Down Argentine Way (1940)

 

Director: Irving Cummings

Screenplay: Darrell Ware and Karl Tunberg

Cast: Don Ameche as Ricardo Quintana; Betty Grable as Glenda Crawford; Charlotte Greenwood as Binnie Crawford; J. Carrol Naish as Casiano; Henry Stephenson as Don Diego Quintana; Kay Aldridge as Helen Carson; Leonid Kinskey as Tito Acuna; Chris-Pin Martin as Esteban; Robert Conway as Jimmy Blake; Gregory Gaye as Sebastian; Bobby Stone as Panchito; Charles Judels as Dr. Arturo Padilla

Ephemeral Waves 

Get in...you beautiful brat.

I had hoped this review would lead to something distinct to cover, as shot in Technicolor and made in the cusp of a new decade, this 20th Century Fox production original influenced by World War II. If Europe was no longer a viable place to sell their films to¹, then the studios looked to South America. It also has political notions beyond this, as this is connected to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Good Neighbour Policy" toward Latin America, with the concern of a growing German influence within the region leading to the United States finding ways to bring about a harmonious relationship between them. So we have American actors playing Argentineans (like Don Ameche), and the film a musical which plans to introduce Latin musicians and singers onto the screen.

We follow Ricardo (Don Ameche), a horse trader who, with a father who was once a famous breeder of race horses until he moved of show jumping, is sent to the United States. Selling horses over a pretty face, and five thousand and a Martini together, is a flaw of Ricardo's, leading him to encounter Glenda Crawford (Betty Grable). Glenda, becoming obsessed with him, goes to Argentina under the guise of wanting to acquire a real horse, but it is not helped she is a relative of someone his father hated as far back as college.

There is a promise for at least a light hearted piece of fluff at the get-go, and I will not hide this review stems as much, alongside wanting to see the film, from wishing to see anything from 20th Century Fox before the House of Mouse will probably bury them. It has promise of a romantic comedy, one with some very catty one-liners to add some appropriate use of salt to this cinematic.  

I came to this expecting stereotypes mind as well. No one in this film for the most part is actually Latin American or of Latin heritage, the one real exception being Chris-Pin Martin, who is of Mexican descent, and even in terms of hiring Latin American singers and dancers that could be of suspect as well. To their credit, they at least try in terms of things like lyrics not being in English, but the production is not exactly one with authenticity, so much in fact it was actually banned in Argentina due to its lack of cultural accuracy. Regardless of my final opinion or this fact though, there are many things to admire in terms of the music, finding highlights such as the Nicolas Brothers.  Fayard and Harold Nicholas, real African American brothers who made their name in their dancing, are a standout and it is great to know there is a lot of their work still out there to see, and even with their home movies preserved as historically important; looking almost like identical twins here (despite Fayard being older) their great synchronised dances in their few scenes were a stand-out.

This film's other distinct feature is the first appearance in a Hollywood film for Carmen Miranda, the legendary Brazilian dancer and singer whose cultural image, even over her work, has lasted for a considerable amount of time. Her work here does show something very enticing for me, though it is surprising how small her filmography was, due to how sadly short her life actually was. Contrary to the advertising however, which promotes her on the cover, she is in only one scene so that does dampen the experience a little.

It has its charm as a film. In another film, a character like Tito would be a stereotypical con artist. Here, able to be charming and able to be with clients happy to pay to see all the best music of Argentina, he can be a good con artist with his extensive family contacts, helped because actor Leonid Kinskey can make the character interesting. There is also the aunt of Glenda, played by a singer/dancer too, who says she is young and whose last birthday was "thirty one", or the chauffer who sleeps at the wheel of the car when un-required. There is enough here, in characters like this, to win you over with a playfulness.

What happens however is a film that is slight, suddenly turning into the premise of a nineties family film, which is not bad until it dwindles into a dull narrative rather than be a fun musical, about a horse being taught to race again against the will of Ricardo's father. This is where Down Argentine Way stopped being a promise for an enticing review but something exceptionally bland for me. The historical context is more fascinating. Betty Grable, as the lead, gained as a result of this film in terms of ongoing success as an actress, able to develop legacy with musicals alongside a legendary 1943 pin-up photo.  The fact this was meant to be a way of good neighbourly interaction with South America, ordained by the government, is inherently fascinating, especially as this idea of Hollywood trying to sale their films to other countries has been with us long before their interest with China in the 2010s. That includes all the complications to be found, this particular film completely failing in its goals even if it was included in the National Film Registry and nominated for three Oscars, for Best Cinematography, Best Original Song and for Best Art Direction. As for the film itself, maybe I was hoping for something else, better or deeply kitsch, but even with its revealed problematic ideas of Argentina it could have been something greater. Instead, it is not even vanilla for me, unfair to that ice cream flavour to ever use that metaphor, but eventually really average.

