HUE & CRY highlights Film Movements's quartet of classic British comedies starring Alastair Sim

Neither as well-known nor as well-loved perhaps as Alec Guinness, British comedian Alastair Sim was nonetheless a major force in British comedy from the 1940s through the 1960s. Now four of his best-known comedies are getting a Blu-ray debut in excellent transfers (without, unfortunately, SDH English subitles) in a four-disc package titled ALASTAIR SIM'S SCHOOL FOR LAUGHTER from Film Movement.

Film buiffs of a certain age will easily recall the original version of The Belles of St. Trinian's and School for Scoundrels. Lesser known but just as worthy are the other two "classics" included: Laughter in Paradise and the film under consideration here, HUE AND CRY.

Helmed by one of Britain's undersung comedic directors, Charles Crichton (at right), and written by the wonderful T.E.B. Clarke, Hue and Cry tells the tale of a gang of thugs whose clever leader uses a popular comic strip to alert his band to their next moves.

Another gang -- of British school-kids (below) -- led by an even more clever fellow gets on to the bad guys and determines to stop them, which leads to all sorts of fun and games and even, at the finale, more genuine suspense than you might have imagined possible in this kind of movie.

The ubiquitous Mr. Sim (shown at center on poster, top) plays the very funny, sunny, and near-camp writer of the comic book's story, who must be cajoled and then finally threatened into helping the kids. He is delightful, as usual, but it is Mr. Crichton's wonderful use of the so-recently bombed-out Britain (Hue and Cry was filmed only two years after the end of World War II) that both startles and rather amazes.

He and writer Clarke know how to plot and pace, so their movie bubbles along with charm and wit, from the funny and original opening credits right through the amusing and thrilling finish. The rest of the cast, of kids and polished British actors, are as delightful as is Mr. Sim. There's not a false step in the entire enterprise.

With this month's release of these classic Sim comedies, along with last month's offering of fine British war films -- both partnered by Film Movement and Studio Canal -- viewers are getting a very nice taste of British classics along with some wonderful accompanying Bonus Features. More please! (But consider including the SDH subtitles next time, OK?)

Blu-ray gift for Bud Abbott & Lou Costello fans: all 28 of their movies in ABBOTT & COSTELLO: The Complete Universal Pictures Collection

TrustMovies has never been sure quite why the antics of comedy team Abbott & Costello have not been enshrined into the certified canon of movie greatness, as has the work of so many other comedians and comedy teams. Was it because the pair was too mainstream?

Well, so were Martin & Lewis, yet Lou Costello's comedy is one hell of a lot subtler than that of Jerry Lewis. But, then, I guess the French critics -- followed by some of the American variety -- didn't take Costello (below, right, with Bela Lugosi) quite to heart the way they did our Jerry.

Bud Abbott (below, left) was a terrific "straight man" for Costello's antics, and an excellent stand-in for us in the audience, making the comedy all that much funnier. But it was the chubby, endearing, frightened and foolish Costello who always made us laugh -- and love him all the more for his many foibles.

This new collection -- so far as I know, the first time their 28 films have been gathered into an entire collection (and certainly the first time they've appeared in high-def, in these glowing, delicious, black-and-white transfers that look better than any A&C movie I've yet seen) -- is a must for fans of the duo. Though the Blu-ray edition is a pricey $136, that's still under $5 per movie, while the copious Bonus Features alone should keep you busy for the remainder of the year -- if not the rest of your lifetime. (Which might amount to the same thing for those of us in the 70s/80s category, who grew up laughing at the antics of this pair.)

The films themselves range in release date from 1940 to 1955, during which the duo made on average a couple of movie per year. The first of these is ONE NIGHT IN THE TROPICS (above), in which A&C get billing below stars of the time like Allan Jones and Nancy Kelly (later Oscar nominated for The Bad Seed), but above that of co-star Robert Cummings. This movie, another of so many that demonstrates how much better was the screenwriting for even throw-away comedies back in the day, is an entertaining little lark, complete with songs (by Jerome Kern) and a musical-number finale that's a glorious hoot.

