a starlet who has mysteriously disappeared. Knowing banter, a well-paced plot and colorful locales highlight this enjoyable spoof of the private eye genre. Directed by Rex Pickett.

The Furies. 1950. Western specialist Anthony Mann helms perhaps his greatest western, a sweeping psychological epic marked by serious scenery chewing compliments of Walter Huston and Barbara Stanwyck. The heart of the story is a kinky father-daughter relationship that’s part affection, part battle of wills. Huston’s final film and arguably Stanwyck’s best performance, The Furies also boasts a stellar supporting cast, most notably Wendell Cory, Blanche Yurka, Gilbert Roland, Judith Anderson and Beulah Bondi.

Hot Enough for June (Agent 8 3/4). 1964. Dirk Bogarde, Sylva Koscina and Robert Morley sparkle in this lightweight spy spoof, laden with eminently Sixties style and sensibilities.

The Hunted. 1947. Tidy little B noir that packs a punch. Tough cop Preston Foster shadows former girlfriend Belita, who's been released from prison for a crime she insists she didn't commit. Belita's acting isn't quite as good as her skating, but she makes a languorously compelling femme fatale. Her skating number is the best part of the film.

Isle of the Dead. 1945. Boris Karloff heads the credits but atmosphere is the star in this murky, less appreciated entry in the Val Lewton canon. Katherine Emery, Ellen Drew and Ernst Deutsch highlight a strong supporting cast, and Leigh Harlene’s creepy score adds to the ambience.

Les dames du Bois de Boulogne. 1945. A beautiful society woman plots revenge on a boyfriend who has jilted her for another woman. She ignores the inconvenient fact that she had already dumped him, sort of. Robert Bresson’s masterly direction and the fine cast, especially Maria Casarès as the vengeful femme fatale, lift the thin material above its pedigree. The sumptuous black & white look is really the true star of the film. 

Les Yeux sans Visage (Eyes Without a Face). 1960. All is bathed in perpetual twilight and gloomy semi-darkness in this horror thriller that's a strong candidate for the mantle of the creepiest movie of all time.

Lizzie. 1957. Eleanor Parker rocks as the multiple personality woman in this poor man’s Three Faces of Eve. Directed by Hugo Haas. 

Mickey One. 1965. Warren Beatty's strangest film is a paranoia-drenched expressionistic thriller with a strong touch of the post-noir. Ghislain Cloquet's cinematography is the true star of the film, which features offbeat on-location scenes in Detroit and Chicago as well as a strong supporting cast that includes Hurd Hatfield, Jeff Corey, Alexandra Stewart, and Franchot Tone in one of his last roles. Directed by Arthur Penn.

Murder by Contract. 1958. It’s Vince Edwards in the role of a lifetime as a quirky, ice cold contract killer. Caprice Toriel shines as the nervous, piano playing mark. Directed by Irving Lerner.

The Sound of Fury (Try and Get Me). 1950. A ruthless criminal recruits a down-on-his-luck veteran to assist him with his nefarious schemes. Unpleasant and difficult to watch, Try and Get Me is a fine film nonetheless, with Lloyd Bridges a standout as one of cinema’s most irredeemable bad guys.

The Spiritualist (The Amazing Mr. X). 1948. A rich woman (a Joan Crawford-esque Lynn Bari) searches for messages from her dead husband through the medium Alexis (Turhan Bey). The surrealistic visuals create a creepy mood in this 1940s style supernatural thriller. Indeed this modest little film may be cinematographer John Alton's masterpiece. This one just gets better with repeated viewings.

Terror in the Crypt (Crypt of the Vampire). 1964. Gothic is the word in this stylish, shadows-laden Italo-horror thriller with a subtly erotic charge. Christopher Lee is the marquee name of the cast, but it’s the ladies who steal the show, especially our two leads Adriana Ambesi and Ursula Davis. Crumbling locales, creepy music and a strong Sapphic undertow contribute to this little known gem.

Waterloo Bridge. 1931. Not to be confused with the much better known, but not as good, Vivien Leigh version of a few years later, Waterloo Bridge is a pre-Code treasure. In the performance of a career, Mae Clarke is wonderful as the working class streetwalker who captures the heart of an American serviceman in WW1 London. Directed by James Whale.