 

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1) And even then, it was not an immediate reduction of films being distributed to Nazi Germany but only until a later point, so it was not necessarily for noble reasons for most of the studios when they stopped.

Generation X (1996)

Director: Jack Sholder

Screenplay: Eric Blakeney

Based on the Generation X comic book series from Marvel Comics

Cast: Matt Frewer as Russel Tresh; Finola Hughes as Emma Frost; Jeremy Ratchford as Sean Cassidy; Heather McComb as Jubilation Lee / Jubilee; Agustin Rodriguez as Angelo Espinosa / Skin; Randall Slavin as Kurt Pastorius/ Refrax; Bumper Robinson as Mondo; Suzanne Davis as Arlee Hicks; Amarili as Monet St. Croix / M

Ephemeral Waves

 

You know I don't like Jello.

There for me is a dividing line between when superhero films meant just Superman and Batman, with the others for theatrical cinema and television a random assortment, with DC Comics in dominance and no standard template, and then the moment Marvel Comics managed to get its act together, leading to the current era which began as far back as Blade (1998) when they got their foot through the door, then the X-Men (2000) firmly planting their flag in the genre. Personally, I find the older era for more interesting, a lot of esoteric productions I am more inclined to watch, as decisions  even with great films like Batman Returns (1992) you get something idiosyncratic, whilst the template the Marvel Studios films have stuck to bored me to the point I have not watched them at all. Which is a shame as, open to American comics as a medium, Marvel have a fascinating history of figures and stories I would be interested to look, even the bad creative decisions, and whilst The Cannon Group did release Captain America (1990), the company were mostly regulated to television and had to also deal with rights issues in lieu to that company, hence why it took the 2000s when Spider Man finally had a theatrical movie.

That television should not be ignored though, and whilst the elaborate films of now sadly, from the few I saw up to the early 2010s, been very predictable, there is a greater joy in those titles which were not high budget films but attempts at hits like Generation X. It is ironic that the 2000 X-Men film had a huge significance on the way superhero films would dominate cinema globally, apt as this review is about the first attempt to adapt the characters to live action, a TV movie that acted as a pilot for a show that never came to be, trying to adapt these iconic characters created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby at a time when they were a big seller in the nineties.

The X-Men, and I say this as an outsider with lack of knowledge on the actual comics, had to take a while to get to that success, steadily growing as a franchise since the sixties. Created in 1963, they were a metaphor for racial intolerance, as outsiders marginalised by society and even seen as a threat, one which has lasted as long as it has due to the fact the metaphor can still tragically relevant to the modern day and that, for a reader, that metaphor can also extend to anyone LGBT, trans, even just an outsider like the loners at a school could easily see themselves as these characters and have someone to represent themselves with. This was  especially when through the seventies onwards more characters were added, including the iconic Wolverine, and X-Men became an actual rainbow of figures of all ethnicities, men and women, even characters with disabilities, as the character of M here, just an overconfident girl with insane levels of invulnerability, was all this in the comics by accounts but also autistic.

By the time of this TV movie, we already had the 1992 X-Men animated series, which I have fond memories of watching as a young kid at the time. I would have been too young to know of this, especially as this is not based on the main series but the titular spin off, part of a time when the X-Men comics were very popular and these spin-offs could exist. This film however, which yet has a fitting connection or two with what came before and after in the franchise, was definitely a failure. A curious one, from the director of A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985), a film without his knowledge was coded with blatant metaphors of the main male character's struggle with his own homosexuality, and The Hidden (1987). Someone also clearly saw Batman Forever (1995), the Joel Schumacher films in that franchise with Batman & Robin (1998) closing off the old superhero films, as Batman & Robin was reviled and Superman was M.I.A since the Cannon Group acquired the rights and fumbled the character in the late eighties with Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987). I like the Joel Schumacher Batman films, and I will not try to defend them nor claim them as guilty pleasures. In fact, whatever you think of their erratic natures and ridiculous camp, you cannot just lift Schumacher's trademark that he wanted to make every location bold and distinct even in all the neon gels he used. He made more grounded films, but the former production designer had an eye for aesthetic which is an acquired taste but I admired.

