Reeling Backward: "The Lady Vanishes" (1938)

Honestly, I struggled to get through "The Lady Vanishes," which is something I never thought I'd say about an Alfred Hitchcock movie.

Even toward the end of his days when his fastball had lost its snap -- "Marnie," "Torn Curtain" -- Hitch's movies always had a sense of bravura momentum, of characters and events drawn inextricably forward. The proceedings might grow self-indulgent or even silly, but the Master of Suspense always managed to keep things moving.

Not in "Lady," his second-to-last film made in the British production system before dipping oars toward Hollywood. The first hour is an absolute chore, more His Girl Friday-type of snappy romantic banter than thriller, essentially a comedy of manners lacking narrative oomph.

Things don't really get moving till the last 30 minutes when the guns come out.

I was amused by this description from Hitchcock's Wikipedia page: "a fast-paced film about the search for a kindly old Englishwoman Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty), who disappears while on board a train in the fictional country of Bandrika." If this is fast-paced, I don't care to see Hitch's version of cinematic lollygagging.

Margaret Lockwood plays Iris Henderson, an English dilettante enjoying a snow skiing vacation with her girlfriends before heading home to be wed, an event she approaches more with resolution than eagerness. After getting knocked on the head by a dropped piece of luggage, she befriends a British governess returning home aboard the same train.

Miss Froy is described as "middle-aged," though Whitty was 73 years old when she played her, and looks every inch of prim elderly Englander. She disappears after Iris falls asleep, and to her consternation no one else onboard claims to remember seeing her. Enlisting the aid of Gilbert (Michael Redgrave, in his star-making role), a puckish musicologist with whom she had sparred at their hotel, Iris sets off on a quest to prove she's not crazy, and that Miss Froy has been abducted, or worse.

Helpfully arriving to provide illumination is a physician of dubious European origin named Dr. Hartz, played by Paul Lukas, who usually plays the good guy and appears to be wearing quite obvious makeup to accent/lengthen his eyebrows. He tells Iris her memory of Miss Froy is an injury-induced psychosis. Later, when evidence mounts to prove her existence, a doppelganger wearing the exact same clothing Iris described Miss Froy as wearing is produced.

Needless to say, this being a Hitchcock movie, the revelation of foul play is inevitable. This builds to such moments as a fistfight with a buffoonish Italian magician using his props as a backdrop, Gilbert climbing along the outside of the train from one window to the next, and a faux nun given away by her stylish high-heeled shoes.

Ostensibly, the story is about the search for Miss Froy, and to find out why seemingly everyone on the train is in on the conspiracy to discredit her existence. Really, though, it's a setup for Iris and Gilbert to fall in love, in that classic I-hate-you-until-the-moment-I-realize-you-are-the-one formula.

Sexually the film is rather frisky for its era. We see Iris and her pals in a considerably disrobed state, and Gilbert is wont to make teasing statements about their relationship, at one point marching into her room and asking which side of the bed she prefers. He even gives her a cheeky slap on the rump, though the actual moment of contact between palm and derriere happens carefully just out of frame.

Also showing up is Cecil Parker as Todhunter, a wealthy barrister who is traveling with his mistress and weighing whether a divorce would impinge his changes of obtaining a judgeship. Needless to say, he's the fellow whose spine shows yellow when the going gets tough.

Providing the comic relief are Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne as Charters and Caldicott, a pair of unctuous British gents whose sole purpose in life appears to be returning to England in time to catch the cricket tournament. It's a twinkly pairing, men who take such seriousness in spectacularly unimportant things, and they act as a sort of self-parody of everything English. They were so popular they would go on to appear together in three more movies.

"The Lady Vanishes" was a huge hit commercially and critically, and indeed it was the success of this film -- after a string of moribund pictures -- that convinced David O. Selznick he ought to bring Hitchcock across the pond to make American movies. For me, it remains one of his weaker efforts, a bit of light, frothy tosh on the way to grander and grimmer things.

Reeling Backward: "Captain Fury" (1939)

The story of "the Australian Robin Hood" is one not well known to American audiences, though the 1939 film starring Brian Aherne, "Captain Fury," in many follows the mold of the incredibly successful "The Adventures of Robin Hood" from a year earlier.

A merry band of outlaws set about rescuing the lives and livelihood of the working people from the cruel machinations of the local overlord. There's loads of derring-do, bucklers that are copiously swashed, pretty girls in need of kissing and a final showdown where the villain gets his well-earned comeuppance.

Despite all the action there's a sense of  invulnerability of the characters, though one token supporting player gets to die a heroic death. The outlaws, led by Irish insurgent Captain Michael Fury, repeatedly capture the evil henchmen and then let them go, repeating the cycle over and over again.

Personally, after I'd foiled the same bad guys a few times, I'd be looking for a more permanent solution.

The film was directed by Hollywood legend Hal Roach. whose IMDb profile lists 156 films directed and 1,202 producing credits. He was one of the few directors to establish himself in the silent era and then successfully transition to sound pictures. Grover Jones, Jack Jevne and William C. de Mille (Cecil's older brother) provided the somewhat clunky original script.

