A man threatens to jump off a skyscraper ledge in a documentary-style thriller directed by Henry Hathaway in 1951. I haven’t seen it, but the other Hathaway thrillers of this period are certainly fun. With Richard Basehart, Paul Douglas, Barbara Bel Geddes, Debra Paget, Howard da Silva, Agnes Moorehead, Robert Keith, Martin Gabel, and Grace Kelly in her film debut. 92 min. (JR) Read more
Nicolas Roeg’s tenth featurerather freely adapted by Allan Scott, who also produced, from a novel by Brian Mooreis characteristically portentous and provocative, beautifully edited and lyrically enigmatic. Roeg’s wife, Theresa Russell, plays the adulterous wife of a doctor (Mark Harmon) having an affair with another doctor (James Russo) while they’re attending a conference in Mexico. Her husband apparently dies in a boat accident, but his body mysteriously disappears from a local hospital; back in California, the wife reencounters her husband, and investigates a vision that may be connected with his apparent death and resurrection. If you like thrillers with tidy denouements, this may not be your cup of tea. But Roeg’s grasp of his material never ceases to be serious and suggestive, and it carries echoes of such transcendental art movies as Stromboli and Vertigo. With Talia Shire, Richard Bradford, and Will Patton (1991). (JR) Read more
Not exactly a lost film or an uncovered masterpiece, but still a pretty good indication of what Frank Capra (and some of his most talented collaborators, including writer Robert Riskin and cinematographer Joseph Walker) could do during his prime. Made shortly after the runaway success of It Happened One Night, but before the little man bromides of Mr. Deeds and Mr. Smith took over, this horse-racing comedy drama starring Warner Baxter and Myrna Loy is a damned sight better than Riding High, the lugubrious 1950 remake with Bing Crosby. In both its brighter and its darker moments, it summons up some of the desperation that underlines both the movie’s Depression context and Capra’s boom-or-bust personality. The racial attitudes toward the hero’s black servant (Clarence Muse) are dated, but the other starsespecially Walter Connolly, Raymond Walburn, and Margaret Hamiltonprovide unalloyed pleasure (1934). (JR) Read more