The team of A&C made nothing but comedies, of course, yet within that framework they inhabited an enormous number of genres -- from westerns (The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap, a delight that co-stars the great Marjorie Main, above) to war films (Buck Privates, In the Navy, Keep 'Em Flying), horror (A&C Meet Frankenstein) to sci-fi (A&C Go to Mars below), among others. What's more, their comedy routines lend themselves so easily to all these genres -- for genres, over time of course, are ever more easily parodied.

The famous routines -- of which Who's on First? is probably most known (and seen in its entirety via One Night in the Tropics) -- are still great fun, and so are these two sterling comedians. Kids today who have never seen Abbott & Costello will have some delight in store, should their parents see fit to grace them with a look at these funny, fun-filled movies.

As of now, I've seen only a half dozen of the 28 included in the three discs in this collection -- Hold that Ghost, co-starring the wonderful Joan Davis (above, center) is another "must" -- but I won't be sharing it with even my very best friends until I've viewed the whole collection, which constitutes an absolute treasure for A&C fans.

From SHOUT! FACTORY, Abbott & Costello: The Complete Universal Pictures Collection hits the street on Blu-ray this coming Tuesday, November 19. The transfers are wonderful and, as earlier noted, the Bonus Features assembled here are themselves worth the collection's asking price. (Still, I do hope these discs will turn up somewhere for rental, as well.) 

Blu-ray debut for Robert Siodmak's deliciously entertaining film noir-lite, PHANTOM LADY

TrustMovies had imagined that he'd seen the famous 1944 film, PHANTOM LADY at some point along his movie-going life. But, no: this new Blu-ray of the film, released via Arrow Video/Arrow Academy last month, proved quite the eye-opening experience.  Prolific and under-rated director Robert Siodmak (below, of The 

Killers,  Criss Cross and The Spiral Staircase -- among a number of other first-class films) does a bang-up job of bringing to life the screenplay by Bernard C. Schoenfeld (his first), based on the novel by Cornell Woolrich.

The story's a whopper, all right, but it is told with such energy, spirit and twists/turns that it easily hold you throughout the crisp, 87-minute running time.

The film also stars one of my favorite leading ladies of the 40s, Ella Raines, shown above (which was why I was certain I must have seen it), in what is arguably her best role. Ms Raines plays the dogged and loyal secretary to a boss charged with the murder of his nasty wife, and she brings the same combo of sass and class that she showed off in other films of the day (see Impact, for one) and is consistently believable and charming.

Phantom Lady is full of typical noir tropes of the time (the fine cinematography is by Elwood Bredell), but I call it noir-lite due to how often amusing and energetic the movie is, along with the fact that it -- finally, at least -- offers a much more positive take on life and love than do so many other noirs.

Top-billed in the film is suave leading men of the period, Franchot Tone (above, right), in a role quite unlike almost all his others I recall. Mr. Tone doesn't even make an appearance unless around halfway through the mystery, but once he does, he definitely commands things.

The would-be hero is essayed by a looker named Alan Curtis (above and below, right), but his role is so circumscribed that only Ms Raines comes through as anything approaching the heroic.

The plot offers so much frisky fun and consistent incident -- a woman's hat (above, worn by Fay Helm in the title role; below, on Aurora Miranda in the part of a spicy/funny showgirl) proves perhaps the most important prop in the proceedings -- that the end result is what you'd call a lulu of a tale.

Supporting cast is aces, with special mention of Thomas Gomez, below, left, who plays the quiet, subdued and very caring and intelligent detective on the case. Once Gomez's character begins investigating in earnest, the movie grows even better: His marvelous "take" on the character of the murderer offers the kind of psychoanalysis that seems to me to be far ahead of most anything that Hollywood was dishing out at the time.

Also in the cast, and in a particularly strong performance is that unmissable character actor whose work graced so many movies, Elisha Cook, Jr., below). He's very good here -- sleazy and craven as hell -- and his single extended scene is a memorable one.

A model movie that's an unusual blending of light and dark, good and evil, and humor, romance and mayhem, Phantom Lady should be on everyone's list of films to catch up on. Or maybe see again, if it's been a few decades since you first did.

From Arrow Video/Arrow Academy and distributed via MVD Visual, the film hit Blu-ray in a nifty new transfer last month, and is available now for purchase and (I would hope) rental and/or streaming. 

December Sunday Corner With Lee Liberman: Dee Rees' MUDBOUND

“The arc of the moral universe is long, 

but it bends toward justice.”

