The Wrong Box (1966)

The Wrong Box* (Bryan Forbes, 1966) Bryan Forbes is a British director not known for a light touch, nor as a writer (and—in the few instances I saw him, not as an actor, either!). So to see him in charge of a comedy leaves one a bit nonplussed as opposed to amused (which should be the bloody intention!). The same can be said for this film, which tries very, very...veddy... hard to be funny, but ends up evoking feelings of something akin to pity (which just won't "do" for a comedy, much as Chaplin liked to use it in his bag of tricks).

The story of a tontine—a trust created for a clutch of privileged school-boys that will go to the last man standing (and the controversies that ensue—The Wrong Box should have the same breakaway, mean-spirited greediness of, say, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (And one should say that with Stanley Kramer, you wouldn't think of being able to do a comedy, either, but look at that result!), Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, or The Great Race, but instead has a leaden lethargy sometimes punctuated by awkward transitions, ill-timed (and rather unnecessary) close-ups, and the frequent appearance of title cards (to explain something the direction does not adequately provide) in a black-out format that recalls silent movie transitions. However, they come in at souch odd times, they're more interruptions that transitons (Odd that one can even mis-time interstitials!)

It's Bryan Forbes imitating Richard Lester making an Ealing Comedy, but without Alec Guiness, and as slap-dash as the Lester's direction could be at times, he at least could tell a story, and give it the momentum so it would never flag or falter. As it is it's one of those 95 minute movies that seem to last forever.

Great cast, though: Michael Caine, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, John Mills and Ralph Richardson; Peter Sellers has an extended cameo as a fraudulent doctor that starts slowly but finally picks up a weird head of steam. And there's an odd love story between Caine and Forbes' actress-wife Nanette Newman that seems unconvincing.

The screenplay is by Larry Gelbart and Burt Shevelove, who wrote the book for the Broadway musical "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" (Lester's film of which was released the same year—coincidence?) John Barry's galumphing score works overtime to make it frothy, but this is one granite souffle. What is missing is whimsy, rather than desperate manicness, and it fortunately is found in Sellers' work, and in the odd performance of Wilfrid Lawson as the harried (not that you'd know) butler, Peacock.

John Barry's ultra-light waltz is lovely but at odds with the material.

* The asterisk is used so that it isn't confused with the silent version of Robert Louis Stevenson's novel (with Lloyd Osbordone i913—not that a lot of people have seen it.

Murder By Death

Murder By Death (Robert Moore, 1976) Neil Simon was busy in 1976. He'd seen a successful film made of his The Sunshine Boys, his play "California Suite" was opening on Broadway, and he was re-tooling an earlier scrapped screenplay "Bogart Slept Here" (that was to star Marsha Mason and Robert De Niro and be directed by Mike Nichols) to ultimately be released as The Good-bye Girl.

 

Why, in God's name, he would write a parody of the typical country house mystery during this time is a mystery in and of itself.

 

However, I suspect the motive was money. Not only that, fellow comedy writer Mel Brooks was making a mint with genre parodies (such as Young Frankenstein), so why not? And if could it generate income as an original work, all the better.

 

The material is a bit weak, the jokes sometimes thudding, and Simon is at his best doing observational comedy as opposed to sketch-writing, which this essentially is. But, he does have a fine time making fun of some basic mystery tropes, characters and mystery writers, specifically Agatha Christie and Dashiell Hammett.

"You are cordially invited to Dinner and a Murder at 22 Lola Lane, Saturday evening 7 P.M." says the invitation sent to many prominent detectives. The host is millionaire Lionel Twain (Truman Capote). Using the photo above as reference, the invited guests are socialites Dick and Dora Charleston (David Niven and Maggie Smith), P.I. Sam Diamond and his secretary Tess Skeffington (Peter Falk and Eileen Brennan), amateur detective Jessica Marbles (Elsa Lanchester), Belgian detective Milo Perrier (James Coco)—with chauffeur Cassette (James Cromwell's first movie!)—and Inspector Sidney Wang (Peter Sellers).* The blind butler, Jamessir Bensonmum (Alec Guinness) assists with the help of deaf and dumb kitchen-maid Yetta (Nancy Walker).

