Déjà vu Dalliance

An influential and innovative director that is sadly unknown to multiple generations of movie enthusiasts is Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, who would have turned one hundred and twenty a couple of weeks ago on January 10th. Best known for Battleship Potemkin (a laudable feature that will be reviewed here in due course), those in the know also point to his first full length motion picture, Strike, as being a vital piece of film history (it is often cited along with Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane as being one of the most audacious and impressive efforts by a first time filmmaker). Released in 1925 (the same year as Potempkin), though set in 1903, the aptly named picture, told in six parts, looks at a factory workers’ strike in pre-Revolutionary Russia. A fascinating study of early socialism versus capitalism from the Soviet perspective, the workers are close to their tipping point. . . looking for better hours, higher pay, less work for the child labourers and other such things. With the elite sensing their waning drive, they warn their spies on the inside to keep both eyes open for civil unrest – each of these men have an animalistic nickname, their personas connected to the beast they have been named for.

1930's Hollywood films are rather intriguing. Though hit hard by the Great Depression (much like everywhere else), the escapism of movies still brought 60-75 million people into theatres each and every week (and, these numbers are for the worst times of the decade). The 30s also harkened in the era of the talkie – quickly putting an end to the silent film industry. The decade can also be split into two distinct periods: the five years before the Motion Picture Production Code (sometimes called the Hays Code) officially came into being (often referred to as the Pre-Code), and the five years after it was put into place – meaning that there was now a strict set of rules and regulations that were being strongly enforced. Both a curse and a blessing (many of the most talented directors found creative and visually clever ways to circumvent the Code – DeMille and Hitchcock are two that immediately come to mind), it did limit creative freedom in a major way, as sex, violence and language were severely censored – movies could no longer depict lacking morals (that is, unless the behaviour would be punished in the end).

As three volunteering women rush aboard a river-boat that takes children from underprivileged families on an annual daytrip, they receive an unexpected letter from one of their friends explaining that she has left their quaint little city behind with one of their beloved husbands in tow, putting each into a state of crisis. This is the suspenseful hook for the 1949 romantic drama A Letter to Three Wives, written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. The letter writer is voice over narrator Addie Ross (Oscar winner Celeste Holm) – the sultry, well connected dame is never shown, and the husband she has run off with is also left in the dark until almost the very end. Doing their duty as good citizens, Deborah Bishop (Jeanne Crain), Lora Mae Hollingsway (Linda Darnell), and Rita Phipps (Ann Sothern), three longtime friends, take the kids on the cruise and stop off to have a picnic, each flashing back (at a moment when they are not busy) to a time in which their significant other may have shown their true colours in regards to Addie.

It is Noirvember once again. . . the only time of the year when cynicism, doom-laden prospects and other dark themes should be sought out and applauded. The first film noir to grace Filmizon.com this November, 2017, is 1946's The Stranger. Directed by Orson Welles (his fourth feature, following the two classics Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons), this drama (with several film noir elements) follows Mr. Wilson (Edward G. Robinson – intriguingly, Welles originally wanted Agnes Moorehead portraying the lead as some sort of spinster lady), a sort of detective with the United Nations War Crimes Commission – or, to give his job a cooler name, he is basically a ‘Nazi Hunter’.