1986 - PIRATES, Roman Polanski's idea of a fun pirate movie

 After a well regarded literary adaption called Tess.  Roman Polanski wanted his next film to be a fun pirate romp for younger audiences.  Taking inspiration from his favorite Disneyland ride, The Pirates of the Caribbean, Polanski decided on making a swashbuckler.

But Polanski being Polanski this fun film is very strange.  It has scenes of attempted cannibalism, people vomiting, stepping on dog poop and a very odd rat eating scene.  Just the kind of stuff to induce an audience to see it.

The film also has a beautiful damsel in distress who at the end of the film doesn't get rescued and looks to end up marrying the chief villain of the film.

Walter Matthau is the lead playing a character called Captain Red and in spite of the strange casting he's actually pretty good as a pirate.  Polanski had intended to play Captain Red's sidekick a Frenchman called "The Frog,"  but instead the part actually went to a French actor.  

The film has lots of action and it's an impressive production, the film does have some weird funny stuff in it and if you are a fan of this director's sense of humor,  you might laugh out loud at some of the scenes Polanski has staged.

The film was unsurprisingly a big flop.  Roman Polanski and his frequent collaborators Gerard Bach and John Brownjohn wrote the screenplay.  The running time is 112 very weird minutes.

1047 - CROSSFIRE, interesting social conscience film noir

Expecting the worse, a 1940's film noir with a lot of touchy feely stuff about antisemitism, Crossfire as it turns out is a pretty good film. The death of a man who is Jewish starts an investigation of some demobilized army soldiers who had some interaction with the man.  The film features a rather preachy detective played by Robert Young who is there as the conscience of the audience.  Surprisingly this actually kind of works as part of the film's plot line.

Robert Mitchum is one of the soldiers helping the police to understand how the murder happened, Robert Ryan in another of his bad guy roles is the bigot who the police focus on.

 

Crossfire is considered a film noir, lots of shadows and expressive lighting. The studio was RKO who was quite good at putting together these types of films.  This time the subject of antisemitism was an interesting approach to what could have been yet another standard film noir. 

 

John Paxton wrote the screenplay from Richard Brook's novel, the running time is an efficient 86 minutes.

1965 - MASQUERADE - entertaining comedy thriller

Entertaining comedy thriller from Basil Dearden.  Cliff Robertson and Jack Hawkins are pressed into service by the British Government to save a young Arab prince from being assassinated.  It seems the British need the oil rights in the prince's country to keep their own economy running.  

Lots of crosses and double crosses, some decent action, location filming in Spain.  This is an entertaining film that knows not to take itself very seriously.  The film also features the one of the stars of Danger: Diabolik,  Marisia Mell who is very easy on the eyes.

Since Cliff Robertson was hired on as one of the leads, writer William Goldman was called in to rework his dialog.  Probably Goldman had a lot to do with the comedic bits in the film.

Written by William Goldman and producer Michael Relph, the running time is 102 minutes

1956 - THE BATTLE OF THE RIVER PLATE aka The Pursuit of the Graf Spee.

Powell and Pressburger towards the end of their run as a production team known as, The Archers.  The Battle of the River Plate may not be as good as their 1940's masterpieces but it is still a very good war film

During the beginning of World War II the German battle ship, "Admiral Graf Spee" is sinking British merchant ships in the southern hemisphere.  The British Navy sends out a task force to stop the Graf Spee and the film consists of a large scale battle followed by some clever intelligence tricks on the part of the British that eventually stops the run of Graf Spee.

The film as always has a strong focus on characterization particularly adding some depth and complexity to the German captain of the Graf Spee,  Captain Hans Langsdorff a rather sympathetic character.

Powell and Pressburger had real battleships to play with while filming.  Obviously models were used in the actual battles but the battle scenes are exciting.

The film is in many ways in the great tradition of "stiff upper lip" British War films.  But Powell and Pressburger are smart enough to tweak the troupes.

As with every film by The Archers, Powell and Pressburger share screenplay and directing credits.  The film runs 119 minutes.

1944 - MURDER MY SWEET, first shot at a Chandler mystery

The first shot at translating a Raymond Chandler mystery, in this case the film based on Chandler's  Farewell My Lovely came off fairly well.  The screen writer John Paxton used a framing device of Chandler's private detective Philip Marlow being interrogated by the police.  This allowed the Marlow character to narrate the story in a flashback using a lot of Raymond Chandler's hard boiled dialog.  Probably the only misstep was having to work a last minute love story into the film at the end.

The big news with this film was the transformation of singer Dick Powell from one of Busby Berkley's performing pawns in his extravagant Warner Brother's musicals.  Powell does a very good job playing Marlowe.  He gets able assistance from a decent supporting cast, Mike Mazurki as the dumb brute of a gangster, Moose Malone.  Claire Trevor as Helen Grayle the "femme fatal" and Otto Kruger as some sort of phony psychic healer Jules Amthor.  The actor Anne Shirley, real name Dawn Evelyn Paris is Marlowe's love interest Ann Grayle a rather weak role in the film.

 

Considering how confusing these Raymond Chandler stories can be the director Edward Dmytryk does a pretty good job of keeping the plot straight.  The film has lots of noir touches which actually became murder mystery cliches  copied by other detective films.  However Murder My Sweet used them first.

 

The film runs an entertaining 95 minutes, screenplay by John Paxton.