Three Films Make A Post: The picture that is the sum total of all human emotions!

Leave Her to Heaven (1945): Often, John M. Stahl’s noir melodrama is listed among the very best noirs ever made, if not declared the very best. I don’t really feel that way about the movie, to be frank. I appreciate elements of it – certainly Gene Tierney’s and Cornel Wilde’s performances – but its very mild deconstruction of the femme fatale trope seems neither fish nor fowl to me, with much of what it does having been handled with quite a bit more depth in what we’d now call domestic suspense novels of its time. Some of the melodramatic business is over the top in a way that just doesn’t work for me, personally, as well.

Leave Her to Heaven does also walk into another one of my personal landmines, where the supposed climax of a movie takes on the form of a judicial trial, which to my eyes has always been and will always be what the less capable writer will use when they can’t come up with an actual dramatic climax. Which, to be fair, is my problem as much as the film’s.

Tora-San’s Cherished Mother (1969) aka Zoku otoko wa tsurai yo: In his second movie outing, as usual directed by Yoji Yamada, eternal grown-up child with aspirations on dignified manliness Tora (as always Kiyoshi Atsumi), is stumbling, drinking and blustering his way into an encounter with the mother he never knew. There’s room for a look on the further developments in the life of the rest of his family – Sakura (Chieko Baisho) is now married and still the sane one in the family – scenes of awkward drunkenness that end in embarrassment, an ill-fated crush, sentimentality that often feels rather real, and all the other elements of the series’ formula.

It’s a nice, simply fun but not simple place to visit, really, where human emotions and their ridiculousness are treated with kindness, and I’m still not surprised that there was an audience for the series in Japan for decades.

Children of the Corn (2020/2023): Kurt Wimmer’s Children update took three years to come out anywhere, and while it is certainly not a great movie, it isn’t the complete train wreck one might expect either. For the first half an hour or so, this even seems to be a very clever update to the franchise formula, playing on the very specific anxieties caused by very contemporary, ecologically-fuelled generational conflicts. The cleverness slowly dissolves over the course of the rest of the film, mostly because the film increasingly just handwaves its own themes away, favouring increasingly stupid set pieces and one of the worst monster special effects you’ll see in a film with a decent budget. And don’t get me started on the particularly egregious horror movie bullshit ending.

In short: Star of India (1954)

After five years of war in India, French country squire Pierre St. Laurent (Cornel Wilde) returns to his home only to now find it the property of a widowed Dutch countess named Katrina (Jean Wallace). Governor Narbonne, the man responsible (and clearly evil because he is played by Herbert Lom) took Pierre’s home and estates for unpaid back taxes and sold them off, or so he says. He also offers no recourse (and certainly no apologies) to the rather incensed soldier.

Katrina, on the other hand, does. Apparently, another bit of bad business instigated by the Governor not only left her husband dead in a duel with the man, but also put the villain’s grubby hands on a family jewel that means rather a lot to her. Right now, it is hidden in a pretty tacky looking “Indian” statuette in Narbonne’s office. If Pierre would agree to, ahem, reacquire the jewel for Katrina, she’d pay him by giving him back everything that belonged to him. Obviously, the good lady might by leaving out some pertinent facts Pierre will learn in due course while swashbuckling, and sometimes scheming his way back to his proper home and hearth, and of course into Katrina’s heart.

While not a top tier swashbuckler, this Cornel Wilde vehicle directed by Arthur Lubin is often very good fun, featuring very satisfying amounts of fencing and intrigue, though not quite enough romance, for Katrina is basically non-existent for much of the plot between the first act and the finale.

The plot is mostly a somewhat obvious developed series of moves, feints, and reversals of exactly the kind you’d expect from a genre in which the plotting does quite appropriately tend to take on the quality of a fencing match. Yet despite being obvious, it’s also nearly always fun and develops in a good pace.

Rather more surprising is that this is a movie about a swashbuckling hero acquiring foreign loot to put it in the hand of a group that wants to put it back where it belongs (apparently to guarantee peace in India), not at all a move typical for this sort of thing, and certainly rather likeable.

As is much of the film, really. Wilde, despite generally getting a bit stiff in the intrigue and dialogue bits (as usual), was the kind of actor at least putting extra effort into those parts of his performances that didn’t come natural, and always did some convincing swashbuckling, too. Lom is always a delightful villain, in this particular case a guy who always seems completely outraged by the idea that anyone could try to pull any of the sort of dirty tricks he enjoys on him, which is the sort thing that makes a villain fun.

