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The hardest part about attending a film festival strictly as a critic, is knowing you have little chance of seeing the wealth of retrospective titles programmed. It’s just so difficult to divide your time away from the newer titles, mostly because, quite frankly, those pay the bills. Often you just hope your local repertory movie theater will bring what you missed to their screens. But when Locarno Film Festival announced its celebratory retrospective series “The Lady With the Torch,” its programme of Columbia Pictures films (1929-1959), marking the hundredth anniversary of the studio—I just knew I couldn’t pass it up. Rather than tooling my schedule for World Premieres, I made these classics and rarities my priority.
The series was a marathon event — my lone complaint is that you couldn’t have come close to seeing all 44 films screened unless they made up the entirety of your schedule — and I was able to view 13 of them, most of them as first time-watches. With the exception of “Gun Fury,” which played in 3D (more on that in a bit), every film screened at the GranRex Cinema, and was accompanied by introductions from a bevy of film critics and historians, like Farran Smith Nehme, Pamela Hutchinson, Christina Newland, and Ehsan Khoshbakht. These writers—along with Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chris Fujiwara, Imogen Sara Smith, Elana Lazic, Christopher Small, and more, also contributed to the anthology of essays accompanying the series. Edited by Khoshbakht, The Lady With the Torch is a wealth of history backgrounding the building of the studio: figures like controversial studio co-founder Harry Cohn, and directors like Charles Vidor, Hugo Haas, William Castle, Howard Hawks and more are analyzed. As is the studio’s unique takes on melodramas, noirs, women’s pictures, screwballs, westerns, war flicks, and social justice works.
The picture that is painted by historian Matthew H. Bernstein in his chapter, is of a Poverty Row studio operating on the margins, which quickly and efficiently churned out B-movies to fuel its later swings at A-pictures, that would, through unlikely circumstances, by the 1950s eventually allow the studio to graduate to producing big budget epics. “No one in the industry, including those three [Columbia Pictures founders Jack and Harry Cohn and Joe Brandt], could have predicted the studio’s longevity… Against all odds, and despite its inauspicious beginnings, by the end of the classical era, Columbia had risen to a place of profitability and prestige,” notes Bernstein. What The Lady With The Torch also makes clear is how Columbia fostered talent, allowing directors and stars to ply their trade in B-movies before handing them bigger opportunities to create memorable work that would form the backbone of the studio’s legacy.
I am thrilled to have caught as many films as I did — many of them screened on 35mm — with each presenter bringing an incredible trove of knowledge that primed audiences to view these wonderful treasures. Below are the 13 films I managed to catch from this wide-ranging series.
“Vanity Street” (1932)
Like many of the directors on this list, Nick Grinde was a B-movie savant. During his career he bounced from studio to studio. But he found his warmest home at Columbia, where he directed ten films. “Vanity Street” wasn’t his first collaboration with the studio (the Barbara Stanwyck starring “Shopworm” holds that distinction). But the Pre-Code is emblematic of the quick-hitting, efficiently crafted works that would be a trademark to his career.
While Charles Bickford’s granite face doesn’t make for a natural romantic lead, “Vanity Street” leans into that fact by casting him as a brusque, sympathetic detective who scoops the starving, homeless Jeanie Gregg (Helen Chandler) off the street — rather than throwing her in jail for throwing a brick through a diner window — and gives her job in the Follies before later bailing her out of a murder rap. Bickford is quite touching as the detective who doesn’t believe he deserves an ebullient Chandler’s love. In the background of the will-they-won’t-they affair is also a gripping, salacious picture referencing sex working and the perilous place aging women hold in showbusiness — making for a slick melodrama.
“Twentieth Century” (1934)
If you asked someone to describe the prototypical screwball comedy, chances they'd either evoke “It Happened One Night” or “Twentieth Century.” While the latter was produced to capitalize off the success of the former, its chronological placement doesn’t make it any less of a scorching picture. Its success stems from its dream team lineup: the legendary Howard Hawks directs, the prolific Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur wrote it, cinematographer Joseph August lensed and editor Gene Havlick cut it (both worked on “Vanity Street”), and John Barrymore in one of his last great performances combined forces with a transcendent Carole Lombard to star.
In this marriage-remarriage screwball, Barrymore is the self-absorbed playwright Oscar Jaffe, who is so confident of his star-making prowess, he casts the inexperienced Mildred Plotka (Lombard) in the starring role of his latest production — renaming her Lily Garland — and eventually marrying her. Years later, not only is Garland a star. She is finished with the verbally abusive, toxically manipulative and unconscionably jealous Jaffe. She leaves him for a career in Hollywood. Their relationship seems over until they find themselves on the same train, where a desperate Jaffe attempts to re-sign Garland for one last production. There aren’t enough adjectives to fully commend Barrymore and Lombard for their peerless work, here. But they’re so effortlessly brilliant together as both verbal and physical comedians that the film's final note somehow feels fitting despite its obvious horror.
