TCM Classic Film Festival 2023: Part One, by David Bax

TCM Classic Film Festival 2023 Part One

At this point, it’s not a coincidence that I always seem to kick off the first evening the the TCM Classic Film Festival with a pre-Code feature. That programming slot is clearly an intentional and seemingly permanent fixture of the festival schedule’s design. It’s a fantastic way to dive into the worldview the festival offers, a kind of Godlike ability to survey all of (mostly American) cinema history both from a remove and from a simulated point of view from each film’s respective present day. The pre-Code kickoff is a way of shaking people out of mainstream cultural assumptions about old movies. And, of all the scandalous Thursday night screenings I’ve encountered at the entry point of the TCM Classic Film Festival (including Jack Conway‘s Red-Headed Woman, Hobart Henley‘s Night World and William Dieterle‘s Jewel Robbery) Tay Garnett‘s One Way Passage may just be my favorite. The picture starts out at a gallop with a head rush of a meet-cute between William Powell and Kay Francis (also in Jewel Robbery), two of the most charismatic actors of the 1930s, in a crowded Hong Kong bar (spelled “Hongkong” in the on screen title). Then, further delightful coincidence finds them on the same ship back to San Francisco. What they don’t know about each other is that she has been diagnosed with the cinematic scourge of Terminal Beautiful Woman Disease and he is being escorted back to the States to face trial for a murder he most certainly did commit. The overpowering romance of it all is only heightened by the fact that we know their love is doomed and they don’t. But even without that element, the simple fact that Francis and Powell are capable of making the simultaneous toss of their cigarettes over the side of the boat as they gaze into each other eyes a clear metaphor for fucking is more than enough.

Following my Pacific excursion, I jumped ahead twenty years to a Technicolor vision of the rolling English countryside with a 35MM screening of Henry CorneliusGenevieve. Even with a faded, scratchy print and multiple issues stemming from the print’s variable density soundtrack. If you don’t know what that means, neither did I but I found more information than I could have asked for here. Genevieve is sort of road trip comedy about a vintage car enthusiast named Alan (John Gregson) and his less enthusiastic wife, Wendy (Dinah Sheridan), entering into an illegal race from Brighton to London against another couple (Kenneth More and Kay Kendall) and their adorable St. Bernard. Now, this is a 1953 release so, when I mention vintage cars, I mean, like, the original cars. Genevieve is the name of Alan’s 1904 Darracq. It’s a fun, lively picture with plenty of delirious incident (even though the race doesn’t kick off until the film is halfway over). But it’s also a sharp illustration of everyday marital discord. Alan and Wendy’s repeated attempts to pacify each other lead to resentment that’s ultimately only resolved by them finding a common cause (beating the pants off the other couple).

George StevensPenny Serenade is an odd case. The final team-up between Irene Dunne and Cary Grant, the particulars of the film’s plot are puzzling in ways that go beyond “Well, that’s just how things were back then.” Dunne and Grant play a young married couple who, after a miscarriage (though the film never calls it that), decide to adopt. Now, there are some elements that can be chalked up to the era, including the usage of wince-inducing phrases like “regular kids” and “real parents.” But the real head scratcher is the one year probationary period after which the state can force the adoptive parents to return the child. I live in California where no such thing exists and I’d never even heard of the bizarre practice. In the experience of friends who have adopted, the hurdles and hoops mostly come before the adoption, not after it. A quick search tells me that there are some states that maintain such laws on their books (though one year is twice the usual time). But hanging an entire movie’s premise on such a construct is a never-ending distraction. Still, the movie is replete with lovely sequences. We are introduced to the couple’s early years via a scrapbook that includes sleeves for records; a different song accompanies each flashback. This connection between music and memory is universally recognizable and thus fare more effective than the probation gimmick. And the film’s entire middle portion, in which the two learn to be new parents, is the most joyous and engaging. Each new task becomes its own miniature suspense film, peaking with a terrifically tense and hilarious don’t-wake-the-baby sequence. Grant is also in top form throughout, playing an idealist not in the Frank Capra mode but in a way that turns his supposed purity of purpose into a frustrating fault. Stevens has often felt a bit too square and stodgy for me but here it’s the screenplay, not his direction, that keep me at arm’s length.

TCM Classic Film Festival 2023 Part One

I’m finishing off this first missive from the 2023 TCM Classic Film Festival with another pre-Code, Frank Borzage‘s revelatory Man’s Castle. Loretta Young plays Trina (coincidentally the name of the adopted daughter in Penny Serenade), an unhoused woman during the ongoing Great Depression (referred to here as the “unemployment situation”). In Central Park, she meets Bill (Spencer Tracy), who takes her to dinner, skips out on the bill and then invites her to stay with him in his shanty in a Hooverville. The depiction of such a settlement in 1933, when they were current events, not history, is the main reason Man’s Castle feels so immediate, vibrant and inexplicable uncanonized. Amidst Trina and Bill’s courtship–an unconventional one for the screen but probably less so in real life–they come to be resemble an unadulterated precursor of sitcom couples like Ralph and Alice Kramden. He talks tough, she just chuckles wearily. But there’s too much hurt and volatility behind it all to find it too funny. He’s prickly and manipulative; she’s desperate and blue. The film does have some laughs, both intentional and otherwise (an odd bit of rear projection in which our characters are different sizes than the crowd behind them is the cause of the latter). But it’s a singular take on love, marriage and pregnancy (not in that order; that’s that pre-Code shit, baby!) amid generational hardship.

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