The Godfather Part III: A Review

THE GODFATHER PART III

"Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in".

This is one of the most quoted lines from whole of The Godfather saga, which is curious given how poorly most fans think of The Godfather Part III. That line could serve as The Godfather Part III's theme given how nearly everyone from the first two Godfather films was essentially roped into this. This film is a sad way to end the tale of Michael Corleone's fall. More a set of The Godfather's Greatest Hits, The Godfather Part III is a confused mishmash of plots and performances with only one genuine bright spot.

It's a bit hard to give a general plot summary of The Godfather Part III given that the film throws a lot at the viewer in terms of story and characters, but here goes. Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) is attempting to not just become a legitimate businessman but a respectable one, currying favor from the Catholic Church to metaphorically cloak his sins. He faces troubles all around him however.

Michael's son Anthony (Franc D'Ambrosio) wants to become an opera singer versus joining the family business. Michael's daughter Mary (Sofia Coppola) is essentially an unwitting front for the shady Vito Corleone Foundation. With Tom Hagen dead and his son Andrew (John Savage) a priest, Michael relies on his business manager Harrison (George Hamilton) and sister Connie (Talia Shire) for support.


And then there's Vincent Mancini (Andy Garcia), Michael's illegitimate nephew. Vincent wants to join the family business, but like his father Sonny, Vinnie has a fierce temper, especially towards Joey Zasa (Joe Mantegna), who is one of Michael's underlings running the old neighborhood into the ground. Aunt Connie has a soft spot for Vinnie and Michael, somewhat reluctantly, takes him under his wing.

Along with Vincent and Joey's war we have Michael's involvement with the Immobiliare real estate corporation, a major business run by the Catholic Church. Getting majority control to bail out a shady Archbishop involves getting the Pope's personal approval, but Paul VI is dying and unable to. Therefore, machinations involve getting their own Holy Father on the Throne of St. Peter. Fortunately, Cardinal Lamberto (Raf Vallone) is an honest man unaware of the nefarious deals going on, but his honesty puts the new John Paul I in danger.

In all this we also get the machinations of Don Altobello (Eli Wallach), Connie's own Godfather who is up to no good himself and Vinnie's romance with Mary. Never mind that they are first cousins: somehow only Michael, weak from a diabetic stroke, seems angry about this. The price for Vincent Mancini to become Vincent Corleone and take full power: the termination of his affair with Mary, a price he is most willing to pay.

The Immobiliare plot culminates at Michael's operatic debut in Sicily to perform Cavalleria Rusticana, where those plotting against Michael and Vincent pay a bloody price but so does an innocent, leaving a weak Michael to die alone.

In theory, there is nothing wrong with the idea for a Godfather Part III, but watching it again I sense that no one had any enthusiasm for the project. From director/co-writer Francis Ford Coppola (with Mario Puzo) to everyone returning from the first two Godfather films, it seems that no one wanted to be there. So much seemed rote, almost methodical in its mechanical nature.

I could not shake the idea that Coppola in particular felt that he needed to just hit some of the same notes to try and give viewers what they supposedly liked about the first two films. It was essentially watching a cover band perform all the hits except that the cover band was made up of the original players.

Echoing Don Fanucci's death with Joey Zasa with the religious festival felt sad, especially given that having a John Gotti-like character opened up so many possibilities in terms of showing the old versus the new. Again and again The Godfather Part III could have done so much more but kept stopping.

Fine, so Robert Duvall refused to take part in the film. Why not have his son Andrew Hagen be the new consigliere? Fine, so they decided to somewhat introduce a new character, Harrison, to fill in that role. Why not have Father Andrew Hagen be part of Vatican backroom politics, aiding to help the unwitting Cardinal Lamberto ascend the throne or deal with this meddlesome Archbishop?

Instead, you have this thoroughly useless character introduced, who has no purpose or reason to be here. Same with Grace Hamilton (Bridget Fonda), a reporter attempting to uncover the truth of the Corleones. We see her at the opening party, then in bed with Vincent, and then she disappears whole-cloth from the film altogether. It was only at the opera that I realized, "Wow, Bridget Fonda hasn't been seen in well over two hours".

The Godfather Part III essentially had two plotlines: Joey Zasa and Immobiliare, either of which would have worked for a whole film. For reasons I cannot fathom Coppola opted to ram both of them but never made clear which was the one to bother with.

Plotwise the film is such a chaotic jumble one really wonders not so much what was going on but why time was taken up with one story to simply lurch to a whole new story sans rhyme or reason.

Acting-wise The Godfather Part III is a nearly universal embarrassment. Many people have singled out Sofia Coppola for blame. According to my late friend Fidel Gomez, Jr., the audience actually applauded when Mary got killed accidentally. It is true that Coppola gave a terrible performance, and that her death scene would elicit more howls of laughter than horror, but I am not going to bash Sofia Coppola for her effort.

