THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 28

 Two silent moves (one of them Russian), one B-noir, and early television drama starring a legendary movie actor. I don't know what more you could ask for. Maybe something you've heard of? Sorry, that ain't my game.

THE DEVIL (1921): Young actors, take note. George Arliss didn't make his first movie, The Devil, until he was 52. And that was 13 years after he originated the part onstage -- his first leading role since becoming a professional actor in 1887! Good things take time.

Arliss is the mysterious Dr. Muller. For no reason other than his own amusement, Muller manipulates two couples, artist Paul De Veaux and his model Mimi, and wealthy businessman Georges Roben and Marie Matin, into thinking they're not really in love with their partners. Faster than you can say, "The devil made me do it," Paul and Marie become lovers, while Muller makes sure Paul and Mimi catch them in the act, all the while acting like a benevolent bystander. When the couples reunite with their former flames, the angry Muller once again plays a game of human chess, arranging for Paul and Marie to innocently meet, while telling Georges they've renewed their affair -- and handing him a gun, just so the cuck can stop their nonsense once and for all. 

After watching George Arliss play enough real-life heroes to fill a history book, it's nice to see him as the personification of evil. The tips of his hair curled up ever so slightly to look like horns; his strange grey eyes looking like they're piercing into people's souls; a smile that doesn't look quite human; the weird dress jacket with lapels resembling bat wings -- you'd think the guy might want to be a little more on the downlow. And while The Devil is a silent picture, anyone who's watched enough of his talkies can "hear" him speak his dialogue via the intertitles. (As for his costars, only Edmund Lowe is recognizable.)

There's not a lot of subtlety in The Devil, especially at the climax when Mimi literally sends Muller back to hell with a Christian prayer that magically creates a crucifix from out of nowhere. But what do you expect from a 1921 melodrama based on a play from almost two decades earlier? George Arliss, both in character and as an actor, looks like he's having one hell of a time in The Devil, which is more than enough reason to watch it.

BONUS POINTS: While the star is called "Mr. George Arliss" in the credits, his wife and co-star Florence, is identified only as "Mrs. Arliss". A producer should suggest Nicole Kidman be credited "Mrs. Urban" in her next movie. You know, just as a joke.

Космический рейс (SPACE FLIGHT, A/K/A COSMIC VOYAGE) (1935): It's interesting that in 1935, the Soviet-era movie industry could produce a remarkably accurate movie about space travel, while still making silent movies. I guess that's an irony similar to a worker's paradise where millions are starving to death. 

The story of Space Flight isn't all that revolutionary (hey, another Soviet irony!) In the futuristic year 1946, Prof. Pavel Sedikh ignores the warnings of others by flying his rocket to the moon, taking along a female professor named Marina, and the adolescent stowaway Andryusha. Upon landing, the three explore the moon's surface, where Sedikh is briefly separated from the others when falling into a crater. After the three are reunited -- and Andryusha retrieves a cat that had been sent up in a previous flight -- the three cosmonauts return home to be welcomed as Commie heroes.

You can't make a Soviet-era movie without a message, and Space Flight's seems to be that space travel isn't just for young men: old guys, women, and children are perfectly capable of making a lunar flight, even if the experts who run the space lab have no faith in them. In fact, Andryusha seems like the kind of kid who'll grow up to put the doubters in front of a firing squad. 

Forget about the story (and the actors' names). What oddballs like me have come for are the visuals. Space Flight impressively predicts spacesuits, weightlessness, and returning to earth via parachute. What it gets totally wrong are Sedikh and Marina packing suitcases for their flight, and the three large water tanks the characters get into to withstand the shock of taking off and landing. Modern viewers used to CGI would probably laugh at the moon set and the miniatures standing in for rockets. To me, the work that went into creating them is far more impressive than programming a computer. Something else I really enjoyed was the occasional use of stop motion to replicate the cosmonauts bouncing around the moon, often with the camera smoothly tracking along with them. But in yet another Soviet irony, Space Flight was soon pulled from release by censors because stop motion was antithetical to "socialist realism". How does a comrade say, "Oh, brother!" in Russian?

BONUS POINTS: The aforementioned suitcases are pretty cool, seeing that the hinges are at the far end, so they open like car trunks. 