“If You Could Only Cook” (1935)
Another marriage-remarriage screwball, William A. Seiter’s “If You Could Only Cook” has a wacky premise. Jim Buchanan (Herbert Marshall), the owner of Buchanan Motor Company, is disillusioned with the quick profit mentality of his board and the soulless love of his fiance Evelyn Fletcher (Frieda Inescort). On a park bench he meets an unemployed Joan Hawthorne (Jean Arthur) combing the want-ads for a job. When she comes across a job asking for a cook and a butler, she, mistaking Buchanan for another job-seeker, proposes that they pose as a married couple and apply for the job. They somehow get the positions working for mobster Mike Rossini (Leo Carrillo), a foodie with a specific palette for garlic. The subterfuge doesn’t make much sense — after all, no one recognizes the area’s largest car manufacturer until his picture pops up in the paper — but the film’s casting is so spot on, especially the spitfire Arthur, alongside the hilarious Lionel Stander as Rossini’s lieutenant, that the ensuing hijinks still power the threadbare story without much let up.
“Let Us Live” (1939)
Anytime I see Henry Fonda on screen, it's a jarring experience. Not because he isn’t an incredible actor. I’m just awestruck by how his naturalistic style is so far ahead of his contemporaries. While 1939 was a banner year for Fonda — featuring starring roles in “Jesse James,” “Drums Along the Mohawk,” and “Young Mr. Lincoln” — its director John Brahm’s “Let Us Live” of the same year that gives a full accounting of Fonda’s incredible range.
He begins the film in the image of his soft-spoken everyman persona as Brick Tennant, an optimistic cab driver preparing to wed Mary Roberts (Maureen O'Sullivan). His world is turned upside down, however, when an old friend — Joe Linden (Alan Baxter) — arrives looking for a job and a place to crash. Brick hires Joe, loaning him an old cab that Joe, with a ruthless gang, uses to stage several robberies. The thefts lead back to Brick, putting him on death row with Joe while Mary teams with Lieutenant Everett (Ralph Bellamy) to clear Brick’s name. This film takes a hard look at capital punishment and critiques the inequities of the justice system. And while the actual investigation is frustrating, that’s sorta the point: The system is so intent on finding a culprit, it haphazardly points the finger at Joe. The hopelessness of Brick’s plight causes the once genial man to change. By the end, Fonda is a completely different person — draped in an uncontrollable rage that foreshadows the later darkened turn he’d take in “Once Upon a Time in the West.”
“Girls Under 21” (1940)
A fascinating entry in the “women’s picture” subgenre, Max Nosseck’s “Girls Under 21” is a morality play that’s simple enough. Frances White Ryan (Rochelle Hudson) returns to her downtrodden neighborhood following a prison sentence in connection with her gangster husband Smiley Ryan (Bruce Cabot). Frances wants to go straight, but the older, conservative women in her community won’t forget her past. Meanwhile, Frances’ sister Jennie (Tina Thayer), along with Jennie’s young cohort, want Frances’ fine clothes and lifestyle. They decide on a life of crime, despite their idealistic teacher Johnny Crane (Paul Kelly) believing they’re capable of more. The girls’ criminal ways eventually lead to tragedy, in a scene so shocking in its violence, it caused the entire theater to audibly gasp. Nosseck’s picture is more didactic than you’d like, and features some canned performances — but it is a compact, nifty film nonetheless.
“Under Age” (1941)
While “Girls Under 21” might be a tad too ‘afterschool special' to be hard hitting, Edward Dmytryk’s “Under Age” is so in your face I almost mistook it for a Pre-Code. Dmytryk’s arresting blend of social issues and exploitation — a line he would jump back and forth over throughout his career, particularly with “The Sniper” (1952) — pushes this film to the limits of the censors. Another “women’s picture,” it supposes an issue afflicting America’s highways and byways: roadside motels using young women to lure male drivers for a good time. Sisters Jane (Nan Grey) and Edie Baird (Mary Anderson) are hired by one such chain owned by Mrs. Burke (Leona Maricle) following their release from prison. While the older, responsible Jane catches the eye of jewelry heir Rocky Stone (Tom Neal), her younger sister Edie — drunk off the money, fine clothes, and attention afforded by her salacious trade — falls for Mrs. Burke’s violent right-hand-man Tap Manson (Alan Baxter). Surprisingly the film does more than allude to these women as prostitutes, and features an incredibly gruesome murder that left my mouth agape. Its theme of collective empowerment is stirring; its use of shadows is evocative; its awareness of the body to enrapture is startling. This film feels like one of the real discoveries from the series.
