Greenstreet/Lorre: Three Strangers (1946)

After a few weeks of Casablanca knockoffs, it’s refreshing to arrive at Three Strangers and find that it is instead an off-brand version of The Maltese Falcon, with three unsavory characters who find their lives changed by their obsession with a bronze statue. Aside from the headlining duo of Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre, Three Strangers has a number of other tangential connections to The Maltese Falcon, but it’s ultimately a pale imitation of a greater film with good performances nonetheless from the usual suspects.

Crystal Shackleford (Geraldine Fitzgerald) invites two strangers to her apartment with an unlikely offer: her bronze statue of the goddess Kwan Yin will grant them all one wish at the stroke of midnight. The three strangers pool their resources on a sweepstakes ticket; charismatic drunk Johnny West (Peter Lorre) is charmed by the idea, but solicitor Jerome Arbutny (Sydney Greenstreet) is doubtful that he’ll see any money out of the affair. When the three part, their personal lives begin to crumble, but the looming promise of their joint ticket is never far from their minds.

 

Three Strangers is never quite a Maltese Falcon remake, though the connections are surprisingly myriad. You have the cast, yes, and the fixation with a mysterious statue, but you also have a screenplay co-written by John Huston. Director Jean Negulesco (who also helmed last week’s Mask of Dimitrios) had done some preproduction work on The Maltese Falcon before Huston claimed the project, while Geraldine Fitzgerald was an early contender for the Falcon role that eventually went to Mary Astor. Meanwhile, Three Strangers very nearly starred Humphrey Bogart in the Peter Lorre role, but Bogart was committed to The Big Sleep. Perhaps it’s just a big game of “six degrees on the Warner lot,” but it seems there is an unnatural tether between Three Strangers and its more perfect antecedent.

 

The greatest challenge in Three Strangers is that the three strangers spend most of the film estranged from one another. That is, aside from the opening and closing sequences, Greenstreet and Fitzgerald and Lorre never interact, which is both surprising and disappointing. One might expect, for example, that the strangers might find themselves in actuality tied to one another – particularly since one is a solicitor and another becomes involved in a murder trial. Instead, the plots branch off and never meet until the very ending scene at Crystal’s apartment, and consequently there are large sections of the movie that just aren’t very interesting. As has been the case all month, the few moments between Greenstreet and Lorre are so engaging that you’ll wish the whole movie had been made up of them. Apologies to Bogart, but they are the stuff dreams are made of.

 

Three Strangers is almost like watching three separate films that only tie together at the very end. Geraldine Fitzgerald’s subplot starts off with a bombshell but smolders away until nothing quite happens. Sydney Greenstreet gets the unusual opportunity to play a man driven mad by ambition and shortsighted greed; for a performer usually known as the coolest cat in the room, Greenstreet is clearly reveling in the opportunity to mug for the camera. But it’s Lorre who is the most dynamic actor in the film; he too gets to play against type, here headlining as the ostensible romantic lead of Three Strangers. Lorre is eminently charming as Johnny West, just about the only truly sympathetic character the film has, and Lorre plays him like an empathetic and decidedly less psychotic Raskolnikov, a likeable sort who may or may not have simply fallen in with the wrong crowd.

 

I wonder if Three Strangers would fare better on rewatch, since my principal objection to the film seems to be that it wasn’t the film I was expecting. Negulesco is highly competent, and there are some sequences that are undeniably arresting in their tension. Huston, meanwhile, is a gifted storyteller, and he makes his point quite eloquently that human life is a combination of chance and choice. Huston’s message seems to border on nihilism, but one senses also a strong moral compass in the film; the thieves and the philanderers get what’s coming to them, while the innocent get put through the wringer but emerge with a clearer sense of what truly matters in life.

 

It's only a shame that Three Strangers gets really good right at the end, but then I suspect that most audiences will remember that moment, the moment when the film goes from a slice-of-life to a Twilight Zone episode. It’s the kind of poetic justice that Rod Serling adored, and it’s the first film this month that hasn’t seemed to demand a sequel. Perhaps that’s a remarkable achievement in itself – these characters have run their narrative course. We left even The Maltese Falcon wishing for a sequel (and, in the case of Across the Pacific, very nearly got our wish), but Three Strangers wraps up nicely. Moreover, it cautions us to be careful what you wish for; longing for a sequel may not, the film suggests, be in our best interests.