 ....Martin Luther King, Jr.

Writer/director Dee Rees (below) and screenwriter Virgil Williams adapted this quietly painful yet transcendent saga from a novel by Hillary Jordan — a tale of the daily rigors of two families who work the same unforgiving land in the Mississippi delta of 80 years ago. The ensemble drama, MUDBOUND, gives voice to the point of view of each of the main characters, bound as they are to each other and the mud, furrows, and trials of eking a living off the land. It is also as pure a study of bigotry as you’ve ever seen — the everyday condescension that blacks and other minorities still endure. The movie captures the relentless dailiness of this as if it were today, not the 1940s.

In that way it is also the story of our original sin — the polar opposite of the flag we fly: “all men are created equal and are endowed with inalienable rights…..”. The current iteration of American racism smacks of repressed rage at not being so white and Christian anymore; the sounds of America have gotten meaner as our non-white population increases. The President sings the same tune as everybody’s racist uncle and Mudbound’s foul-mouthed Pappy. Trumpism is racism, says Adam Serwer, an Atlantic editor.

Trump’s appeal doesn’t originate in economic suffering; his followers are driven by the desire to suppress non-white America’s civil and voting rights. The film plunges us into the murk of racial memory, the metaphorical mud of the delta; it stars everyday meanness in its Jim Crow rules and poverty. The Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday’s review of Mudbound compares it to great literature of Faulkner and Steinbeck and the sweeping film sagas of William Wyler and John Ford. The difference in Mudbound is that it is the daily earth-bound struggle itself that is epic — the warp and weave of farm life under segregation in rural Mississippi during the 1940’s, writ large.

The landowner is laconic Henry McAllan, his cheerless wife Laura (Jason Clarke and Carey Mulligan, below), their daughters, and sadistic, racist Pappy (Jonathan Banks). Henry’s younger brother Jamie (Garrett Hedlund, early in his years of leading-man heart-crushing) goes off to war and then returns home.

Their tenant-farmer neighbors, shown below, are the Jacksons: Hap (Rob Morgan), his wife Florence (a poignantly heroic Mary J. Blige), and their children including oldest son Ronsel (Jason Mitchell) who also makes the round trip to war and back home to the delta.

Hap Jackson grieves his ancestral ties to this earth: “What good is a deed? My grandfathers and great uncles, grandmothers and great aunts, father and mother… worked this land all their lives, this land that will never be theirs… They sweated until they bled; they bled until they died… Died with the dirt of this same 200 acres under their fingernails… all their deeds undone. Yet this man, this place, this law say you need a Deed--not deeds.”

Laura McAllan dreams in brown, knees and hair encrusted in mud (constantly refreshed by downpours), boot-shaped brown patches marching across the floor. Violence is part and parcel of country life, she says. “You’re forever being assailed by dead things. Dead mice, dead rabbits, dead possums. You find them in the yard, you smell them rotting under the house. And then there are the creatures you kill for food. Chickens, hogs, deer, frogs, squirrels. Pluck, skin, disembowel, debone, fry, eat. Start again…..” There is miscarriage, incest, adultery, murder, and Klan violence quietly woven into the fabric. But the central relationship is that of the returning warriors: Jamie a bomber pilot and Ronsel a tank sergeant in the black battalion that General Patton used to spearhead his army (archival photo below).

The story occurs at a turning point referred to as the ‘forgotten years of the black revolution’ — World War II and it’s aftermath.

Ronsel (above, right) says: “Home again, home again jiggity jig; coon, spade, darky, nigger. Went off to fight for my country and found it hasn’t changed a bit. Over there we were the liberator, they were lined up waiting for us, throwing flowers and cheering. Here I’m just another nigger pushing a plow…..

“The army gave us separate barracks, separate blood supply, separate latrines... But them European girls they didn’t have any problem with us at all… But that was then… and right now I guess I’m right where I should be — throwing my life away.”

The two depressed men get drunk together, flouting the ingrained habits of segregation and leading Pappy (below, left) to scold Ronsel: “I don’t know what they let you do over there, but you in Mississippi now — you leave by the back door”. It doesn’t take long for both former soldier-heroes to feel like aliens in a South they have grown out of.