It's a generally great-looking film, with lots of loving shots of the Australian countryside ... well, the California countryside standing in for Down Under, anyway. The costumes, weapons and sets all have an authentic feel to them, and the film got an Oscar nomination for Art Direction.

It's such a rousing good time, though, that "Captain Fury" ends up seeming weightless. Since the only good guy who dies is Coughy, a tuberculosis-condemned sidekick played by John Carradine whose first spoken lines are that he only has a few months to live, it feels as if the story takes place in a consequence-free zone.

It is notable that Coughy -- who, I should point out, never actually coughs -- is the one who ends up killing corrupt landlord Arnold Trist, malevolently played by George Zucco. In 1800s Australia when it was still just a lawless British colony, Trist wants to keep all the land for himself and push out the peaceful settlers who have taken up in the valley.

With only an ineffectual governor to rule the entire land, it's up to Fury and other convicted criminals to rally the cause. Fury was a famous rebel sent to Australia to serve out his time in indentured servitude, a fate he seems perfectly willing to accept until Trist wants to whip him for insubordination.

He escapes, meets up with the leader of the settlers, François Dupré (Paul Lukas), a stern Mennonite with a a lovely, spirited daughter named Jeanette (June Lang). The handsome Fury and the winsome Jeanette are soon an item, much to the consternation of papa, who later even goes so far as to betray Fury to Trist.

The meatiest part by far goes to Victor McLaglen as Blackie. As head man among the convicts, the gregarious strongman tussles with Fury and gives him a thrashing. But it's enough to endear one red-blooded Irishman to another, and after Fury breaks him out Blackie agrees to become his right-hand man.

A running joke is that Blackie is a born thief who thinks they should be keeping all the loot they liberate from Trist's men for themselves, while Fury insists they return it to the settlers. McLaglen is a fun presence, part taskmaster and part comic relief, and he provides "Captain Fury" with its juiciest scenes.

I'm glad I saw "Captain Fury," though I can't say as I thought that much of it. It's not a seminal film, but rather a fairly obvious knockoff of another successful picture -- something Hollywood was quite adept at during the Golden era.

Reeling Backward: "Watch on the Rhine" (1943)

Sometimes when a movie is totally different from our expectations, it can be a glorious thing. I remember going into "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" expecting a slapdash prequel, and came out convinced I'd just seen the best movie of the summer.

But diverging too far from what people thought they were going to get can be a fatal drawback, too, and I admit I approached "Watch on the Rhine" expecting to see a gripping spy thriller. This was, after all, a film that was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Screenplay and Supporting Actress, and won a golden statue for Paul Lukas as Best Actor.

Alas, "Rhine" couldn't be more different than I expected, and it seriously sapped my enjoyment of the picture. I went in thinking spy thriller with lots of twists and turns in the plot. It's much more a dramatic piece of high-toned propaganda, as characters speechify about the evils of Nazism and the nobility of those who stand up against it.

As its opening screen crawl makes clear, the film is an ode to Germans who resist the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich through armed resistance. Coming out in 1943, it couldn't be seen as anything other than an overt appeal to the fighting resolve of Americans and their allies abroad.

Set in 1940 and based on a famous play by Lillian Hellman, "Rhine" concerns an American woman, Sara Muller, (Bette Davis) who returns home after 18 years abroad with her German husband Kurt (Lukas) and children in tow. It soon becomes clear that Kurt is not just the mild-mannered engineer he seems to be, but is one of the key leaders of the German resistance.

Alas, Sara's wealthy mother Fanny (Lucile Watson) has a disgraced Romanian count loitering as a house guest on an extended stay -- why, it's never made clear since she doesn't really know him very well -- and he conspires to sell the information about his identity to the Germans. He threatens to blackmail the husband, who shoots and kills him, then returns to Europe to fight on.

If that doesn't sound like a lot of plot, it's because it isn't. Dashiell Hammett was a famous novelist used to seeing his books turned into movies and television, but as near as I can research this was his only screenplay credit. He tries in vain to breathe some life into the proceedings, but it's hard to escape the story's stilted stage origins, as characters talk and talk and talk ... and talk.

Similarly, director Herman Shumlin was a stage veteran with no experience behind the camera, and it shows. His camera work is stagy and stiff, with characters tending to plant themselves in one spot and barely move around. The performances are also uniformly formal and inorganic, as the actors recite their lines by rote as if schoolkids who have proudly memorized a speech for class.

Shumlin only directed one other feature film, and promptly went back to his native soil on Broadway, where he racked up an impressive array of Tony Award nominations and wins. I'm glad he found success in the medium where he was most suited, because clearly film work was not for him.

The scene where Kurt shoots the count, Teck de Brancovis (George Coulouris), was controversial in its time because the Romanian is only looking for a bribe, not threatening his life. Kurt forces him into the garage at gunpoint, and a shot rings out. It's pretty clear that Kurt kills him in cold blood.

