A Devil a Day

Looking for a good public domain movie to watch to-night? You could do worse than 1953's Beat the Devil starring Humphrey Bogart, Gina Lollobrigida, and Jennifer Jones. Jones is billed over Lollobrigida but it's mainly Lollobrigida I think of as the female lead. She is luscious in this movie.

She plays the wife of Bogart's character and I don't know why his attentions are drawn off by Jennifer Jones. Well, Jones is pretty cute, too, playing a spoiled British tourist who decides to make a game of it when she finds herself in the midst of crooks. Bogart along with four other professional criminals have some kind of scheme involving uranium in Africa, the movie's never too clear on the specifics.

Peter Lorre plays one of the four crooks and delivers one of the film's most oft quoted lines:

Time. Time. What is time? Swiss manufacture it. French hoard it. Italians squander it. Americans say it is money. Hindus say it does not exist. Do you know what I say? I say time is a crook.

The screenplay was written by Truman Capote and director John Huston while the the film was being shot. There's something exciting about the minute by minute sense of invention. The movie has a lovely casual tone, like you're just hanging out with these crooks. Even a moment like the one where one of the crooks starts spouting off about Hitler and Mussolini comes off as an amusing sideshow rather than dramatic.

Bogart seems like he's having fun though you can clearly see he lost his front teeth in a car accident during production.

Beat the Devil is available on YouTube and Amazon Prime and probably lots of other places.

X Sonnet #1741

The arch resembles birds in tepid love.
Oh, here's a symbol thick as leaden shoes.
And where's a burning soul to kill a dove?
For rites as such were wrought to kill the blues.
The violent styles change about a hair.
A second more's enough to hang a clock.
A voice contained the smallest hint of care.
A gravid trap could ape an iron lock.
So why's a rock the bouncing damage ball?
The plaster rains across the jagged floor.
A catered curse careens along the hall.
A ready nurse abused the crazy poor.
With melted candy coated shoes we go.
The air beyond the bowl can lately glow.

Gina Lollobrigida

One of the most beautiful actresses in the history of cinema, Gina Lollobrigida, has passed away. She was from Italy but made herself an international figure in American cinema. I first saw her in John Huston's Beat the Devil (1953), an experimental, partially improvised adventure film in which she played opposite Humphrey Bogart. I was immediately impressed by her dark, voluptuous features.

She was perfectly cast alongside Yul Brenner in Solomon and Shiba. Watching her preside over an orgy in tribute to a pagan god leaves no question as to how King Solomon was seduced.

She was capable of a more straight-forward, dramatic performance, too. She's an excellent point of view character opposite Sean Connery and Ralph Richardson in the underrated 1964 film Woman of Straw.

She seemed never afraid to experiment. The strangest movie I saw her in was the Italian science fiction film Death Laid an Egg in which she conducts genetic experiments on chickens.

She later had a second career as a journalist. But burned in my memory are her curves and mysterious eyes in 1952's Fanfan la Tulipe.

Eyes like those will melt your soul. She certainly left her mark.

Mutant Chicken Aphrodisiac

Genetic experiments on chickens, the serial murders of prostitutes, and a love triangle. All of these things are contained succinctly somehow in the the title of 1968's Death Laid an Egg (La morte ha fatto l'uovo). A stylish film with beautiful stars, it's as captivating as it is weird despite a discordant soundtrack and distractingly experimental framing. Sometimes seeming to lose its train of thought in dead end digressions, the film nonetheless seems to be making some kind of point about sex and nature. Sort of.

The beautiful Anna (Gina Lollobrigida) is the wealthy owner of an egg farm run by her handsome husband, Marco (Jean-Louis Trintignant). When Anna's young, beautiful cousin, Gabri (Ewa Aulin), visits, the relationship between Anna and Marco is disrupted.

It's not that Marco's attention seems distracted by Gabri's beauty. Probably because he's busy secretly paying for prostitutes in a hotel across town where he role-plays murdering them (many reviews and synopses of the film seem to feel we're meant to think at first he's actually murdering them but I never had this impression). Instead, it's Anna who become fixated on Gabri and tangentially with the idea of Marco having an affair with her. When Anna discovers Marco's prostitute habit, she and Gabri gleefully initiate a scheme to have Anna pose as a prostitute.

The commentary on sex and relationships here seems almost a Vertigoian statement on the role of fantasy and ideal in relationships. With this context, the fact that a scientist is breeding headless, wingless chickens at the egg farm takes on new significance.

Anna sees this as a revolutionary development with a promise of increasing profits. Marco, meanwhile, sees only abomination. Is there an implied connexion here between how each one sees relationships? Kind of. Anna is fixated on discussions of wigs and Gabri's young skin, of dressing up and modifying, the effect of beauty being more important than the process to achieve it. Marco, meanwhile, enacts a relationship that places him in power. How that's connected I'm not sure unless it's to say that a body needs a head.

Death Laid an Egg is available on Amazon Prime.

Twitter Sonnet #1314

A horde of hoards were many marching coins.
A walkie talkie took the cell to phones.
Official pants report the legal loins.
Banana banks begin to peel your loans.
A tower leans to shelter little trees.
The acre plate controls the breakfast land.
A bigger thought contained a hive of threes.
A double deck could deal a triple hand.
A walking head connects the footed necks.
Repeated guys redeem the mushy lunch.
Rewards involved bikini cargo wrecks.
The frothy waves advanced to test a hunch.
Extracted words create a second sea.
Vacation hives return a strident bee.