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SUPPORT FILM FREAK CENTRAL:
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Don't Bother to Knock (1952)
** (out of four)
also starring Richard Widmark, Anne Bancroft, Donna Corcoran, Jeanne Cagney
screenplay by Daniel Taradash, based on a novel by Charlotte Armstrong
directed by Roy Baker
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Marilyn Monroe wasn't quite at the height of her acting powers when she assayed the role of Nell, a suicidal widow who takes a job in New York City as a babysitter at the posh hotel where her uncle (Elisha Cook Jr.) works as an elevator operator. Nell crosses paths with Jed (Richard Widmark), the guest across the courtyard; dumped because of his grating, unflagging cynicism by the hotel's chanteuse (a very young Anne Bancroft), he entertains a one-night stand with the woman in the window but gets a crash course in applied psychiatry instead. (The picture hails from an era where Psych 101 was used to refurbish hoary thriller conceits. Within that sub-genre, it's at least better than the Vincent Price chiller Shock.) One of Don't Bother to Knock's early pleasures is its unforeseeable objective, but by the time Monroe wields an endtable like Joan Crawford from any number of she-devil B-pictures, Roy Baker's film has become too inexplicable to care. Some fabulous hard-boiled dialogue ("You're silk on one side and sandpaper on the other")--all of it delivered by the redoubtable Widmark--and the fluid lensing of future Sam Peckinpah cinematographer Lucien Ballard are at the mercy of mildewed melodrama. Not even Monroe's ultimately convincing frailty can save it; don't bother, indeed. Fox's DVD release of Don't Bother to Knock features a crisp, textured black-and-white transfer of 1.37:1 elements restored chemically and digitally, though the prelude to the "restoration comparison" admits that the existing negative was in decent shape, with poor splices and a missing reel presenting the only substantial problems. A tasteful stereo remix is preferable to the original mono sound (also included) from a non-purist's standpoint, while trailers for all the films in the second "Diamond Collection" (plus one for the first set itself) and a gallery of production stills (in one, Monroe is looking at a horse, bemused--can't say I recall that scene) round out the disc. Image: A-, Sound: B  English Stereo, English Mono CC English and Spanish Subtitles DVD-9 76 minutes -Bill Chambers |
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Monkey Business (aka Howard Hawks' Monkey Business) (1952)
***1/2 (out of four)
also starring Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers, Charles Coburn
screenplay by Ben Hecht, Charles Lederer and I.A.L. Diamond
directed by Howard Hawks
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"Not yet, Cary," a disembodied voice tells Mr. Grant when he tries to make an entrance before the pomo, Tashlin-esque opening titles of Howard Hawks' Monkey Business have ended. So begins this silly yet sharp and provocative farce in which the distracted Dr. Barnaby Fulton (Grant--perfection) develops--through the surreptitious assistance of his lab chimps--a fountain of youth formula that does more than invigorate its test subjects: it causes them to act like teenagers. The mysterious concoction starts a battle of the sexes between Barnaby and his wife (Ginger Rogers, who gets a quasi-dance number) after a little of the stuff leads her to revert to chastity and him to buy a fast car and take office secretary Marilyn Monroe for a spin. But nothing can quite prepare you for the film's frenzied second half, with plotlines about a kidnapped infant (with whom Rogers flirts in public) and Barnaby threatening to use gardening shears on his lawyer converging in a climax that, needless to say, demolishes boundaries of good taste with thrilling unrestraint. The earlier Hawks/Grant screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby feels like it's on horse tranquilizers in comparison, but somehow Monkey Business never flies off the rails. Is it about anything, though? Fox presents Howard Hawks' Monkey Business on DVD in a full-frame black-and-white transfer of high contrast and superior detail; an included stereo remix is louder, though not necessarily better, than the film's original mono elements (also on board). Trailers for the other entries in the second "Diamond Collection" plus a preview of the first set, a shorter-than-usual restoration comparison (whose preface states that Monkey Business didn't need much clean-up work), and a funny still gallery round out the disc. Image: A-, Sound: B+ English Stereo, English Mono, French Mono CC English and Spanish Subtitles DVD-9 97 minutes -Bill Chambers |
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Niagara (1953)
** (out of four)
also starring Joseph Cotten, Jean Peters, Casey Adams
screenplay by Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch and Richard Breen
directed by Henry Hathaway
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Joseph Cotten gave us one of the cinema's most indelible villains in Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, and while he brings some of the same tragic understatement to his turn as Marilyn Monroe's jealous husband in Niagara, neither he nor anyone else in the picture has a line as good as Cotten's unremorseful confession in Shadow of a Doubt: "Do you know the world is a foul sty? Do you know if you ripped the fronts off houses you'd find swine?" Instead we get such impenetrable corkers as Jean Peters', "In order to wear a dress like that you have to start laying plans when you're 13." We also get the gee-whiz husband (Casey Adams) who's excited to see the Shredded Wheat factory when he arrives at Niagara Falls; a peculiarly tepid femme fatale in Monroe (she was better at playing dumb and conniving than smart and the same); and inscrutable character motivations. The cinematography of the Canadian side of the Falls is nice, mind you, and the climactic action sequence is well-executed for its day--the strings don't show. Incidentally, this is one of the few films in which Marilyn smokes. Fox's DVD release of Niagara contains a gorgeous rendering of restored Technicolor elements at 1.33:1, a full-sounding stereo remix (the rushing waters register nicely in the subwoofer), trailers for the other Marilyns in the second "Diamond Collection," a preview of the first "Diamond Collection," a three-part restoration comparison, and a still gallery. Image: A, Sound: B+ English Stereo, English Mono, French Mono CC English and Spanish Subtitles DVD-9 89 minutes -Bill Chambers |