Wicked Woman. 1953. This trashy little gem features 1950s B movie legend Beverly Michaels, but Percy Helton steals the show as the most repellent lecher in cinema history. Running a brisk 77 minutes, Wicked Woman positively drips in sleaze, and it’s a small miracle the film got past the censors in the early Fifties.

Woman on the Run. 1950. Ann Sheridan hits it out of the park in this under appreciated quasi-noir that boasts a fine supporting cast, especially police inspector Robert Keith and shady journalist Dennis O’Keefe. WotR is also notable for the effective use of sinister San Francisco locales. Directed by Norman Foster.

Women in the Night. 1948. Ostensibly a thriller, this (post)WW2 propaganda film received the full pulp noir treatment from director William Rowland. German scientists plot revenge on the victorious allies by developing a cosmic ray weapon. Meanwhile, beautiful women are held prisoner as they provide 'tea and sympathy' at an officers' club. Featuring Tala Birell, Virginia Christine and especially Jean Brooks, who (more or less) reprises her persona from The Seventh Victim. Gloriously exploitative, irresistibly kitschy trash.

[1] For an exceptionally thorough perusal of under-the-radar B noirs see: Arthur Lyons, Death on the Cheap: the Lost B Movies of Film Noir, Da Capo, 2000. For the cult angle there’s Danny Peary’s three volumes on cult movies.

the forgotten superstar: Alla Nazimova

Readers of this blog may notice a preference for the 1940s RKO horror films produced by Val Lewton, who happened to be the nephew of theater and silent film sensation Alla Nazimova. It seems some of the diva’s subversive theatricality and artsy sensibilities found their way into the Lewton-produced films (his novels too), but that, as they say, is another story. In any case as an old movie buff I’d heard of Nazimova and only later learned of her connection to Lewton. In my mind’s eye I envisioned her as a dominating, Amazonian sort physically. Little did I suspect she was a wispy, even dainty figure of a woman. This is certainly the impression one gets in her most famous film role Salomé, in which a 42 year-old Nazimova convincingly impersonates a girl half her age, and even that might be an understatement. How old was Salomé anyway when she performed the most famous striptease in history? Sixteen-ish?

   Anyhow the great Nazimova had the artistic world at her feet for a time in the 1910s and early 1920s [1], until a gradual decline in fortunes both financial and aesthetic [2], largely if unintentionally self-inflicted, rendered her more or less a cultural irrelevance upon her death in 1945 at the relatively youthful (by today’s standards) age of 66. But perhaps there is a happy ending after all, a posthumous comeback, if you like. But more on this later.

   Nazimova was unabashed and unrepentant in her lesbian lifestyle in an age when doing so engendered much risk. But no matter. Her inclinations crept into some of the films she produced, directed and/or starred in, none more so than her aforementioned, ill-fated Art Nouveau magnum opus Salomé [3]. This project has been hailed as a masterpiece by some, scoffed at as an eccentric relic by others, but is possibly most notorious today for being comprised of all gay or bisexual actors, a claim not universally accepted. Artistically the film is most notable for its design qualities, a synthesis of Nouveau, surreal and Deco elements that are still impressive even today a century later. Moreover, the film combines ballet, cinema, grand opera, and, not least of all, melodrama with what might be charitably called less-than-subtle acting.  

   Salomé may indeed be the first art movie ever. Be that as it may, the silent film it most resembles, for me anyway, and mostly for the design features, is Metropolis [4]. Of course there’s also that wild dance by the evil replicant woman in Metropolis that would not be out of place in Nazimova’s epic. Salomé may also be the first camp film ever, but whether Nazimova set out to create a work of camp is debatable at best, the presence of the predominantly gay cast notwithstanding. Did the concept of camp as a legitimate form of artistic expression even exist in the early 1920s?

   At any rate the conspicuous commercial failure of Salomé brought to an end Nazimova’s status as a major player in the increasingly corporate controlled (and not so coincidentally, male dominated) film industry in the Twenties. But she wasn’t quite finished yet. She made a few more films and even continued acting well into the sound era, although by this time she was confined to bit parts. Alas many of the early films of “the founding mother of Sapphic Hollywood” and “the most notorious Hollywood lesbian actress of all” are lost to history [5].

