Paramount Summer Classic Film Series-Josie and the Pussycats

 

When I first saw this movie in 2001, I thought it was a fantastic satire of pop culture and consumerism. My opinion was not widely shared, as the film was a big flop and to rub dirt in the wound, prominent critic Roger Ebert gave the movie half a star as it's rating. I think after losing Gene Siskel as a partner, Roger got an inflated opinion of his own opinion, and drifted from the audience a little to often. This movie is a pop confection with a nice subverted message about pop culture, and the most well known film critic of his time, missed the whole point. 

Rather than rebut the review of the long gone Mr. Ebert, I plan on explaining my point of view, right here, right now. There are several ways that you can process the film, and I am going to talk about three of them. The first and most elemental take on the movie is that it is a teen comedy, made primarily for young girls and enlightened boys. Josie, Val, and Melody are three girls from a midwestern town, dreaming of rock stardom but fated to play at the bowling alley, mostly on spec. Josie has a crush on longtime guy pal Alan M, but is flummoxed about saying anything, just as he is. This is your usual case of pluralistic ignorance in a romantic comedy. By the end of the story will they overcome their mutual intimidation and get together? Of course they will, but guess what, this is barely the C plot in the story. If you are focusing on romantic comedy, you are going to miss the point of the film. Mel and Val don't get romantic counterparts, Alan M is mostly superfluous to the story, the usual rom-com tropes are missing, deliberately so. That is so not what the movie is about. 

The second way of looking at the film is as a rags to riches rise of a pop band. "The Pussycats" struggle to find a place in the music industry, and break through the barriers they encounter with gumption and talent. This is a little closer to the real story of the film because so much of the movie involves the songs and performances that the band create. There are recording sessions, promotional videos for MTV, and stage shows for audiences primed by their love of the music. Anyone who says the songs are not good enough to produce success, much less be entertaining, has not heard any pop music since 1962. Maybe every song is not a banger, but "Three Small Words", "Pretend to be Nice" and "Spin Around" are the kinds of tunes that could easily form the backbone of an album.  Each of those tunes could be the encore song for a popular girl band at the turn of the century. Song writers Adan Schlesinger, Adam Duritz and Kenneth 'Babyface' Edmonds are all part of the ensemble of producers, writers and music professionals, who made sure that the songs of the Pussycats were credible pop tunes. I will put their credibility and my personal taste, up against any of the naysayers out there. 

Still, in spite of the fact that the rise to stardom plotline is substantial, it is not the main paradigm by which the film can be judged. The third and maybe most important element of the film is the satire on consumerism and the influence of the media on teen culture. This film suggests a secret cabal of product manufacturers, government, and technical media wizardry could drive the economy with the money from teens. This is before Facebook, You Tube, and Twitter existed. The writers of this film saw that the rise of media influence would be the strongest force for consumption in the future. Everyone out there making a career as an influencer, can look at this movie and say, "that's how it starts". Replace the Head of the Record Company, Fiona, and her toady assistant Wyatt, with some You Tubers and a couple of media analysts, and you have the world of today.  (Of course none of them are as much fun as Parker Posey and Alan Cummings)

The whole opening segment with the boy band is a commercial for dozens of products, satirically.  That joke is extended through the whole movie. Amazingly enough, these were not paid placements, like they would have been in a hundred other movies, they were targets (Including Target) of the film makers suspicion of consumer manipulation. If you think "Smells Like Teen Spirit" from Nirvana was cutting criticism of youth consumerism, how could everyone miss the savagely aggressive takedown of product placement, teen fashion trends and celebrity worship that this movie took on? I don't know, but somehow they did. 

If the rise of Boy Bands, manufactured by record companies and supplemented by autotune and other technologies is a sore point with music lovers, why is it that the "DuJour" song "Backdoor Lover" from the fictional band in this film, not become a rallying cry against manufactured music? It is a great takedown of the form, and it is also hysterical. There might be some PC resistance to it these days, but a quarter of a century ago, it would be embraced by hipsters as ironically ideal.

