Marc Seguy’s blog

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

A dull and inaccurate biopic on Aussie swimmer Annette Kellerman.
Its only saving graces are the beautiful underwater ballet sequences choreographed
by Busby Berkeley. Esther Williams, the film’s star, did 25 films for MGM.
This one is typical, as it shows Esther magnificently doing her swimming
thing and struggling mightily to act when out of the water. The script
is handled by Everett Freeman; Mervyn LeRoy (”Gold Diggers of 1933″) is
the director.

It begins in the early 1890s in Sydney, Australia, where crippled
Annette Kellerman as a ten-year-old surprises her musical tutor father
Frederick (Walter Pidgeon) by swimming in a pond without braces. When dad’s
conservatory goes bust, the now teenager and fully developed Annette (Esther
Williams) is recognized as an amateur swimming champion of Australia. Dad
takes a teaching job offer from a conservatory in London, and the two travel
by ship. En route they meet wannabe showbiz entrepreneur Jimmy Sullivan
(Victor Mature) and his loyal assistant Doc Cronnol (Jesse White), who
own a kangaroo that can box. Jimmy proposes Annette hook up with him in
London and develop a mermaid swimming act to go along with his boxing kangaroo
act. Dad shuns the offer, saying Annette’s enrolled in a ballet school.
In London, dad’s conservatory closed and the family is scrapped for bread.
Jimmy, attracted to the beautiful swimmer, drops by and offers her good
money to do a publicity stunt for his kangaroo act. Annette swims 26 miles
down the Thames and the public cheers her on. The Brit press runs with
the human interest story and she unexpectedly becomes a celebrity. 

Jimmy goes to New York and tries to get Annette a booking at the
Hippodrome (legendary theater built in 1905 with the largest seating capacity
in the world of 5,200 people. The most popular vaudeville artists of the
day, including Harry Houdini, performed at the Hippodrome during its heyday.
But by the late 1920s, the growing popularity of motion pictures replaced
the vaudeville acts and circus spectacles presented there). Alfred Harper
(David Brian), the Hippodrome producer, turns her act down. Jimmy brings
Annette to Boston where she again goes for a long swim as a publicity stunt.
The slick Jimmy then arranges to have her arrested for wearing a revealing
one-piece swimsuit and notifies the press. She creates a splash that’s
reported across the country, and Jimmy is able to snowball the publicity
into a lucrative contract as a water-ballet underwater star. The two become
lovers but have a falling out, as he becomes jealous of her success. Annette
gets hired by the Hippodrome to swim in their immense tank, while her dad
is hired as the orchestra maestro. When Annette’s dad dies and Jimmy stubbornly
refuses to see her, she is drawn to her kindly benefactor Alfred and they
become engaged. 

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The climactic scenes involve Annette’s accident while making a pic,
and the pining Jimmy coming back into her life as she lies crippled in
a hospital bed. Jimmy equals his discovery of Annette by next discovering
none other than Rin Tin Tin. 

If you can get past the tedious love story, then you will be rewarded
in seeing the absolute best water-ballet routines ever filmed.

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Warning: spoilers throughout review.

This gloomy film noir, tells the story of a mixed up young man, Martin
Lynn (Farley), who on the night of his mother’s death sought help from
his local church priest to give his mother (Morris) a big funeral and became
enraged by the old priest’s insensitivity to his poor family’s plight.
Without thinking, Martin picks up a crucifix on the desk and kills Father
Kirkman (Vermilyea) by banging the cross over his head.

The producer hired Ben Hecht to add a prologue and epilogue to its
already finished project. Hecht also expands the role of Father Roth (Dana).

The Edge of Doom is told in flashback. Father Roth uses the story
of Martin as a morale booster to a young disillusioned priest wanting to
leave the poor New York City church because he can’t reach the parishoners.
Father Roth was the younger assistant to Father Kirkman and inherited the
job of church pastor upon Kirkman’s death. He will tell the priest how
he tried to save the kid by getting him to believe in God and confess to
the police about his crime.

Martin is an industrious truck deliverer for a floral shop. His boss,
Mr. Swanson (Houseley), refuses to give him a raise on his $30 a week salary.
Due to lack of money, Martin is unable to help his ailing mother get the
proper medicine needed and move to Arizona, where he thinks she will be
able to survive best. It also keeps him from saving enough money to marry
his elevator operator girlfriend, Julie (Mala), who loves him but is upset
that the handsome momma’s boy is so busy that he hardly sees her anymore.