“None Shall Escape” (1944)
Similar to many directors of his era, Andre de Toth sorta did everything: westerns, horror, war pictures, and noir. “None Shall Escape,” one of his early films after emigrating to America from Hungary during World War II, is a time-bending work. “As Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘Alphaville’ would do two decades later," notes critic Jonanthan Rosenbaum in his chapter for The Lady With the Torch "‘None Shall Escape’ — its title derived from a Franklin Roosevelt speech about Nazi crimes — plants a sharp look at the recent past inside the recent (or soon to be materialized) future. One might even say it mixes tenses in order to address the present."
Toth’s film imagines and predicts a war tribunal, not unlike the later Nuremberg Trials, where Nazi war criminal Wilhelm Grimm (Alexander Knox) stands accused of murder. The film flashes back through witness testimony provided by Grimm’s former fiance Marja Pacierkowski (Marsha Hunt), her uncle Father Warecki (Henry Travers), and Grimm’s brother (Erik Rolf) to chronicle Grimm’s descent from school master to antisemite. The trial itself is riveting, even if the construction is obvious. But it’s a speech conducted by Rabbi David Levin (Richard Hale) as Jews are being forced into cattle cars — which speaks upon the need for the oppressed people of the world to unite — that is equally harrowing and urgent in a moment where genocide in Gaza is presently occurring.
“Mysterious Intruder” (1946)
As a producer, William Castle is probably best known for “The Lady from Shanghai” and “Rosemary’s Baby.” As a director, he made his name self-releasing wildly successful B-horror films like “House on Haunted Hill.” But Castle first broke out when Harry Cohn assigned him to direct “The Whistler” (1944), an adaptation of the same-titled radio serial. It became exceptionally popular, spawning eight total films in the series. “Mysterious Intruder” is the fifth, and follows the unscrupulous private eye Earl C. Conrad (Richard Dix) as he works to find the long missing Elora Lund (Pamela Blake) for the aged antique salesman Edward Stillwell (Paul E. Burns) — who claims to possess two rare wax cylinders worth hundreds of thousands of dollars belonging to Lund. The dollar signs not only interest Conrad, they cause a couple of mysterious murderers to pick up the scent too. Like the rest of the series, “Mysterious Intruder” keeps its radioplay elements, cutting to the shadow of the raspy-voiced narrator the Whistler (Otto Forrest) to keep viewers abreast of the film’s psychological underpinnings. This is a sharp-tongued, rough around the edges noir that ends on a surprising yet satisfying final scene.
“The Killer That Stalked New York” (1950)
Let’s just say after COVID — I use the word “after” very loosely — Earl McEvoy’s pandemic thriller “The Killer That Stalked New York” hits a bit differently. Based on a 1948 Cosmopolitan article by Milton Lehman, it follows Sheila Bennet (Evelyn Keyes) — who has recently returned from Cuba, where she illicitly shipped stolen diamonds in the mail to her no-good husband Matt Crane (Charles Korvin). When she returns, not only is she being trailed by a Treasury agent, she also finds Matt in a relationship with her younger sister Francie (Lola Albright). To make matters worse, she is gravely ill. Sheila seeks help from Dr. Ben Wood (William Bishop). At his office she meets a young girl, who, with through her contact with Sheila, contracts smallpox. The disease begins to spread across New York City, spurring Ben and the Department of Health to search for patient zero: Sheila. This is a pro-vaccine film, one that captures an appropriately shaken government ready to spring into action to prevent further unnecessary death. While the film is a socially conscious work, as Khoshbakht observes in his essay in The Lady With The Torch, it also represents how Columbia produced directors and stars. Its director McEvoy moved up from second unit work to helm this picture, one of his few directorial efforts.
