Nanook of the North (1922)

Nanook travels in a kayak, hunts seals, builds an igloo, and bores me to tears. Roll credits.

Nanook of the North is often called the first documentary, but because any length of film without a story narrative is technically a documentary, it isn’t even that. But it was a wild success and popularized what more people think a documentary is. But again, it isn’t even that. Nanook was played by a man named Allakariallak, the woman who played his wife (her name was Alice) wasn’t, and most of the scenes were staged. The Inuit people hunted with rifles and wore modern clothes, but filmmaker Robert Flaherty wanted to show a pre-industrial version of their society leading to criticism to depicting them as backwards and quaint. Still, it looked like a documentary and maybe that’s all that matters.

A fraud by modern standards but I do not hold that against the film. This is a time where the rules of film making were still being hammered out. It was very influential and gave people a vaguely accurate image of what life was like for the Inuit people. It also gave us a derisive name to call people who wear oversized winter coats. It’s in the National Film Registry, 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, and on many people’s great films list. But be warned that this is a painfully dull watch. I fell asleep several times watching it which is quite impressive for a 70-ish minute film. Nanook of the North was culturally significant and groundbreaking in some ways, but wholly uninteresting to me. I learned nothing about the Inuit people. I just learned what this famous film looked like, and, well AMRU 2.

Niagara (1953)

A young couple on honeymoon at Niagara Falls meets up with another couple with problems. George (Joseph Cotten) is a troubled veteran married to Rose, a much younger Marilyn Monroe type (Marilyn Monroe). They have a couple blow-outs that bring Polly and Ray into their situation. It soon becomes clear that secrets are being kept.

Tagged Film-Noir, it is slightly outside the genre (vibrant color, American director). But it checks enough boxes so I’ll allow it. Marilyn’s character is perhaps the most complex of her career with lines way longer than “It’s me, Sugar!”, and she does well with them. Not academy award nominee level, but a step above her regular. Forty eight year old Cotten looked ridiculous next to peak Marilyn hotness but that was the point. I expected to read how he buffed-down for this part.

Speaking if Marilyn, this was her first color film and her first starring role. She would go on to make Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire the same year banking a fortune for Twentieth Century Fox, but because she was contracted as a stock actress, she would earn less then her makeup man.

Our lead is pretty Polly (Jean Peters). Not the flashy beauty of Marilyn, but perhaps prettier. Also a solid actress, she likely would have had a long career had she not married Howard Hughes. She had a late TV revival after the divorce. This film would have been shorter had the people listened to her instead assume she was just a hysterical woman. Men, am I right?

There is a lot going on here and any more detail would be in spoiler territory. Niagara is an excellent thriller that keeps you guessing. It is visually stunning with a very 50’s look and feel but the film-noir elements are still intact. Suffice to say that this is a thrilling, complex film with great performances. It, the falls, and Marilyn in the shower all look great. It's a real treat. AMRU 4.

Manhattan (1979)

Shriveled Isaac (Woody Allen) is dating a hot teenager way out of his league (hot teenaged Mariel Heming-way out of his league) when he learns that his married friend is having an affair. He meets Mary (Annie Hall … I mean Diane Keaton) and immediately dislikes her. So obviously, he becomes obsessed, screwing up his relationship with the hot teenager way out of his league.

Meryl Streep is here in a small role as Isaac’s pissy lesbian ex-wife, intent on embarrassing him. She shot her scenes while on break from Kramer vs. Kramer. I wonder if she regrets it.

The creep factor for this film is off the scale. The obvious starting place is Allen’s 42 going on 62 Isaac dating 17 year old Hemingway as a plausible plot point. But it gets worse when you realize that the man himself was actually dating two different teenage girls during that time. His first wife was sixteen when they wed and his current wife was born nine years after Mariel. It became fashionable to dump on Allen after his Soon-Yi fiasco, but all the warning signs were there.

The success of the film hinges on caring about the Woody Allen character and sympathizing with his concerns and problems. He’s an intellectual snob who hates intellectual snobs, is the catalyst for all of the problems in his life, and whines about everything. But how does one relate to an ugly man who screws up relationships with hot women who for some reason sleep with him? Some of them minors by certain standards. I’ve seen six or eight of his films, which is a small percent of his total, but I am tired of his schtick. His brand of humor (“I think people should mate for life, like pigeons or Catholics”) just doesn’t do it for me anymore. His pedophilia-adjacent behavior notwithstanding.

Manhattan’s saving grace is it’s cinematography. Filmed in black and white anamorphic widescreen, it gives the city a vivid, lush, and classic look. And the city is framed beautifully in every scene. It is truly stunning. Sometimes called a love letter to New York, I think it would have worked better if it was just that, and left the story out of it. AMRU 2.5.

Shock (1946)

A young wife, waiting for her recently released POW husband, checks into a hotel to advance the plot. Believing him dead for years, she becomes distraught when his arrival is delayed. Out on the balcony she witnesses an argument in another apartment that ends in murder. This shock puts her into a catatonic state. As luck would have it, a specialist (Vincent Price) happens to be staying at the same hotel and has just finished murdering his wife. This is a very delicate case. Better bring her to the sanitarium.

No mystery here as it never occurred to the filmmakers to play the ambiguity angle. Did she really witness a murder or was it all a delusion? Nope, she totally did. It’s just a matter of how everything plays out, which seems pretty obvious from the onset.