The three girls in the power trio that make up the Pussycats are spot on. Rachel Leigh Cook has that punk girl next door quality. She has attitude but not bitterness and she is cute as heck. Rosario Dawson has been the thinking mans sex symbol for two decades now. She is smart, tough and attractive and her character is in tune with what is going on from the beginning. Tara Reid, was the staple hot chick of 90s movies and she is delightfully dingy and sweet as Melody, who loves puppies and plays the drums with gusto. 

"Josie and the Pussycats" has all the markings of a cult film. It was a flop initially, it has undergone re-evaluation and it has a devoted following of fans who are willing to humiliate themselves to show their love. That was evident Sunday Night as the audience was full of people wearing their cat ears through the whole movie. Me Included. I am not a late arrival to the cult, I could easily be the founder.  I have shouted praise for this movie for a long time. Back in 2013, I featured it in one of my posts "Movies I Want Everyone to See".   

Paramount Classic Film Series-Roman Holiday

I think it might be interesting to know the effect this film can have on a person by describing to you the context in which I saw it and the impact had on me last Sunday. We had a tight schedule, and so left for the movie with just an hour to spare. It is usually a 40-minute trip down to Austin from where we live, and then a 5 to 10 minute walk over to the theater. Typically we leave much earlier and arrive anywhere from 30 minutes to 60 minutes before the film is supposed to screen. Clearly we were cutting it close. When we arrived at the parking garage, the kiosk that distributes the tickets was not working and we had a backup of cars behind us who could not get into the structure as we could not. I used the call box and a voice said somebody would be coming down to take care of the problem, but I had no idea how long it was going to take them. The car is behind me finally backed up and left the structure which allowed me to do the same. As the time was getting closer to the start of the film, while I was stuck, I sent Amanda on ahead and told her I would find parking and just meet her in the theater. When I finally got out of the structure which has been my usual parking spot for the summer, and for which I have a prepaid voucher, I needed to find a place to park in downtown Austin. There was a lot on the corner three blocks south and I pulled in there, thinking that would be the solution. When I checked the QR code instructions I discovered that the fee for parking in this lot was $11 an hour, far higher than I had imagined it would be for a Sunday afternoon. So I pulled out of that lot drove around the block and pulled into another structure for one of the high-rises in downtown, it had a list price of $10 a day for weekend parking. That was much more reasonable but it was a slightly longer walk. At this point I was pretty irritable, and then somebody on the street with a political message that I don't particularly care for approached me and I lashed out. I rudely told them what I thought of their message and plowed on with as much indifference as I could muster after having blown my stack. I got to the theater made it inside and sat down next to Amanda 5 seconds before the lights went down and the movie started. I was still quite wound up and frustrated, but within 5 minutes my soul was soothed, my mind was at rest and the negative memories were far away. That's what this movie can accomplish almost instantaneously.

This effect is entirely responsibility of the ephemeral and eternal beauty and charm of the star Audrey Hepburn. As a put-upon princess who longs for connection with the real world, Hepburn is the epitome of grace and loveliness. We can instantaneously sympathize with her frazzled persona, as she stands in a presentation line with one shoe off, and she struggles to get it back on so as not too embarrass the nation she represents. The baroness and the doctor who are responsible for managing her, or micromanaging her, are supportive bureaucrats, merely carrying out their dictates. It's a miracle that she figures out how to escape the surroundings before she collapses from the drug that has been administered to help her sleep. Of course this sets up the cute meet with a journalist, Gregory Peck. Their first 10 minutes together are quite charming, and once he takes her back to his apartment to safely allow her to fall asleep, the movie takes on an almost slapstick nature. You're expecting sophisticated comedy from the film, and there's plenty of that, but there are also pratfalls in the small apartment, tumbles from the bed, and mistaken inferences by the housekeeper and the landlord. Gregory Peck is as solemn as he usually is but he does get a little bit more excited and in character when he realizes what he's gotten himself into and the opportunity it presents. This is a romantic comedy that plays with the idea of social status in a more serious way than any of the other royalty falls in love with commoner films you are likely to have seen. This is not the "Princess Diaries".