“Pickup” (1951)
I’ve slowly been working my way through Hugo Haas’ directed works, previously watching “Bait,” “One Girl’s Confession,” and “Hold Back Tomorrow.” So I was immediately keen to catch “Pickup,” his directorial debut in America (he previously enjoyed a sizable film career in the Czech Republic). Along with directing, Haas self-produced, co-wrote with Arnold Phillips, and starred in the picture as Jan Horak — a tender-hearted railroad dispatcher who attends a carnival looking for a dog but comes home married to the gold digging Betty (Beverly Michaels). Jan is too sweet of a man to see that Betty, who’s miserable living in the middle of nowhere at his depot, not only doesn’t love him, but is smitten by his young assistant Steve (Allan Nixon). When Jan suddenly goes deaf, Betty sees the disability as her chance to steal his money and bolt. Her plan goes awry, however, when Jan, after he miraculously regains his hearing, pretends to be deaf. “Pickup” features an impressive sound design, relying on high-pitch squeals to unmoor the viewer, and excels at a psychological seediness that is lean and mean yet filled with immense heart and warmth.
“The Glass Wall” (1953)
Playing at Locarno for the first time since it won the Golden Leopard in 1951, Maxwell Shane’s “The Glass Wall” is a vexing tale that puts America’s broken immigration system under the spotlight. Peter Kuban (Vittorio Gassman) is a Holocaust survivor who has stowed away on a ship heading to New York City. Once in America, he is detained, where he tells the story of how he helped save an American G.I. during the war. Unfortunately, he only knows the soldier's first name — Tom (Jerry Paris) — and that he's a clarinet player living in New York. None of those details are enough to guarantee his place in America; he needs to find the real Tom within 24 hours or he’ll be deported. Peter breaks out of custody toward Time Square to search for Tom, where, along the way, he meets helpful souls like Maggie Summers (Gloria Grahame) and a burlesque dancer named Nancy (Robin Raymond).
Gassman, an Italian actor playing Hungarian, is simply tremendous as Peter, demonstrating clear desperation yet a hopeful view of the world, despite his wretched circumstances, which gives this picture its moral compass. If a “model migrant,” in all the loaded connotations of the phrase, cannot hope to gain entry into America, then who can? That kind of question, which “The Glass Wall” raises, is one we’re still grappling with as many decry those who are not entering the country “the right way” without fully considering what a distasteful phrase — the years-long obstacles and boundaries thrown up at migrants — like that could possibly to mean those most distressed.
“Gun Fury” (1953)
As mentioned before, every film in the series, at least the ones I watched, screened at the GranRex Cinema. All of them except “Gun Fury,” a 3D western directed by the great Raoul Walsh. In the reconstructionist narrative, Rock Hudson plays Ben Warren, a pacifist with only two dreams on his mind: Marrying Jennifer Ballard (Donna Reed) and living far away from the troubles of the world on his massive ranch. Those dreams are shattered when Frank Slayton (Philip Carey), an outlaw haunted by the Lost Cause, robs a carriage carrying gold, shoots Ben and kidnaps Jennifer. When Ben awakens, he teams with Slayton’s former partner Jess (Leo Gordon) and with Johash (Pat Hogan) — an Indigenous man seeking revenge against Slayton — to hunt down the outlaw. Though the 3D in “Gun Fury” is mostly rudimentary, involving characters throwing objects at the lens, such as a loaf of bread, it’s still enrapturing to watch Walsh’s unparalleled sense of how to frame these vast landscapes and the way he captures the film’s immersive chases (at one point, we get a thrilling POV a shot from the driver of a wagon, as though we’re the ones holding the reins).
“The Last Frontier” (1955)
I am admittedly not a fan of Victor Mature. I just find his lackadaisical onscreen persona grating; I can never tell if he actually wants to be whatever movie he’s acting in. Nevertheless, I adore Anthony Mann — especially his long collaboration with James Stewart. And while Mature brings an unpredictable sense of intensity as the crude Jed Cooper — who along with fellow fur trappers Gus (James Whitmore) and Mungo (Pat Hogan) are enlisted by Captain Glenn Riordan (Guy Madison) to track an Indigenous chief named Red Cloud (Manuel Dondé) — I can’t help but feel he’s miscast here.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t fascinating elements to “The Last Frontier.” For a time it thrives as an anti-war and anti-military picture. Robert Preston appears as a General Custer-like figure, the bloodthirsty Colonel Frank Marston, whose wife Corinna (Anne Bancroft) is not only incredulous of her husband’s tactics but is also the apple of Jed’s eye. Preston provides the narrative with an easy villain to root against, one that embodies the rotten core of America's Manifest Destiny. Jed’s desire to wear an blue army jacket is also nearly stamped out in a cathartic breakdown by Mature that demonstrates the emotional depths that always lurked underneath his stoic exterior but was rarely seen in his noir work. “The Last Frontier,” unfortunately, undoes much of that great, radical work by returning to normalcy and ultimately becoming the thing it so fervently seemed to hate — a blindly patriotic picture.
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