That night while the two lovebirds plan to dine together, Martin
receives a call from his mother’s neighbor, Mrs. Lally (Innes), that his
mother took very sick. When Martin gets home, he learns that she died and
he becomes visibly shaken. The view of Martin’s claustrophobic tenement
apartment, in which he shares with his mother, indicates how trapped he
must feel.

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Martin has developed a negative feeling toward the church ever since
the tragic incident that occurred when he was 13-years-old and his father
held up a store to get money for his needy family but when caught, he committed
suicide. Father Kirkman refused to give his father a proper Catholic burial.
Martin never stepped foot in the church again despite his mother remaining
an avid church-goer and coming to terms with what Father Kirkman did. Though
he grew up to be a good boy, never getting into trouble and devoting his
life to helping his kindly mother, he was left with a pent-up rage against
what he felt was a hypocritical church — which he saw as taking money
from parishoners who were poor enough already.

Martin has it in his head that he must give his mother a big funeral
and feels the church owes it to him, and he goes to the rectory to see
Father Roth who got along very well with his mother and has a way of reaching
people; but, as fate would have it, the Father has just gone out on a call
and only the insensitive Father Kirkman is in. The old priest tries to
tell him that the church could cover the expenses for a small funeral,
but he soon feels uncomfortable around the troubled young man so he calls
him a cab and gives him cab fare to get rid of him. That’s when Martin
went into his rage and accidently killed him.

Escaping into the city’s crowded streets in a panic, Martin passes
a movie theater whose box office has just been held-up and runs away from
the crowd into a diner. He is picked up by a pair of cops who harshly grill
him sensing something is wrong; they book him for the theater robbery.
At the police station Martin is further grilled by Inspector Mandel (Keith)
who tells Father Roth that he suspects something about that boy, but releases
him to Father Roth’s custody. Mandel goes on to tell Father Roth, that
in his experience as a cop, he knows when someone is holding back information.
But Father Roth adamently says he’s not the type to rob someone. These
scenes between the cops and the hysterical youth are classic noir ones
and are what give the film its dark edge.

At the floral shop, Martin goes slightly berserk demanding that his
boss give him the best floral arrangement possible for his mother’s funeral,
but he upsets his boss so much that he is fired. Martin goes to Murray’s
funeral home, trying to arrange a lavish funeral even though he doesn’t
have the money. When Murray (Chamberlain) hears that he is unemployed,
he refuses to help telling him instead to go to the church and let them
take care of matters.

Father Roth accidently scratches on Father Kirkman’s notepad and
the impression of Martin’s name is on it. Now knowing that Martin is the
killer, he will try to get Martin to confess and find peace for his troubled
soul. Father Roth believes Martin is not an evil person, but someone who
is confused and has a good conscience because deep down he believes in
God.

Martin is part of a lineup for the murder. But the neighbor fingers
the wrong person, a Mr. Craig (Stewart), a neighbor of Martin’s who is
a known petty thief. Craig tells the cops he didn’t do the murder but he
did the theater robbery, but Inspector Mandel books him for the murder.

Meanwhile Martin is full of pain and anxiety, not knowing what to
do. He sneaks into the funeral home and views his mother’s body, talking
to her and coming to terms about what he has to do. Martin later on meets
with Father Roth and is concerned only that he shouldn’t miss his mother’s
funeral, as he is turned over to Inspector Mandel. Father Roth says that
both of them will be at the funeral.

In the epilogue, Father Roth tells the young priest that he writes
to Martin in his prison and Martin expresses an interest in coming back
to the church and praying at the altar where Father Kirkman prayed. This
was a dark tale and could have been made more interesting if it cut away
from Father Roth’s saintly but unconvincing role and followed through more
on the story as it was written by Philip Yordan from Leo Brady’s novel.
The potential was there for a great film. Censorship was the curse of the
1950s. This good-priest/bad-priest story unfortunately turns out to be
a futile exercise in self-righteousness.

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

A personal project for Robert Mitchum: he wrote the story, composed
the theme song, produced, stars, and has his son Jim play his kid brother.
Arthur Ripley (”The Chase” 1946) directs with a crude but appropriate passion
for film noir and B-films. It tells of Appalachian dwellers in rural Tennessee
as illegal transporters of alcohol. The moonshiners in the backwoods are
treated in a stark unsentimental way as they face dangers from treasury
agents led by straightshooter Troy Barrett (Gene Barry) and a new organized
crime syndicate located in Memphis that is headed by the ruthless Carl
Kogan (Jacques Aubuchon). 