   However . . . and in quintessentially theatrical, Nazimova-esque style, the great woman has staged something of a comeback, even though it took nearly seven decades after her death for it to come to fruition. Today there is a Nazimova society, and Nazimova tributes pepper the Internet. The film Salomé, for all its excesses – perhaps because of its excesses – has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." In 2006, Salomé became available on DVD as a double feature with the avant-garde film Lot in Sodom (1933) by James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber. In 2013 Salomé was screened at the Ojai Music Festival with the Bad Plus performing a live improvised soundtrack. In 2018 Haley Fohr’s experimental score for Salomé was commissioned by Opera North for the Leeds International Festival, and there are even rumblings that it’s time for a mainstream biopic, though Nazimova and mainstream in the same sentence seems a bit of an oxymoron.

[1] For an idea of Nazimova’s cultural and commercial cachet at the time, in 1917 Metro Studios offered Nazimova a 5-year, $13,000 a week contract, an unheard of sum and $3,000 more than Mary Pickford, the world’s biggest movie star, was making. The contract also allowed her director, script, and leading man approval.

[2] In 1918, she moved to Hollywood, where she bought a large Spanish-style house that would later become the Garden of Allah, a hotel and apartment house where a number of Hollywood luminaries would live and where she allegedly hosted wild parties. But Nazimova had little head for business and the hotel quickly lost money. She sold the Garden of Allah in 1930 and concentrated mostly on theater work. When Nazimova moved back to Hollywood in 1938, she rented Villa 24 at the hotel and lived there until she died in 1945, destitute, in poor health, and largely forgotten.

[3] For better or worse, for better I think, Salomé is now available in public domain.

[4] There’s more than a hint of myth-invoking rapture, eminently Germanic, in Nazimova’s opus, and like Lang’s Metropolis, Salomé's production elements have a retro-futuristic vibe. Ergo, Nazimova’s Salome looks not unlike a cyborg and first cousin to the mechanical Maria of Metropolis.

[5] “founding mother…”: Diana McLellan, The Girls: Sappho Goes to Hollywood, LA Weekly Books, 2000, p. xxiii; “the most notorious lesbian…”: Patricia White, “Nazimova's Veils: Salomé at the Intersection of Film Histories,” in: A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema, editors, Jennifer Bean and Diane Negri, Duke University Press, 2002, p. 87

Further reading:

William Mann, Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910-1969, Viking, 2001, pp. 59-62.

Teresa Theophano, Film Actors: Lesbian, 2015. Glbtq archive.

a gem of a movie: Jewel Robbery (1932)

  Forbidden Hollywood, Volume 4. Burbank, CA, distributed by Warner Home Video [2012]. 4 videodiscs (267 min.): sound, black and white. Contents: Jewel Robbery; Lawyer Man; They Call It Sin; Man Wanted.

   Jewel Robbery was originally released as a motion picture in 1932 by Warner Bros. Pictures & the Vitaphone Corp. Directed by William Dieterle; screenplay by Erwin Gelsey, based on a story by Ladislaus Fodor. Performers: Kay Francis, William Powell, Alan Mowbray, Hardie Albright, André Luguet, Sheila Terry. Summary: Baroness Teri von Horhenfels lives in Vienna, Austria, with a husband who bores her. When a jewel thief victimizes her, she is intrigued by him.

prosperity is just around the corner

   There are no weak links in Warner's DVD set Forbidden Hollywood v4, but the real jewel is … Jewel Robbery, an absolute creampuff of a movie that sparkles with a sprightly plot and knowing repartee delivered at a snappy pace. The cast is boffo: Kay Francis shines in a quintessentially Kay Francis role: a high society woman who is alternately bored and oversexed. Thus she's ripe for a romance with dashing thief William Powell (oops! he prefers to be called Robber).
 
  Ironically it was this kind of effortless performance that garnered Miss Francis the reputation as a so-so actress because everything seemed so easy for her. But ultimately this is William Powell's movie as he breezes through his role as the titular character. As always he and Francis have marvelous onscreen chemistry. Kudos also to the rest of the spot on cast: Henry Kolker as Teri’s plodding husband, who nonetheless gets some of the best lines; the ever exuberant Helen Vinson (in her first film), who’s so good she almost steals the movie from the divine Miss Francis; and Lee Kohlmar as the nervously obsequious jeweler Mr. Holländer and Clarence Wilson as the clueless police shief, both of whom fall victim to those 'drugged cigarettes.'