Batman Forever was actually a hit, so Generation X borrows all the canted camera shots and coloured gels it can get. That is actually one of the best bits of the TV movie, alongside Max Headroom star Matt Frewer looking at Jim Carrey's performance, playing one of the villains in that earlier film, and thinking he can be even more over the top and a sex pervert too. What likely killed the show before it even got started were many creative choices which feel like the screenwriter was bored with the comic they had and decided to doodle off to the side. Writer Eric Blakeney, whose career before was writing television like 21 Jump Street, could have easily went with the main metaphor of these characters. For those who have no ideas what the X-Men are, or at least going to their origin to scrutinise where someone deviated greatly from the source material, in the world of the comic people have mutant genes which provide them superhuman abilities or drastic bodily changes when they hit puberty, also leaving a potentially subversive metaphor that the cruelty and bigotry the normal world has for them is a jealously as much as a fear that they are now evolutionarily inferior. It also leaves many metaphors of the existential and moral crisis teenagers and even adults have in drastic circumstances, as these "mutants", in coping with the changes few can share the equivalent of and affecting them physically and mentally.

In the world of Generation X, this has already lead to the darkest timeline as, when the comics had the likes of giant "Sentinel" robots created to hunt down mutants, where Frewer's evil scientist Russel Tresh tries to lobotomise a mutant, to get his pineal gland, just to only get a discharge for medical misconduct and the poor mutant victim gets shipped off to a mutant camp ran by the government. The nineties, as we neared the Millennium, even with a title like this speculated about the future ahead, where here night time in the setting is a neon soaked dark metropolis, and Tresh lands on his feet well after his dismissal. Now he has joined an advertisement company where he is paid to brainwash people with subliminal messages for Slick Lips Lipstick, Coffin Nail Cigarettes and, with wonder why Sega thought it was a wise decision contextually to allow this, the real life beat em up arcade game Virtua Fighter. He only comes off as going too far when he now wants to control people in their dreams.

With a little research, the production had to change and create new characters because of the budget being preventative from trying to bring certain characters onscreen, comics with a lot more ability to push imagination with fewer resources required. Set at the Xavier Academy where young mutants have been rescued from the camps and persecution, at the same real building used in the Bryan Singer X-Men films, the two adults in charge are Emma Frost, soap actress Finola Hughes wandering around in sexy leisure wear, and Banshee, played by Jeremy Ratchford who also voiced him in the animated show I grew up with, even though his Irish accent is terrible. The teens, a little group in a giant school are thus: Refrax (eye lasers), Mondo (a toned down gift from the source character of being able to briefly absorb the density of what he touches), Skin (one of the leads, with a super stretchy body), M (perfect, but does little, original a more interesting sounding character due to being with a learning disability), Buff (an interesting female character in this time period as, with a super muscular body, she is uncomfortable with her appearance before such body types were more accepted), and Jubilee, a character I also saw in the animated series who was clearly meant to be a character sold to viewers at the time. It is strange how Jubilee, standing out in the animated series is the mall rat teen who shot fireworks out of her hands, was a trend character who never became as big as the attempts to sell her did, especially as the character would appear in other live action films.

Inexplicably the screenwriter, like the one I have imagined in this review for a joke and build up, was much more interested in writing a premise about a fifth dimension, where dreams are a real life version of Plato's realm of perfect forms, and can be accessed with psychic powers and a dream machine. I am sure one mutant, maybe more, exist who could tap into dreams, and considering Dr. Strange in the Marvel back catalogue and all their creations there has to be a few, but baring every mutant now being a "little" psychic", someone got bored and accidentally created a premise befitting a director of a Nightmare on Elm Street sequel instead. I am not precious about accuracy to source material, the man who has no real investment in the X-Men, but there was a fine line between a drastic story risk which still played to the premise about adolescent mutants with powers, and a premise which limits this aspect almost entirely even in knowledge of the budgetary restraints.

Beyond this, Generation X has a lot of plot, but is vet limited to what actually transpires. Whilst X-Men gained so many parallels to keep the metaphor alive, this is instead the school of TV action, drama and exposition, a constant flux of event which when works is why television is compelling, makes the notorious oddities like Steel Justice (1992) (about a detective in a futuristic Los Angeles who can make a dinosaur robot toy a giant one with magical powers) more compelling, but also makes anything which does not really push the limited budget or characterisation less exciting. This story eventually becomes a group of over powered mutants against one normal man, more severe as a plot fault if you stop and think about it. Matt Frewer's Russel Tresh is a deeply creepy figure, who coxes Skin in dreams to become a voyeur to and [Trigger warning] threats to "mind rape" his little sister to get his to follow orders, but he never has any sense of threat to suggest this film, with no greater depth to it. There is no real sense of threat from this character even when he gets dream powers. The only time that he stands out in terms of how he should have been written as is when the film recreates the scene from Batman Forever where he kills his boss from a fall from a giant window in a tall building; using television budget effects to conjure dreamt shadows of birds, in a dream sequence surrounded by business people at conference table, it is one of the only moments  where the film gets vaguely imaginative as well.