It's a wonderful cast. One wishes it was just a better movie, starting with the premise: at dinner (after various attempts on their lives) Twain appears and challenges the detectives to a sort of duel: he has come up with a mystery that he believes they cannot solve—a murder is going to occur in the house at midnight and both the killer and the victim are in that room. If the mystery is solved, that sleuth wins $1 million. The group then finds a couple of victims, disappearing bodies, disappearing rooms, and many courses of unchewable dialog and rather stale jokes.

But, it also has conflicting stories, made-up alibi's, mutually exclusive excuses, and a double-cross that should have been clever, but is only saved by Alec Guinness' sheer brio in his willingness to get laughs.

Oh, there's a couple of things that work. The mansion's door-bell is Fay Wray's scream from King Kong and that manages to be a consistent laugh just as the horse-scream whenever "Frau Blücher's" name is mentioned worked in Young Frankenstein. There's a nice gag when Nancy Walker's deaf-mute maid runs into the dining room and screams...in total silence. And the cast is uniformly game, but the stand-out is Peter Falk's Sam Diamond, evoking Bogart's gumshoes to a tee.**
 

Ultimately, Murder By Death merely kills a couple of hours.

* The inspirations for these characters are (of course) Nick and Nora Charles from Hammett's "The Thin Man", Sam Spade from Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon," Agatha Christie's Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, and Earl Derr Biggers' Charlie Chan.

 

** Falk would get his own sequel of sorts—The Cheap Detective—from the same writer-director team.

Olde Review: Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

This was part of a series of reviews of the ASUW Film series back in the '70's. Except for some punctuation, I haven't changed anything from the way it was presented, giving the kid I was back in the '70's a break. Any stray thoughts and updates I've included with the inevitable asterisked post-scripts.

Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964) 

"I can no longer allow...Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion...and the international Communist conspiracy...to sap and impurify...
all of our precious bodily fluids!"

Stanley Kubrick was sitting, working out the first draft of a screen-play based on the nuclear thriller "Red Alert" by Peter George, when he came to a scene in which the President of the United States gives out secret information to the Russians in order that they may stop a squad of U.S. B-52's before they can drop their nuclear payload on the USSR and instigate world-wide destruction. Kubrick decided to throw it out because audiences would laugh at such an implausible occurrence. But, as he went along, Kubrick found himself throwing away more and more important plot developments, and slowly peeling away his story.

A fine story it was, too. A lower echelon general goes mad and mis-uses a government-approved contingency plan that would allow him to make nuclear war decisions in the event that Washington D.C. were destroyed. It is up to the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to stop the General and obtain the code that will stop the B-52 attack on Russia.

Kubrick solved his dilemma with an almost suicidally daring decision—to treat this thriller as a comedy, a nightmare-comedy where the grins are the same as produced by rigor mortis. So, have the mad general attack Russia because of their plot to fluoridate our waters and turn the men impotent. Turn the B-52 commander into a Stetson-sporting "Hot Damn!" baboon. Make the head of the Joint Chiefs a gravel-voiced reactionary and a sex maniac. And turn almost every communication device in the film against them. Then turn the title into Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

This decision let Kubrick have his cake and eat it, too, for not only is Strangelove funny, but it is, at the same time, the skillfully realized edge-of-your-seat thriller it originally was. And the comedy aspects cast a realization of what an insane situation the nuclear "stand-off" is. Despite the characterizations, Kubrick managed to pull to present a completely factual account of a possible nuclear accident, right down to the equipment in the B-52's. It is all plausible no matter how broadly drawn the characters (and the Air Force disclaimer at the beginning of the film only adds fuel to this argument). As is Kubrick's style, the most horrendous occurrences will happen and Kubrick will sit back and watch, for his films, by this time in his career, had become cold observations taken, as some have commented, from the view of some extra-terrestrial life, not human, and unmoved by what he sees...with a definite slant, but without a heart.*

And so the comedy bill in 130 Kane is a full one--a perverse comedy of warmth and sweetness and a perverse comedy of cold and destruction--and both excellent in each other's way.

Broadcast on KCMU on Januray 7th, 1977

* That's a pretty tortured last 'graph, and I think I put it there just to have that final statement contrasting Young Frankenstein and Dr. Strangelove—the films were paired together on that night's double-bill.