Once the journalist and the princess start off on their excursions around the Eternal City of Rome, the fun begins to be more consistent. Accompanied by his friend, a photographer played by Eddie Albert, Peck is trying to maneuver the princess into not only having a good time, but revealing things about herself that he would never have any chance of getting in a formal interview. The fact that he is being duplicitous is a little off-putting and it takes the dawning love between the two of them to show that his true nature is not really his harsh as we were led to believe. Nowadays it would certainly be a fairy tale to imagine that somebody working in this sort of journalistic format could be circumspect enough to choose not to publish some information. This may in fact account for the notion that this is more of a fairy tale than a romantic comedy. I still found it quite affecting when after the princess has returned to her role, she discovers that her partner was in fact a reporter, but that he has no intention of violating her trust. They played at a surface level that is just right for their stations in this story. And of course while all of this was happening, we got a little travel log of the city of Rome.

There was so much to smile about by the end of the film that I  nearly forgotten how crazy I  was when I first sat down. The rest of the day went so much more smoothly and I felt so much better having been entertained by two fabulous stars of the golden era of Hollywood. If anyone ever suggests that Audrey Hepburn didn't deserve to win the award for best actress in "Roman Holiday", just make them watch the 5 minutes seen at the end where she wordlessly accepts the circumstances of her responsibility, and the love that she's not going to be able to follow. It's a perfect example of acting for the screen. All hail the princess.

Reagan (2024)

We unfortunately live in a world where any sort of political position seems to result in backlash instead of discussion. There shouldn't be anything controversial about reviewing a biopic that covers the life of the 40th President of the United States. The man had a compelling story, starting with an impoverished childhood, running through the Golden Age of Hollywood, touching down on the Red Scare of the 50s, the counterculture of the 60s, and the threat of nuclear war as a result of the Cold War in the 1980s. The fact that there's so much to talk about May in fact be the key weakness of this film. The script tries to cover so much of Reagan's life and so many of the key events in his political career, that there's not really much time to reflect on any of it. This plays like a slideshow reminder for people who lived through the era, and a set of bullet points for younger viewers who only know Reagan from their history books or memes on the internet.

As I said, I hesitate to even discuss the film because people will have knee-jerk reactions to the mere mention of a political figure. On one side you'll have people who will react negatively simply because they identify with a different political philosophy. On the other side of course, worshipful fans might be too forgiving of the flaws of the film. Everyone will be looking to score some political points one way or the other from the movie. I remain committed to my goal of writing something about every film I see in a theater, so I'm not going to let the fear of opening a can of political worms keep me from putting some words down on this film.

Reagan is an interesting political figure because he was elected president with a 40 state Electoral College victory in 1980, and a 49 state victory in 1984. He was clearly a very popular president, and the film gives us several reasons to see why. The one thing that the film does which makes it worthwhile, is to focus on the character of the president, his sense of morality, and the ethos that drove him. Even if you don't care for that sort of philosophical bent, I think you'll have a better understanding of how it influenced Ronald Reagan over his lifetime. The other big thing that the film has going for it is the lead performance of Dennis Quaid. He's not quite doing an impersonation of the well-known president, but he does get his cadence and intonation pretty well covered. He also presents him as a cheerful advocate for his positions, rather than the impenetrable wall that many biographers have found. If there is a weak performance in the film it is probably Penelope Ann Miller as Nancy Reagan. Her performance feels a little brittle and stagy. Sometimes she seems to be shouting when it's not completely necessary. I'm sure she has Nancy Reagan's unfailing love for Ronald Reagan completely covered, but whenever her character steps out of the romantic entanglement and into the larger political sphere, it feels overdone.

There's a terrific supporting Cast in the film, many well-known character actors get a chance to shine in the spotlight during the course of the story. Nick Searcy is doing a great job as chief of staff James Baker. Xander Berkeley is George Schultz and Dan Lauria does a pretty reasonable impression of House Speaker Tip O'Neill. C. Thomas Howell is also in the film as part of Reagan's Cadre of advisors. The most significant role in the film, for an actor playing a character part, is the former Russian analyst portrayed by John Voight, using an accent it is a lot more clear than the one he used in Anaconda. This plot line is really the backbone of the film, in spite of its fictionalized nature. His character is telling the story of Reagan from the perspective of an adversarial spy, after the events have already occurred, in an attempt to explain the significance of Reagan's personality but especially his political ideology. Some of the things that get developed in the story might be the kinds of things that would justify some political shenanigans. This framing story however is not that central to the main character of the film.