After returning from the Korean War Lucas Doolin (Robert Mitchum)
rejoins his family’s traditional moonshine business by transporting the
whiskey in his souped-up Fords (as the song goes: “Thunder was his engine
and white lightnin’ was his load”) that his teenage mechanic brother Robin
(Jim Mitchum) services. His pop Vernon (Trevor Bardette) runs the still,
while his mom (Francis Koon) runs the household and frets about the dangers
of bootlegging and has made Lucas promise to never allow Robin to be in
the business. Lucas swears he will kill anyone who tries to make his brother
a whiskey runner. 

The bachelor Lucas is the best driver in Harlan County and the men
admire him for that but are also envious, while hillbilly teenager Roxanna
Ledbetter (Sandra Knight) gushes over him because she can’t get him out
of her mind. But the independent-minded Lucas is sweet on Memphis nightclub
singer Francie (Keely Smith), whom he meets with after making his dangerous
run to the city. 

Murders start taking place when city gangster Kogan wants to combine
all the stills in four neighboring states under his rule, but the independents
under Lucas’ leadership refuse. It leads to the death of one transporter
(Jerry Hardin) by Kogan, as his henchman’s (Peter Hornsby) rifle shots
make the driver’s car go off the road into a fatal spill. When an agent
(Dale Van Sickel) and a moonshiner (Mitch Ryan) are killed by a car bomb
from Kogan, the agents close most of the stills in the county. Pressured
from both the treasury agent and the gangster, Lucas makes one last run
to Memphis.

Pleasingly anti-authority, having a good feel for local ways, featuring
a powerful performance by Mitchum and with exciting highway chases along
nightime back roads, the crime drama remained gripping. It has become a
cult favorite, and covers that backwoods area as well as any film ever
has and has become the ultimate road movie.

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Douglas Sirk (”Magnificent Obsession”/”Written on the Wind”) directs
this religious drama about the 400 hundred year order of the Jesuits, founded
by St. Ignatius of Loyola, with the hopes of drawing comedy over a crisis
brewing over lack of faith among the priests. It’s based on the play by
Emmet Lavery, performed in 1934 on Broadway, who also is the screenwriter.
It was shot on location rather than the studio, where Sirk usually preferred
working. Its main fault is that it’s too chatty, but to its credit is free
of the usual Hollywood pieties offered in such a devotional pic.

Fr. Marc Arnoux (Charles Boyer) is the resolute Jesuit teacher at
St. Gregory’s seminary, who still questions why he didn’t become an attorney.
Dr. Peter Morell (Lyle Bettger) tends to the fading fast elderly, bedridden
for three years, Father Jose Sierra (H.B. Warner). When Arnoux visits Jose,
he recognizes Peter as his former student at the seminary–someone who
was bounced from the school and has since become an atheist.

While the brothers are gathered in a room to watch the home movie
of Father Quarterman’s recent visit to India, Jose shocks everyone by entering
the room and saying that Joseph Martin (the Jesuit founder of the house)
told him to find Father John Fulton (Wesley Addy)-a young teacher at the
seminary who gave up a career as a pianist. This remarkable recovery leads
the cured priest to believe it’s a miracle, since the doctor says he was
not given any new medical treatment. Word of the miracle spreads and pilgrims
flock to the seminary, and the rector (Leo G. Carroll) hopes that maybe
now Rome will declare Joseph Martin a saint. But Arnoux doubts it’s a miracle
over the objections of the other priests. When news of this “miracle” gets
out of hand, Peter confesses to Arnoux during confession that he made Jose
walk through shock treatment by invoking the power of suggestion. But Peter
doesn’t want the priest to break his vow of silence over the confession,
which causes Arnoux to pray for a just solution. Meanwhile Rome sends word
that it’s taking up the canonizing of Joseph Martin. 

Unfortunately, the film didn’t know how to go from here to deal with
the miracle and bogs down in a sentimental and artificial conclusion suggesting
another impossible cure of a local crippled girl (Barbara Rush) might indeed
be a miracle attributed to prayer. 

Cast against type, William Demarest gives a strong performance as
the secular monseignor; while Boyer is fine as the good-guy Jesuit teacher;
and Bettger plays his medical role with a subdued dignity. But the absurdity
of the miracle never shines through as something meant to be taken as an
ironical joke.

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Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

An exciting twelve-part serial that John Wayne made for Nat Levine
and Mascot Pictures after the unhappy Duke left Columbia for various reasons
including the main one that the studio didn’t use him right. The cliffhanger
serial follows commercial pilot Larry Baker (John Wayne) in search of the
killer of his railroad chief engineer father, Jim Baker (J. Farrell MacDonald),
working for the L & R Railroad and driving The Hurrican Express. The
killer is known only as “The Wrecker,” and works with a team of agents
to sabotage the railroad which aids a competing airline. The Wrecker wears
a rubber mask that can resemble anyone on the train, which enables his
identity to remain hidden and causes undue confusion. 

