From the Planet Krypton to Inside the Human Body to the Popular Front and Beyond

This is the second part of my review of the 16^th annual TCM Classic Film Festival, which took place in Hollywood from April 24-27. This year, the vintage film fete’s theme was: “GRAND ILLUSIONS: FANTASTIC WORLDS ON FILM, You’re invited on a wondrous journey to enchanted worlds of fantasy and stories beyond belief. From myths and magical creatures to ghostly encounters and travels through time, you’ll escape with fellow movie lovers to places that will ignite your imagination.”

Film historian Luis Reyes, who has co-authored three movie history books with me about the screen image of Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders, and is now at work on a fourth book about works shot on location at Hawaii, introduced the 1966 sci fi pic Fantastic Voyage. As usual, Reyes’ comments were full of insights, including the fact that this was Raquel Welch’s first major screen role (I had thought it was in that furry bikini in One Million Years B.C.). In this improbable plot full of Cold War era intrigue (another fact pointed out by Reyes, which I had completely forgotten), a team of doctors and others are microscopically reduced and inserted into the bloodstream of a stricken scientist in order to render an internal operation and rescue him. I remembered being wowed by the special effects when I was a little boy, although now, 50 years later, they are passe to downright laughable.

The same is arguably true of 1978’s Superman, which was preceded by The Arctic Giant, a 1942 cartoon about the Man of Steel made by Max Fleischer – the father of Fantastic Voyage’s director, Richard Fleischer. Although Superman’sSpecial FX are outdated, it was good fun seeing Chris Reeves as the title character (and, but of course, as that “mild mannered reporter Clark Kent”), Gene Hackman as supervillain Lex Luthor, Margot Kidder as Lois Lane, Jackie Cooper as Perry White and Marlon Brando as Jor El, dancing his last tango at Planet Krypton before it explodes. (Get it? The dead planet has the word “crypt” in its name.)

With its dazzling sense of movement, sizzling swordplay, dashing leading men and lush romanticism, Rouben Mamoulian’s The Mark of Zorro is one of Hollywood’s best swashbucklers ever. Set in 18^th century Los Angeles, Tyrone Power as the title character and his secret identity, Don Diego, leads the Mexican peasants to rise up against the tyrannical Spanish mayor (J. Edward Bromberg). Just as Basil Rathbone unforgettably crossed swords two years earlier against Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood, here Rathbone memorably has a duel with Tyrone Power as Zorro. Made in 1940, The Mark of Zorro’s theme of the “enlightened,” liberal members of the upper class uniting with the plebians in a mass rebellion against dictatorship mirrored the Popular Front ethos of the time, in the struggle against fascism.

Interestingly, co-star Gale Sondergard was the wife of the Hollywood Ten director Herbert Biberman when he was blacklisted in 1947. J. Edward Bromberg, too, was blacklisted and he died shortly afterwards of a heart attack. Call it “the mark of the Blacklist and McCarthyism.”

These are just a few of the films, etc., experienced during the movie magic of the 16^th annual TCM Classic Film Festival. For lovers of movies, this Fantastic Film Fete was no mere grand illusion. Sprinkled by filmic fairy dust, a cinematically splendid time was had by all.

For more info see here.

Ed Rampell’s novel about the Native Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement for Indigenous rights, The Disinherited: Blood Blalahs, will be published this Spring.

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