Although the film comes from a specialty Film Production, the technical aspects of the film are very solid, and the effects, sets, and photography do not let down the professionalism of the movie. The story is a little schmaltzy because it is trying to cover the entire life of Reagan. It remains shallow as a consequence. I think this would have been a film which could be more successful artistically if it picked a significant event from Reagan's presidency and connected it to maybe his early anti-communist stance. That's the approach that Spielberg took with his Lincoln film, and it might have been a better choice for this movie. Regardless of the weaknesses of the script, I do think that the film achieves one of its objectives, namely making Ronald Reagan a real person for a large part of the audience that did not live in his times.

The Crow (2024)

 

I've never been the biggest fan of the original "The Crow" from 1994. It's a perfectly acceptable film, it's main attraction being the goth-like look of the city in decay that is haunted by the avenging spirit of Brandon Lee's character. The whole plot itself mostly consists of a revenge driven fantasy, which doesn't do much to build character, or make us loath the villains who are being given justice. It's a paint by numbers Vengeance film with a supernatural element to it. In that version of the film there is no explanation whatsoever as to why the character comes back from the dead. There is only some mumbo jumbo about crows leading the dead to the after world or back to this one if something is left undone. The impervious nature of Eric's body to weapons and punishment is clearly supernatural but not very clear as to why it is happening.

This version of the movie attempts to answer those questions and make the plot line conform to a more coherent structure. I'm not sure that that's completely necessary but I had a better understanding of what the hell was going on when watching this than I did with the original. That however is not enough to make this a good movie. The fact that we meet the hero and his lost love early in the film and spend some time understanding how they got together and what they mean to one another, does help a little bit, but it moves pretty slow and I'm not sure how much the audience really care about this. Apparently the whole plot that appears in this film concerning a minion of Satan using his powers on Earth to send innocent souls to hell is completely new with this screenplay. I didn't have any problem with this since it conforms to the other part of the story about why Eric comes back from the dead in the first place. It also makes the ultimate villain of the piece a little bit more interesting than in the previous film.

The slow moving first hour is not likely to endear this film to most viewers. A love story between two drug users, who break out of rehab and somehow managed to find an upscale apartment to stay in and unlimited resources to function with, is not really that appealing. The two characters are all right, with the female lead being more appealing than our main protagonist. There's a convoluted connection to the villain and why this young woman is being sent to hell and why Eric feels he must come back from the dead to try and save her. Blah blah blah.

I suspect what fans really want from a film like this, are the sequences where the hero makes the bad guys suffer for their sins. I know that's what I was sitting here waiting for. When it happens this film goes further in making the punishments seem harsher and more just, given what the criminals are responsible for. Eric doesn't seem so much like a righteous angel as he does an Angry Young Man who simply has an extraordinary power to survive deadly force. Apparently death also makes him an expert at using a sword and firing a gun. It doesn't matter how he got so good with those tools, all that matters is that he uses them and we get to see. So there are dismemberments, piercings, and face shooting galore at the start of the third act, and damn it that's what we've been waiting for.

Bill Skarsgårdis is in fact a perfectly acceptable replacement for Brandon Lee and the role of The Crow. He has a washed out hollow look, and the lanky frame of a drug user, who's still possesses a little bit of physical capability. He never comes across however as anything other than an angry man. There is very little depth to his mission, even when it appears that he has to accept a truly negative consequence in order to pursue it. Little thought has been put into whatever intellectual concepts might have been relevant in a revenge story of this type. Danny Houston is particularly reptilian as the minion of the evil one, who is trading the souls of hundreds of Innocence, for his continued existence on Earth. He seems to have some Supernatural persuasive voice, like some Hellbound Bene Gesserit, convincing the innocent to do something that will damn them. It's all a little fuzzy, as are most of the things in this story.

As I've already said, the main difference between this film and the previous iteration of "The Crow", is the look of the film. So much of this version occurs during daylight hours, maybe the skies are cloudy, but it is certainly not as dark is the 94 film was. The original Crow had the death of Brandon Lee hanging over it, which probably also accounts for its cult status. This version of the movie will probably not achieve that standard. I guess is it will be forgotten after this last weekend, in fact I nearly forgot that I had seen it myself.

