Cinematic Distractions...

[dulcedemon]

It's been a while. Without going into the grim and depressing details, May was a hell of a month for my family. One of these movies was watched fairly recently; the others were not. Thankfully, I took notes at the time I watched them.

Pyro...The Thing Without a Face(Fuego - 1964):
An architectural engineer with a Ferris wheel fetish(Barry Sullivan) goes house hunting, and meets a firebug femme fatale(Martha Hyer) in the process of setting one ablaze. A torrid romance based upon sexual blackmail ensues. When a co-worker at his office warns him about his hot new lady's troubled past, while also shaming him for neglecting his wife, he decides to end the affair. Not helping things is a weird, incestuous side note pertaining to the mistress character.
Imagine if John Waters had directed Fatal Attraction(1987) while psychically channeling Alfred Hitchcock. Divine could have played either the wife or the mistress, or even both. Pyro has that kind of a feel to it.
The architectural engineer runs away to join a carnival for reasons that would give away too much of the plot here. He dons a disguise that makes him look like Jack Palance. He also gets hit on by the carnival owner's barely legal age daughter(Soledad Miranda) in spite of being at least thirty years older than she is.
Fun and vengeance for the whole family directed by Julio Coll.

Diary of a Telephone Operator(Certo, certissimo, anzi... probabile - 1969)
I had to fuss around with the aspect ratio of this low budget, Italian romantic comedy. The music implies porn. Though it easily could be, it's not that kind of movie. It just sounds like it is.
I rented this based upon incorrect information. I was told it was a Tinto Brass movie. It's not. It's directed and co-written by Marcello Fondato, who also wrote the story and screenplay for a movie I liked enough to buy on DVD, Blood and Black Lace(1964).
Claudia Cardinale plays Marta Chiaretti, a woman with a not so great voice that's always hoarse in the morning, yet her fondest desire is to be a telephone operator. She auditions for the job. The man in charge of the audition is played by Francesco Mulé, who is famous primarily for his voice acting, most notably as the Italian Yogi Bear. Marta gives a terrible audition, but they hire her anyway, because she is single and has no plans to get married.
When not busy at her hairdressing job, her roommate, Nanda(Catherine Spaak), is a conniving man-stealer. She manages to seduce almost all of Marta's boyfriends, which eventually causes Marta to move out.
That describes the bulk of the movie. The plot is simple yet entertaining. There is also a running joke about spaghetti.
The boyfriends:
--Sappy house painter guy, who is kind of a stalker but in a sweet follows Marta like a puppy way - played by John Phillip Law
--A traveling salesman who is rude to Marta over the phone, but gets invited to her apartment anyway, then tries to sell both ladies some jewelry
--The sexually frustrated fiancé of one of Marta's co-workers, who pushes his luck too far when he suggests a threesome - played by Antonio Sabáto Sr.
--A handsome, artsy and intelligent fellow who is self-employed as a furniture upholsterer, and seems like the man of Marta's dreams until...It's not Nanda. For once, it's not Nanda!

The Smiling Lieutenant(1931):
Maurice Chevalier and Claudette Colbert star in this lighthearted, musical, romantic comedy. Before watching this, I only knew Maurice Chevalier as a name and voice from a Marx Brothers' comedy bit in their movie Monkey Business, which also came out in 1931.
A lieutenant with a penchant for one night stands accompanies his CO to the local beer hall. The CO is married but infatuated with the violin player in the all ladies band that performs there. The violin player, Franzi(Claudette Colbert), prefers the lieutenant. Before long, they are back at his apartment, making music together. Things get serious, but an errant grin brought about by a flirtatious gesture threatens to tear the happy couple apart.
Enter the princess. Yes, there is a princess. Once the princess enters the picture, things get just plain silly. The good thing about the princess is the actress who plays her, Miriam Hopkins, looks like a young Cybill Shepherd. The bad thing about the princess is she dresses more like a nun than a princess, which doesn't exactly thrill the lieutenant with whom she is smitten.
It's the princess versus the beer hall violinist. The scene I most enjoyed was when the two women confront each other. After a few face slaps, they perform a song together called Jazz Up Your Lingerie. Big-hearted Franzi helps the princess stop dressing like a nun, then delivers my favorite line in the movie: "Girls who start with breakfast don't usually stay for supper."
A sight gag involving the lieutenant making trips up the stairs to a bottle of Hennessey cognac, and back down to the jazzed up princess brings things to a close.
In the end, I prefer Maurice Chevalier as a Marx Brothers' comedy bit.

The French Connection(1971):
I didn't like this movie. There are no good guys in it. That is not to say that there must be good guys in order for me to like something. It's just that there are no likable characters in this movie.
Corrupt, clueless, and depraved, and that's just the cops. Speaking of which, I happened to watch this a few days before George Floyd was murdered. This is a terrific ACAB movie. An absolutely fantastic ACAB movie.
Other than that, it's a great time capsule of New York City in the 1970s.

Fata Morgana(1971):
As much as I like Werner Herzog, I didn't like this. It's too pretentious and indulgent in its repetition of images. The recitation of the Popul Vuh, and some poetry written by Herzog was somewhat enjoyable.