In fact, the end of legal segregation in America and the British de-colonialization of Asia and Africa were the unplanned outcomes of war fought against German and Japanese racism. Although, as Ronsel says, they were segregated as soldiers, they got jobs, pulled their weight, and black and white fought as one against the enemy. Dee Rees makes the point with a U.S. flyer shooting down Germans who were pummeling Jamie’s plane, after which the rescuer, a black pilot, hi-fives Jamie on a fly-by (archival photo of black airmen below).

In the 1920’s the socialist speaker/writer, A Philip Randolph, organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; during the 1941 war build-up he organized a march on Washington demanding that blacks be hired for factory jobs. When Randolph assured the president that 100,000 would show up and demonstrate, Roosevelt signed the order, the march was pre-empted, and blacks entered the workforce.

After the war, Truman ordered the integration of U.S. armed forces. Black voters then turned out to help Truman defeat Dewey in the 1948 presidential election. The next leap forward for civil rights wasn’t until 1963, taking us into the modern era of integration.

No -- Mississippi held no post-war hope for Jamie or Ronsel, and Rees crafts off-ramps for them, leaving the delta to marinate in Jim Crow. The viewer comes away feeling waked up again to the fact that ever since slaves were brought to America we have been mired in racism. Still, this movie with its mostly note-perfect story-telling is uplifting rather than depressing. Last week Mississippi opened its civil rights museum and a Democrat, civil rights lawyer Doug Jones, just won an Alabama Senate seat ("turning back the dead hand of George Wallace," said Howell Raines, retired editor of The New York Times and an Alabama native). We are on a journey and must move forward.

Mudbound got raves on the festival circuit but was not picked up for distribution until content chief at Netflix, Ted Sarandos, stepped up. Yet this might be one of the more absorbing and meaningful films of the year in its quiet revelation of America’s original sin. It came to theaters and has been streaming on Netflix since late November and has received some nominations for awards, including Mary J Blige’s ‘Mighty River’, a spiritual she co-wrote and sang for the film (press here to have a listen).

The above post was written by our 

 monthly correspondent, Lee Liberman.

Black lives mattered: Nancy Buirski's latest, THE RAPE OF RECY TAYLOR, opens in theaters

Over the past six years documentarian Nancy Buirski has made four terrific non-fiction films: The Loving Story, Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq, By Sidney Lumet and now THE RAPE OF RECY TAYLOR. If her newest documentary does not reach -- film-wise, at least -- the level of her previous movies, its subject matter alone makes it an extremely important piece of work. The documentary relates the story of the titular 24-year-old black woman in Alabama back in 1944 who, after leaving an evening church service and walking toward her home and family, was forced at gunpoint into an automobile by/with six young white men, who took her off with them, raped her multiple times and mutilated her sexual organs (she was unable to have more children after the rapes) and then left her by the roadside, once she had promised "not to tell."

This is a disgusting tale, though not at all unusual in our Southern states during the time of Jim Crow (yes, and before and since). What makes it particularly resonant at this moment, of course, is all the instances of sexual harassment currently coming to the surface and their seeming consequences for the harassers.

I say "seeming" because only time will tell how much will actually "change" regarding male behavior toward the female. Yet whatever problems white women have had regarding sexual harassment, the plight of black women in our country's history would seem to be at least ten times as awful.

What made Recy Taylor's case so significant was less the event itself than her reaction to it. She and her family actually spoke up about what had happened to the community at large. Ms Buirski, shown at right, lets us discover all of this -- the event, finally, and Recy's and her family's reaction to it -- and her film is full of shock and anger at how and why all this took place. (And took place much more frequently than most of us whites would care to know.)

We experience how the black community around the nation rose to the occasion, raised money and publicized the event and its follow-up.

What makes the movie fall down somewhat, particularly compared with the filmmaker's earlier projects, is the fact that Buirski evidently did not have access to nearly as much specific archival footage as in her previous films. Consequently, she must rely on imagined or re-created footage, most of which simply does not do the trick.

Almost from the beginning, this seems unnecessarily repetitive and a little tiresome. And yet, once we hear the known facts of the case, the anger and enormous sense of injustice is so strong that it carries the movie along.

