I'm going to do something I don't think that I've done here before. I'm going to write up a movie based on notes I took long ago, in 1976, to be exact. Why? Because it looks like I won't be able to see "The Trial of Vivienne Ware" again before I die. I've been looking for it for what is it some 47 years. I saw it for the one and only time on a triple feature at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley. Three William K. Howard films ("Back Door to Heaven" and "Transatlantic" were the other two), presented by William K. Everson, on one of his memorable annual trips to the PFA. (Don't remember if he was named after William K. Howard.) I ended my notes with "fastest movie ever?!". "Pan, pan, wipe, wipe, pan up, down, across--speed as comic style" is how I began them. "You watch the virtuoso pacing and don't even know what the hell is going on, but it's going fast." Zasu Pitts reports (on the radio) re the fashions of the women in the courtroom; Skeets Gallagher does lightning-fast recaps of the day's testimony and supplies the hype. Flashbacks go by 1, 2, 3, some without words, only sudden action-and-chase scenes. There are zippy lines by protagonists and onlookers alike. (One line apparently includes the phrase "pick up fares", but in what context I've kind of forgotten, in the interim. Yes, on its own, it's pretty zipless.) The characters are all wise guys, except Joan Bennett's Vivienne, the calm, rather dull center of all the furiousness. And they all talk loud. Now if only "Father Brown, Detective" (1934) would show up again. Haven't seen that one since 1961.![😊]()
statistics: Posted by dcwillis9 — 10:06 PM - 1 day ago — Replies 4 — Views 384