After viewing two 2008 films in the last week, I felt it time to go back to my first love -- films from cinema's golden past, especially since I've a lot on my mind of late and it helps being taken back to a simpler and more charming world. Of course I thoroughly enjoyed the two recent movies reviewed below, but neither was able to take me outside myself in the same way. So what have I seen?
The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1936): This British film is a Korda production based on an H.G. Wells book and stars Roland Young, ever associated with Topper, in one of his few non-Hollywood roles of the period. One of the all powerful gods in the sky feels that mankind should be given more powers and decides to experiment on one meek draper's assistant. When Young finds that he can make the material world do his bidding, but not the emotional world, everyone wants a piece of him -- whether for limitless material wealth or for unthought-out do-gooding. Everyone wants to be the one to advise him or use him and everyone ultimately wants to protect their own interests. It's a lovely fantasy as the meek man strives to please himself, but in the end realises that it is folly to try to improve upon what is and that disaster is just a mad wish away.
The Good Earth (1937): I believe that this was the last prestige production from Irving Thalberg before his death and is based on an epic novel by Pearl Buck. Of course no one saw any big problem with assorted Hollywood actors playing Chinese peasants, but character actor Paul Muni and Austrian Luise Rainer (winning her second best actress Oscar for the second year in a row) give it their best shot. I suppose this casting is just about preferable to seeing Katharine Hepburn play Chinese in "Dragon Seed" a few years later. On many levels the movie is an overlong pot-boiler of emotions but it's all so professionally put together that the viewer suspends disbelief as one is taken through starvation, revolution, folly, and plagues of locusts. They absolutely don't make them like this anymore!
I Married a Witch (1942): This is another completely appealing fantasy from director Rene Clair and is short enough and charming enough to entrance. Would-be State Governor Frederic March, the descendant of New England witch hunters, is about to be married to bossy Susan Hayward, when a lightning strike frees the ghosts of Veronica Lake and Cecil Kellaway from the tree where they were entombed some 270 years before after being burned for witchcraft. Now neither March nor Lake are normally associated with light comic roles, but they work well together here, while her tipsy father Kellaway is dead set on revenge but can't quite remember all the necessary spells to stop their growing attraction. Some nice special effects as well (but not quite as nifty as those in the Roland Young film above).
If things are getting on top of you, there is definitely something to be said for looking for an escape in the fantasies of the past.
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