We hear from Recy's surviving family members, from a few of the surviving white families of the perpetrators or their friends, along with other Alabama folk -- many of whom present a very good picture of just why Roy Moore is so likely to win his upcoming election. It's a degrading, disgusting spectacle. But, hey, that's our South, honey. D.W. Griffith would be proud.

The Rape of Recy Taylor is a story that needs to be told, and I am glad Ms Buirski rose to the occasion. Given what she had to work with, I suspect that the film is as good as we could get in terms of a full-length documentary. Though perhaps an hour-long program for television might have worked even better.

From Augusta Films and running 91 minutes, the movie opens in Los Angeles this Friday, December 8, at Laemmle's Monica Film Center, and in New York City next Friday, December 15, at the IFC Center.

Yet more excellent European TV via MHz: Krivine/Daucé/Triboit's A FRENCH VILLAGE

Despite our country's ludicrous array of Trump supporters (not to mention the even more ludicrous Donald himself) and their cries of "Make America Great Again" by tossing out Mexicans and Muslims and -- let's make it clear -- anyone who isn't white, their "great" America remains a country that has never experienced what most of Europe did during World War II. That would be "occupation" by a foreign power, Nazi Germany, who ruled with an iron hand, using everything from intimidation to torture and death to keep the populace in line. It is all too easy to make fun of the French for losing their fight against the invading German army, but almost every other Western and Eastern European power was occupied, too (or worse, allied with the occupiers), not to mention the Scandinavian countries.

What is especially bracing and unusual about the French television series, A FRENCH VILLAGE (Un village français) is how it shows us what occupation meant for the occupied country in detail and precision, with all the nasty ironies intact. What it also makes so very clear is how impossible it was (without giving up your life, of course) not to betray everything and everyone -- from your country to your family to your friends at some point or other in this awful occupation. We human beings have enough trouble being kind and just during normal times. When you're part of the conquered, difficulties quadruple.

As created and (much of which) written by the trio Frédéric Krivine (shown above), Emmanuel Daucé and Philippe Triboit, with M. Triboit directing many of the episodes, the series has now reached five seasons -- only two of which have appeared so far on DVD.  But these 24 roughly-45-to-50-minute segments are enough to give viewers a fuller look at what "occupation" meant than anything from anywhere I've so far seen.

How a populace is convinced to collaborate with its enemy is shown with surprising skill and art. The series strikes me as both historically accurate and also rich in drama, with only an occasional coincidence to shake a bit of that believability. The reasons for collaboration are many and varied, from simple survival to bettering one's station. Two prime components in the collaborative process are the village doctor (Robin Renucci, above, left) -- along with his pampered wife (Audrey Fleurot, above, center, of Spiral) -- who is appointed town mayor by the Germans and must then work out one problem after another.

Those who collaborate for profit is one of the town's leading businessmen (Thierry Godard, also of Spiral), who gladly cooperates with the enemy in order to reap the many benefits. Among the various villains is one in particular (played smoothly and sleekly by the steely-yet-appealing Richard Sammel, above), who takes Nazi sex and pain to new heights (and lows).

Along the way, food -- or often the lack of it -- plays an important part in the proceedings, with pineapple upside-down cake,  foie gras, and a very large bunny (below) among the items used for maximum tension, irony and surprise. In these first two seasons, the French Resistance is only beginning to be felt, with the French Communists who incite this shown to be both leaders and idiots in their insistence on hierarchy and following orders. (That's the Mayor's Communist brother, above (played by Fabrizio Rongione), who also figures heavily into the plot.)

Toward the finale of Season Two, the doctor's Jewish maid is given a quietly stirring and absolutely on-point speech about collaboration that's should be a keeper that is shown to all future generations. There is a constant threat of violence here, and sometime its follow-through, as well. But the series does not milk events for mere suspense and thrills. There are plenty of both, yet the filmmakers are much more interested in the vagaries of human behavior than in the usual guns/guts/gore routine.

Available on DVD (those first two seasons) with some, perhaps all, of the others viewable via streaming from the MHz Networks, A French Village is one of those rare television series that should appeal to history buffs, seniors who still have a memory of WWII, and just about anyone who loves a good tale well told. Click here to see how to get the series now.

Bonus: There are also half a dozen very fine "extras" 

at the end of Season 2 that should prove 

of interest to film and history buffs.