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River of No Return (1954)
*** (out of four)
also starring Robert Mitchum, Rory Calhoun, Tommy Rettig
screenplay by Frank Fenton
directed by Otto Preminger
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One of Marilyn Monroe's worst performances can be found in one of her best films, River of No Return. Her familiar breathiness, which subdued with age and substance abuse and only popped up in her later work in a subversive context, seems a mite inappropriate as she roughs it in the wilderness--fish-out-of-water Ginger Grant on "Gilligan's Island" might be sending up this very character/performance. But River of No Return is all about being inappropriate, its moral that we should teach our children the evils of pacifism. Director Otto Preminger revels in the lawlessness and masculinity of his Civil War backdrop, staging a fight between a cougar and Robert Mitchum as a form of catharsis following Mitchum's attempted rape of Monroe, cutting from a shot of elk frolicking in the water to the beasts basting on a rotisserie, and portraying Indians as rabid pitbulls on horseback. (What's the opposite of "noble savage syndrome"? River of No Return.) Monroe's Kay risks the rapids with Mitchum and son in pursuit of her horse-thief boyfriend; the greatest foe they encounter turns out to be rear projection. That kind of technical limitation reminds us that this is just a movie and not to take it too seriously, so sit back and enjoy--but wear a raincoat: the forecast calls for piss and vinegar. According to the often-inaccurate DVD FILE, the severe 2.55:1 aspect ratio of River of No Return's anamorphic widescreen transfer still compromises vertical information at the leftmost side. If that's true, at least the image is the most lucent and lush it's ever looked, some irreparable damage to the fade-outs and optical dissolves aside. Preserving the original quadraphonic sound format in which the film was released, the disc's Dolby Digital 4.0 discrete mix is often dizzying, since multi-channel usage extends to the placement of dialogue. Extras include trailers for all of the films in the second "Diamond Collection" plus a preview of the first set, an eye-catching restoration demonstration, and production stills that show Marilyn using a pair of crutches off-camera. Image: A, Sound: B+ English DD 4.0, French Stereo CC English and Spanish Subtitles DVD-9 95 minutes -Bill Chambers |
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Let's Make Love (1960)
** (out of four)
also starring Yves Montand, Tony Randall, Frankie Vaughan
screenplay by Norman Krasna (with Hal Kanter)
directed by George Cukor
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Marilyn Monroe's penultimate film has a quality I can't quite put my finger on that I'm tempted to call sinister, though I think that may be too harsh. Let's Make Love's problem is that it has absolutely no idea what it's trying to say, and thus has its foot planted firmly in its mouth for two gruelling hours. Yves Montand's Jean-Marc Clement comes from a long line of Jean-Marc Clements: he's a billionaire who's inherited from his ancestors not just money, but a few character flaws as well. Advised by his new PR man (early romcom staple Tony Randall) to pay a visit to the theatre company planning to parody Clement in a pop-culture revue (to show them he can take a joke), he is mistaken for one of the Clement impersonators auditioning that same day, and a Prince and the Pauper/Beauty and the Beast scenario is born, mainly from his desire to win the heart of a woman--lead actress Amanda Dell (Monroe)--without the sway of fame and fortune. And yet it doesn't seem to occur to the filmmakers that by hiring celebrities (Milton Berle and others cameo as themselves) to cultivate his performing talents while secretly wresting control of the troupe from its cash-strapped owners (thus allowing him to cut Amanda's other suitor (Frankie Vaughan) from sketches in which he would appear alongside her), Clement is contradicting his own radical plan. Perhaps one could really do something with that central irony--moreover, be allowed to--today. As it stands, Let's Make Love knows nothing about ethics--and even less about lovemaking. Fortunately, Let's Make Love sparkles more than ever before on Fox's DVD release, which features a scrubbed, if too-green 2.55:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. Preserving the original quadraphonic sound format in which the film was released, the disc's Dolby Digital 4.0 discrete mix is somewhat aggressively directional. Extras include trailers for all of the films in the second "Diamond Collection" plus a preview of the first set, a brief restoration demonstration, and a gallery of so-so production stills. Image: A-, Sound: B+ English DD 4.0, French Stereo CC English, French, Spanish Subtitles DVD-9 119 minutes -Bill Chambers |
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© Film Freak Central; filmfreakcentral.net. This review may not be reprinted, in whole or in part, without the express consent of its author.
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