At first this ran afoul of the censors of the time, since the Hays Code stipulated that criminals always had to be shown getting their comeuppance in the end. According to a book about Davis' career, the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures actually suggested changing the ending so Kurt is captured and executed by the Nazis. In the end, the producers managed to convince the censors that Teck was the true villain, and he intended to betray Kurt even after extorting money out of him.

All the Germans except Sara speak in very stilted tones as if English were not their first language. I can understand what the filmmakers were going for, but the result is stiff and strange, with the children speaking like little academics. There's also the odd youngest child, a chubby child who informs his grandmother that he is "not beautiful," and she does him one better by telling him she adores him despite his being ugly.

There's also a distracting subplot about Sara's playboy brother David (Donald Woods) having a thing with the count's young wife Marthe (Geraldine Fitzgerald). It adds nothing to the tale, and only serves to distract from the spy story. Of course, since that is so spare, perhaps they just needed something, anything to pad out the script.

All the European names makes for a difficult time remembering who is who -- Teck, Anise, Marthe. Even "Kurt" comes out sounding more like "Koort."

Maybe it's just because I was expecting something completely different -- I was picturing back-alley assassinations and a potboiler plot -- but I just couldn't get engaged in "Watch on the Rhine." Even the title seems like a misdirection, since the action rarely leaves the Farrelly mansion, let alone shifting to Germany. But this is a whole lot of pompous pontificating with little dramatic punch.

Reeling Backward: "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" (1954)

Keeping with the nautical theme for this week's classic film columns, today I'll be taking a look at Disney's 1954 version of Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea."

Not long ago in this space I commented that I didn't think Golden Age Hollywood divided movies up so neatly into kids' movies and adult ones as they are today, and I think this adaptation of the famed 19th century science fiction novel helps prove my point.

"Leagues" is from Walt Disney, one of the first live-action films he produced himself, and there certainly are light-hearted moments meant to appeal to children. Most of these are centered around the character of Ned Land, a happy-go-lucky mariner played by Kirk Douglas. He sings, he carouses with women, he gets into fistfights ever 20 minutes or so, and befriends Captain Nemo's pet seal -- even singing a duet with it.

But watch James Mason's portrayal of Nemo, the mad submariner who's taken to the sea as his refuge from the evils of mankind. It's a hard-edged, dramatic performance, with no winking nods or cartoonish layers. You could transport Mason whole into a much darker movie with R-rated violence, and he would fit like a glove.

The other two main characters Paul Lukas as Professor Aronnax and Peter Lorre (grown old and thick) as his servile assistant, Conseil. I'm sure most people are familiar with the basic gist of the story: Arronax and his two companions are captured by Nemo, who makes them guests/prisoners aboard the Nautilus, his amazing submarine.

I just love the stupendous arrogance of Mason's Nemo, as seen in this exchange with the professor:

Arronax: "I'm afraid that I don't understand."
Nemo: "At the moment, I don't intend that you should."

Verne's novels were notable for their (often amazingly accurate) portrayal of the technology of the future, as seen from the mid-1800s. So it's interesting when filmmakers with another century of scientific advancement under their belts try to portray a futuristic past. All of the amazing stuff aboard the Nautilus -- diving suits, electrified hulls, periscopes -- were old hat by 1954.

Although Nemo's invention is not terribly advanced in weaponry: He doesn't have any torpedoes or guns -- he takes out offending ships trolling his seas by simply ramming them.

The production values of the film, directed by Richard Fleischer, hold up pretty well more than a half-century on. The art direction aboard the Nautilus has a splendid brass-and-iron look to it. Of course, the ship itself is a wonder of imagination, with its two large viewing windows resembling eyes, and overlapping hull plates that give it a crustacean look.

Like a lot of people my age, I first encountered the story of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" by visiting the ride at Disney World. I was heartbroken, even well into adulthood, when they shut it down in 1994.

The film deviates quite a bit from the book, which featured a rash of other adventures never portrayed, including visits to the South Pole and the lost city of Atlantis.

The big battle with the kraken is the centerpiece of the movie, and it's still an energetic and swashbuckling scene. Reportedly it was originally supposed to take place in daylight on a calm day, but the technicians were worried the cables used to control the massive squid would be visible. So they changed it to a stormy scene at night -- adding hundreds of thousands of dollars (a fortune then) and six extra weeks of shooting to the production.

It's grown a little hokey with years, and there's now denying the film is pitched more to audience members who measure their age in single digits. But "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" is a rousing adventure story with dark undertones that all ages can savor.

Notably, although there were several film versions prior to this one, it's stood for more than a half-century as the quintessential adaptation of Verne's book. (A few TV versions have come and gone.) Now Hollywood has two remakes in the works, racing to get into theaters first in 2012 or 2013. I enjoyed the Disney version, but I'd love to see a grittier take.

Too bad James Mason isn't around to star.

3 stars out of four