 

Three Strangers is not rated. Directed by Jean Negulesco. Written by John Huston and Howard Koch. Starring Sydney Greenstreet, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Peter Lorre, Joan Lorring, and Alan Napier.

April of the Apes: Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973)

Even if it weren’t the end of a franchise, Battle for the Planet of the Apes would be a strange beast. It’s a post-apocalyptic fable that seeks both to foreshadow an apocalypse to come and to assure the audience that the future is brighter than we think. That tension, between the planet of the apes to come and the planet the apes hope to create, gets brushed away in favor of a shoot-’em-up finale against uninspiring adversaries.

Battle picks up after the talking chimpanzee Caesar (Roddy McDowall) has successfully led apes to revolt against humankind, which has largely destroyed itself in an ensuing nuclear war. In search of guidance, Caesar follows the human MacDonald (Austin Stoker) and the orangutan philosopher Virgil (Paul Williams) into the ruins of the Forbidden City, where a recording of his parents exists. While the gorilla General Aldo (Claude Akins) foments unrest in Caesar’s absence, the ape king and his allies discover a band of irradiated humans living underground, led by Caesar’s old nemesis Kolp (Severn Darden).

 

I’ve said throughout this “April of the Apes” (and I hate to belabor the point) that the franchise is supposed to be a closed-loop time travel story, but Battle seems to hope that this inevitability won’t be the case. Virgil opines that the apes are blind travelers down a timestream with many paths, with no guarantee that the future will repeat itself this time around. Similarly, a framing sequence involving the Lawgiver (played by John Huston, who is quite plainly slumming it) rejects the ape supremacy of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, positing instead a utopia in which the children of man and ape may commune in peace. Yet despite the film’s trajectory toward a happy ending – and not the dystopia Dr. Zaius invoked – Battle (and by extension the entire franchise) ends with a statue of Caesar, weeping. Is the future written, or can we change our destiny? The film isn’t saying, yet it hopes to have it both ways.

 

It might seem unfair to expect this franchise to take a stance on weighty philosophical issues, but let’s not forget Rod Serling was at the helm of the first (and still best) film. This sort of sci-fi fable was exactly in his wheelhouse, and I can’t help but feel Serling would have embraced the dysfunction of dystopia, discomfiting though it might have been for audiences. Indeed, Battle is practically a cop-out in the name of happily-ever-after, still attempting nonetheless to sneak a bite of its dystopian cake. Battle is confused about what it wants to be, beyond being an excuse to trot out those impressive simian special effects one last time.

 

Make no mistake, those effects still hold up (though some of the ape voices seem more muffled this time around; perhaps the bean-counters skimped on the ADR sessions). McDowall continues to do masterful work under all those prosthetics, twitching and stooping his way to a very engaging protagonist. As Virgil, the apparent antecedent to Dr. Zaius, Paul Williams is fascinating, proving that vocal color is one of the keys to a good ape performance; fans of the blog may recall his impeccable turn as The Penguin on Batman: The Animated Series, and his film debut here is just as fun listening as his fowl fiendish felon. And as the film’s ape antagonist, Claude Akins is suitably gruff in the role of General Aldo, reminiscent of General Ursus from Beneath the Planet of the Apes but with a more revolutionary bent that makes him a fitting adversary for Caesar. The film’s chilling finale, in which the apes discover the violation of their central tenet – “ape shall never kill ape” – is grounds enough for an impressive franchise finale, with the assembled apes murmuring, “Ape has killed ape, ape has killed ape” over and over.