 
   With its echt-Continental pedigree, Jewel Robbery could almost be seen as a warm-up for the even better (though not by much) Trouble in Paradise that appeared later that year [1], with Kay Francis more or less reprising the baroness role (this time as a perfume heiress) and the urbane Herbert Marshall stepping in as the suave thief. Indeed Jewel Robbery has a very Lubitsch-like Euro feel to it as director William Dieterle sustains a mostly breakneck pacing that that even the great Lubitsch would envy. The brittle dialogue is delivered so fast that most of the innuendos fly under the radar and it takes several viewings to appreciate the sly implications and mildly subversive editorial comments.

    But getting back to those funny cigarettes: among other things what makes Robbery a pre-Code cult classic is that it's quite possibly the earliest overt reference to marijuana in the movies, those thin cigarettes William Powell keeps passing out. And to make matters all the cheekier it’s done so in a comic context.

“untouched in the suburbs . . . that doesn’t intrigue me at all”

   The film’s mildly leftist subtext delivers its message subtly – and sometimes not so subtly – in sometimes contradictory ways, in any case always reflecting a certain pre-Code skepticism and street smarts. The Robber’s disdain for bankers inspires the rejoinder that he must be a communist. Quite the contrary, he explains. He much prefers predatory capitalism to egalitarian communism: even in the Depression-laden 1930s, in which the masses in the capitalist countries are mostly poor and downtrodden, there’s still plenty of well-to-do targets for a self-respecting criminal to prey upon.

   As Powell explains, what could he steal in a communist world? Grain elevators? Tractors? And much like the two confidence artists in Trouble in Paradise, Powell’s gentleman thief only fleeces the eminently deserving: wealthy scions, idle heiresses, bankers, government bureaucrats, in other words, the corrupt rich.

   The Francis and Powell characters are appealing, the most sympathetic in the entire film actually. Consequently we root for their, however improbable, romantic success. Indeed, they’re about the only characters in the story worth rooting for. Paradoxically, despite their good looks, fine clothes and breezy charm neither is very admirable. Teri, by her own admission, is superficial, self-centered, materialistic and uninteresting, and the robber, for all his surface gloss, is still a methodical, calculating criminal. Yet like them we do. We must, it would seem. After all they look pretty good next to the rich trash, doofus policemen, and pompous government apparatchiks they’re surrounded by. The possible exception is the flighty, harmless Marianne (Helen Vinson), more or less a clone of Teri in her trophy wife status and thrill-seeking  vacuity.

   Note: this was Francis’s and Powell’s penultimate movie (they did six altogether). The arguably superior – and very different in tone – One Way Passage that followed later that year was their final pairing. And what a year 1932 was for Kay Francis!

    [1] As good as it is, Jewel Robbery still has a hint of the ramshackle and rough-around-the-edges that accounts for a good deal of its charm and the appeal of pre-Code movies today. By contrast Trouble in Paradise luxuriates in a generous swath of Lubitschian polish typical of Paramount’s best efforts.

who are the greatest geniuses in cinema history?

 We admire geniuses, we love them, but they discourage us. They are great concentrations of intellect and emotion, we feel that they have soaked up all the available power, monopolizing it and leaving none for us. We feel that if we cannot be as they, we can be nothing. Beside them we are so plain, so hopelessly threadbare. How they glitter, and with what an imperious way they seem to deal with circumstances, even when they are wrong.

   - Lionel Trilling, Introduction to Orwell's Homage to Catalonia


   The idea of genius, along with attempts to explain or define it, has always been a slippery slope. Greater thinkers than I have opined on the subject, at length, and there’s no shortage of commentaries on the ‘Net. But just what is genius? What are its precise boundaries? Is genius something we’re born with, or can it be learned and cultivated? Are ‘geniuses’ that different from the rest of us? Do some individuals simply have a greater flair for publicity and image? Who can say where genius ends and self-promotion begins? Are 'geniuses' really grifters in disguise?  

   Or do those we deem genius simply have more energy, determination and persistence than the rest of us? Were these the only qualities necessary then figures like Ed Wood and Harry Stephen Keeler would be right up there among the all time greats. And for all their respective cult followings, the conventional wisdom would vote against calling Wood or Keeler a genius. Obviously some qualitative factors have to enter into the equation: at minimum a true genius has to be good at his chosen artistic (or otherwise) mode of expression.

