An excellent double bill this time, starting with last night's film "Behind the Makeup"(1930), an early pre-Code melodrama featuring stellar acting by an outstanding cast. Do you remember Hal Skelly, the actor who was hit by a train while searching for his dog? We saw him a few weeks ago in "The Shadow Laughs". He was okay in that movie but seemed ill suited for the role. Here, he is in his element as a Vaudevillian, and he knocks it out of the ballpark. Skelly plays "Hap Brown", a mediocre stage clown who survives on the club circuit by giving the audience what he believes they want, which is "hokum", broad humored gags that "don't go over their heads." In truth, that may be all he's talented enough to deliver, but at least it keeps him in ham and eggs at his favorite cafe, where his gal pal "Marie" (Fay Wray) is the waitress. Hap has a thing for Marie and makes it no secret, but he's too nice a guy, a gushy, heart-on-his sleeve optimist. He has no edge; consequently, Marie "loves him like a sister, sometimes like a mother", so when Hap asks her to marry him, it's "well, lemme think about it." She's just being polite, of course. The answer is really no.
One night, after another lukewarm performance, Hap leaves the club to find, under a lamppost, a down and out man who looks about to collapse. Hap offers him a meal. He hasn't eaten in four days. His name is "Gardoni" (William Powell), and wouldn't you know it, he's a professional clown, too, from Italy. The difference, as he tells Hap his story, is that in Italy, he was trained in highbrow humor. "Subtle, you know? sophisticated." Hap tells him that'll never fly in America. "They don't understand subtle. You've gotta give 'em hokum. You can't go over their heads." The two become friends and a compromise is reached. Gardoni, being the more alpha of the two, suggests they form a duo in which he will be the leader. "You will be my fall guy," he tells Hap, "and we will do half subtle, and half your way....what you call it? Oh yes, hokum."
They take this act on the road, but it's a dismal failure, and Gardoni walks out on Hap, who once picked him up out of the gutter. Some thanks, eh? Gardoni is not a bad man, but he is temperamental and egotistical. He thinks Hap is a simpleton and in some ways he's right, but Hap has a high emotional IQ. Later, Gardoni bring his new solo act to town, and Hap takes Marie to see it. Lo and behold, Gardoni is now doing hokum. In fact, he's stolen a lot of Hap's gags. Hap goes to see him backstage, and mentions that fact but instead of getting upset, he blows it off. "It's okay, Gardoni. I don't mind." One of Hap's weaknesses, or maybe it's a strength, is that he's forgiving of everything. When Gardoni asks to meet his date, and Hap brings Marie backstage, Gardoni in his arrogance starts conversing in Italian with her (which she conveniently understands, being of Italian heritage). This excludes Hap, and because Marie only has sisterly feelings for him, despite his being smitten with her, she becomes entranced by Gardoni from the moment he kisses her hand. Two scenes later, they are married, and Gardoni announces it to Hap as if it was a foregone conclusion. He has now stolen Hap's hokum act, and made it a huge success, and he's also stolen his would be girlfriend. But even through all of this, Hap continues to say "it's okay, Gardoni. I don't mind." He always wishes the best for everyone, even to his detriment, and his feelings are genuine, not an act.
But as Gardoni becomes more and more successful, he shows more of the self-centered guy he really is. He's not a jerk, per se, and he's always friendly to Hap, but he's now very self-important, and he's ignoring his new wife Marie, who he was infatuated with until he came to realize that she was "only" a cafe waitress at heart. "I cannot survive on chile con carne," he confides to Hap. Hap nods in non-committal sympathy, but he still loves Marie. He could survive on her cooking just fine.
Then comes the movie's Big Reveal, when Gardoni shuttles Marie home one night after a performance, only to entertain another woman in his dressing room. "Kitty Parker" (Kay Francis) is a high roller card playing society gal, but what Gardoni doesn't realise, even in all his European sophistication, is that she's a gambling shill - a stunning-looking lure for a card table racket. She plays along with Gardoni's lust for her (while he's ignoring Marie at home) and before too long, he's in debt to Kitty for 20 thousand clams. By now, Hap has returned to their live act, and when Gardoni raids their joint bank account to pay off his debt to Kitty, he bankrupts Hap also. Gardoni has mistakenly assumed that Kitty was in love with him, but she was only ever a shill, and now that he's paid her the gambling debt, she leaves him high and dry. Gardoni has now gotten a triple dose of his own medicine, and it's too much for him to deal with. I can't cant tell you what happens after that, but I can tell you I am tempted to give this movie our highest rating of Two Gigantic Thumbs Up. In addition to the heart-tugging performance of Hal Skelly, made all the more poignant by his death-by-train accident while looking for his dog, there is the Gardoni performance by William Powell, with an authentic, non-hambone Italian accent. If there is any doubt left that William Powell was one of the greatest actors in motion picture history, let them be dispelled. Yes, he was fantastic as The Thin Man. But he could also play everything else, and was doing Streep/DeNiro type roles forty years before them. His Gardoni is a tour de force. Fay Wray was no slouch herself and could pull emotion and tears out of a hat, through body language and those eyes, and Kay Francis could do it all, from haughty (as she is here) to heartbreaking.
