1944 - MADEMOISELLE FIFI, producer Val Lewton's World War II propgranda films.

You weren't a Hollywood studio or producer worth your salt if you didn't crank out a propaganda film or two during World War II.  One of the oddest propaganda films to come out of RKO studios was from classy low budget horror movie producer Val Lewton.

Rather than kicking out another Allies vs the Nazis film with actors like Erroll Flynn, Humphrey Bogart and especially John Wayne.  Lewton and his director Robert Wise chose to film something a little more subtle.  Using the same source material as John Ford and his writer Dudley Nichols used for Stagecoach, Mademoiselle Fifi has a group of people with different backgrounds all riding a stagecoach.  In this case the stagecoach happens to be in France during the late 1800's when it was occupied by Prussians aka Germans.

The cast is a group of character actors which I can assure you no one has ever heard from.  John Emery (Rocketship X-M, The Girl Can't Help It), Kurt Kreuger (Sahara, Unfaithfully Yours) and Alan Napier ( Alfred in the original Batman TV series) to name a few.  Probably the biggest name in the cast was French actress Simone Simon who had a very spotty career in Hollywood in the 30's and 40's before she returned to France.  Simone Simon is remembered for her role as Irena in The Cat People.

 

Mademoiselle Fifi is essentially a rather talky drama about the role the French people had in dealing with the Prussian invaders occupying their county.  Simone Simon plays the only character who has the guts to stand up to the Prussians.  The film is very obviously a not so subtle comparison of  the Nazi occupation of France in the late 1940's.

 

The film is interesting especially if you are a fan of Val Lewton's films.  The dialog is literate and Robert Wise does a fairly good job making this very talkative script cinematic. Val Lewton always aimed for something a little more different than the regular movie stuff that Hollywood spit out during the 1940's.

The film was written by Josef Mischel and Peter Ruric although Lewton probably had his hands in it as well.  The running time is a brisk 69 minutes.

1994 - BARCELONA, the second film from Whit Stillman

The second film from Whit Stillman a less than prolific filmmaker is another quirky comedy much like his first film Metropolitan.  In Metropolitan, Stillman set his story in the world of the debutante ball season in New York.  His main character got himself mixed up with a bunch of fairly self absorbed preppies.  It was an offbeat and amusing film  looking into a world few people knew about and it got Stillman attention as a filmmaker to watch.

His next film Barcelona  had a bigger budget since he was now associated with a film studio and it is almost a chamber piece.  The film focuses on a couple of cousins living in Barcelona, Spain.  It follows their involvement in relationships with some Spanish women and their adjustment to Spanish culture particularly at a time when the United States was not very popular in Europe.

 

This film like Metropolitan also has a lot of that dry humor that was already a characteristic of Stillman's films and this was only his second time behind the camera.  The performances are interesting if at times on the dry side and when the film starts to get a little to dramatic Stillman slips in a couple of  humorous lines and situations to lighten the mood.

 

In the world of Whit Stillman, all of the Spanish women are beautiful and basically jump into bed with our American characters on a minute's notice.  The men are self aware if rather on the neurotic side but not in a debilitating way.  Barcelona is a minor if entertaining comedy, I suppose in the good old days they would call this a "civilized entertainment.

Written by Whit Stillman, the running time is 101 minutes.

1968 - THE BASTARD or I bastardi

This rather oddball Italian euro crime feature is set in Arizona but the credits acknowledge that the film was shot in New Mexico, whatever.  The plot involves two criminal brothers who are basically robbing and shooting people all over the American Southwest.  One of the brothers  ( Giuliano Gemma) is betrayed by his current girlfriend to the other brother (typically scary actor Klaus Kinski) who steals his suitcase full of jewels and injures him for life.  The film turns into a revenge story from that point on with Giuliano Gemma out to kill his brother Kinski.

There are lots of shootings, car chases and a couple of gorgeous women one played by Margaret Lee.  In addition onetime James Bond leading lady Claudine Auger who was Domino in Thunderball, shows up in this film.  Also in the cast is legendary 40's glamour star Rita Hayworth as the drunken mother of the two brothers.  Hayworth suffered from dementia towards the end of her life but I don't know if that affected her performance in this film, she is supposed to be playing a drunk.

 

The director is a guy named Duccio Tessari an Italian writer/director who worked in the "Spaghetti Western", euro crime, and war movie genres, a versatile fellow.  You can give him credit for moving the story along and making it interesting and watchable.  He has a good eye for staging action scenes and picking locations.  Having two gorgeous women as costars doesn't hurt this film any.  The Bastard is a decent watch if you are into crime films.  I have to say that the film does have a rather odd ending.

 

The film was written by Mario Di Nardo, Ennio de Concini and Duccio Tessari.  The running time is 102 minutes.