She was put in an impossible situation. Stepping in at the last minute when Winona Ryder dropped out, Sofia was asked to do something she had little to no training for up against veterans who knew their roles inside and out. On the whole I think Sofia Coppola gave as good a performance as she could under difficult circumstances. It does not absolve her of a genuinely bad performance: her scene with Pacino asking the perhaps too-close-to-home questions "Why are you doing this? Why am I doing this" particularly stiff and uncomfortable to watch.  However, it is, in retrospect, grossly unfair to single her out when just about everyone was horrendous.

As a side note, at least three times in my notes I wished that D'Ambrosio's Anthony would be the one that ended up whacked. I found his performance flatter than Sofia Coppola, even when he was in the opera. I though his character more annoying than Mary and his performance emptier.

Eli Wallach's performance was equally if not more hilariously bad. Playing Don Altobello as this tottering old fool whom the film keeps pushing as some kind of Machiavellian mastermind, his final scenes at the opera are simply too funny to be serious. It is a more laughable performance than that of Sofia Coppola. Same goes for Mantegna as Joey Zasa, so wildly camp one almost expected him to call himself "Fat Tony".

Pacino and Diane Keaton as his now-ex-wife Kay looked so bored, as if they were just saying thing while waiting for the check to clear.

The film comes alive only when Andy Garcia is on the screen. You can believe Vincent is the combination of the three Corleone brothers. He has Sonny's fiery temper and violent streak. When whacking his hated rival Joey, we see Michael's methodical ruthlessness and intelligence. When playing love scenes with Grace and Mary or in his fondness for his Aunt Connie, a little bit of Fredo's warmth comes through. Garcia was compelling, intense and magnetic as Vincent Mancini-Corleone to where a film built solely around him could have reached the heights of the first two Godfather films.

Shire, to be fair, did well as Connie to where I wish she had more time as the de facto Godmother. Hamilton too did well as the business manager Harrison.

The film does have a couple of flashes of brilliance. The whacking of Joey Zasa, while not great had potential and Pacino had one good moment when he confesses his sins to Cardinal Lamberto. Oddly, what was meant as a climatic scene when assassinating the heads of the major families via a helicopter felt almost boring, a sign of how weak the film overall was.

On the whole however, The Godfather Part III is a sad and sorry mess. Jumbled, confused, with too much going on and nearly universally bad performances save for Garcia, The Godfather Part III is a case of going to the well once too often, hitting the same beats as its predecessors but not finding their melody or rhythm.

Speak Softly Love but see this film unless it's for Garcia or for completion's sake.

DECISION: D+

The Godfather Part II (1974): A Review (Review #1272)

THE GODFATHER PART II

The Godfather Part II is really both sequel and prequel to The Godfather, a sweeping tale of the rise of mob boss Don Vito Corleone and the fall of his son Michael. A massive epic running almost three and a half hours, The Godfather Part II chronicles the American dream in vivid albeit dark colors.

The film ebbs and flows between turn of the century New York and 1958 Nevada, so a plot summation requires a little dexterity. In the pre-Godfather sections we see young Vito Antolini forced into exile due to a longstanding vendetta. Coming through Ellis Island, his name is changed to that of his hometown, Corleone.

As a young Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro) attempts to raise a family and keep to an honest life, he finds circumstances force his hand into a life of crime. Joining with neighbor/small-time hood Clemenza (Bruno Kirby), Vito now takes on the local boss, Don Fanucci (Gaston Mochin) for control of the area. Vito is generally a good man, using his 'influence' to help those in need but not afraid of using the full force of his powers.

He returns to Sicily one last time for a final confrontation with elderly mob boss Don Ciccio (Guiseppe Sillato). Vito took his whole family to Sicily, though given their ages it is unlikely that toddler Michael or baby Connie would remember. Perhaps if they did, Michael would see how he echoes his father.

In the post-Godfather section family head Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) faces a host of trouble. There are the minor problems such as his sister Connie (Talia Shire), now a bitter mob princess running around from man to man. Then there are major problems. Longtime Corleone caporegime Frankie Pentangeli (Michael V. Gazzo) is furious that Michael appears to side with Jewish mobster Hyman Roth (Lee Strasberg), who is funding Frankie's rivals for control of his territory. Michael survives an assassination attempt at his home, and now he is determined to smoke out whoever is the mole working for Roth, whom Michael knows is behind the attempted hit.

Pentangeli is himself set up for assassination but the attempt is accidentally thwarted. Frankie thinks Michael sold him out, so now he's going to sell Michael out to the government. In reality, Michael's older brother Fredo (John Cazale) was the rat, though whether he was duped or not is a subject of debate. As he faces enemies on all sides, Michael's cunning and coldness helps him survive but at a high cost.

Michael's long-suffering wife Kay (Diane Keaton) takes shocking steps to ensure there will be no successor to Michael's bloody throne. As for Fredo, he like Roth and Pentangeli pays for his sin of treachery, with the cost being Michael's soul.

