ANOTHER TIME ANOTHER PLACE: and another godawful melodrama

I'm still trying to figure out exactly what is the most ridiculous thing about this 1958 Paramount melodrama - Sean Connery's spectacular eyebrows or the notion of Lana Turner as an ace war correspondent.
She plays Sara Scott, one of those movie journalists who remains gainfully employed despite never

letting work get in the way of their personal life. She swans around wartime London in a fur coat, perfectly coiffed and oblivious to the realities of modern warfare although, to be fair, it's not difficult for her not to notice when director Lewis Allen has chosen to mostly omit it from the mise-en-scene. Other than a sequence showing sappers defusing an unexploded V2 rocket, and Scott's hired help making a passing reference to rationing, there's no indication that this is a city that's been at war for nearly 6 years. There's no bombed out buildings, no indication of food, gas or clothing shortages, and barely anyone in uniform on the streets.
As a peroxide blonde society lady who spends her time lunching, loving and shopping on 5th Avenue, Turner is entirely convincing. As a highly rated journalist ready to fly off at a moment's notice to whichever battle front her editor deems her presence and writing talents to be essential, she's somewhat less plausible than Steven Seagal tackling Shakespeare.
Which brings us to Mr Connery's eyebrows. They are both a wonder and a mystery and put Robert Pattinson's brow hair to shame. His are wider but inexpressive and just sit there above his eyes. Connery's, in contrast, are longer and undulate like two strips of dark brown deep shag carpeting strapped to the back of a couple of adult earthworms. They're so impressive they actually distract attention from his luxuriant head of hair which to anyone used to the older, more follically challenged Connery, is a talking point in itself.
ANOTHER TIME ANOTHER PLACE was not the 28 year old's first movie but it was the first time his name had been billed in such close proximity to the film's stars, and clearly no one had considered that a little personal grooming might be in order to reflect his new status as love interest to a bona fide Hollywood star. His agent might also have found a tactful way to suggest that having Connery's character, with his distinct Scottish accent, wax lyrical at great length about his idyllic home town on the coast of Cornwall, might not be the most convincing.
But even shifting location and pruning his eyebrows would not have prevented this turgid drama from dissolving into a pool of smelly sludge. Nothing about it rings true and no one does anything to evince our interest or sympathy. It's just a bust.

MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES: at least five hundred of them in shadow

When James Cagney was cast as legendary silent film star Lon Chaney in 1957 he was 58 years old. That made him 11 years old than Chaney when he died of cancer in 1930.
Which posed a formidable challenge - how to make a very middle-aged Cagney look credible when portraying Chaney as a young man.
Director Joseph Pevney's solution was to shoot Cagney almost exclusively in long-shot for three quarters of the movie and also in shadow. Not artistically lit or subtle shadow, mind you. These shadows are big and black and blot out Cagney's face. They're the kind of obscuring shadows that would have the director screaming "cut! cut! CUT!!" on any other film and then chewing out the cameraman in front of the whole crew for lighting the scene so ineptly.
There is no reason for these shadows other than to obscure Cagney's features. They do nothing to create or enhance mood, or convey a message. These are shadows that put the worst of film noir to shame.
On the couple of occasions when Pevney attempts something resembling a medium close-up he overlights Cagney's face, clumsily but effectively burning out any detail including his wrinkles.
But Pevney's not simply a two or even three trick pony when it comes to concealing the ravages of time. He also has Cagney play several scenes in thick clown face make-up - because that's what we remember Chaney for. You might think that a biopic of Hollywood's first great horror actor might focus the bulk of its attention on recreating those years and films, but MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES spends an inordinate amount of its overlong running time bringing us up to speed on Chaney's vaudeville career. I'm not
doubting that it was an important training ground but do we really need to see the dancing clown routine more than once?
Actually, if it weren't for Pevney's hamfisted efforts to obscure Cagney's inappropriateness for the part, this film would have very little to recommend it. If writer Ralph Wheelwright's account is to believed (and from some sources I've read it might not be), Chaney's personal life was a little on the turbulent side, but the way it plays out here is so flat, unimaginative and uninspired that it's a chore to stick with it.
Within the limitations previously discussed, Cagney gives a good account of himself,  demonstrating his versatility as an actor and a hoofer while suppressing most of the Cagneyisms that characterized many of his performances. But not for one moment did he lose himself in the part, and that meant I never shook the feeling that I was watching him playing a part rather than watching him become the part.

THEY MADE ME A CRIMINAL: and they made Claude look very very silly

Plenty has been written about Warner Bros' 1939 release THEY MADE ME IN CRIMINAL in the context of what it did for the young John Garfield's fledgling film career. But considerably less attention has been paid to the monumental miscasting of one of his more established co-stars.
I refer to the suave, silken-voiced Claude Rains.

Unlike Garfield, Rains was by 1939 a known quantity to Warner Bros and cinemagoers. He'd made an immediate impact 6 years earlier in the title role of 'The Invisible Man' where his distinctive, British-accented, voice had been used to great effect in the many scenes where Rains was present but not seen due to his invisibility. Since that debut Rains had played Frenchmen ('Hearts Divided'), Russians ('Stolen Holiday') and Italians ('Anthony Adverse') all to reasonable effect and, indeed, he was destined to secure his place in movie history playing French police officer Captain Louis Renault in 'Casablanca', but the one part that was most definitely not within his range was that of a New York City born and bred cop.
What on earth director Busby Berkeley and Warner Bros were thinking when they cast Rains as Detective Phelan remains a mystery but they clearly were not thinking straight. They had a studio full of character actors capable of playing the part so why did they give it to the most unsuitable man on the lot?!
Rains, puffing furiously on a limp cigarette, tries his best with the colloquial, slangy, tough-guy dialogue but never gets anywhere close to halfway convincing. Lines like "That makes no difference to me - see - I'm a cop. I gotta do me duty whether I like it or not" and "That's a swell looking dame you're leaving behind kid. I feel kinda sorry for you" fall so unnaturally and uncomfortably from his lips that it's embarrassing to witness.
The Rains casting fiasco aside, THEY MADE ME A CRIMINAL is a solid, production and a fine example of Warners scrappy 1930s house style. In only his second film, the 26 year old Garfield radiates star quality as Johnnie Bradfield, a young boxer who goes on the run in the mistaken belief

that he's killed a man in a drunken brawl. If you're not familiar with Garfield's work this film is a fine place to start. All the elements that contributed to his 40s screen persona are already present - the tough, cocky, streetwise underdog battling against the fate that society and his own impulsiveness has preordained for him.
The film also showcases Ann Sheridan, another rising Warner Brothers' star, and she succeeds in grabbing our attention with the brief amount of screen time she's allowed. In hindsight it would have made more sense for her to have switched roles with Gloria Dickson, but perhaps the smaller (though more prominently billed) part was the only way she could cram THEY MADE ME A CRIMINAL into her schedule of six films in 1939. May Robson is also a delight as the salt of the earth Grandma Rafferty who's foster-mom to a bunch of transplanting teenage New York delinquents, played by the Dead End Kids, although their bickering, head slapping and shoving shtick was already starting to grate a little.
Not quite an A movie but considerably more than just another run of the mill Warner Bros B movie, it's Garfield's magnetic presence that makes this film a must-see for anyone seriously interested in 1930s and 40s Hollywood cinema.