At Sword’s Point (1952)

Twenty years (supposedly, for the ages of most of our heroes suggest thirty-five or so) after the original adventures of the Three Musketeers, France is in turmoil. Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu are both dead, and the kid who will become Louis XIV still has some years to go to come of age. Queen Anne (Gladys Cooper) does her best to keep the country together as best as she can, but she’s old and ill, and fighting the ruthless Duc de Lavalle (Robert Douglas) for the fate of the kingdom.

Lavalle uses his increasing power and barely hidden violence to push for a marriage with Anne’s daughter Henriette (Nancy Gates), clearly planning to do away with Louis once he is nicely positioned as the only throne candidate standing. By now, the Queen has become quite desperate, hiding Louis away at a secret spot somewhere in the country, and repeatedly attempting to ask the King of Spain for help in keeping the situation stable. All of her couriers to Spain, however, have found themselves on the pointy ends of Lavalle’s men.

In desperation, the Queen remembers the men who served their country so well twenty years past, and sends for the former Musketeers.

Because time works a bit strangely in this France, all four are now either dead or too old for action (damn that gout!). Fortunately, they have children at just the right age who all happen to share their fathers’ character traits and abilities perfectly. Who’d have thunk!

So now it is up to D’Artagnan Jr. (Cornel Wilde), Aramis Jr. (Dan O’Herlihy), Porthos Jr. (Alan Hale Jr,), and Athos Jr. to save the day. Did I say Athos Jr.? In fact, it’s his daughter Claire (Maureen O’Hara) taking up her old man’s banner!

Swashbucklers often tended to have somewhat meatier roles for actresses even outside of the villainess roles and the melodramas where they were allowed to have personalities at the time when this was made. So it’s not a complete surprise that Lewis Allen’s very free (so free the original novel isn’t “Three Musketeers: The Next Generation” at all) adaptation of Dumas’s Musketeer Sequel “Twenty Years Later”, provides O’Hara with so prominent a role even when it comes to the fights, but it’s still a joy to watch.

Interestingly, the film does so while still using some of the standard tropes a woman goes through in adventure fiction, so she still is the romantic objective of the main character, and there’s a lot of flirting; it’s just that Allen, or the handful of scriptwriters, never uses this to diminish Claire. She’s just your standard adventure movie heroine who also happens to have the courage and conviction usually left to the male heroes, and the fencing skills to back it up.

This does of course also practically automatically turn her into the most complex and rounded character on screen. Of course, it does help that the script doesn’t go the route where the badass woman is suddenly turned incompetent once she’s fallen for the hero; nor do the other three, once Claire has demonstrated her fighting prowess, try to keep her away from the action or ever doubt her capabilities. The film and its characters simply accept that being deeply romanceable and being deeply capable aren’t mutually exclusive.

O’Hara seems to relish this role, too, providing Claire with the same kind of swagger and humour the other musketeers are supposed to have. She’s really throwing herself into the fencing sequences, too.

The other musketeers aren’t quite as awesome. Wilde is certainly fine in the fights, but he’s not quite as youthful and charming as the script pretends he is, ending up a bit too stolid, O’Herlihy doesn’t get a lot to do, and Hale Jr. seems to have difficulty enough with the little he is supposed to do already. The thing is, O’Hara’s good enough to make that a matter of little to no import.

The film’s plot, while certainly not brilliant, does help there also. Things never stand still for too long, the plot is always providing opportunities for scenes of men doing hearty belly-laughs while fighting, desperate acrobatic feats, a bit of pathos and romance, and a lot of intrigue. All of it is presented in an expertly timed manner, and really never lets a boring minute come to pass, using RKO’s not titanic purse strings to their technicoloured fullest.

Speaking of intrigue, even though Douglas’s performance is more solid than truly memorable, the script does provide him with a series of somewhat sensible plots, turning him memorable and interesting as a villain simply by virtue of his plans actually making logical sense in a swashbuckling world, therefor providing the heroes with actual odds and stakes to fight against and for, respectively.

All of which only improves At Sword’s Point, a film that could have gotten away with being the Maureen O’Hara show, even more.

Three Films Make A Post: HEXED BY THE EVIL EYE

The Scarlet Coat (1955): Like many of director John Sturges's films, this one about Cornel Wilde acting as a double agent during the US Revolutionary War and about the Arnold Conspiracy, is a more complex and emotionally grown-up film than one would expect. If most of the media concerning said Revolution you've consumed has been made during the last thirty years or so, you might also be delighted to find a film that doesn't treat the British as baby-eating Satanists and the Americans as glorious, flawless angels.

