One, Two, Three.

Review #2235: One, Two, Three.

Cast: 

James Cagney (C.R. "Mac" MacNamara), Horst Buchholz (Otto Ludwig Piffl), Pamela Tiffin (Scarlett Hazeltine), Arlene Francis (Phyllis MacNamara), Liselotte Pulver (Fräulein Ingeborg), Hanns Lothar (Schlemmer), Howard St. John (Wendell P. Hazeltine), Leon Askin (Peripetchikoff), Ralf Wolter (Borodenko), Peter Capell (Mishkin), Karl Lieffen (Fritz), and Hubert von Meyerinck (Count Waldemar von Droste-Schattenburg; Sig Ruman as English voice) Produced and Directed by Billy Wilder (#106 - Some Like It Hot, #194 - Ace in the Hole, #422 - The Fortune Cookie, #641 - The Apartment, #809 - Sunset Boulevard, #1384 - Stalag 17, #1390 - The Seven Year Itch, #1825 - Double Indemnity) 

Review: 

"We knew that we were going to have a comedy, we [were] not going to be waiting for the laughs. But we had to go with Cagney, because Cagney was the whole picture. He really had the rhythm, and that was very good. It was not funny. But just the speed was funny...The general idea was, let's make the fastest picture in the world...And yeah, we did not wait, for once, for the big laughs. We went through the big laughs. A lot of lines that needed a springboard, and we just went right through the springboard...We just did it, nine pages at a time, and he never fumbled, he never made a mistake."

This was the 18th feature film to be directed by Billy Wilder, who had been quite busy as a filmmaker by this point in time of his career. He wrote the screenplay for this film with I. A. L. Diamond for yet another collaboration with each other as the two worked together mostly uninterrupted from Love in the Afternoon (1957) to Buddy Buddy (1981); inspirations for this film (read: borrowed) was the Ferenc Molnár's 1929 play Egy, kettő, három but also Ninotchka (1939), which had been co-written by Wilder. As such, he picked James Cagney to be the star, despite queries about the fast-paced intent. This would be the penultimate performance for Cagney, who went from liking the idea of doing a film in West Berlin to being annoyed at the experience of filmmaking with having to go with such a high pace of speaking along with not enjoying the presence of Buchholz in terms of scene-stealing. If one sees the sequence involving clothes and wondering about a morning coat and "striped pants", keep in mind that it apparently took over fifty takes to get that sequence exactly to Wilder's liking (the result was that Cagney would not appear in a film for two decades). The film was released four months after construction of the Berlin Wall started (which is why the film came out with a preface mentioning August 13, 1961 and that the people one would be dealing with here are "real shifty") and generated a muted response, although a few decades later, it found an appreciation in West Berlin. Wilder and Diamond would stay busy regardless, working together three more times in the decade with Irma la Douce (1963), Kiss Me, Stupid (1964), and The Fortune Cookie (1966).

Well, it is a fairly well-rounded production, this much is for sure. Seeing the film with the best available view (i.e. paying attention to its widescreen) will at least make one appreciate the effort taken to place these characters in as wide a space as possible to display such madcap-type of dialogue. It never really reaches a place of greatness, but it isn't hard to at least defend the movie as a silly time involving the satire of go-getters on one side of Berlin and, well, the folks in the East. It is probably one of the more obvious "hit or miss" kind of comedies, where you are either with it or find it to be a lead-footed film. Cagney may not have had the most enjoyable experience with filming, but he sure does dominate the film with a tremendous amount of commitment that anchors the film in ways that would've been lost with a lesser actor. He runs with the film and never loses a step while being quite funny in having to shift gears from enterprising razzle-dazzle to screwball razzmatazz with the right cadence to lift it all rightfully. Suffice to say though, he was probably a bit correct about Buchholz, because he is merely adequate when compared to the rest of the cast in terms of timing beyond just that edge of bluster that is only slightly funny, particularly when compared to Tiffin, who is far more interesting with her hearty timing. Francis matches well with Cagney in those screwy moments together (such as referring to her husband as "mein führer" multiple times). The rest deliver a few chuckles in parts, such as Lothar having to dodge the ramifications that arise from being asked to borrow a dress in public or a few mishaps spent with a trio of communists. The 104-minute runtime is about on par with what one might see from a really fast film with a few hijinks that may be around the speed of His Girl Friday (1940) but the end result is merely just a selection of chuckles rather than hearty laughs to go with appreciation for its look. It doesn't wear out its welcome by the end, but one can see where it may have been just a bit out of its time when it comes to the final result that is sometimes silly, sometimes overwhelming and yet one that is curious enough to seek out for those big on Wilder beyond the obvious choices.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars. 

Secret of the Incas.

Review #1696: Secret of the Incas.