 

If the film had only focused on Aldo, it would have made for a very fascinating examination of ape society on the cusp of change. Aldo’s militant anti-human position puts him at compelling loggerheads with Caesar, and the political/military jousting therein is among the film’s best features. However, the film spends too much time on the human villains, who are creatively lifeless and without motivation beyond run-of-the-mill mustache twirling. As excited as a continuity wonk like myself ought to be at seeing Kolp, of all characters, return, Severn Darden’s performance isn’t exactly animated, and it’s very hard to be threatened by a militia that rides into battle in a dirty school bus. Mad Max: Fury Road, this isn’t. (But how much better might that George Miller film have been if Tom Hardy played an ape? Sound off in the comments: what movies would improve if they starred apes?)

 

Just about the only good reason to include the underground humans comes in the film’s extended edition. Where the unrated cut of Conquest completely changed that film’s ending – and, I’d argue, the tenor of the entire franchise – the extended cut of Battle only embellishes here and there, but it does close the loop on one of the most baffling elements of the Apes series. You may recall the psychic bomb-worshipping mutants from Beneath the Planet of the Apes, and Battle explains how that death cult came to be, introducing the first Mendez (Beneath featured Mendez XXVI). This restored scene provides little more than a frisson of continuity, but I suppose it’s enough to justify this subplot’s existence. I’ve never felt that the mutants fit into the Apes cosmology, but Battle makes an effort to integrate them more deliberately, tying them more organically into the rise of the apes.

 

Despite concluding on a battlefield, Battle is more than a bit boring. Its visual spectacle is a bit of a letdown after the more visceral ape riot of Conquest, and its plot never quite goes anywhere. For all the magnificent ape characters in the film, it’s not unwatchable, but nor would I say it’s highly rewatchable. It is, I might argue, the Godfather III of the series, essential only as an epilogue after the franchise has long since said its piece. Perhaps it is better to remember Caesar for his thousand-yard stare, gazing over the ape insurgence of Conquest, much like Michael Corleone watching Lake Tahoe eddy before him when all his enemies are defeated; apes and mobsters alike do not age well. Put another way, this is a Battle that need not have been fought, and it is hard to imagine anyone winning.

 

Battle for the Planet of the Apes is rated G. Directed by J. Lee Thompson. Written by Paul Dehn, John William Corrington, and Joyce Hooper Corrington. Starring Roddy McDowall, Claude Akins, Natalie Trundy, Severn Darden, Lew Ayres, Paul Williams, and John Huston.

Monday at the Movies - April 1, 2013

Welcome to this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  Even though it's April Fool's Day, no joke - this is a movie that could be reviewed in a single word:  “perfect.”  (Don’t worry, you’ll get the other 249, as well!)

The Maltese Falcon (1941) – As well as a directorial debut and a book-to-screen adaptation, The Maltese Falcon is the curious case of the remake that’s better than the original (is it the only one?).  Director John Huston takes the Dashiell Hammett book of the same name and films it virtually word-for-word, casting Humphrey Bogart in a star-making role as private eye Sam Spade.  It’s your classic MacGuffin film, where the object of pursuit is less important than the characters who pursue it, and here The Maltese Falcon shines with an amazingly engaging set of protagonists and antagonists who are all in it for themselves – even if it means double-crossing each other to get there.  Spade gets embroiled in a search for the fabled “Black Bird,” though he’s not sure who really wants it or why; in hot pursuit of the jeweled statue, Spade becomes embroiled in a sundry cast of characters including a charismatic pathological liar (Mary Astor), an effete but well-mannered criminal (Peter Lorre), and a garrulous gentleman (Sydney Greenstreet) whose vocabulary is matched only by his girth.  The Maltese Falcon is perfect on a number of levels – perfect cast, perfect direction (which practically reinvents noir before your eyes), perfect script that wastes not a single shot in relentless pursuit of the plot.  Huston has made something really remarkable film here, almost the noir version of Seinfeld, in which essentially nothing happens while four ostensible allies scramble over each other to come out on top.  On first watch, the pursuit is all; on second watch, you’ll be able to appreciate the performances now that you know who’s after what at which point.  On third watch?  You’ll be saying the dialogue along with them.  The Maltese Falcon is that perfect crystallization of earnestness and infectiousness, a movie instantly rewatchable time and again.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!