swo17 wrote: Fri Feb 02, 2024 6:21 am
April announcements:
John Farrow box
I picked this set up on a whim after realizing how many Farrow films I’ve enjoyed without ever really taking note of him as an auteur, and I think it’s one of the most impressive collections of films and extras I can recall. I know many here look down on Imprint but it is impossible to imagine this curated and insightful set coming from any other label.
domino harvey wrote: Tue Aug 09, 2016 3:09 am
Commandos Strike at Dawn (John Farrow 1943) Small Norwegian (!) town finds itself invaded by Nazis who are somewhat sympathetic to the natives (the Nazis say something along the lines of, “Hey, you guys are almost Aryans”) but also do things like steal all the blankets from shivering old people— I’ve seen Nazis do a lot of dastardly acts on-screen but I appreciated that as ludicrous as this was, it was a new one! Paul Muni is one of the locals who covertly fights back against the invaders, and the best stretch of the film is the ten minutes or so where the townspeople impose their will on their aggressors, including a memorable outcome to one Nazi caravan asking for directions.
The Hitler Gang (1943) is a fascinating Hollywood curio that I had never heard of before this set. A big budget biopic of Hitler’s rise played more or less straight by a collection of character actors and bit players cast for their physical resemblance more than acting acumen (this works out okay on the whole but the guy playing Hitler probably should have been dubbed by a more forceful speaker) — the most recognizable face here is probably Sig Ruman and he’s only just barely in it. I expected it to be in the litigious spirit of something like
Enemy of Women but the movie doesn’t overplay its hand and while the biopic elements are often on the nose (“My book should be called My Battle because…” &c) they are also used to make the film a borderline gangster film in tone. I did chuckle in one of the extras where Joe Dante dismissed this one out of hand though!
domino harvey wrote: Sun Jun 28, 2015 3:36 pm
Night Has a Thousand Eyes (John Farrow 1948) Melancholy borderline-horror film concerning phony vaudeville psychic Edward G Robinson who miraculously develops the skills he'd long been faking, only to learn that seeing the future brings with it a morose responsibility for the ills it delivers. The second half of the film, with skeptical police detective William Damarest doing his best to stay doubtful as Robinson attempts to save the life of his ex-fiancee's daughter via a series of random signals that naturally begin to transpire, is predictable but also infused with a sad inevitable drive forward, ending with one of the more touchingly downbeat endings I've seen from this genre. Recommended.
domino harvey wrote: Mon Aug 18, 2014 6:11 am
Submarine Command (John Farrow 1951) Fourth, final, and weakest by far pairing of William Holden and Nancy Olson. Holden is a sub captain who is haunted by his actions on the last day of the war which resulted in the original captain of the sub dying. Though he's in the right and there's even a narratively convenient meeting with the man's widow who pleads with him to forgive himself, Holden eats himself alive mainly because one of the men under him, William Bendix, keeps giving him dirty looks and refuses to shake his hand &c. William Bendix seems like your girlfriend's father: he's fun, you like him, but you wouldn't want to piss him off. So I get it. But I don't get it. You needn't ask if Holden eventually wins back favor in the eyes of some guy who's really good at holding a grudge once Holden and his ship get recommissioned back into duty for the Korean War, for you already know the answer.
Botany Bay (1952) is a wonderful surprise. Farrow’s only film about his native Australia, this is on the upper end of ship-bound epics, with innocent convict Alan Ladd hellbent on escaping James Mason’s ship. Mason’s character is quite fascinating, as he resists all shortcut urges to become Captain Bligh and presents a plausible sadist who is not a compassionate leader but functions by a code that makes sense. Unfortunately the great entertainment value and restraint are undone a lot by the conventional and uninspired last ten minutes. It’s impossible to watch this after going through the extras and not noting the glee with which Farrow films all the debauchery afoot. I am wholly convinced Farrow is indeed classic Hollywood’s most fervent sadist, and I look forward to revisiting more of his films to retrace these elements.
The extras are copious. I especially liked David Cairns’ lengthy study of the five films included, especially since surely this is the first academic extra to ever contain the phrase “Babe City”! Joe Dante’s interview is proof that all great directors have varied and deep cinema knowledge, as he spends some time praising the rather obscure Karloff film
West of Shanghai over more popular fare.
The feature length documentary on Farrow is a real missed opportunity though. The filmmakers gather together an impressive collection of names to discuss Farrow (some of which are inspired, such as getting other famous Australian directors like Bruce Beresford and Philippe Mora to discuss Farrow, or a movie critic friar to talk about
Alias Nick Beal), but they are incompetent in constructing a final product out of these interviews. One wishes we just got hours of unedited interview footage. Imogen Sara Smith in particular has a lot of valuable comments in the documentary, I’d love to hear whatever else she had to say (and she does provide the commentary on
Night Has a Thousand Eyes in this set, which is labeled as new so may not be the same one she did for Kino)
I’m not sure if there are many copies of this set left but I highly recommend it because it did what you’d want a set like this to do: it caused me to positively reevaluate the subject’s career while enjoying the honest appraisals of those coming to bury Farrow. There’s something refreshingly honest about the conflicted responses of most commentators throughout this set to the man himself, and learning of his varied career apart from moviemaking was quite a shock (after converting to Catholicism to marry Maureen O’Sullivan, he wrote several religious studies). While what I’d consider to be his best film,
Wake Island, is not present, you get four good to great movies and one awful one, but even that seems to befit the honest appraisal in the set: he made some shitty movies too, and here’s one of them! As Cairns notes, it really is an unusually representative collection of movies that efficiently explores the career of a prolific director.