Paramount Classic Film Series Double Feature-The Breakfast Club and 10 Things I Hate About You

 

We are heading into the final week of then Summer Series and the Double features are piling up. Friday featured two teen films from different decades. "The Breakfast Club" is a Gen X staple from 1985 and "10 Things I Hate About You" is catnip for millennial girls. The show was well attended and the audience stuck around for the second movie.

The Breakfast Club (1985) 

I must have seen this movie a couple dozen times over the years. That is largely because I used a section of it in my Small Group Communication Classes and my Interpersonal Communication classes. Regardless of how credible the personalities in the film are, the process by which they interact is a good illustration of several communication concepts I was trying to teach my classes. Most of the students I taught were not too distant from the high school experience in the film, so some of the instigating events would likely feel relevant to them.

How do you see yourself as a person? Are you capable, a clown, superior, a leader or a toady? Why do you think of yourself that way? In the film, the strongest influence that writer/director John Hughes came up with is the power of the family and parents to shape who you see when you look in the mirror. Emilio Estevez as Andy, sees a jock, who must live up to the experience of his father. Anthony Michael Hall as Brian, is the smart kid, who has never failed a class, is an A student, and who has a family that expects him to excel. Molly Ringwald is Claire, a princess, who has been pampered by her parents and coddled through life,, with unhappy role models. John Bender played by Judd Nelson is an anti-social misanthrope, who has been formed by an abusive set of parents, and Allison, the introverted outsider is ignored by her family and craves the love she doesn't get at home. True, they are all stereotypes, but they clearly illustrate some of the principles that our self concept derives from.

When they finally break down some barriers, the subject of self-disclosure becomes the focus of the film. You can see each of the kids testing the safety of the group when thinking about honestly sharing something about themselves. Bender is slower to share because he fears a loss of power in the relationships, Claire on the other hand is concerned with status. Brian and Andy disclose to the group as a form of catharsis, trying to lessen the burden they carry on themselves. Allison shares false information to manipulate the others and then reciprocates with some truth when she knows that others have made themselves vulnerable. I would run these scenes in class and usually, someone would pick out something connected to what we had talked about and for a few minutes, there would be some actual conversation.

The movie is also filled with entertaining moments, sometimes the kids dance, sometimes they obfuscate with the vice principal monitoring them during their detention. Paul Gleason was maybe tied with William Atherton as the go to actor for the asshole character in a film. Mr. Vernon is mostly an adult, who resents the kids for putting him in the position he is in. Although in the closing essay that Brian wrote for the group, where they mock his assignment and assumptions about them, it is in fact the assignment that they have been completing in the whole film. Maybe they will never use algebra, but they will use these lessons in life. There are some very funny moments and some painful ones. They may not always be credible, but they work for the most part.

10 Things I Hate About You

One of the many films that updates stories from William Shakespeare in the 1990s, "!0 Things I Hate About You" would be a film I saw multiple times twenty four years ago, because I had teen and tween daughters who loved it, and we had a DVD player. This movie was a go to for gatherings with their friends, rainy Saturday afternoons or days spent home when they were sick. Heath Ledger planted the seeds of his future fandom and legacy in the hearts of girls everywhere with this movie. Julia Styles may very well have turned one of my daughters into the heinous bitch version of her character simply by presenting that attitude as being so cool.

If you are familiar with "The Taming of the Shrew", you will recognize how closely this hewed to the original plot structure. There are occasional names, and lines that will connect the film to the play as well. While this is still a teen romantic comedy, it is one that goes much deeper than usual in those types of films. The nature of popularity is not just treated as a joke, but as an actual dilemma that teens must confront in some way or another. The two male leads find that truth is a better path to happiness than pretention, and of course the pretentious one gets a comic comeuppance.

Larry Miller plays the father of the two female leads, and he has had a prolific career in film and television as a character actor. This role may be his most memorable because of the way he plays his scenes with star Julia Stiles. He goes from comic foil to supportive father in one really memorable scene. Allison Janney is about to start her time on "The West Wing" but the goofy, wannabe romance writer as vice principal was a fun role in just a couple of brief scenes.  

