Review: 'Notorious' Blu-ray

Eight months after the end of World War II, Alicia Huberman’s dad is convicted of spying on the U.S. for the Nazis. An agent named Devlin recruits her to infiltrate the home of her dad’s pal Alex Sebastian, a Nazi industrialist hiding out in Rio who has long carried a torch for Alicia. Since Ingrid Bergman plays Alicia and Cary Grant is Devlin, they’re just too damned good looking to keep their hands off of each other, and the budding romance complicates her dangerous liaison with Alex, played by a unsettlingly sympathetic Claude Rains.

This bizarre love triangle is the backbone of Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious. Without the Gothic feverishness, luridness, wild set pieces, or high adventure of Hitchcock’s most celebrated work, Notorious may stand as his most low-key and adult film. Grant even suppresses his usually uncontainable charm to play Devlin as a cold fish whose actual motivations do not become clear until the very end of the film. All of this does not render Notorious similarly chilly. Hitchcock still manages to electrify his imagery with flashes of disorienting camerawork and wrings classic moments of suspense out of such subtle actions as a palmed key and a dwindling champagne supply. However, it is Bergman who really ignites the atmosphere. She was rarely better than she is here as a fierce alcoholic determined to outpace her father’s reputation but ends up as a pawn in a potentially fatal scheme.

The Criterion Collection is now giving Notorious a 4k upgrade, and the film looks good with a natural grain and no noticeable flaws. At times sharpness and contrast are a tad weak, but the picture looks very fine overall. The supplements constitute a veritable crash course in cinema studies. Chief among them is David Thompson’s 2009 documentary Once Upon a Time… “Notorious”, which spends 52-minutes analyzing the filmmaking, describing making of details, and placing the picture in historical/political context…some of which will require a very strong stomach as it includes actual concentration camp footage. There are also plenty of new exclusives, such as David Bordwell’s video essay focusing on the film’s style and chillingly subtle ending, an interview with cinematographer John Bailey on the look of the picture, and additional featurettes starring Hitchcock’s biographer Donald Spoto and David Raim. There is also an hour-long radio adaptation of Notorious starring Ingrid Bergman  and Joseph Cotton, a very brief pathe reel featuring Bergman and Hitchcock, and Marian Keane’s audio commentary ported over from Criterion’s 2001 DVD.

Psychobabble’s 31 Favorite Universal Horrors: #4

Halloween season simply isn’t Halloween season without a regular dose of golden age Universal horror (1923-1963). Every day this October, I’ll be giving you a steady IV drip of it by counting down Psychobabble’s 31 Favorite Universal Horrors!

#4. The Invisible Man (1933- dir. James Whale)

James Whale found his voice with The Old Dark House. He started shouting from the rooftops with The Invisible Man. Its blend of horror and humor are seamless. The plot is pretty faithful to H.G. Wells, but that guy didn’t have a funny bone in his body. Whale and writer R.C. Sheriff find the humor in a mad scientist who can do as he pleases—so long as he’s totally naked— without going in any of the obvious gross or prurient directions. Really, Dr. Jack Griffin just wants to have fun, whether that means dancing down a road as a pair of floating pants while singing “Here we go gathering nuts in May” or throwing a few beer mugs about. OK, he takes the joke too far when he derails a train and murders his arch rival for the affections of Gloria Stuart, but can you blame him for that last one? That Dr. Kemp is such a bore! The same cannot be said of Griffin, and Claude Rains fleshes out his invisible role with a brilliantly expressive voice. However, the real stars of The Invisible Man may very well be the special effects team of John P. Fulton, John J. Mescall, and Frank D. Williams, whose disappearing act will still make you marvel “How did they do that?” Oh…and Una O’Connor. Never forget Una O’Connor.

Psychobabble’s 31 Favorite Universal Horrors: #9

Halloween season simply isn’t Halloween season without a regular dose of golden age Universal horror (1923-1963). Every day this October, I’ll be giving you a steady IV drip of it by counting down Psychobabble’s 31 Favorite Universal Horrors!

#9. The Wolf Man (1941- dir. George Waggner)

Having exhausted literary sources during the first phase of its Golden Age of monsters, Universal managed an original creation to really bring its next phase into focus. More rooted in the practical/tragic human issues of turning into a snarling beast beneath the moon than Werewolf of London had been, The Wolf Man finally got the werewolf picture right. The originality of its story is not the only thing that sets The Wolf Man apart from Universal’s earlier horrors: it also eschews a Gothic, period setting in favor of a contemporary, fairy tale milieu. Yet the new monster was such an instant smash that he was deemed an acceptable playmate for Frank and Drac. Lon Chaney, Jr., gets to do what he does best as he grimaces and wrings his hands as Larry Talbot. Jack Pierce gets to do what he does best as he covers Chaney’s face in yak fur, fashioning his final memorable monster. The Wolf Man also stands out from most of the earlier Frankenstein and Dracula pictures because of its consistently interesting cast. Dracula was a touch of a drag whenever Bela or Dwight Frye wasn’t on screen, but you never feel as though The Wolf Man is wasting your time as long as Claude Rains, Evelyn Ankers, the unforgettable Maria Ouspenskaya, and yes, Bela, are on screen.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 358

The Date: September 22

The Movie: The Wolf Man (1941)

What Is It?: Writer Curt Siodmak, director George Waggner, and makeup wizard Jack Pierce reinvent the werewolf. Much of what we now associate with lycanthropes—their aversion to silver, their association with the pentagram, their kinship with gypsies—leaped from Siodmak’s imagination. He also composed an ace nursery rhyme repeated infinitely throughout The Wolf Man and its sequels (“Even a man who is pure at heart and says his prayers by night / may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright”). The film’s other great innovation is the introduction of Lon Chaney, Jr., as the next successor in his father’s monster-movie-star legacy.