The Godfather Part II is more than a simultaneous continuation and remembrance of the Corleone family saga. It really is a story about family, particularly fathers and sons. We see how Michael is in many way's Vito's son. Both hold long resentments and enact cruel vengeance on those who injured them. It does not matter that one was a virtually senile old man or one's own somewhat senile older brother. It was their need to 'defend their family & family honor' that motivated their brutality.

Director Francis Ford Coppola curiously had Vito take Michael's hand after both his murders (Fenucci and Ciccio). I do not think it was intentional but one can see perhaps symbolically how Vito was passing on his bloody legacy to the one son he hoped would not carry on the tainted family legacy.

The film is absolutely fantastic about having you empathize with Vito yet recoil with Michael. We see Vito in many ways as a victim, particularly when he arrives alone and silent to America. As so many of us are either immigrants or children of immigrants, we can identify with Vito and the hope of a new life away from the burdens of the old country.

However, we see in The Godfather Part II the dark side of the American dream: the Corleone family did indeed find prosperity in America, but one built on crime, brutality and death.

The film is also a sly critique of capitalism. Note that Michael and Roth, these two mobsters who built their empire on crime, are sitting at the same table with industrialists who essentially rule Cuba. As the Revolution heats up we see only Michael realizing the danger his empire faces while everyone keeps dancing. Note that Roth and his partners metaphorically cut Cuba among themselves via Roth's birthday cake with a map of Cuba as the frosting. They are essentially businessmen, but whose industry involves criminality up to and including murder.

The corruption of the Cuban government is more brazen than that of the American government, embodied by the WASP Nevada Senator Geary (G.D. Spradling). He actually provides a humorous moment when he essentially flees the Senate committee meeting on organized crime when Michael is perjuring himself like crazy. In his flustered declarations that 'not all Italian-Americans are mobsters', Geary shows the pomposity and stupidity of those in power. We know Geary is amoral and corrupt to where Vito's dreams of a 'Senator Corleone' look rational, even hopeful. Michael is right: both are part of the same hypocrisy.

The Godfather Part II is exceptionally acted. De Niro affects Marlon Brando's raspy voice from the first Godfather and speaks almost exclusively in Italian. That isn't a distraction however, as DeNiro makes Vito a very sympathetic character: competent and decent who was basically forced into this brutal world. Gazzi and Strasberg were also exceptional as the emotion-driven Pentangeli and the cold-thinking Roth, almost balancing each other.

While all three were nominated for Best Supporting Actor (with De Niro winning), I am surprised that Cazale was not for his Fredo. It was an equally strong and moving performance. Your heart breaks for Fredo when he stumbles into his explanation as to how he ended up as Roth's stooge. In his mix of clumsiness, hurt, rage, ineptness but genuine sweetness and pathos Fredo is extremely sympathetic. You leave knowing that he did not deserve his fate.

Shire also excelled as Connie, going from angry at Michael to loyal to him. Keaton had a bravura moment when she confesses the truth about their lost baby to Michael. It's shocking and heartbreaking, Kay's pain and fury and desperation all exploding simultaneously. Robert Duvall too was strong though I think his role as Tom Hagen was diminished.

Now we go to Al Pacino as the Corleone patriarch. His performance is brilliant whether he calmly signals that Fredo's time is up or slapping Kay for destroying his dreams of a dynasty. We see Michael has destroyed what he insists he loves most: his family. That we can find even an ounce of humanity within Michael's now-dark heart is a credit to Pacino.

The last shot of him is simultaneously heartbreaking and chilling. As he remembers all his siblings long before he assumed power, we can see so much and so little in his cold eyes. Does he regret? Does he feel pain to now being the undisputed king? He is a sad and pathetic figure, alone and damned. Michael has reached the summit but still has nothing to show for it.

The Godfather Part II echoes The Godfather in many ways. Both essentially begin with religious festivities that mask nefarious goings-on. Both have the conflict of betrayal and loyalty at their center. Both touch on the struggle between doing what is right and what is necessary. It was necessary to wipe Roth out. Was it right to wipe Fredo out?

Every element in The Godfather Part II works: the performances, Gordon Willis' cinematography, Carmine Coppola and Nino Rota's score. If there is a quibble it might be that some might find the jumping between the past and present a bit jarring and/or confusing. Some may find the length a difficulty, particularly with certain parts that might have been cut without affecting the overall flow. I find those minor quibbles.

There is debate whether The Godfather Part II is superior or inferior to The Godfather. I am firmly in the former category. The Godfather Part II, this tale of corruption both external and internal, of the price of loyalty is chilling and tragic. The sins of the fathers do taint their sons, and sometimes what we do for our family may end up damning them in the long run.

