Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of September 16-22, 2013. This being the third full week of September, we get another part of the Story of Film series on TCM; another night of Kim Novak movies, and another Sunday with Alfred Hitchcock. There are some other wacky films showing up this week as well. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
We kick off this week with the continuing month-long salute to Alfred Hitchcock. Once again, there's another of his silent movies in the Silent Sunday Nights slot: The Farmer's Wife, at midnight Monday (ie. 11:00 PM tonight LFT). Jameson Thomas plays a widowed English farmer who's just married off his daughter. Now that he's alone, he decides it's time to get married again. So, with the help of his housekeeper (Lillian Hall-Davis, whom we saw last week in The Ring), he sits down to come up with a list of all the marriageable women in the area. It should be obvious fairly early on who the right woman is for him, but he goes through all the women on the list, finding each of them wrong in rather humorous ways, before finding the one who's right for him. This is a straight-up comedy, not the usual Hitchcock thriller stuff, so it has a very different feel, but it's still quite entertaining.
The Farmer's Wife is followed at about 1:49 AM by the short The Case Against the 20% Federal Admissions Tax on Motion Picture Theaters. Apparently there was an excise tax on movie tickets in the early 1950s, and the theater owners claimed that this was driving down business. (The introduction of TV probably had a lot more to do with it.) So the small town theater owners (this was the era before the sixtyplex) and their trade association put together this two-reeler to show how important the downtown movie houses were to the local economies, not just for the movies, but for the public accommodations spaces they supplied. It's odd, because they clearly have to be serious, but they look almost as though they're trying to sabotage their case by presenting themselves as far more important than they were. Looking back on things 60 years, it's unintentionally funny.
On Monday morning and afternoon, we're getting a bunch of British movies of the 1930s on TCM. There's some interesting location photography in The Challenge, which comes on at 2:30 PM. The setting is 1865. Robert Douglas plays Edward Whymper, an English illustrator and adventurer who is in Switzerland because he wants to lead the expedition that will be the first to climb the Matterhorn. He had actually be trying for several years, working with the guide Carrel (Luis Trenker). However, the two men had a falling out, and each of them wound up leading an expedition to climb the mountain, taking different routes. Both expeditions successfully reached the summit this time with Whymper's being the first. However, Whymper lost four of his men on the descent and was accused of negligence by cutting the rope to prevent the entire party from being killed. This is all based on the true story of the conquering of the Matterhorn by Whymper and Carrel, with the four Englishmen really dying.
This week brings the third installment of the series The Story of Film. The documentary will be airing at 10:00 PM Monday (after Sunrise, which begins at 8:00 PM), and again at 3:00 AM Wednesday, and focuses on directors at the end of the silent era and beginning of the sound era who broke the mold. A good example of this would be LuÍs Buñuel, especially in his first film Un Chien Andalou, which airs at 12:30 AM Wednesday. This short film, which doesn't really have a plot, is based on the dreams of Buñuel, who collaborated with Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali. The images seem more selected for their shock value, starting right at the beginning with a famous scene of a razor slitting a woman's eye. The rest of it has to be seen for yourself to be believed.
Joan Crawford was born in March, but TCM is spending Tuesday morning and afternoon with her anyhow, in films such as Dancing Lady, at 12:30 PM. Crawford plays the lady, who starts off the movie as a burlesque dancer in the low-rent district. The place where she works gets raided, and she gets arrested. Lucky for her, though, wealthy playboy Franchot Tone was slumming, and bails her out, mostly because he's smitten with her. So when she tells him she'd like to dance on Broadway, he decides to get her the lead role in a musical, even if he has to pay for it himself. Clark Gable plays the director, and doesn't want Crawford at first, until he discovers that she really can dance, at which point he too becomes smitten with her, so you now have every musical clichÉ known to man. Crawford dances (for some values of "dancing") with Fred Astaire before he ever danced with Ginger Rogers, and has a scene with the Three Stooges too.
TCM is spending Wednesday night celebrating the career of Mario Lanza. Lanza was a Philadelphia-born opera singer who was signed by MGM to act in their 1951 operatc biopic The Great Caruso, which is airing at midnight Thursday (ie. 11:00 PM Wednesday LFT). Caruso was born in Italy in 1873, came to New York at the end of the 19th century, was a superstar, and died tragically young in 1921. The movie, however, takes quite a few liberties with Caruso's life, overlooking the real-life Caruso's son, barely mentioning the huge influence Caruso had on the recording industry -- he had the first million-selling record -- and having him die even earlier than he did in real life. All that having been said, the reason to watch this is for Lanza's portrayal of an opera singer: if you like opera music at all, Lanza was one of the great tenors of the 20th century. Enrico Caruso Jr. didn't think the story of the movie was so great, but praised Lanza's performance.