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and David Krumholtz are a terrific comic duo with great timing in their scenes together. Krumholtz probably steals more scenes than he should, but he does pay for it when he has a penis drawn on his face, and Andrew Keegan may have typecast himself perfectly with his performance as the self centered antagonist in the film. If you are a fan of indie's rock music of the 90s, you will find it in abundance on the soundtrack of this film.

In the packed audience last Friday, it was clear there were a number of women reliving their youth. Every time Heath Ledger did something in the film that was charming or cute, you could hear sighs and cheers throughout the auditorium. If I was thirty years younger, I might have considered it a prime situation for hitting on women who liked the film and wanted to experience the exuberance of young love once again. I'm not that young or stupid, but I smiled every time some woman let out a small moan of pleasure during the film. 

Paramount Summer Classic Film Series- The Man who Knew Too Much (1956) Hitchcock Week

 

Jimmy Stewart returns to the Paramount with another Hitchcock thriller, a very rare remake of his own work "The Man Who Knew Too Much". This is an international intrigue with a political assassination as the MacGuffin. The settings include  London and Marrakesh, and there are authentic location shots mixed with rear screen projection. Most of the interior shots were done in Hollywood on sound stages, but the film has an international flavor to it because of all the extras and the supporting roles.

The title gives away just enough to let us know that it is information which drives the plot. Stewart and Doris Day play the married couple, Doctor and Mrs. McKenna. He worked in the army Mash unit in North Africa during the war, and she was a well known pop singer when they met in London. They are returning to those haunts on a medical junket/vacation, with their little boy. They get connected to a man, Lois Bernard, who speaks Arabic as well as French and English, when he helps them with a cultural misunderstanding on a bus ride to Marrakesh from Casablanca. Bernard turns out to have been some sort of spy, who for is not clear, the local French authorities are suspicious of the Americans having any contact with him. It turns out there is a conspiracy, and the son of the nice American couple is used as a tool to keep them from sharing what they know.

Maybe the idea of an Indiana Doctor and his pop singer wife, turning into spies who travel to London, seems far fetched. The real strength that drives them is their love for their little boy and the animosity they feel toward those who betrayed them and threaten their son. Stewart gets tense in some scenes, clutching his fingers in anger below the surface of a table, struggling to contain his frustration. Day is more openly desperate and the scene where her husband has to sedate her before he can reveal their son's abduction is frightening and sad. 

The British security authority who wants them to trust his agency, is incapable of following up on their promise. The bureaucratic mind of the police officers who could potentially have stopped the plot by taking an active crime as enough justification to enter a building is almost as infuriating as the assassination plot. Of course, social niceties are also why Jo McKenna and the Doctor, don't disrupt a concert performance where the murder is supposed to take place. The final scream of warning comes at the last minute, which is thrilling for a drama, but makes little logical sense.

Having seen "Notorious" just two nights earlier, it is striking how much the descending staircase image dominates the climax of both movies. It seems to be a Hitchcock trope so when you watch "Psycho" remember, he has done this before. I think this is one of the few Academy Award winning songs that is actually relevant to the plot. Doris Day was a crossover star of the era, a singer and actress, and she took a simple little sing along tune and turned it into a moment of tension during the final act. She was famously uncertain about how she was doing in the role, but when you watch the screen, it is clear, she has command of her part.

This is another mystery thriller that mixes murder, espionage and ordinary people together in a well written script. The execution of the drama and suspense cannot be faulted, and the performances are top notch. If you ever get a chance to see this on the big screen, take it, you will be in the hands of a master.

Paramount Summer Classic Film Series Double Feature-Dial M for Murder and Rope (Hitchcock Week)

 

Dial M for Murder

A double dose of Hitchcock last Friday night, with two films based on plays that take place in a limited setting. First up, the star studded "Dial M for Murder" from 1954. Ray Milland, the Academy Award winning actor from a decade earlier in "The Lost Weekend", plays a retired English tennis player, married to a socialite American played by Grace Kelly, who would win the Academy Award this same year for another film. There is however a love triangle going on as she is still emotionally involved with a former paramour, played by Bob Cummings.

