Hidden Treasures - Week of Jan. 7th

SILVER LODE (1954)
Directed by Allen Dwan in 1954, SILVER LODE is a western that has all but slipped into obscurity. Dan Ballard (John Payne), a well-respected citizen of the town of Silver Lode, has his wedding interrupted by a U.S. Marshal bearing a warrant for his arrest. The Marshal is a shifty character named Ned McCarty (Dan Duryea), and Ballard is convinced McCarty isn’t who he claims to be. However, as McCarty relates his story to more and more people, Dan Ballard finds that he’s not only fighting McCarty, but the good people of Silver Lode as well. Along with being a well-crafted western, SILVER LODE is also a thinly-veiled take on the McCarthy blacklist era of the 1950’s. It was singled out by Martin Scorsese in his excellent BFI documentary, A PERSONAL JOURNEY WITH MARTIN SCORSESE THROUGH AMERICAN MOVIES. In it, Scorsese lauds Dwan for his stylish approach in directing this low-budget film, taking what was essentially a B-movie and transforming it into something much more substantial.

THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM (1961)
No actor was better suited for Edgar Allen Poe than Vincent Price. He embodied both the gentle sophistication and deep-seated despair that a Poe character demanded, and when it came to depicting a slow descent into madness, Price had no equal. In this Roger Corman-directed film, Price plays Don Nicholas Medina, who is stricken with grief at the recent death of his wife, Elizabeth (Barbara Steele). When the family’s physician tells Elizabeth’s brother, Francis Barnard (John Kerr) that his sister died of ‘shock’, Don Nicholas is forced to reveal the truth, and leads Barnard into a secret torture chamber hidden deep within the castle, a chamber that Elizabeth had grown obsessed with during her final days. Director Corman brought a great style to his Poe adaptations (which included films such as HOUSE OF USHER and THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH), constructing an atmosphere of foreboding doom by way of elegant period costumes and sinister set pieces. Showing a flair for color and an understanding of what it is that makes people squirm, Corman breathed new life into the great writer’s chilling compositions, with Vincent Price mixing in the proper dose of the macabre for good measure.

THE VIKINGS (1958)
Set in the Dark Ages, THE VIKINGS weaves a tale of two men who have more in common than either ever imagined. Einar (Kirk Douglas), a Viking prince, kidnaps Morgana (Janet Leigh), a Welsh Princess betrothed to marry the King of England. Einar falls in love with Morgana, but she, in turn, has fallen in love with Eric (Tony Curtis), a hot-blooded slave who has insulted Einar on several occasions. What none of them realize is that Eric and Einar are half brothers, each a son of the Viking chieftain Ragnar (Ernest Borgnine). Director Robert Fleischer and star Kirk Douglas, who also served as the film’s producer, sought to make THE VIKINGS as realistic as possible. Portions of the movie were shot on location in the Fjords of Norway, and Fleischer spent a considerable amount of time at a Viking museum in Oslo, where he learned to design, among other things, the magnificent ships used throughout the film. This realism, coupled with an intense performance by Douglas, convincingly carries us back to one of the most barbaric periods in mankind’s history.

TROUBLE IN PARADISE (1932)
TROUBLE IN PARADISE is a film of perfect refinement, which is amazing when you consider it’s essentially a movie about crooks. Gaston (Herbert Marshall) is the most sophisticated thief in all of Paris, or at least he thought he was until he met Lily (Miriam Hopkins), a woman whose skills at trickery and deceit are as polished as his own. Together, the two devise a scheme by which they’ll bilk wealthy perfume executive Mariette Colet (Kay Francis) out of her vast fortune. But when Gaston inadvertently falls in love with Colet, an angry Lily demands that he choose either the straight and narrow path of wealth and privilege, or a life of adventure with her. After arriving in America in 1922, German-born Ernst Lubitsch directed a number of high-brow comedies, including TO BE OR NOT TO BE, THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER, and HEAVEN CAN WAIT. Yet as polished as these works were, TROUBLE IN PARADISE stands alone, a shining example of the talented director’s mastery of the urbane. TROUBLE IN PARADISE is pure gold.