DECISION: A+

1975 Best Picture: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Hot Air (2019): A Review (Review #1271)

HOT AIR

I enter Hot Air with a bit of trepidation, the pun of the title making me wary given its central character is a conservative radio talk-show host. I needn't have worried. Hot Air isn't bad because it takes easy shots at conservatives in general.

It's bad because it's disjointed, unfunny and quite dry.

Fired Up host Lionel Macomb (Steve Coogan) rules the airwaves, though there is a pretender to the throne. It's his former protege Gareth Whitley (Skylar Astin), who has found religion and does conservative radio with a vaguely Christian bent on his increasingly popular show, The Way.

Lionel is a misanthrope par excellence, so he's none too pleased to see Tess (Taylor Russell). Tess is his niece and despite having had no contact with her uncle she has nowhere else to go. Her mom Laurie (Tina Benko) is in rehab so for the time being, with some urging of Lionel's girlfriend Val (Neve Campbell) and to avoid scandal as his contract is renegotiated, Lionel shelters her until Laurie finishes her stay.

Lionel's Number One nemesis is New York Senator Judith Montefiore-Salters (Judith Light) and her 'Clean Slate' Act that would allow children brought illegally to go to college without fear of arrest complete with scholarships if memory serves correct. As he despises and detests "Hyphen" (his pet name for the Senator), it makes a budding romance between Tess and Montefiore-Salters' aide Grayson (Pico Alexander) a bit of a conundrum.

Lionel agrees to a live sit-down television interview with Gareth and is surprisingly enraged himself doubly ambushed. Not only has Gareth invited Hyphen to join them (something he did not agree to) but Gareth exposes Lionel's troubled past, information gleamed from Grayson. Eventually though Lionel still manages to survive this fiasco, while Laurie, somewhat sober, helps Tess get to an exclusive prep school and Tess finds her uncle's heart has melted ever-so-slightly.

Hot Air is not without possibilities and you can see at least one story clawing desperately to get out. Therein however lies at least one problem with Hot Air: it has a lot of stories and characters that come and go hither and yon.

For example, early on we see Gennady (Declan Michael Laird), this young Russian Eurotrash who takes Tess to a club. After Lionel dresses them both down we never see Gennady again, making all this rather pointless. Stabs at comedy with other characters such as Lionel's on-again/off-again assistant Tyler (Griffin Newman) similarly fall flat because he too seems almost an afterthought.

Again and again things, people and plot points are introduced only to be dropped or forgotten. Lionel has a mug from Dinosaur Gardens, which the film suggests is his only happy childhood memory. The film hints that this might be his 'Rosebud', that element that could crack the mystery. However, while it's mentioned it doesn't lead anywhere.

When Tess first sees her uncle, she storms into his bedroom to find he's schtupping the maid to Night on Bald Mountain. It boggles the mind that he would cheat on Val given how good she is. It boggles the mind that Val would give someone like Lionel the time of day in any case. Despite Tess asking him once why does he cheat that plot point is never mentioned again.

As far as I remember we never hear or see Tess share her family's painful past with Grayson. In fact, I think they share one coffee and take pictures with Polaroids.

As a side note, I kept wondering where she got Polaroid film, but I digress.

A bigger problem in Hot Air is how shockingly disjointed it is. Within a minute we go from Lionel and Tess being snippy at each other to them and Val happily going off to a weekend at the sea? What the hell? It doesn't make any sense because the tone shifts so wildly and so quickly the viewer almost gets whiplash.

It's surprising that one can get a good cast and have them give pretty lousy performances. Coogan was shockingly stiff and dull as Lionel. He seemed too controlled to be a firebrand and too deliberately hostile to make what was meant as a softening look real. Even the most rabid progressive would side with Lionel when he is ambushed on Gareth's show.

Astin came across as creepy than sincere. I can only guess that Gareth Whitley was meant to be creepy and insincere, like a simultaneously sweeter and more uncouth version of Tucker Carlson. Alexander, like Coogan, played Grayson as if he were a character as opposed to a person.

However, among the jumble that is Hot Air, we do have some light. Russell had some genuinely good moments as Tess, limited only by the script. Her confrontation with Laurie was quite good. Hopefully Russell will find better and stronger material to showcase her budding talent. Campbell too is unrecognizable as Val, the public relations guru who actually loves Lionel despite all logic.

I would rather have wished to see a film with them as the main characters, with maybe Tyler as the wacky sidekick.

Again, it isn't as if there isn't a good idea rattling around Hot Air. There's even a real moment of wit. After being harassed out of a public park movie screening one of Lionel's harassers shouts, "How do you sleep at night?" Without missing a beat Lionel retorts, "On a mattress stuffed with cash and the broken dreams of Hillary Clinton".

OK, that's funny.