Why Today?: Today is the first day of autumn.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 41

The Date: November 10

The Movie: The Invisible Man (1933)

What Is It?: James Whale’s humorous brand of horror ripens fully with one of cinema’s most spectacular special effects triumphs. Claude Rains proves a truly great actor doesn’t even need a face. Una O'Connor screams.

Why Today?: On this day in 1889, Claude Rains is born.

Diary of the Dead 2013: Week 4

I’m logging my Monster Movie Month © viewing with ultra-mini reviews at the end of every week in October. I write it. You read it. No one needs to get hurt.

October 18

Phantom of the Opera (1943- dir. Arthur Lubin) **½

With the original era of Universal horror having its last hurrah with 1941’s The Wolf Man, the studio started dipping back into old properties in earnest throughout the forties. This usually manifested in sequels uniting the Wolf Man, Dracula, and the Frankenstein Monster in various configurations, but there were also a couple of Full-on remakes in order. The first was Charles Laughton’s reinterpretation of Chaney in 1939’s Hunchback of Notre Dame. The second found another formidable actor attempting to fill the Man of a Thousand Faces’ boots. No doubt Claude Rains is a superb actor and one of Universal’s most unforgettable horror stars, but the version of Phantom of the Opera in which he starred is utterly forgettable. Because of the U.S.’s recent entry into World War II, the studio got cold feet and decided to tone down too many of the elements that made the original so chilling, most notably doing a half-assed job on the Phantom makeup for fear of reminding viewers of those who’d been disfigured in the war. It gives the key unmasking sequence the impact of a soggy washcloth. The rest of the movie is pretty lame too, with an abundance of corny musical numbers that go on and on, soppy romance, and fatigued comic relief where the horror should be. Rains is very sympathetic but not at all menacing as the Phantom with none of the delicious mania he supplied in The Invisible Man. While the decision to shoot in color made commercial sense—and the film certainly looks sumptuous— it also made this Phantom the odd-man out from Universal’s greatest monster pictures. Tellingly, the other second-wave monster pictures would return to black and white. This is less essential than even the monster rallies, which are at least terrific fun.

Nocturna: Granddaughter of Dracula (1979- dir. Harry Hurwitz) *½

Nearly every detail of this soft-core disco vampire comedy seems consciously designed to make it rank as one of the worst movies ever made. The awful script. The cheesy, gratuitous nudity. The absolutely horrid acting. The rhythmically-challenged dancing. The sad appearances of John Carradine as the count and Yvonne De Carlo as his old flame. Brother Theodore’s hammy mugging as a werewolf/Renfield type character who longs for the title vamp. She is really the one who brings the terrible Nocturna: Granddaughter of Dracula to unprecedented heights of terribility. Crazy-eyed, perpetually grinning Nai Bonet must have taken a page from the Bela Lugosi book of acting by learning her lines phonetically, because there isn’t a trace of expression in anything she says. This would be prime stuff for at-home Mystery Science Theatre sessions if it wasn’t so boring. That half star is for some pretty good numbers by a disco group called Moment of Truth.

October 21

Blackenstein (1973- dir. William A. Levey) **

Review: ‘Karloff as The Invisible Man’

A swarm of potential Karloff vehicles materialized in the vapor trails behind Frankenstein. Universal jolted many into existence: The Old Dark House and The Mummy and The Black Cat. Several were stillborn, including films that would eventually be realized with different actors in their lead roles. Too bad for Boris, but The Wolf Man would make a star of Lon Chaney, Jr., and The Invisible Man would do the same for Claude Rains, even though the actor’s face is only non-invisible (or visible, if you prefer) for mere seconds before the credits roll. Of course, Frankenstein made Boris Karloff a star, and such scant screen-time hardly befitted a creature of his stature. Director James Whale saw his latest horror project (and his latest project to delay his career-long obsession, The Road Back) run through a number of variations before he deemed it suitable for filming. By that point, Karloff was off the project because studio execs Carl and Junior Laemmle had failed to give him the salary increase he deserved.