Our damsel in distress, cute Anabel Shaw, went on to do, well, fairly little else. She had a forgettable role in Gun Crazy but here she pouts her way into our hearts. Price is great as always in a very early villain role. If not for him, and the film’s short running time, I would not have considered watching it. Still, probably shouldn’t have.

The Amazon Prime film quality is quite poor. Rumor has it that there is a crisp version out there someplace, but I don’t think it would have helped. This is a slow moving, low budget, non-thrilling thriller that wastes a good Price performance. AMRU 2.

Daughter of Shanghai (1937)

When an oriental antique shop owner is murdered for not cooperating with human traffickers, his daughter (Anna May Wong) does her own investigation.

Anna May Wong was an almost leading lady, being blocked by production code rules disallowing white leading men from getting down with her Asian hotness. And a film with two Asian leads was not fit for mainstream honky audience. She did what she could, but it was a losing cause. TCM did a special on Wong, interviewing Nancy Kwan and showing a string of her movies. Daughter of Shanghai came on so I watched it.

Old friends Anthony Quinn, J. Carrol Naish, and Buster Crabbe play heavies, but you would hardly recognize them. Philip Ahn played the Chinese federal agent also investigating. Ahn had a long career, frequently playing random uncredited Asian guy. He was actually Korean and received death threats during world war 2 because, you know.

Daughter of Shanghai is a fair if unremarkable crime drama. Anna May was charming if two dimensional. I would like to see her in more meaty roles, but time will tell if that ever happens. There was a small bit of mystery and a good pay off. And it was amusing to watch Chinese characters fight a bunch of whities to stop illegal immigration. AMRU 2.5.

He Who Gets Slapped (1924)

A poor, young scientist (Lon Chaney) finds the support of a wealthy Barron who steals his research and his wife. When he protests, he is slapped in front of bearded academic-types, who laugh at him. Laugh at him, I tell you! At which point he becomes a circus clown whose only shtick is to be slapped while people laugh at him.

Yes, this is another tragic film where Chaney is a carnival or circus performer who falls for a woman way too young and way out of his league. In this case it was Norma Shearer who for the duration of the film I mistook for Moira Shearer. Which would be weird as Moira wasn’t born yet. I know Chaney liked them young (on screen - he was no Charlie Chaplin) but that’s a bit too far.

Speaking of Norma, she was an almost big star and wife of producer Irving Thalberg. The workaholic (Irving, that is) produced ninety titles before dying of pneumonia at thirty seven. Five years into her career (Norma, that is), Slapped was her twenty third feature film. Norma would star in a great many films I've never seen and fall just short of Hollywood greatness because apparently she was cross-eyed. She would retire at 40 and live to a ripe old age of 80.

Not many on this film had that luxury. Chaney famously died at forty seven only six years later, but the evil Baron would match the age dying a year earlier. Chaney’s duplicitous wife would also die at forty seven, but that was over twenty years later. Her career would die much sooner. But let’s talk about John Gilbert.

Dashing John Gilbert was a silent matinee idol at the level of Rudolph Valentino, but come the advent of talkies, his star faded quickly. There are stories that his voice was wrong for leading roles, but that wasn’t true. The problem was his drinking and sudden lack of sizzle on screen. Jilted at the altar by Greta Garbo, he was never the same. He made ten or so talkies but only Garbo’s Queen Christina stands out. He would die of a heart attack a couple years later, at thirty eight. And so it goes.

The big news here is that a youngish Bela Lugosi is an extra somewhere in the background. I didn’t notice him but he was either wearing clown makeup or an academic-type beard. And, obviously, you don’t hear his voice. So, maybe BIG news was overselling it a bit.

There are some interesting things here. The score gave the clown performances a surreal feeling, and Chaney was at his prime. This, according to IMDb, is his second highest rated films behind The Unknown, my personal favorite. I thought it was well worth watching. AMRU 3.5.

“Laughter - the bitterest and most subtle death to hope…”

Transatlantic Tunnel (1935)

Visionary engineer Richard McAllan (Richard Dix) has a plan to build a Transatlantic Tunnel from Britain to America. You know, for world peace. All he needs is for some rich people to finance it. The project takes many years and impacts our hero’s life and family in many ways, while the rich people play games in the background. Gosh, that financier’s daughter is awfully pretty.

Originally titled The Tunnel, it is based somewhat loosely on the 1913 book Der Tunnel, which was also made into a 1933 German film. Infrastructure scenes were borrowed for the British version. Our hero’s life becomes consumed by the project. Not only does he deal with technical issues, he has to make sure the funds stay flowing, and even flies to America for publicity events. Wait a minute! He flies to America?

This film has been on my radar for quite a while and I don’t recall why. It must have been on a list of great early sci-fi movies. It has been compared to Things to Come (1936) which should have been a red flag. High concept, hit or miss scientific predictions, boring story. There is something infuriating about British movie dialog. They talk in circles, never say what’s on their mind, and use figures of speech that seem completely wrong for the situation. The Holly and the Ivy (1953) is probably the worst offender, but at least it had a fleshed out interpersonal story.

The sci-fi elements of Transatlantic Tunnel are admittedly interesting. Some thirty years later plate tectonics science would steal it’s thunder, but that’s not too bad of a run. The problem lays with the fact that building a tunnel, even if we forget about commercial airlines and plate tectonics, isn’t terribly interesting. Add to that the brit-speak and weak storyline and you end up with a film about as interesting as digging a hole. AMRU 2.