Hot Air as it is now is sorely lacking: neither humorous or heartfelt. It's too dry, stiff, jumbled and filled with cliched characters and situations. It might have worked better with some tweaks: if for example Lionel were a liberal and Tess a conservative or if Lionel had vaguely human quirks such as a love of hockey or a passion for collecting bobbleheads. While Neve Campbell and Taylor Russell did good work (with Newman as an Honorable Mention), Hot Air is not funny no matter what your political leanings.

DECISION: D-

The Broken Mirror: A Review

THE BROKEN MIRROR

This review is part of the Summer Under the Stars Blogathon sponsored by Journeys in Classic Film and Musings of a Classic Film Addict. Today's star is Kirk Douglas.

Kirk Douglas was once deeply ashamed of his Jewish heritage, sometimes claiming he was 'half-Jewish' in the naïve thinking that being 'half-Jewish' was not as bad as being fully Jewish. As he aged and after surviving a helicopter crash, he began to explore and ultimately embrace his Judaic heritage. His own private journey from shame to pride seeps its way to The Broken Mirror, a children's/young adult novella Douglas wrote at age 81, shortly before Douglas himself had a second bar mitzvah.

The Broken Mirror, although very brief and vaguely autobiographical, has the potential to make for a good play and primer to learn about one of history's greatest evils.

Munich, 1938. Little Moishe Neumann is fascinated by these strange marching men with flags of a crooked cross. His father Jacob and mother Leah (Tateh and Mameh to Moishe and his sister Rachel) are worried, particularly after Kristallnacht. They essentially hide out in the countryside, where they keep to themselves on a farm.

Moishe is devoted to his older sister Rachel and loves hearing fairy tales, particularly one about how Satan had a mirror that made everything beautiful look evil & ugly and vice-versa. Satan and his minions attempted to fly it up to Heaven to have God look upon it, but as they went higher it got heavier to where they couldn't hold it. Falling to Earth, the shards fell upon people's hearts and eyes, unleashing evil in the world.

Evil does come when the family is rounded up to an Italian concentration camp. Moishe is the only survivor, and now he no longer wishes to be Jewish. He adopts a new name, Danny, from the Roma (here called Gypsies) and is taken to an American Catholic orphanage. "Danny" is lost in this world until he makes an unlikely friend: Roy, a skinny kid cajoled into bullying him until Danny stood up to himself. Roy then looks on Danny as a hero for helping him and they become inseparable.

It isn't until Roy is adopted, leaving him alone again, that Danny finally breaks down and runs away. He ends up accidentally running to a synagogue and welcomed by the American rabbi that Moishe has metaphorically come home, the lights of the Sabbath leading him back.

The Broken Mirror touches on one of the most monstrous aspects of an already monstrous episode in human history: how the Holocaust impacted the most vulnerable among us. A children's book cannot be graphic and it is to The Broken Mirror's credit that Douglas gives us just enough information in a simple manner that a child can feel great sadness for Moishe without having to learn some of the more horrific elements.

The voice is extremely well-done: Moishe comes across as very innocent but after he survives his imprisonment not bitter but shell-shocked, confused and alone. His decision to abandon his Judaism both spiritually and ethnically are understandable, making his return more impactful.

The overt symbolism of the evil mirror's shards making people cold and uncaring with Moishe's own experiences works well in this children's story. Douglas uses symbolism effectively both with the fairy story of 'the broken mirror' to that of the Sabbath lights leading Moishe back to a loving home reminiscent of what he lost in Germany. Moishe's goodness comes through, along with his confusion about America and slow embrace of baseball and stronger embrace of Roy.

As I read The Broken Mirror, I found that it might work well as a play geared towards children. Save for Rachel and her boyfriend David's death we do not see anything that could be traumatic for children. I think children could identify with Moishe, who sees a world of wonder until it grows dark, then how he survives to find the light again. A play adaptation might need to work out some things such as expanding the story of his time at the orphanage, but on the whole the source material is there to create a stage version that would work well for children without delving into much more somber elements.

The Broken Mirror makes for fast reading, coming in at less than 90 pages. Douglas obviously was not a Holocaust survivor but the book does in a sense show his own evolution from rejecting his Jewish heritage to being passionate about it. Douglas, like Moishe, went through his own journey to find the Sabbath lights lead him home.

The Broken Mirror is brief, well-written with a story that ends with hope, all positives in a world forever close to plunging itself into darkness.

8/10

The Conqueror (1956): A Review (Review #1270)

THE CONQUEROR

This review is part of the Summer Under the Stars Blogathon sponsored by Journeys in Classic Film and Musings of a Classic Film Addict. Today's star is Susan Hayward.

Few films have become as notorious as The Conqueror, the biopic of Genghis Khan. From the wildly miscast performers to shooting on a nuclear test site that is thought to have led to various deaths, The Conqueror became infamous for being such a disaster that its powerful yet reclusive producer Howard Hughes pulled it from circulation for decades. The Conqueror routinely finds itself listed among the worst films ever made, but does it merit said reputation?