In fact, most of the film's complexity lies in its treatment of morals and ideals as a rather more personal thing; being in the right is complicated. Here, idealism depends on the beholder, and cruel and wrong things can and will be done for the best of causes. Added to this - really very spy movie-like - view of the world is dialogue that regularly reminds more of a film noir in its sharpness, and some fine acting by Wilde and Michael Wilding. The film gets a bit too morally upright and sentimental in the end for my tastes but it's much too interesting to ignore.

Green Jade Statuette aka Killer's Game aka Fists of Vengeance (1978): Lee Tso-Nam's movie falls under the thankless bracket of "just another decent Taiwanese martial arts film". Even though there's nothing to write home about except for the film's borrowing from certain Spaghetti Western soundtracks and - wonderfully - an orchestral version of "Greensleaves" for a moment right at its end, it's still an entertaining enough watch full of not inspired but professional fights, martial arts smack talk philosophy (one of the differences between Asian and Western action films is that Asian ones at least try to sound profound), and rather random twists and turns. It's fun enough.

Lupin III: Farewell to Nostradamus (1995): Speaking of films that don't move away from their genre base even one inch, this anime is exactly what you'd expect from a Lupin III movie (which are a genre for themselves), with characters you either love (you are a wonderful human being) or hate (I say thee nay), going through the usual hectic and over-blown adventures. Lupin is generally not at all about originality but about frenetic and loving execution and fulfilled expectations. Usually, I'd criticize the series for playing it safe, but when it's one of its better episodes/movies/OVAs like Farewell, I'm much too occupied with enjoying myself for that sort of thing.

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In short: No Blade Of Grass (1970)

Humanity's finally done it. The Earth's natural resources have been wasted and poisoned, and now a new disease is destroying all grass-type plant life like rice and wheat, promising food shortages in apocalyptic dimensions.

While China is gassing its own population centres to reduce its population to a survivable number, the UK hasn't quite been reached by the catastrophe yet, but it's only a question of time until it does.

Architect John Custance (Nigel Davenport) plans to take his wife Ann (Jean Wallace), his teenage daughter Mary (Lynne Frederick), and their youngest child David (Patrick Holt) to his brother's farm far away in the countryside, for he's cultivating plants that aren't (yet) touched by the disease there. Plus, the farm's naturally situated so it can be easily defended once the expected anarchy breaks out.

Warned by Mary's boyfriend Roger (John Hamill), who works in some scientific capacity for the government, that a state of emergency will be declared shortly, the Custance's and Roger begin to make their way towards safer pastures. The situation deteriorates quickly, though, and soon enough, the group kills and steals its way to survival, not so much slowly losing its civilized veneer but throwing it away with great enthusiasm.

Cornel Wilde's No Blade of Grass (based on a novel by John Christopher whom you may know for his - also post-apocalyptic - YA book series The Tripods) is an early, desperately bleak example of the post-apocalypse movie that not only predates most of this particular genre (at least on screen), but is also much grimmer than many of its successors.

Seldom have I seen a film this willing to make no particular moral difference between the way its protagonists try to achieve survival, and those the groups they encounter do. In No Blade of Grass's world, barbarity seems to be humanity's natural state that it only too happily falls back into again once civilization gets into trouble. However, it's clear that Wilde, unlike a representative of the survivalist bend of post-apocalyptic fiction would be, may be deeply pessimist about human nature, but isn't perverse enough to celebrate this state of affairs. So there's an - often blunt, sometimes quiet - sense of desperation running through the film I found particularly moving.

On the directorial side, No Blade Of Grass (at least in its newly restored full-length version) is a bit of a schizophrenic case. Half of its emotional punch is based on laconic, semi-documentarian shots of people wandering through the empty English countryside, polluted nature, and action sequences that are suspenseful yet devoid of action hero behaviour. This mood is regularly broken up by strange stylistic flourishes like flashbacks and flashforwards, negative shots and freeze frames (most of this stylistic excess is completely missing from the film's shorter versions, making that version more easily digestible, and weaker) that can seem awkward and blunt, yet also help emphasise that the film isn't meant as a man's adventure movie. Wilde doesn't want his audience to be excited by the action, so he's undermining the normal build-up of suspense for this sort of movie. It's a rather bizarre way to go about it, but it works.

 

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