Wise Gals

One of the great horror directors of the 1930s, James Whale shot Frankenstein, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, and The Bride of Frankenstein in just four short years, an impressive feat that also somewhat overshadows a few of his lesser known, non-spook related features – specifically, 1931's Waterloo Bridge. . . which, interestingly enough, earned Whale so much favour with the head of Universal Pictures’ production department, that Carl Laemmle, Jr. (due to a combination of his quality work and coming in under budget), gave the director the choice of anything the studio had in early planning stages – the filmmaker chose Frankenstein, a smart decision. His Waterloo Bridge is based upon Robert E. Sherwood’s 1930 Broadway play of the same name (the playwright based it upon many of his own experiences), where we are transported to London, England, circa World War I. Stuck in the metropolis is Myra (Mae Clarke), a chorus girl who has fallen on hard times.

With the “based on real events” thing getting a bit old, some recent films have started to have fun with this oft-used opening – American Hustle introed with “Some of this actually happened”, while today’s film, Doug Liman’s American Made, was described by the director as “a fun lie based on a true story”. . . a clever way to accentuate the addition of many fictional plot points to enrich the narrative. Tom Cruise plays Barry Seal, a seemingly staid airplane pilot secretly looking for a thrill in his exhausting, routine-driven life. Married to Lucy (Sarah Wright), they have what a traditionalist would coin – the middle class dream – family, home, and solid income. Yet, a well informed CIA agent, Monty ‘Schafer’ (Domhnall Gleeson), tracks Barry down at the end of one of his flights – it does not take much to convince the pilot to sign up, and he is soon working questionable missions for the agency all over Central America.

Tackling Raymond Chandler’s1953 novel “The Long Goodbye” (which features detective Philip Marlowe) in a unique way, director Robert Altman decided to, “call him Rip Van Marlowe, and we took the position that he had been asleep for twenty years, woke up, and Elliott [Gould] just wandered through that film. . . and that was our idea – that he was wandering through this landscape, the film trying to invoke the morals of a previous time into this early seventies.” Set exactly twenty years after the novel’s release date, detective Philip Marlowe (Gould) awakes in the middle of the night from a deep sleep – voice raspy, five o’clock shadow quickly moving onto six. . . a man in an endless stupor. His retro suits, skinny ties and constant smoking are out of place, much like his 1948 Cabriolet Lincoln Continental Convertible – a gent who is undoubtably from another time (even his salary closely resembles what a detective would make in the late 40s or early 50s).

In this era of female empowerment, a name from the past that must be highlighted is Dorothy Arzner. Starting as a typist in the film business for director William C. de Mille (the older brother of Cecil), less than a year later, she had worked her way up to screenwriter, soon after, promoted to editor. Editing star Rudolph Valentino’s Blood and Sand, her impressive skill was immediately evident. Continuing to do stellar work, she eventually threatened to move from Paramount to rival Columbia if not given a directorial job, the studio conceding in 1927. The only major female director in Hollywood during its “Golden Age”, she was able to transition from silent films to talkies (the first female director to make one), and, while filming 1929's The Wild Party, is credited with essentially developing the first boom mike – some say it was to help star Clara Bow get over her fear of talking on camera, others to end her frustration of always having to hide a microphone in one spot on set. . . in any case, she had technicians rig a microphone onto a fishing rod, solving the problem (and, though she did not patent the idea, Edmund H. Hansen did one year later, she is credited with its invention).