The Conqueror is a bad film, but despite what has been said the fault does not lie in its stars alone.

Temujin (John Wayne) is a mighty Mongol warrior who comes upon the beautiful Tartar princess Bortai (Susan Hayward). Instantly in lust with her, he leads a raiding party to capture our fiery Tartar tart despite the misgivings of his brother Jamuga (Pedro Armendariz) and their mother Hunlun (Agnes Moorehead).

Bortai will not submit to Temujin, making him more desirous, but war comes first. He forms an alliance with his half-brother Wang Khan (Thomas Gomez) against the Tartars, but Temujin is betrayed. Despite this, he is still defiant and somewhere along the line Bortai has fallen in love with the Mongolian chieftain. With Temujin now having succeeded in both escaping the Tartars and taking Wang Khan's throne and his capital of Urga, he now leads one final push to begin his reign as Genghis Khan, Bortai now at his side.

No one is safe in The Conqueror, as massive a misfire in the annals of cinematic history as can be found. Bless Dick Powell, former song-and-dance man turned film noir antihero, for at least having an eye for detail visually. The costumes and sets, dressed up with sand imported from their outdoor shooting location in St. George, Utah, did bring a certain authenticity to things.

One also perhaps should give grudging credit to Powell for having some good action sequences.

Apart from that, Powell's directing ranged from comical to merely inept.

You have a highly talented and skilled cast, but everyone in The Conqueror looks so hilariously bad it might have been better for them to have embraced this as so much B-movie camp.

One does not need to look further than John Wayne as the Asian warlord. One watches his performance almost in awe, amazed that Wayne or Powell thought the former (and latter to be honest) was anything other than embarrassing himself. What possessed either of them to attempt to make his eyes more 'Asian'? As if this yellowface routine wasn't already deeply disgraceful for all concerned, Wayne delivered his lines in some oddball cadence, almost as if he had discovered English.

Then again, to be fair there is probably no actor who could make Oscar Millard's screenplay sound remotely human. It's a running game to find what line is the most laughable and/or cringe-inducing. "Make haste, cretin. The Tartar wench awaits you!" would test the dramatic skills of any actor. No one will ever be able to deliver the line "You're beautiful in your wrath!" with any sense of reality.
Add clunkers like this to Wayne's speech pattern and there is no saving things.

Again and again Millard's screenplay dooms every actor caught in its cross-hairs. Susan Hayward is an exceptionally talented actress, but her forte was in downtrodden women who struggled and sometimes survived. The idea of this redhead as a Tartar princess goes beyond believability, but she too is forced to utter such nonsense as "I am consumed with want of him". She apparently was directed to be a bit of a camp vamp in The Conqueror. One genuinely does not know whether she is trying to be serious or opted to go for some avant-garde gonzo acting style that tried to separate her from the film itself.

It's a sad thing when the most sensible thing Bortai does is a danse erotique at Wang Khan's palace as part of an elaborate dance number that has nothing to do with the plot but is the most entertaining part of The Conqueror. It's actually the only entertaining part if you attempt to watch it without a sense of humor about the wild goings-on. It's also Hayward's only good moment, showing she's quite able to cut a little rug before slinging swords at monarchs.

Armendariz and Moorehead too cannot escape the tawdry dialogue, though somehow the script's stubbornness in having everyone address someone as "My Brother" or "My Mother" when speaking to them as opposed to about them is enough to drive the viewer batty.

You do have to constantly suppress howls of laughter at lines like those or this one said by her father when Tamurjin swears vengeance: "Already the Mongol whelp whines!". As bad as Powell's directing is, as bad as the performances are, it's the script that is so shockingly inept and inert that you could have cast the Royal Shakespeare All-Stars and still had a disaster.

One final point on Millard's script. Either I was falling asleep or I missed something because The Conqueror never seems to establish whether Jamuga really was a traitor or just kept finding himself in the wrong place and time. More bizarrely, he serves as closing narrator despite requesting to be executed, though again it's never fully established if it was because he was a traitor or just perceived as one.

If there is anything good in The Conqueror, it is Victor Young's score. I think Young is vastly underappreciated compared to a Franz Waxman, Max Steiner, Bernard Herrmann, Alex North or John Williams. It's a terrible shame since The Conqueror's score is quite good. Its Love Theme is beautiful and the music for the big dance numbers is quite impressive.

As this is a film review, the stories of how The Conqueror led to various cast and crew deaths due to shooting downwind from a nuclear test site is not relevant. However, the various deaths from a host of cancers that claimed many lives takes away from whatever camp pleasure one gets from the film; of the many cast and crew members  Powell, Wayne, Hayward, Moorehead, John Hoyt (who played a Shaman and imperial adviser) and Armendariz (who committed suicide when he learned his cancer was terminal) succumbed to cancer which may have been triggered by the location shooting taking place so close to a nuclear fallout site. And those are the well-known victims.

