My Week of Movie Watching

The Old Dark House – Little known horror film from 1932, directed by James Whale. A group of five travelers have to take refuge in a creepy old house, and are terrorized by the strange family that resides there. How strange is the family? They have TWO members locked in rooms upstairs…and a butler who should be. The cast is top notch. Boris Karloff plays the fearsome butler, and Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, Raymond Massey, and Gloria Stuart play the travelers. A good primer on how lighting, sound, and set design can be used to create atmosphere. Recommended.

Gangster Story – Low budget mediocrity from 1959 is mostly notable for being the only directorial credit for Walter Matthau, who stars here as a sly bank robber on the run from both the FBI and the mob whose territory he is infringing upon. He hooks up with a beautiful librarian (Carol Grace, aka Mrs Walter Matthau) who just has to be the dumbest girlfriend ever put on film. If you’re a Matthau fan, you might want to check it out, but overall, not worth the bother.

The Drivers Seat – Strange, strange Italian film from 1974 stars Elizabeth Taylor as a mentally ill woman loose in Italy, looking to hook up with a man who she wants to murder her. That plot is puzzling enough, and the film compounds it with a disjointed narrative, including multiple flash-forwards to a police investigation. Taylors’ Lise seems to have identity issues, as she borrows personal facts and anecdotes from people she meets. She also seems to have aversions to the thought of sex. The films climax is peppered with suggestions of sado-masochism and sexual violence, and will raise more questions than it answers. Not recommended.

The Lodger – Early (1927) silent film from Alfred Hitchcock. This is considered the first “real” Hitchcock movie, that is, the first one where we start to see the visual style and themes that he would carry throughout his career. The plot is simple – A Jack-the Ripper style murderer is terrorizing London, and a mysterious lodger at a boarding house becomes a prime suspect. There are a couple of neat visual touches here, most notably showing the lodger pacing in his room in a shot from below, but overall, this one is a miss for me. My problem is that the only way the film can create any suspense around the lodger is for him to do everything he can to appear guilty, and it that plot contrivance gets annoying after a while.

The 400 Blows – The first film of Francois Truffaut, and one of the vanguard films of the auteur theory. It has been many years since I’ve seen this, and I had forgotten how great it really is. Jean-Pierre Leaud plays young Antione Dionel, who comes from a dysfunctional home, and is inclined towards rabble-rousing and petty crime. The film follows him as his relationship with his parents reaches the breaking point, and he ends up in a reform school. Antione is not really a bad kid, but he is sorely lacking in any sort of adult guidance, thus he gets waylaid into bad stuff easily. Leaud plays him as a stoic who is just riding the tide of his life. The films tone is bleak and sour throughout, but its famous conclusion is a thunderbolt of hope and promise. A must see for any film lover.