We have our third night of Kim Novak's turn as Star of the Month on TCM this Thursday. This week has three of Novak's films with Jack Lemmon. The one that I don't think I've recommended before is The Notorious Landlady, which comes on at 1:15 AM Friday. Novak plays the title landlady, who rents out a flat in London to Lemmon, who is a junior diplomat at the US embassy. Novak is accused of the disappearance (and presumed killing) of her husband, and Lemmon decides to help her prove her innocence. Things get complicated when the husband shows up, which ought to prove Novak's innocence, except that the husband then gets killed, accidentally, in a struggle for a gun. Now how is Lemmon going to prove that Novak didn't do it? Along the way, Lemmon and Novak unsurprisingly begin to fall in love. Fred Astaire plays Lemmon's boss, who wants to transfer him from London to avoid any scandal, but gets involved trying to solve the case himself.
If you like movies that go off the rails and become unintentionally funny, there's a good on over on the Fox Movie Channel this week: Of Love and Desire, at 1:00 PM Friday. Steve Cochran plays a mining engineer who flies down to Mexico for a job, only to find things have been held up for a few weeks. When he gets down there, he meets the boss (Curt JÜrgens), who is quite protective of his half-sister (Merle Oberon). The reason for that is because she tries to seduce every man she meets, which includes sleeping with Cochran on the first night he's down in Mexico. Eventually we learn that this has to do in part with her having lost her first love in World War II, but Oberon's relationship with Cochran increasingly enrages JÜrgens, who brings back one of his half-sister's old boyfriends to get back at Cochran. Ultimarely we learn the full truth about Oberon, as she has a nervous breakdown that includes running wildly through an Acapulco hotel. Indeed, the last half-hour or so of the movie will probably have you laughing at the sheer ludicrousness of it all. This is a movie that needs a restoration and a wide-screen print because there's some lovely Mexican scenery.
If you're not such a fan of movies that become unintentally funny and prefer comedy by design, you might want to keep your TV tuned to TCM on Friday. They're showing a day of films directed by Norman Z. McLeod, on the anniversary of his birth in 1865. These include Merrily We Live, at 8:15 AM. Billie Burke plays a ditzy society mother (gee, how many times have we seen that casting before?) who likes to do her part for the lower classes by hiring bums to be family servants, which has predictable results. The latest is Brian Aherne, who really doesn't want Burke to take her in, as it seems he has ideas of his own that don't involve robbing the family the way all the other bums-cum-servants have been doing. The fact that he isn't actually a bum but a victim of circumstance has something to do with it. But he takes the job, proving himself to have a mysterious touch of class, and falling for elder daughter Constance Bennett along the way.
One of this week's TCM Underground films is 200 Motels, which is on at 3:30 AM Sunday. This is one for fans of Frank Zappa, who claims that he conceived of the idea for this thing while on tour and being in hotels and every place seeming the same. There's a plot which is more or less about the Mothers of Invention being on tour, this time with a philharmonic orchestra backing them, and one of the memers going crazy and leaving the band because every stop on tour is the same: a concert, a hotel, and a bunch of groupies. However, the movie is more a surrealist experience than a film with a plot or even a concert film. Ringo Starr appears as Larry the Dwarf, while Keith Moon plays a nun. I'm not particularly a fan of Frank Zappa so I find this a dificult slog, but those of you who enjoy that era of music may like the film.
The Alfred Hitchcock films continue next Sunday on TCM, starting with one of his lesser-known British movies: The Skin Game, at 10:00 AM Sunday. Edmund Gwenn plays an industrialist who wants to buy some land out in the country for his new factory. The only thing is, it has tenant farmers on it, the the current landlord (CV France) is insistent that the farmers be allowed to stay. Gwenn agrees, but this is just a lie to buy the land. And when France discovers the lie, he vows to get revenge, by digging up scandal on his foe. But the scandal winds up damaging both of them more than the landlord can imagine.... This is anothe rof Hitchcock's early films (this time a talkie) that isn't his typical suspense film. It's not bad, but it'a not what you expect when you watch a Hitchcock film. The title apparently refers to British slang for a swindle, and has nothing to do with actual skin, of which there isn't all that much. Sorry guys.
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