Divorced from the tragedies that potentially claimed lives, The Conqueror would be remembered as a disaster in and of itself. Its cast had no chance with such a leaden script, but the performances did not help in making it any better. In so many ways, The Conqueror is a bad Wrath of Khan.

Circa 1162-1227

DECISION: D+

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: A Review

20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA

This review is part of the Summer Under the Stars Blogathon sponsored by Journeys in Classic Film and Musings of a Classic Film Addict. Today's star is Paul Lukas.

I read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and fell in love with the book, though Jules Verne did keep going on about the minutia of fish. Pages and pages about fish to where after a while I skipped all those pesky pescatarian descriptions and moved on to the actual story. It's to where I remember the Disney film adaptation more than the book, apart from all those fish. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is a brilliant film and a personal favorite, mixing adventure and humor with some strong thoughts about the state of man.

It's 1868 and the world is captivated by stories of a 'sea monster' roaming the oceans and taking down many ships. Some sailors believe these fish stories but others don't. French Professor Aronnax (Lukas) is willing to keep an open mind, but his assistant Consiel (Peter Lorre) is more dubious. They, however, agree to go on a U.S. Naval expedition to search, with the government bringing another passenger, Ned Land (Kirk Douglas), a master harpooner.

They do find 'the monster' that does take down the ship, but the three survivors discover that it is not a living thing. Instead, it is something unheard of: a submarine craft called the Nautilus, where Captain Nemo (James Mason) rules unquestioned. Nemo is impressed by Professor Aronnax but dismissive of Consiel and especially Land, who goes out of his way to antagonize him.

Aronnax is conflicted: fascinated by the technological advances Nemo has uncovered particularly when it comes to the seas but appalled at Nemo's hatred towards humanity and ease with which he sinks ships and kills men. Land and Consiel join forces to find someone to rescue them, leading to a fiery conclusion for all involved.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea balances family-friendly action/adventure with surprising intellect and even some humor and comedy. Children can find amusement at the double-act of Land and Consiel or the hijinks with Nemo's pet seal Esmeralda. Adults can think on the morality of Nemo's actions, on whether he was right or wrong or even a mix, a question that Aronnax keeps going back to.

Visually it is breathtaking, with its two Academy Awards in Set Design and Visual Effects more than worthy. Looking at it now at times some of the effects may be a bit dated, but in other respects 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea astonishes. A climatic fight with a massive squid is thrilling, and while the Nautilus may be a model, it's a damn good one. It looks so real that one would have thought Walt Disney had built an entire submarine and then sent them to his theme parks.

We also get breathtakingly beautiful underwater images when the Nautilus crew explores and even cultivates the ocean depths for food. The sets too, particularly the Nautilus interior, are also elegant.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea allows for a surprisingly light side to Kirk Douglas. Douglas was not known for comedy or light entertainment but in the film he's quite adept at being charming, even funny. Douglas' Land is still an action lead: fighting physically and verbally with nearly everyone, especially Nemo. At times he does come close to letting his all-out anger erupt.

However, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea also allows Douglas to have a little fun. His scenes with the pet seal are a delight, showing Douglas as a bit of a lovable scamp. Douglas even belts out a delightful tune, A Whale of A Tale, showing a nice and rarely tapped comic manner with a humorous song.

Douglas also works well with Lorre, who like Douglas would seem an odd choice for such a family project. However, with his sad eyes and meek manner Lorre was equally delightful as Consiel, doing what he thought right for the Professor even when the Professor didn't think so. He and Douglas make a wonderful double-act, down to adopting a routine where Ned would mess what hair Consiel had one way only to have Consiel return it to how it was when Ned left.

Lukas was the moral and intellectual center of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, so his Aronnax had to be a little more on the serious and stoic side. Professor Aronnax was not about to burst into A Whale of A Tale anytime soon. However, Lukas' role was just as important as the action star Douglas or the somewhat comic relief of Lorre. He is where the audience should be: simultaneously fascinated and appalled by Nemo's actions. At times Aronnax seems to think the Sun rises and falls on Nemo, while at other times he cannot accept Nemo's indifference to individual lives. Like Nemo, Aronnax is an intellectual, but unlike Nemo he has a code that will not bend.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea may be James Mason's best-known role. It is also I think one of his finest as the mad Captain Nemo, one who is in turns snobbish but wise. He berates Ned for going after treasure when they were sent to find food on a sunken island, noting that genuine treasure is "a sound mind and a full belly".  Mason's Nemo is in turns genius, elegant and completely bonkers. He brings Nemo's rage along with his passion and wisdom for the ocean. It is a fully-formed performance.

It is a massive credit to director Richard Fleischer that despite the episodic nature of the film he kept things flowing well and got great performances out of his cast. Paul Smith's score is eerie and haunting, echoing the otherEarl Felton's adaptation also managed to keep things flowing despite a two-hour running time. In hindsight one of Ned Land's lines as he attempts to escape a sinking Nautilus could have been revisited.