The darker tone is surprising, as the release that came after, not for television but beyond on VHS, even has cursing, not dancing around the subject but a scene just created for Jubilee to say "shit" and "fuck" for go measure in the same sentence. The result however, in spite of this clear attempt at a darker and neon stained tone is something missing the mark. Definitely, with good reason, it never got the television series - tonally it varies drastically, where Tresh can be an uncomfortably menacing figure but who also auto suggested a board of potential investors beforehand in their dreams to fart at the same time at a certain hour mid-meeting. The only constant detail is the aesthetic, which is compelling even on this television budget as hyper-saturated. Even the teen protagonists are not likable, bickering and insulting each other to the point of being detestable. The only time, and the one plot detail that stands out, is when Refrax suddenly shows real nobleness, when in his affections with Buff, going on a date at a country fair, an ability to see through clothes finally clicks; he goes before anything transpires, with actual honour, only for her to think otherwise, his sincere attempt to tell the truth and show his love for her a good moment.

I admit I enjoyed Generation X, just as a failed curiosity sadly ignored, as it never had a DVD release. X-Men, the Bryan Singer film, came only a few years later and erased this title from existence. Ironically, it was Wolverine, a grizzled old vet, rather than the teenagers who broke out, all because the production hired an unknown named Hugh Jackman at the last minute that ran with the role and made his own career. X-Men has had a lot of films over the 2000s, from 21st Century Fox, to a varying amount of success but with the perverse tale of New Mutants (20??) as a fitting coda, an attempt to go back to young teen mutant characters which has been in limbo since it was first announced for release in 2018, between Fox being gobbled up by the House of Mouse and the COVID-19 pandemic. Generation X itself was meant to be a big title, causing one to wonder how the production and Marvel reacted to its clear failure; Stan Lee himself made the unfortunate comment, in an L.A Times article just before its television premiere¹, that "[if" this thing doesn't create demand[...] I'll eat my hat!". One wonders whether he would have lived up to the bet and ate said hat, considering how gun-ho and passionate he was.

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1) Source HERE.

All This and World War II (1976)

Director: Susan Winslow

I've become increasingly frustrated with Disney's accusation of 21st Century Fox, as so many titles will likely be sat on as not being part of the House of Mouse's image. They are not good arbiters of preservation as even their digital preservations of films like Cinderella (1950) have been accused as practically altering the original work, so this is significant as particularly in the seventies 20th Century Fox produced some very idiosyncratic titles. They made the likes of The French Connection (1971) and The Omen (1976), but also oddities like Alan Arkin's only directorial feature Little Murders (1971) or Brian De Palma's musical Phantom of the Paradise (1974). Or anything Robert Altman made for them that wasn't M*A*S*H (1970) but also 3 Women (1977), based on a dream he had, and Zardoz (1974), the John Boorman sci-fi lunacy involving floating stone heads vomiting out guns, penis obsession and Sean Connery in kinky bright orange belts and nothing else. All This and World War II is a candidate for something that managed to be even weirder than Zardoz to have been bankrolled by the studio, and if Fox didn't destroy it themselves Disney are not the kind of company to let the public access these oddities freely.

Beatlemania is why it even exists. The Beatles were a cultural juggernaut in the sixties, a band who even when they stopped perfuming live and become more experimental in the late sixties still generated so much goodwill. Films with the band and based off their work in the sixties - A Hard Day's Night (1964) to Yellow Submarine (1968) - eventually bleed into the seventies when they disbanded in 1970, even a documentary about the notoriously antagonistic recording of Let It Be that lead to it in 1970. They had some diminishing returns, an early Robert Zemeckis film I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978) more respected than say, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978) where Donald Pleasant sang I Want You to the Bee Gees. All This and World War II is much more notorious in a way as, whilst many don't know its existence, it never got a release since its 1976 theatrical release.

The documentary tells the tale of World War II, from the late 1930s as Nazi Germany invaded countries and Britain's attempts at a treaty through Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain fell through, to the involvement of the United States in the forties. This material is told through archival footage and films owned by 20th Century Fox itself, such as Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), a Japanese-American collaboration telling the tale of the Pearl Harbour attack from both sides. This is not necessarily a bad idea, as you do see a lot of the period in detail. You see just how offensive and ridiculous some of the propaganda in old films were outside the context of the Japanese being the US' enemy, as white actors portraying Asian figures is practically surreal and barely accomplished, and aspects of how life was in the States particularly at the time which add layers to the time period that you don't normally get. It provides real documentary footage of fascination, even those offensive films a curious touchstone when the USA felt it needed to villainize the Japanese the rally against them as enemies in real combat.