Larry Baker dedicates himself to finding his father’s killers and
bringing them to justice, after he’s fired from his airline job. He befriends
the railroad’s cute secretary Gloria Martin (Shirley Grey), who helps his
investigation. He soon learns her dad is Stratton (Edmund Breese), an escaped
convict who claims he was framed for robbery by the railroad when he was
their general manager and escaped from prison to clear his name. Other
prime suspects include Edwards (Tully Marshall, old-time actor from the
silents), the new surly General Manager of the railroad; Stevens (Conway
Tearle) the smooth railroad attorney; Walter Grey (Lloyd Whitlock) the
head of the rival airline who has the most to gain by the railroad going
out of business; Jordan (Matthew Betz) an engineer who was fired and in
a fit of anger promised revenge; and Carlson (Alan Bridge) a station agent
in Plainville who seemed frightened at an inquiry held over one of the
train wrecks and might have lied about what he witnessed.

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It was co-directed by veteran actor J.P. McGowan (”The Hazards of
Helen”-1915) with Armand Schaefer. George Morgan is co-writer with Mr.
McGowan; the story is by Colbert Clark, Barney Sarecky & Wyndham Gittens.
Though the unknown Wayne wasn’t top billed, that honor went to the more
widely known Marshall, he’s clearly the star. A young, vigorous, virtuous
and athletic Wayne makes for an engaging hero, and the serial gives younger
viewers a nostalgic look back at the past to see how audiences got their
thrills back in the day. These type of serials would regularly be part
of the double feature of a Saturday matinee. 

MAX KEEBLE'S BIG MOVE
A film reconsideration by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2001 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): * 1/2

Tim Hill's MAX KEEBLE'S BIG MOVE has no reason to be playing at your local
multiplex. If it were an episode of a kid's television series, which is what it
feels like, it would rank a little below average. Tune into the Disney channel
on a random afternoon, and you'll find something similar and probably better.
The three first-time screenwriters, Jonathan Bernstein, Mark Blackwell and James
Greer, couldn't think of any fresh material. Jokes come from food fights, a
principal who falls over backwards in his chair and a squirrel that runs down
the principal's clothes.

The shame of it all is that some of the young actors manage to show some special
sparks in a movie that's almost terminally bland. The best are Alex D. Linz
(HOME ALONE 3) as Max Keeble and Zena Gray (the cute mascot from SUMMER CATCH)
as Megan. They both possess a likable spunk that makes them interesting even
when their characters aren't. Max, a short kid who picks up an extra two inches
in height with his spiked hair, is off to his first day of junior high. (Many
of the large kids in his school look like they have been forced to repeat some
grades.) Megan is the canonical character of the friend who deserves Max's
attention, which is captured by Jenna (Brooke Anne Smith), a miniskirted ninth
grader with a killer body. The top of Max's head doesn't even come up to
Jenna's chin.

The adults are uniformly awful, especially Robert Carradine as Max's doofus dad
and Larry Miller as the school's unprincipled principal. As the "Evil Ice Cream
Man," Jamie Kennedy engages in a series of embarrassingly bad slapstick
routines.

The plot has Max rebelling. The type of kid who regularly gets hazed by the
school's bullies, he's striking back at everyone thanks to his newly found
freedom. After his parents tell him suddenly that they'll be moving in a few
days, Max figures that he can get away with anything. He'll be out of there
before the bullies or the principal can exact their revenge on him. The
dishonest principal, who is angling for a promotion to superintendent, is not
one to be messed with. He has escalated the school's normal zero tolerance
policy to "subzero tolerance."

"I'm not having fun," confesses the teacher on cafeteria duty when Max launches
the big food fight. And, like my dead audience, you probably won't be having
much fun either. The surprise is that this junior high school comedy, which is
aimed more to the seven-year-old set, doesn't have much in it that's funny for
any age group, even the younger ones.

MAX KEEBLE'S BIG MOVE runs 1:25. It is rated PG for "some bullying and crude
humor" and would be acceptable for kids of all ages.

My son Jeffrey, age 12, who had trouble thinking of anything that he liked about
the movie, gave it * 1/2. He checked his watch frequently, something that I
suspect everyone will be doing in this short movie that feels extra long.

The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, October 5, 2001. In
the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC and the Century theaters.

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