DVD/150: THE ROMAN SPRING OF MRS STONE (Josė Quintero, 1961)

Acclaimed Broadway director Josė Quintero made one film, an adaptation of Tennessee Williams' first novel.

Ten years after her Blanche Dubois in A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, Vivien Leigh delivered another memorable Williams heroine in Karen Stone, a former actress living in Rome after a year of widowhood.

Hiding from friends and having lost her nerve for the stage, Karen drifts through days in an apartment by the Spanish Steps.  She is further unnerved by a young vagabond who seems to be watching her...

Drawn into a circle of wealthy emigres, she meets Magda, an ingratiating German Contessa who procures young men for them, living off their financial gifts.

Knowing of Karen's wealth, Magda introduces her to the charming but shallow Paolo but Karen suspects the truth and keeps him at arm's length.

She eventually succumbs but Paolo treats her with disdain. Karen is again alone but knows destiny awaits her...

Shelf or charity shop?  She had a spring, now she has a shelf.  A bit of an over-looked film, I have always enjoyed it and find it's enigmatic ending haunting. Vivien Leigh had been away from the screen for six years, unlike her character she was being a success on stage, but also suffering from recurring manic depressions that plagued her as well as her divorce from Laurence Olivier.  She gives a wonderfully nuanced performance: lost, rueful, disdainful and desperate and looks glorious, glowing in her Balmain couture.  Sadly Warren Beatty gives a skin-deep performance and is effortlessly outshone by Lotte Lenya, earning her Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress with a performance of glittering malice.  The extraordinary supporting cast include Coral Browne as Helen's friend Meg who knows her too well, Jill St John is great as a sly Hollywood starlet, silent screen actress Bessie Love as Karen's bossy dresser and it was the last film of Ernest Thesiger, best remembered as the eccentric Dr Pretorius in BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN. 

DVD/150: BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (James Whale, 1935)

86 years on, James Whale's film re-generates with every viewing, just like his iconic Bride...

The greatest of all the Universal horror films crackles with invention, wit and a deliciously perverse subtext - all the more remarkable that James Whale wasn't interested in making the sequel.

The script went through seven writers before Whale was satisfied.

We start with Mary Godwin, Byron and Shelley discussing her novel followed by a FRANKENSTEIN montage to pick-up the storyline, swirling through to the final cataclysm - Elsa Lanchester playing both Mary and The Bride provides a wonderful symmetry.

Boris Karloff and Colin Clive return as monster and maker. Whale refused to give up on his alcoholic friend Clive who died two years afterwards from TB.

Karloff built on his performance to suggest the soul within the monster, oddly he disliked the idea of the monster learning to speak.

BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN lives....

Shelf or charity shop?  It's what shelves were made for... One of the rare sequels that outshines the original, Universal gave James Whale full artistic control after the success of FRANKENSTEIN and his vision was brought to vivid life by cinematographer John C Mescall, production designer Charles D Hall, costume designer Vera West, make-up artist Jack Pierce, Kenneth Strickfaden's electric laboratory props and composer Franz Waxman. Whale cast UK actors in all six lead roles: apart from Karloff, Clive and Lanchester, the film benefits from the lip-smacking eccentric campness of Ernest Thesiger's Doctor Pretorius, Henry's former professor who lures him back to the dark side. 17 year-old Valerie Hobson was cast as Elizabeth when Mae Clarke was too ill to reprise her role - Hobson is quite wonderful especially considering her age, and finally Belfast-born Una O'Connor plays the bustling, shrieking maid Minnie.  Australian actor OP Heggie is marvellous as the blind hermit who provides the monster with a few hours of understanding, while FRANKENSTEIN'S scuttling servant Dwight Frye returns to play another sniveling underling.  Elsa Lanchester's Bride is onscreen for only 3 and a half minutes but in that brief time a screen icon was born: swaying, imperious, scared and disdainful..

...and The Bride made a memorable reappearance at The Retro Bar in 2005...