Cast: 

Charlton Heston (Harry Steele), Robert Young (Stanley Moorhead), Nicole Maurey (Elena Antonescu), Thomas Mitchell (Ed Morgan), Glenda Farrell (Mrs. Winston), Yma Sumac (Kori-Tika), Michael Pate (Pachacutec), and Leon Askin (Anton Marcu) Directed by Jerry Hopper.

Review: 

Inspiration is an interesting thing to define. When interviewed for her work as costume designer for the film Raiders of the Lost Ark, Deborah Nadoolman Landis talked about the costume of its main hero Indiana Jones and the inspiration for the character's clothing being this feature, adding "We did watch this film together as a crew several times, and I always thought it strange that the filmmakers did not credit it later as the inspiration for the series." Of course, when filmmakers George Lucas and Steven Spielberg wanted to guide the production crew on what the film should seem like in style and acting, this was one of the films, while the other was China (1943, featuring Alan Ladd), and it just so happens each movie was released by Paramount Pictures. Really though, looking at this feature under any eyes as some sort of proto-Indiana Jones is a bad idea, because it forgets the basic truth for this feature: it's just a mediocre adventure with a guy in a hat and leather jacket looking for fortune and glory (at least without an artifact that melts people's skin off). I don't mean to clog up a review for one film with stuff for another, but it is evident to see and say why one film has endured for forty years in the popular culture while the other has essentially languished in lesser stature after half a century, and it is the general energy in the adventure that makes that evident. I mean, we are talking a movie about a guy who likes to call himself a "tour guide" for gullible tourists coming off the plane in Peru who just happens to find part of a relic (which I will call the doohickey) that if found intact can help him find a shinier doohickey linked to the end of the ancient Incas; of course he has to find a way to travel there, so when someone conveniently happens to need to escape a person with a plane (so he can "borrow" it, get it?), he just happens to get himself to Machu Pichu to find the doohickey that already had archaeologists ready to find the doohickey for the natives. The only other thing that might make it seem different is the fact that the film was actually shot on location in Peru and that the film was for a time really hard to find on video formats. Besides, director Hopper would basically be more known for his work on television (ranging from Wagon Train to The Fugitive) more so than his features, with this being the fifth of his eighteen movies as director.

Technically speaking, there isn't anything too terrible to watch here for 98 minutes, it merely happens to just be a movie with very average marks for a film that lacks subtlety in the way one would expect from a noir, which fits the middling level excitement that you wouldn't think would happen in something meant to be an adventure. You get exactly what you would expect from a movie with blah chemistry and one clear unkempt adversary, which is really a whole bag of "okay, sure" - even having a random supporting character join in as a villain would have been a useful surprise to chuckle. This was the twelfth film role for Heston (who replaced Wendell Corey, initially cast as the lead), who by this point had cultivated a bit of success with features in the 1950s just before he became a bigger star. Even in a movie that resembles a B-flick, Heston still makes it a worthy time to at least try to watch, enterprising in his blunt approach to living that is in need of a lighter film or a noir with tension. This was actually the last film for Young, who had been acting in films since 1928; he might be best known for his second phase in acting on television, such as Father Knows Best (which he had the lead role in radio and television for eleven years). He really only shows up in the second half of the film (because remember, the film needs to spend quite a bit of time meandering before getting to the temple), and he seems a bit too quiet to really make an impression beyond just the blah-blah doctor role, and the idea of any chemistry with Maurey seems more like a father-daughter dynamic, really. Maurey plays a Romanian defector with the timing of a hat rack knocked down by a sloth. At least the Indiana Jones series would hone their craft in snappy chemistry between its leads without cribbing from the passé energy seen here. It might interest you to note that Mitchell was a prime star in film, television, and theatre (playing support roles generally just in the first category) that lasted for nearly half a century; he makes for an interesting unkempt kind of adversary, one that pops in from time to time to serve as a parallel to Heston of sorts (while being nearly undone by a terribly ironic last scene in which he is talking about gravity right before falling down a ravine). 

It might interest you to note the presence of Yma Sumac, performing folk music native to Peru that had an octave range higher than most singers (four and half compared to most trainer singers with three). Of course, it also might not interest you to hear multiple performances of Sumac, because really it kind of drags the film down a bit in what we call "get to the point". The noir could probably get away with a song or two, but this is an adventure, not a stage show - now, if I watch a recording of an opera on film, then obviously I wouldn't make that statement. As a whole, there really isn't anything here that just screams for attention beyond just a mild experience with mild acting. If it wasn't for the "inspiration" part, it probably would have just lurked farther into obscurity, which means that basically this is a movie you watch to "look" for the moments or if one is interested in seeing Heston headline a movie before stuff like Ben-Hur (1959), I think. There's a plethora of movies from that era that are probably more suitable for a watch (good and... noticeably not good), and there are probably better adventure movies to sift through before/after this movie that one could probably look into, but if you really need to scratch the itch of curiosity over a somewhat obscure movie with a leather-clad fedora wearing hero, it might suit you. I can't endorse it as a winner, but I'm sure others will prove just fine (or less patient) with it.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.