As noted, this film is pre-Code, so all of the moralistic and tragedian stops are pulled out. As great as all the actors are - and William Powell is a 10 - it is Hal Skelly who will leave you with a lump in your throat, with his character's relentless kindness, right up to the point of deception. Yes, let's give "Behind the Makeup" Two Gigantic Thumbs Up. It's the best drama we've seen in a while. The picture is very good. ////
The same night (because we had to get caught up), we watched Erich von Stroheim in "Fugitive Road"(1934), a post-war dramatic/romantic comedy. I don't know what to call it, because it's played, for the most part, with a style so deadpan that you aren't sure in which way the story will evolve, funny or serious. We've seen this before from von Stroheim, who often specialised in playing proto-Fascistic characters. Sometimes, he's flat-out sinister, but at other times he plays a role expressionless and speaks without emotion, in a truly weird accent that is somewhere between Berlin, Brooklyn, and Bismarck, North Dakota.
This time he's playing "Hauptmann Oswald Von Traunsee", the commandant at a border crossing station in Austria. The period is postwar WW1, and a lot of Euorpean refugees are coming through. There's an Italian man and his very large wife, who "a-give him-a many-a children, all-a boys". He's good for some caricature Big Italian Family humor, and his wife has an extra baby right there at the station.
Then there are the diamond smugglers, a Brit and a Russian, who are trying to sneak their gems through the station under the bandages of a "wounded" comrade. They're dressed as an ambulance crew, but they don't fool the Hauptmann.
There's also an American city slicker from New York, wearing a pinstripe suit. He's a smooth talker, but von Stroheim recognises him from a picture in a detective magazine, in a "Wanted" notice. The guy is a gangster who's escaped from prison and there's a reward for him in America. Von Stroheim calls him aside and offers to make a deal with him, probably a criminal deal, but we never find out what it was gonna be, because a woman soon comes between them. Von Stroheim hates his post at the border station because it's boring. The only diversion is the occasional pretty foreign girl who passes through, and this time it's "Sonja Valinoff" (Wera Engels), a beauty from rural Hungary who's trying to join her brother in America. Von Stroheim detains her, and just to try and put the make, he invites her to a private dinner in his quarters. She has no choice but to dine with him if she wants to be released, but when the gangster overhears all of this, and hears her last name, he realises he knew her brother in prison in New York, and knows the man is dead.
He petitions von Stroheim to let her go, but without telling her about her brother. "She's got her hopes up, why destroy them now? Let her find out later on her own." When Sonja learns the gangster is from New York, she becomes attached to him, hoping he can get her into America. He's kind to her and she falls in love with him, but he isn't capable of love and tells her so. He does however, help her by hatching an escape plot to get her away from von Stroheim and out of detention at the border station. Much of the early going in this movie is small talk and vignettes between the various refugees, coupled with von Stroheim's blank-faced reactions. He was a unique performer with that strange accent of his, and with a deadpan so inscrutable you can't tell what angle he's playing. Is he maniacal? Romantic? Is he a black humorist? Sentimental? Maybe all of those things combined? You just can't tell, which is what he was trying for as an actor. Two Big Thumbs Up verging on Two Huge. The picture is very good. The two movies in this blog are highly recommended and could be watched as a double feature. You'd be done in less than 2 hours 15 minutes. ////
And that's all I know. Now I have a question: did someone flip a freakin' Weather Switch? Halloween night was balmy enough to walk around in a t-shirt; now, just three days later, it's fruh-HEEZING Cold! It's so cold I had to wear three shirts and a Pendleton (I do layers instead of heavy coats), and I also had to break out my space heater, something I don't usually have to do until Christmas. Good Lordy Moses! I wasn't ready for L.A. Cold this early in the game, and in such rapid, overnight fashion. Ahh, to dream of 108 degree nights again! Bring on July, already. My blogging music tonight is "Single Factor" by Camel. Late night is "Die Meistersinger" by Wagner. I hope your week is going well and I send you Tons of Love, as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :) :)
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