Next Lobotomy Room Film Club ... Desire (1936) on 15 February 2024

“Marlene Dietrich, with her pencil-line arched eyebrows, as the most elegantly amusing international jewel thief ever. She steals a pearl necklace in Paris and speeds toward Spain; on her way she has a series of encounters with Gary Cooper, a motor engineer from Detroit who is on holiday. Produced by Ernst Lubitsch, for Paramount, and directed by Frank Borzage, this is a polished light comedy in the "continental" style - a sophisticated romantic trifle, with Dietrich more chic and modern than in her von Sternberg pictures. When she eyes Cooper, she's so captivating, you almost feel sorry for him; there's an image of her standing against French doors that is simply peerlessly sexy. But you can also see why this European sophisticate longs for the American innocent. Cooper is a bit coy and rambunctious in his Americanness but wearing narrow-tailored suits and with his hair sleek he's the ideal Art Deco hero. And he's great when he leans close to Dietrich and says, dreamily, "All I know about you is you stole my car and I'm insane about you." When he's being threatened by her crooked associate (John Halliday), who remarks, tauntingly, "One mustn't underestimate America - it's a big country," he bends forward and says, "Six foot three."”

/ Pauline Kael’s review of Desire (1936) /

Considering the February film club almost coincides with Valentine’s Day and to prove that even Lobotomy Room can occasionally raise the tone, on 15 February we whisk you away to The Spanish Riviera for sumptuous 1936 romantic screwball comedy Desire! Gary Cooper stars as Tom Bradley, a naïve American automotive engineer who becomes entangled with Marlene Dietrich’s enigmatic Madeleine Beaupré – described by Pauline Kael as “the most elegantly amusing jewel thief ever.” Directed by Frank Borzage, with lavish costumes by Travis Banton and songs by Frederick Hollander (who wrote all of Dietrich’s best musical numbers – including “Falling in Love Again”) and featuring the two leads at the height of their considerable beauty, Desire is an Art Deco gem of a movie! Join us to wallow in sheer glamour over cocktails in the splendour of Fontaine’s in Dalston.

Lobotomy Room is the FREE monthly film club devoted to cinematic perversity! Third Thursday night of every month downstairs at Fontaine’s cocktail lounge in Dalston. Numbers are limited, so reserving in advance via Fontaine’s website is essential. Alternatively, phone 07718000546 or email bookings@fontaines.bar. The film starts at 8:30 pm. Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8:00 pm. To ensure everyone is seated and cocktails are ordered on time, please arrive by 8:15 pm at the latest. Facebook event page.

Some fun facts about Desire: it was originally meant to be directed by Ernst Lubitsch – and entitled The Pearl Necklace! Marlene Dietrich stars as a glamorous and amoral jewel thief who - due to wacky screwball hijinks - becomes entangled with unworldly vacationing American-in-Paris automobile engineer Gary Cooper. Desire reunites Dietrich and Cooper for the first time since their triumphant pairing in Morocco in 1930 (which was Dietrich's Hollywood debut). As Dietrich’s definitive biographer Steven Bach asserts, “Cooper was not just her first American leading man, but her best.” Decide for yourself on 15 February! 

/ Below: find someone who looks at you with the same delight as Marlene Dietrich contemplating these pearls! /

Trailer:

Reflections on ... Blowing Wild (1953)

 

Recently watched: Blowing Wild (1953). Tagline: “Fighting wild! Loving wild!” I’m using this period of enforced social isolation to explore the weirder corners of YouTube for long forgotten and obscure movies. (My boyfriend is accompanying me only semi-willingly). 

Golden age Hollywood royalty Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanywck memorably appeared onscreen together in the justly celebrated comedies Meet John Doe and Ball of Fire (both 1941). There’s a minor but interesting collaboration the duo made much later in their careers that rarely gets cited: the frankly tawdry, hard-boiled melodrama Blowing Wild. (Don’t let the title mislead you: it’s not an exploration into the heartbreak of flatulence). Blowing Wild deserves to be better known. At its best, it reaches a fever pitch of baroque, operatic lunacy that anticipates the 1954 Nicholas Ray Western Johnny Guitar.

Cooper is Jeff Dawson, a taciturn drifter searching for employment in Depression-era South America. Dawson’s luck seems to improve when local oil baron Paco Conway (Anthony Quinn) hires him as a foreman – but sparks fly when he discovers that Conway’s wife Marina (Stanwyck) is an old flame. And the highly volatile Marina makes it extremely clear she’s still carrying a torch for him.  Even when Dawson tells her, “You’re no good, Marina! You’re just no good!” she still lunges at him for a kiss. After Dawson contemptuously brushes her lipstick off his mouth with the back of his hand, she growls, “You tried to wipe me off before - and you never could!” 

Blowing Wild boils with hints of dysfunctional perversity. Paco knocks a guy out in a fistfight while Marina (a dominatrix in jodhpurs) observes approvingly on horseback. “She likes to see me fight!” a grinning Paco assures Dawson. Later, one of the laborers confides to Dawson that Marina has a history of sleeping with Paco’s workmen. Marina sublimates her pent-up sexual frustration with reckless high-speed horseback riding. A furiously pumping oil derrick outside the Conways’ mansion (the source of their wealth) seemingly represents the couples’ inner turmoil. 

Hugo Fregonese’s direction is terse and muscular. In terms of acting and charisma, you can’t fail with a cast like this. The performances from Quinn and Stanwyck are ferocious (Cooper is his usual laconic cowboy self). As Paco the cuckolded husband, the unfailingly intense Quinn oozes swarthy machismo and a constant patina of sweat. And Stanwyck is simply majestic as hot-pool-of-woman-need Marina. When Marina cracks-up spectacularly towards the denouement (Dawson to Marina: “It makes me sick to even look at you!” Marina: “You’ll never get away from me! I won’t let you!”), Stanwyck suggests a crazed Lady Macbeth figure. And then there’s Ruth Roman in the secondary female lead as Sal Donnelly, waiting in the wings to claim Dawson for herself. A sensual and earthy actress with a distinctive nicotine-stained voice, Roman elevates every film she appears in. There’s a deliciously bitchy encounter when Marina goes to the casino where Sal works to confront her rival. (It culminates with Marina sneering, “You're a liar, a cheap little liar. What can he see in you?”). Actually, I'd happily watch a 90-minute movie of just tough broads Stanwyck and Roman exchanging insults. 

Early on, there’s one gloriously noir moment that justifies Blowing Wild’s existence: Paco roughly embraces Miranda from behind while she’s seated at her make-up table. Marina (clad in a black negligee) furiously snarls, “You smell like the gutter!” and Paco responds, “That’s just where I’ve been!”

You can watch Blowing Wild on YouTube (just ignore the Spanish subtitles):