Quarterly Cinema Scan - Volume XVIII

My mother, Little Pook, used to be my cover for attending romantic comedies.  Anybody who saw me in the movie theater would surely think, "Oh what a nice guy.  He's enduring the pain of sitting through a rom-com so his mother can see it."  Little did they know I enjoyed that genre of film as much as she did.

My "cover" has now been gone for over four years -- Momma Cuan can take them or leave them -- so these days when I go to a rom-com I keep my fingers crossed that no one I know will recognize me.  The penalty of being discovered would call for me to surrender my man card.

While I don't make a point of seeing every rom-com that comes along, I have seen enough of them to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff.  I have not formulated a top ten list of my all-time favorite rom-coms, but I feel safe in saying that Walk, Don't Run from 1966 would comfortably find a spot on it, probably somewhere between numbers 4 and 7.

The setting is 1964 Tokyo, where the summer Olympics has caused an unsolvable shortage of hotel rooms.  English businessman Sir William Rutland (Cary Grant) has arrived in the city two days earlier than his reservations, and neither the hotel nor the British embassy is successful in helping him find lodging.  On his way out the embassy door he spots a bulletin board ad by Christine Eastman (cute Samantha Eggar, another Brit) seeking a roommate.  As soon as Christine sees him at her apartment door she realizes she forgot to specify she was seeking a female roomie, but it's too late.  Sir William, as only a Cary Grant character can do, sweet talks his way in, and before she can collect her thoughts he has become her tenant.

Shortly thereafter, Sir William strikes up a conversation with an American athlete, Steve Davis (Jim Hutton).  Like Sir William, Steve has also come to the city a couple of days earlier than his Olympic Village reservations, so that he can study Japanese architecture.  Although Sir William makes a meek effort to hide his own lodging arrangements, you know Steve is going to end up sharing a room with Sir William. (Conveniently, Christine's spare room happens to have two beds!)

Since this is a rom-com, it's just a matter of time before Christine and Steve's relationship becomes more than landlord-tenant.  Christine's engagement to local embassy underling Julius D. Haversack (nerdy John Standing) is a minor obstacle.  He is no match for Sir William, who delights in playing cupid for the benefit of his two new young friends.  Sir William's ploy to divert Haversack's attention away from Christine works like a charm.

The film has several other pleasing aspects: the unintentionally funny routine planned by Christine to give herself and her two tenants equal bathroom time in the morning, the two little kids who are spotted periodically sitting in the apartment building's stairwell, the frequent attempts by Sir William to comply with the Japanese protocol of bowing from the waist, and many references to the greatest mystery of all, viz., in what Olympic event is Steve participating?

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Here are the movies I've seen on the small screen during the fourth quarter of 2014.

1. The Birds (1963 horror; Tippi Hedren decides to stay in fishing village Bodega Bay to fend off the birds with Rod Taylor, rather than simply getting back in her car immediately to head home to safe San Francisco.) C

2. Carnal Knowledge (1971 drama; Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel, roommates at Harvard and friends into their forties, have more than their share of self-inflicted frustrations with the women in their lives, including Candice Bergen and Ann-Margret.) B+

3. Hotel (1967 drama; Melvyn Douglas, the owner of the classic St. Gregory's Hotel in New Orleans, relies on general manager Rod Taylor to attend to all of the hotel's day-to-day problems, such as  key thief Karl Malden, hit-and-run culprit Merle Oberson, and sneaky potential buyer Kevin McCarthy.) C+

4. The Night Heaven Fell (1958 drama; Brigitte Bardot falls for Stephen Boyd, even though he is accused of killing her uncle.) C+

5. Out Of The Past (1947 drama; Robert Mitchum is a former gangster who gave up that life to run a rural gas station, but his ex-boss Kirk Douglas wants him to find Jane Greer who ran off to Mexico with forty thousand smackers of the chief's money.) B+

6. Psycho (1960 horror; Janet Leigh steals forty grand from her office, heads out of state, and then checks into the Bates Motel, where the proprietor is creepy Anthony Perkins.) A-

7. Walk, Don't Run (1966 rom-com; see the above mini-review.) A-