The film gets bizarre as this is scored to Beatles songs. There were plans to use the actual songs, but with the prospect of being able to release a soundtrack album, which did happen and lasted longer in public consciousness, the production got a who's who of mainstream seventies music. Even Status Quo, the English personifications of Dad Rock, cover Getting Better alongside songs by Rod Stewart, Tina Turner, Bryan Ferry etc. Even Elton John covers Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, a song recorded before and ironically with John Lennon playing on it under a pseudonym.

The issue, and where All This and World War II falls off the rails, is that most of the song choices are utterly inappropriate. Sun King arguably makes sense as a double pun on the Japanese army, with their first ever emperor Jimmu said to be a direct descendant of the sun-goddess Amaterasu, and the Rising Sun on their country's flag, whilst Keith Moon singing When I'm Sixty Four is fun in the knowledge Paul McCartney wrote that song in mind to the type of music from an early era like this, but most aren't like this and fail. That I Want You is never used for a recruitment segment is a missed opportunity, nor Back in the U.S.S.R. when Soviet Russia enters the war, is just the tip of the iceberg.

From http://www.midnightonly.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/allthis2.jpg

Instead having I Am The Walrus covered by Leo Sayer over the Pearl Harbour attack or the Americans in the Pacific War in combat is absolutely perplexing, as you now have to consider "the Eggman" (written by Lennon as pure nonsense to trick listeners) are now armed. Only a few times do the combinations work. Rod Stewart barking Get Back to Hitler in the Nazis' losing finale, with footage manipulated to make him and the goose-stepping soldiers dance, is one of the only successful moments¹. Most don't work because the lyrics are tonally inappropriate, the film making a misguided error to presume the chorus is all that matters, not that you still have to hear everything also. So Come Together is used for the involvement of the Japanese, whilst She's Leaving Home is used for the women working out in jobs or for the war effort.

The point of the documentary is a real question mark. It mainly comes off as nostalgic on the surface but streaks of subversion are found which undercut the entire work. It has a passage, significantly, which deals with the internment of Japanese Americans by their government which is a black eye historically for the States, a really bleak sequence of people being forced into camps, really racist language in newspaper extracts, and even signs of Japanese kanji or phrases from stores and cafes being removed and replaced. It's the best sequence but tonally alien to the film's whole.

That this production changed hands, director Susan Winslow not the original figure in that seat, probably explains a lot. Even some of the footage is jarring too. The aftermath of the Pearl Harbour bombings, and the initial footage showing the USA joining the conflict, inexplicably has a ventriloquist dummy enlisting in the army in a surreal publicity segment. Most of the film visuals tell a succinct tale under ninety minutes, but the juxtaposition with the music is at odds. Even if the documentary was meant to be very subversive, some of the tonal choices throughout do jar from everyone which does, with the former usually more frequent than the successes.

The result was, as mentioned, a film pulled after two weeks of a theatrical run. The soundtrack was much more successful, whilst All This and World War II fits the strange catalogue of films made in the seventies which were nostalgic for the times between the 1920s and 1940s, where Mae West's last film in her eighties was the car crash Sextette (1978), and old stars were repacked into TV and variety shows. This is a film, even with flashes of subversion, which is undeniably about the nostalgia of the era even if its accidental. The film also reminds you of how different a time the forties was, as stars like Jimmy Stewart are shown enlisting in the war effort, and even dealing with the racist propaganda films a peculiar nature is found of there once being a saneness to dressing a white man up and trying to pass him off as Asian as Charlie Chan's cameo attests to.

And the time capsule footage can be compelling, enough that this should've been made available.; even a minor tangent like the art painted onto airplanes, including some that would be too saucy to show outside colour footage that looks like home film recordings, has something of immense reward for me in terms of new details of the era. Seeing the ordinary world of the era, in among the celebrities and fictional war films, including a much appreciated James Mason cameo as a Nazi, is a virtue even if the film is structurally mishandled and the project misguided.

Abstract Spectrum: Bizarre/Haphazard/Nostalgic

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/nx_Wa-hpbjI/hqdefault.jpg

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1) Done later but done better, in its opening credits set to disco funk, of the wonderfully titled and awesome Czech sci-fi gem Tomorrow I Will Scald Myself with Tea (1977), a film deserving of a much wider fanbase and actual availability in the English language territories.