A voice as distinctive as Karloff’s dulcet lisp would have made the actor as recognizable as an invisible man as a visible one, but early drafts of the film would have given viewers far more glimpses of his equally iconic face than the completed film starring Rains. In the latest essential volume in his essential “Alternate History for Classic Film Monsters” series, Philip J. Riley collects all that remains of the discarded swipes at The Invisible Man. After his brief overview of the film’s history, Riley hands over the reins to R.C. Sherriff, who would ultimately compose the script James Whale filmed in 1933. In an extended excerpt from Sherriff’s 1968 autobiography, No Leading Lady, the screenwriter spends much time wringing his hands over the faithfulness of his accepted script. Apparently, Universal expected its screenwriters to use their source material as the merest seeds that might sprout almost completely original ideas (it is unclear whether this was Sherriff’s interpretation of the studio’s desires or if the Laemmeles specifically demanded originality). Indeed, his plot is the most similar to the one in H.G. Wells’s novella, though the author took issue with Sherriff’s decision to have the invisibility formula turn Dr. Griffin into a madman.

One can only guess how violently Wells would have reacted to James Whale and novelist Gouveneur Morris’s treatment, which recasts the Invisible Man as a sort of evil faith-healer, who lives in seclusion because of his horribly scarred face like the Phantom of the Opera and fears crucifixes like Dracula. Or Richard Shayer’s distasteful unfinished treatment/script, which would have set Karloff off on a rape-spree through Manhattan. John Huston’s treatment is the eeriest, but Sherriff clearly made the right decision by adapting Wells faithfully while working in the humorousness of the Shayer draft. And Sherriff quite sells himself short in his autobiography by suggesting he did little more than reformat Wells’s novella as a screenplay. He enriched that tale by inventing the madness-inducing drug Monocane, introducing the love interest that would somewhat humanize the otherwise deplorable Griffin, and nudging in the humor that surely appealed to cheeky Whale and helped make his film a classic. Because the unfilmed treatments all end abruptly, Riley includes the complete first draft of Sherriff’s shooting script, which is most notable for missing some of the film’s funniest flourishes.

November 10, 2009: Rains Reigns

If I asked you to name one of Universal’s most formidable Monster Movie stars, who would be the first to creep into your consciousness? Karloff? Lugosi? Chaney (senior or junior)? I’d wager that precious few would first think of Claude Raines, although he played one of Universal’s most memorable horrors. The problem is he was invisible, so aside from a face swathed in surgical bandages, there wasn’t much to associate Raines with the role aside from his voice. But what a voice! Having a strong Cockney accent and a childhood stutter, Claude Rains was an unlikely choice to play a character almost entirely reliant on his voice for expression, yet his powerful performance still proved his formidable acting abilities, bandages or no bandages.

Rains was the only lead in a Universal Monster movie not to be typecast as some sort of walking nightmare. He went on to sizable roles in some of Hollywood’s most celebrated films: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Now Voyager, Casablana, Hitchcock’s Notorious, and Lawrence of Arabia, to name a few. But he still managed to build a noteworthy horror pedigree. With the possible exception of his turn as Captain Renault in Casablanca, Dr. Griffin in James Whale’s The Invisible Man (1933) may still be Rains’s most iconic role even though his face is only on exhibition for a few seconds during the final shot of the film. Even hidden by gauze, he displayed all the versatility he’d bring to future roles: dishing out dastardly one-liners with the aplomb of the Joker, romantically cooing his devotion to Gloria Stewart, singing jovially as his seemingly disembodied pants chase a woman down a snowy path, cackling like a looner, madly declaring his intentions to “rob and rape and kill!” At once charming, funny, frightening, and tortured, Rains makes Griffin a more complex character than, say, Lugosi’s Dracula or Karloff’s Mummy. He brought that same depth to his performance as Erique in Arthur Lubin’s Phantom of the Opera (1943), although the film suffers due to its awkward moments of humor and uninspired make-up: compare Rains’s mildly scarred puss to Lon Chaney’s horrifically skull-like countenance. There’s little wonder why Chaney is most associated with the part, but this is hardly Rains’s fault.

George Waggner’s The Wolf Man (1941) was a stronger picture than Phantom, although Rains’s role in it was considerably less monstrous. As Sir John Talbot, the father of Lon Chaney Jr.’s cursed Larry, Rains imbued the character with a formidability that transcended his short stature (which is especially apparent when he stands beside the towering Chaney). The elder Talbot is reserved, yet Rains also makes it clear that he cares deeply for his estranged son. The climax of the film, in which Rains inadvertently cures his son’s lycanthropy by most unfortunate means, is the closest a Universal Monster Movie came to Shakespearean tragedy.

Apparently, the suits at Universal would have liked to entomb Claude Rains in additional Monster pictures, offering him such juicy parts as Dr. Pretorious in Bride of Frankenstein, Quasimodo in the 1939 version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Wolf Frankenstein in Son of Frankenstein. Surely, Ernest Thesiger, Charles Laughton, and Basil Rathbone all gave unforgettable performances in these respective roles, but there’s little doubt that Rains would have delivered his usual superb work had he accepted them. His choosiness—and the anonymity of his most famous creep—kept Claude Rains from sitting at the sides of Karloff, Lugosi, and the Chaneys in terms of Universal’s most revered Monster portrayers, but his incredible work as Erique the Phantom, Sir John Talbot, and especially Dr. Griffin suggest that this situation deserves to be corrected.

Claude Rains was born 120 years ago today.