I WOULDN'T BE IN YOUR SHOES (1948): Finally -- a film noir where the murder clue is provided by muddy imprints of tap shoes! The police trace them to dancer Tom Quinn, who's also in possession of some of the money that had been stolen from the victim. All this circumstantial evidence leads to Tom's appointment with the hot squat. Police Detective Clint Judd tracks down a more likely suspect -- not so much out of the goodness of his heart but because he has the serious hots for Tom's wife Ann, who recklessly promises to marry him if he reopens the investigation. When the second suspect doesn't pan out, Detective Judd consoles Ann the best way he knows how: getting her a new, furnished apartment that he can also move into as soon as hubby gets fried. What's a soon-to-be-widow to do at a time like this? Maybe take a good look at the money that the horny, crazy cop is carrying...

Don Castle, the Clark Gable of low budget noirs (the previously discussed Roses are Red and Lighthouse among them) is the hapless Tom Quinn, who not only can't catch a break, but almost seems to welcome his pending execution. As with fellow B-lister Tom Neal, Castle's character appears to mirror his real life acceptance of his position in the movie world (both began at MGM before taking the down elevator to Poverty Row studios). As such, he brings some genuine emotion to I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes, making it one of the few noirs where I was kind of hoping for a happy ending. We know the guy is innocent of the crime, and, frankly, Don Castle deserves some joy, even if it's only in a movie. 

I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes' other star, Regis Toomey, clicks big as the creepy dick Clint Judd, a combination of his other detective roles with a splash of his psycho killer from Dark Mountain. Early on, he portrays Judd as an honest hardworking cop, while gradually allowing his dark side to seep through. By the climax, even his eyes start to look whacked-out. Toomey wasn't necessarily a great actor, but in roles like this, he was terrific -- one of the few actors, like Richard Dix, whose best performances were flat and lowkey. (Depending on your age, you may remember him as Det. Les Hart in Burke's Law. Yes, another detective.) 

Elsye Knox sells the character of Ann just enough -- you believe a sap like Judd would fall for her false promise of marriage. Ann's guilt for helping to get her husband in this mess, by convincing him to keep the stolen money he found, comes through as well. And she's got an interesting look -- Lizabeth Scott minus the hard edge. Familiar character actors appear, too, inside and outside the prison walls, making I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes a good fit for a pre-dawn 70 minutes of noir.

BONUS POINTS: In case you were wondering, Tom's shoes wound up in the alley when he threw them at a howling cat. Did anybody ever do that other than in movies, cartoons, and comic strips?

SUSPENSE: A CASK OF AMONTILLADO (October 11, 1949): Rome, V-E Day. A man named
Montresor tells American soldiers that he witnessed the murder of a fascist General named Fortunado. The latter was once a stableboy for him until the war, when he commandeered both Montresor's castle and sister. Having started an affair with another woman, Fortunado killed the sister. In return, Montresor leads the alcoholic general to the basement of the castle with the promise of a cask of you know what. Getting the upper hand on him, Montesor chains Fortunado to the wall and entombs him.

Anyone familiar with A Cask of Amontillado will recognize that Suspense took a few liberties with Poe's short story. But who cares about that when Bela Lugosi stars in his first-ever TV appearance as Fortunado?  Like George Arliss, nobody else matters here -- except maybe for Ray Walston in one of his earliest TV roles as the army officer taking Montesor's confession. You could say Walston gives the best (i.e., most realistic) performance. But only the most fervid Poe fans would watch this if Bela Lugosi didn't have the lead, giving us the rare chance to see him not just on live TV, but in a dramatic role that has nothing to do with horror or the supernatural. He is a character actor, first and foremost. It's a shame that, unlike, say, Boris Karloff, he didn't have more chances to appear on television dramas.

This episode of Suspense (with spooky organ music similar to the still-airing radio version) is also a memento of early televised plays, when brick walls were no more believable than a school play, and walking down a long winding stairway was done on one simple set shot from different angles. Lugosi twice has trouble with his pistol, and also accidentally kicks over a wine bottle -- typical moments when viewers were reminded that they were watching something live with no retakes possible. A Cask of Amontillado, then, is the closest we'll come to seeing Bela Lugosi in a dramatic stage performance. And just to remind you how old this episode is, its setting -- V-E Day -- happened only four years earlier!

BONUS POINTS: The Suspense sponsor, Auto-Lite, reminds us that its spark plugs cause less radio and television interference.

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