   But more to the point, how can we apply the notion of genius to the movies? [1] Does it even make sense to mention the term in connection with the movies? Interesting that other art forms – music, literature, painting, sculpture – have canons that are pretty well solidified. Accordingly, the individuals who merit the title have long been identified.

   However … (and it’s a big however), film is a unique art form. Among other things it combines several art forms in its final product, all of which makes it more difficult to arrive at parameters, much less who qualifies. The challenges, it seems, are many, but can be broken down into a few basics. First, for all the huffing and puffing of the auteur theory, film is ultimately a collaborative art, and a highly technical one at that, and the witches’ brew final product is almost always a case of the whole never quite equaling the sum of the parts. The other issue is that cinema is a quintessentially commercial art, and matters of aesthetics can never be completely separated from mass consumerism.

   Further, movies didn’t always have the highbrow cachet they enjoy today. Indeed, for the first half century or so of their very existence the movies were viewed as a commodity, and the idea that they were great art was considered folly at best. All that changed in 1952 with the U. S. Supreme Court’s decision on Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson (also referred to as the Miracle Decision) in which the court held that cinema was indeed an artistic medium and among other things entitled to First Amendment protection.

   For our deliberations here, however, it’s the aforementioned collaborative nature of cinema that’s the monkey wrench. To wit, and for better or worse, in the context of cinema we use the term ‘genius’ almost solely in connection with directors [2]. Occasionally screenwriters, cinematographers, and performers get a mention, and, very occasionally, producers. But this reveals a decided prejudice for the creative side and diminishes those active in the, arguably equally important, technical, management and promotional areas. In the technical and -like areas, along with the obvious candidates of editors and cinematographers, do we include wardrobe designers, art directors, set designers, special effects wizards, makeup artists, hairdressers, film restoration specialists, titles designers?

   If we define genius as someone who made a signal impact and influence on the art, we’d have to give serious consideration to the much maligned movie moguls, especially those of the Golden Age, the Harry Cohns and Louis Mayers of this world, alongside the more aesthetically correct auteur producers like Val Lewton, Irving Thalberg and Daryl Zanuck. But if we include studio executives, how about the powers behind the throne like Ida Koverman at MGM during Mayer’s reign? And while we’re talking management, should agents figure into the mix? In the technical department, a case might be made for Technicolor guru Natie Kalmus.

   Whatever the parameters, be they aesthetic, commercial or technical, is a consistent body of high level work over a long period of time sufficient? Do we forgive the occasional misfire? Is one transcendent work sufficient? Do historical elements figure into the mix? Are the works of Sofia Coppola and Kathryn Bigelow less significant because they appeared a century after those of Lois Weber and Germaine Dulac?

   Here I invoke the oft-noted and self-defeating caveat that it’s meaningless to create lists like these, perhaps worse than meaningless, since tastes, perceptions, and even definitions inevitably change over time (translation: it’s all very subjective). And yet, and for all my long winded reservations above, I thought it might be fun to list my choices of the top ten cinematic geniuses of all time. It pained me to cut it off at ten – I was tempted to lengthen it to twenty. As a compromise I include an honorable mention section of arguably lesser lights whose contributions, while significant, and all possessing at least some spark of genius, were nonetheless in my opinion more specialized or of a lesser degree in areas like aesthetics, impact, and influence.

   I’ll admit my selections betray a certain favoritism for the offbeat, experimental, independent and subversive. There’s also an undeniable Hollywood/Euro bias, along with a preference for the artistic side over the technical or managerial. Still, perspicacious readers may find themselves scratching their heads at the absence of some pretty big names. Indeed, a few of the entries, especially the honorable mentions, may well be cringe inducing to some tastes. And no, in case you wondered, Ed Wood doesn’t make the cut, though the thought did occur to me. Nonetheless, and echoing the sentiment above, some of the all-time greats are conspicuously absent. They are familiar and we needn’t mention them by name. In one sense these greats of cinema, and here I refer mostly to directors, made the same film over and over, and did so very well within the confines of budget, studio, genre and era. The stories, performers and techniques may have varied, but the underlying philosophic and aesthetic vision was always the same, most of the time anyway. Such individuals were expert at creating expert films, films that were supremely well made but lacking that special something – dare I say, genius – that characterizes the work of perhaps less proficient artists who nonetheless created films that were more compelling and exciting.