"Let me out of this glory hole!" Ned shouts. AY DIOS MIO!

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is one of my favorite films, and I am so happy I got a chance to revisit an old friend. It is A Whale of a Tale, fun, exciting, a bit funny and never failing to thrill and entertain.

DECISION: A+

Executive Suite (1954): A Review

EXECUTIVE SUITE

This review is part of the Summer Under the Stars Blogathon sponsored by Journeys in Classic Film and Musings of a Classic Film Fan. Today's star is June Allyson.

An all-star cast holds court in Executive Suite, where backroom boardroom politics and machinations take center stage. Executive Suite is a well-acted, well-paced film that holds your attention to the strong finish.

Avery Bullard, president of the Treadway Furniture Company, drops dead suddenly on a Friday. His death comes just as he has called an impromptu board meeting where he will appoint an executive vice-president. However, as there is no official successor the new president will have to be elected from among the current Treadway board members.

One board member, Loren Shaw (Fredric March) sees himself as the new president. He is driven purely by numbers, charts and profit/loss margins. Other board members have their own agendas. Bullard's BFF/right-hand man Fredrick Alderson (Walter Pidgeon) has been undercut by Shaw. Shaw also finds that another board member, Walt Dudley (Paul Douglas) has been schtupping his secretary Miss Bardeman (Shelley Winters). He does not directly blackmail Dudley but Shaw does know how to apply pressure.

Another board member, Caswell (Louis Calhern) witnesses Bullard's death and sells his stock at a profit, but now finds himself figuratively and literally indebted to Shaw. Only board member/production head Don Walling (William Holden) seems immune from Shaw's power, but he has no interest in taking leadership. Don's wife Mary (Allyson) flips back and forth between urging him to take power and retreating from it.

There's a wild card in the succession crisis: Julia Treadway (Barbara Stanwyck), the founder's daughter who owns enough shares to make her the only female board member, though her mental stability and romantic past with Bullard makes her an uncertain vote. With no genuine rival to Shaw but no enthusiasm for him either, all these various elements play to see who succeeds to the presidency.

Executive Suite is a surprisingly taut tale of the wheeling-and-dealing that goes on in high finance. While it gives us characters who are mostly villains and mostly heroes, the film does not go over-the-top with either. It is filled with exceptional actors at the top of their various games, each giving very strong performances.

Shaw is a pretty reprehensible man, but he also has a cold logic to his thinking. As he sees it, his job is to increase profits and nothing more. The quality of the product, the effect to employee morale or employment, and anything close to human emotion is irrelevant to him.

Executive Suite is, as I understand it, the rare villain in Fredric March's career, and he is masterful as Shaw, forever wiping his hands when doing something shady. He is never overtly evil but it is in his cold-blooded manner, his thinking only of cost that makes him the emblem of indifferent capitalism.

Opposing him is Holden as the more idealistic and moral Walling. Holden has a bravura monologue at the end of Executive Suite, where he makes his impassioned case that business should be more than just numbers and decimals on a ledger page. It should be about pride and quality of work, about enriching people in all aspects of their lives beyond the stockholders' accounts.

Stanwyck excels at playing bonkers beautifully as Julia, troubled, suicidal, but also with a spark of hope within her. Winters' Eva, the lovelorn mistress, evolves into a woman who has the strength to end their affair, especially after Walt won't stand up to Shaw when he forces his way into Walt's love-nest. "Get yourself another aspirin tablet," she quietly and sadly tells Walt as a farewell, her acknowledging that she is nothing more than a comfort to him.

Pidgeon's moral outrage and honesty works well against Douglas' essentially decent but unfaithful and weak Walt. Calhern's sleazy Caswell, a man who keeps his own good-time girl waiting at the bar while he desperately seeks out confirmation that it was Bullard he saw drop dead also does good work.

The popularity of June Allyson has always escaped me. To me she has a foghorn voice, isn't attractive and never impressed me with her acting. My only real memory of Allyson is of this raspy-voiced woman telling me to "GET BACK INTO LIFE!" with Depend adult diapers.

To my shame those commercials still send me into fits of laughter. I also can admit that perhaps Allyson was a better actress than I gave her credit for. As Mary, she is supportive but also active in shaping her husband's mindset. She even has a bit of comedy when playing catch with their son Mike (Tim Considine). Allyson may not have been my cup of tea in musicals, but stripped from any cutesy manner she manages to more than hold her own against a cavalcade of powerhouse players.

Executive Suite is still relevant about the power plays involved in high finance, and it might be worth remaking. It is a well-acted film that showcases a variety of performers very well, adeptly directed by Robert Wise with a screenplay by Ernest Lehman. The back-and-forth among those in "The Tower" makes for a strong, fascinating film.

DECISION: B+