I no longer think Dr. Strangelove is cold. I think it presents the case and lets the viewer decide. But that stratagem is ham-strung by Kubrick's decision to make it a comedy (he felt that it was going to be laughable no matter what he did, so making it a romp would make it, at the least, entertaining, all the hewing to fact is for naught if you have an audience resenting the lecture). But the best part of Dr. Strangelove is the coda, where plans are made to maintain the status quo, despite that policy already having lead mankind down the path of total annihilation. The scenarists in power take the situation and find out how to make the best of it (usually for them), completely devoid of accountability and conscience or any sense of responsibility for its part in the disaster. It's all about self-justification. 

And all it takes is one mad man to set the intricate death-trap in motion.

Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is timeless.

And should be required viewing every election year.

Nixon's "War-Room" from Zack Snyder's Watchmen (2009)

The Ladykillers (1955)

The Ladykillers (Alexander Mackendrick, 1955) Those who know Alec Guinness mostly for his Jedi mastery in the "Star Wars" series may have missed his amazing string of English comedies showcasing his talents, sometimes in multiple roles in the same film. A complex "interior" performer, Guinness had enormous range whether playing drama or comedy. But of the latter, the most interesting might be his ghoulish turn in Alexander Mackendrick's The Ladykillers,* the dark comedy of a motley group of robbers planning an armored car job under the nose of a little old lady who has rented them rooms in her flat.

It is a murky day when Professor Marcus (Guinness) answers an advertisement placed by neighborhood busybody and widow Mrs. Wilberforce (Katie Johnson) of rooms to let in her slightly dilapidated house. The house might be old and musty, settling, and filled with screaming parrots,** but for Marcus, it's "location, location, location." And he is willing to negotiate with Mrs. Wilberforce in order to secure rooms for himself and his band-mates, a string quartet. As he explains, his orchestra needs rooms for practicing, but that is merely a ruse for a much darker purpose: his rather suspicious looking orchestra is actually less musically inclined as criminally disposed.

Besides Marcus, there is former pugilist "One-Round" Lawson (Danny Green) tough but a bit punch-drunk, spiv Harry Robinson (Peter Sellers), con-man Major Claude Courtney (Cecil Parker) and the murderous gangster Louis Harvey (Herbert Lom). They would never pass for a quartet if anyone had discriminating eyes, but Mrs. Wilberforce, who usually eyes things suspiciously, is quite myopic when it comes to the Professor's players. Maybe it's their repertoire of Boccherini's Minuet in E that evokes fond memories for her and makes her look past their bizarre looks. 

What they have eyes for is the reason they took the rooms in the first place—the modest house is but a stone's throw from the King's Cross railway station that is the destination for a regular armored car delivery, it's cargo of cash being what they covet and the Professor's plans being how they will carry it off.

The humor of the film is how these wolves must pretend they're sheep for the benefit of the innocent Mr.s Wilberforce. The crooks so their best (or worst) to be on their most innocent—or least suspicious behavior—around Mrs. Wilberforce and her friends, and the usually suspicious landlady is unaware that she has a bunch of thugs under her roof, despite sticking out like snapdragons in a rose garden. There is the constant state of danger that could become...very uncordial.

Then once the heist has been carried off without immediate consequence, there is the tense situation that the money might be detected. The ill-gotten gains are then at risk of being discovered by the kindly, if "Kravitzy" little old landlady. All of the main cast of characters, innocent or guilty as sin, are strangers in a strange land, potentially clashing with their own natures, due to the circumstances.

Now, because it is a crime film, albeit a comedic one, from the 1950's, some comeuppance—some moral balance—must be imposed in the way the story shakes out, one that has been played out with a similarly accidental twist in later movies of the type, but takes on a decidedly macabre version of "there's no honor among thieves". That there is still some ambiguity in that resolution is what makes the film quirky, ironic and mischievous. And jolly bad fun.

 
* The Coen brothers (Joel and Ethan) remade the film, set in the South (Louisianna, actually) with Tom Hanks playing the Professor character, but their film, though different in particulars, is not an improvement over the original. Perhaps the decision to re-locate the film in the States is a reaction to the fact that this very British film was actually written by American William Rose, who wrote such other films as It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming!, and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. 

** The parrots, amusingly, are voiced by Peter Sellers.

*** Guinness, when he was offered the script, remarked "but this is for Alastair Sim, surely" (yes, it was, but he'd turned down the part) and Guinness' character make-up design does bear a slight toothy resemblance to the actor. Sim—if you think he looks very familiar—played what many think of as the definitive Ebeneezer Scrooge in 1951's Scrooge—directed by Brian Desmond-Hurst.