   In any event, my own bottom line: to be designated a cinematic genius, an individual had to create works that were not only of high intrinsic value, but more important, new, exciting or groundbreaking, that allowed us to experience the medium, and by extension the world, and perhaps ourselves, in fresh and unexplored ways. Helming a work, or works, that today we consider revolutionary wasn’t a requirement, but it didn’t hurt.
   I lean toward multi-taskers philosophically, and depending on how one defines these things, a majority of my top ten might be considered such, less so for the honorable mentions. In any case most of the top tier choices are hardly shocking, though a couple may raise eyebrows. It’s obvious I prefer the old over the new: the test of time has to count for something. On the other hand, as opined above, even a consistently high level of work over time in itself doesn’t qualify as genius [3]. I’ve demurred from any life’s work summaries as most of the folks on the list have had a ton written about them already. So, with drumroll, my choices are (listed more or less in chronological order):

Lois Weber
Charlie Chaplin
Fritz Lang
Irving Thalberg
Busby Berkeley
Orson Welles
Val Lewton
Bernard Herrmann
Roger Corman
tie, Federica Fellini,
   Michelangelo Antonioni

  Honorable mention: John Alton, Kenneth Anger, Fred Astaire, Ingmar Bergan, Robert Bresson, Tod Browning, Jack Cardiff, William Castle, Jean Cocteau, Joan Crawford, Maya Deren, Walt Disney, Carl Dreyer, Germaine Dulac, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Ray Harryhausen, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Charles Laughton, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Peter Lorre, Guy Madden, Frances Marion, Georges Méliès,  Russ Meyer, Carmen Miranda, Alla Nazimova, Mabel Normand, Leni Riefenstahl, George Romero, Mack Sennett, Andrei Tarkovsky, Gregg Toland, Dalton Trumbo, Douglas Trumbull, Edgar Ulmer, Peter Ustinov, Jean Vigo, John Waters, James Whale, Daryl Zanuck.

[1] I’ve scoured the ‘Net and other sources and have yet to find a satisfactory definition, at least one that describes genius in scientific, measurable terms. Even the most reputable sources resort to a subjective, airy vagueness. This from the Cambridge Dictionary (actually a pretty good summary, but eminently lacking in particulars): “ … very great and rare natural ability or skill, especially in a particular area such as science or art.” Similarly the venerable OED chimes in with: “ … inborn exalted intellectual power; instinctive and extraordinary imaginative, creative, or inventive capacity, frequently opposed to talent.” Actually the OED version gets subtly closer to what I look for in a work or individual to merit the label ‘genius.’
    Still, such definitions are at best a good start; the phrases used to define genius could well describe any number of bright, talented folks who aren’t geniuses. What’s lacking is that special something, that magic that separates genius from the merely talented or gifted. The same principle applies to other, non-artistic, areas like physics, chemistry, mathematics, philosophy, and medicine. Then there are the problem fields like public service, commerce, sports and history. Can a head of state, government bureaucrat, military commander, lawyer, business tycoon, chess player, football coach, political operative, or historian (or any nonfiction author ... film critic, anyone?) ever merit the mantle of genius? By the way, not a new observation, but is genius merely the flip side, the sunny side if you like, of madness?

[2] Indeed were a poll taken today to anoint the greatest cinema genius of all time, the consensus choice would probably be Chaplin, though to be sure his would be a plurality choice. At the same time august bodies routinely proclaim Hitchcock, Welles, or Ozu as the best director, though seldom Chaplin, all of which tends to illustrate just how elusive the concept can be.

[3] One might also assert that the difference between genius and the exceptionally talented craftsman is a sometimes fuzzy one, and to take it one step further, what separates the reliable professional from the dreaded moniker hack can be a precariously thin line. It’s only fair to add that history has taught us that the studios, certainly in the studio era, (almost) always preferred a reliable craftsman/hack at the helm to an erratic genius. Plus ça change …

Further reading:

Marjorie Garber, “Our Genius Problem,” Atlantic Monthly, v290n5 (Dec. 2002): 64-72.
Darrin T. McMahon, Divine Fury: A History of Genius, Basic Books, 2013.
Andrew Robinson, What Has Become of Genius?