The plot involves an elaborate murder plot that goes awry and deepens the sinister nature of the crime. Tony is a conniving dilettante, who is unsatisfied with his life as a married man who has retired from his sport.  He maneuvers an old school acquaintance into his plot through a blackmail threat. His goal is to do away with his wife, inherit her money and be safely alibied by his wife's former lover. Things don't go according to plan but Tony is a clever man if not an ethical one, he improvises a scenario that results in an even more solid cover for his crime.   

The Paramount Program Director, Steven Jannise, correctly lauds Grace Kelly as the victimized woman in the story, but I am not sure you can say she steals the picture because Milland as the villain, is unctuous, quick footed, and capable of making the most seemingly innocent things look bad, while also explaining away his own bad actions in a reasonable manner. The part is very cleverly written and Milland handles it with aplomb. Kelly does the distraught wife and victim role well, but there needs to be a little more to her indignance at what transpires.

There are two supporting performances that deserve some attention away from the shade of the stars. John Williams portrays the suspicious Chief Inspector Hubbard, who follows a false trail at first and then doggedly pursues the truth on a last minute bit of subterfuge. Williams is brilliant in the part, side eying everyone and  smiling at his own suspicions. It is exactly the kind of performance that makes a movie special. Also deserving some kudos is Anthony Dawson, who plays the shady schoolmate recruited by Tony to be his weapon. I hadn't recognized him immediately, and I should have, perhaps the moustache was in fact a perfect disguise. Dawson is the actor that plays Professor Dent in Dr. No. He is on the receiving end of James Bonds Walther, when his Smith and Wesson runs out of ammo. As 

Charles Alexander Swann/Captain Lesgate, Dawson is sinister and charming as he loses a battle of wits with the well prepared Tony. 

The film is set largely on the apartment of Tony and Margo, with brief exteriors in front of their building and a couple of scenes set in the police headquarters of Chief Inspector Hubbard. The part with the key switch was a memorable moment in "The West Wing" one of my favorite TV series. The President is screening "Dial M for Murder" and trying to connect with his middle daughter Elle, who is resisting his fatherly sense of humor. The resolution of the scene with the Hitchcock film in the background is one of the warm moments from the series.

Rope

The second feature was another movie based on a play, and it is a grand experiment for the master of suspense. Set entirely in the apartment of the two killers, "Rope" is a psychological tug of war between the killers and their former mentor, the head of their house at prep school. Jimmy Stewart was a frequent star in Hitchcock films, and this was his first foray into the thriller territory that Hitch was the ultimate authority in. 

Pseudo intellectual entitled miscreants Brandon Hall and Phillip Morgan, murder a former classmate and friend as an intellectual exercise in power and superiority. They have taken the late night bull sessions with their teacher, way too seriously. Swallowing whole the philosophy of Nietzsche's "Superman", they kill as a way of affirming their own superiority.  Brandon, a narcissist with a sadistic streak, secures the body of their victim in a  wooden chest that he turns into a center piece at a party he is hosting with Phillip in their apartment. The dead man's father, Aunt and fiancé, as well as his former best friend are all in attendance.  When Rupert Cadell, their school house head and mentor, comes to the party, the intellectual cat and mouse games begin. Jimmy Stewart as Cadell, starts to suspect his former students are guilty of something as the snarky Brandon drops hints of his intellectual pretensions while the unnerved Phillip, drinks himself into a morose shell of himself and practically confesses to the crime repeatedly.

The movie is shot in continuity, as if it is all one take. The transitions between the film cuts, necessitated by the limit of ten minutes worth of film at a time, are covered by fades into someone's back or shots cast into a shadow. The movie also plays out in real time, a brief eighty minutes of tense talk and camera movements limited by the setting. The conclusion is a little melodramatic but the film is a fascinating experiment and it features an interesting set of performances from the two villains. The idea that they are superior to a character like the decent Mr. Kentley , played by Cedric Hardwicke, is ultimately laughable. Their twisted self rationalizations are thin and not even convincing to the man they think they are taking inspiration from.

I've seen the film a couple of times, including a theatrical experience at a revival house back in the 1980s. I can't quite remember if it was at the Rialto in South Pasadena or at the New Beverly in West Hollywood. Regardless, it is a great way to see the film, but it may be one Hitchcock that is not diminished by viewing on a TV.