TCM CLASSIC FILM FESTIVAL ROUNDUP

Just like last year, the concluded four-day celebration of film at the TCM Classic Film Festival offered much more than promised with its theme of “Grand Illusions: Fantastic Worlds on Film.

The theme worked well for the opening night gala presentation of “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.” No one should question that George Lucas created an enchanted world of fantasy in outer space.

Producing events at TCM’s festival, Bruce Goldstein is a fountain of information and insight on pre-Code films, and fortunately he was the presenter for 1932’s “Me and My Gal,” a comic crime tale starring Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett.

When the Hayes Code, which set a variety of standards to rid films of such things as profanity and sexual perversion, became enforceable in 1934 “Me and My Gal” was kept out of circulation for decades because it could no longer be released.

Spencer Tracy’s Danny Dolan, a wisecracking street cop in pursuit of escaped mobster Duke Castenega (George Walsh), initiates an erratic romance with perky waterfront waitress Helen Riley (Joan Bennett).

Over a cup of coffee at Helen’s hash house, Danny proposes to Helen, saying “Will you marry me so I can get some sleep?” After the screening, Goldstein noted this line was deemed ribald enough to get censored in some jurisdictions even before the Hayes Code kicked in.

While “Me and My Gal” was delightfully funny, Goldstein regaled the audience by quoting film reviews of the era that savaged the film for being smutty. Flopping at the box office, the film got pulled from theaters after a week.

The Los Angeles Examiner noted the film was “real entertainment with the highbrow stuff left out.” One could look at this review as a sort of backhanded accolade, if only because so many other reviews were so brutally negative.

With some irony, Goldstein noted the film also got confused with “For Me and My Gal,” a musical released a decade later and starring hoofers Gene Kelly and George Murphy.

Considering the brilliant wit of Noel Coward, notable for being a playwright, director and actor among other talents, the chance to see the 1945 film adaptation of “Blithe Spirit” proved irresistible.

Coward’s bantering dialogue is evident throughout the film, with Rex Harrison’s Charles informing his second wife Ruth (Constance Cummings) in one exchange, “If you wish to make an inventory of my sex life, I think it only fair to tell you that you’ve left out several episodes.”

Echoing the film’s title, Charles’ flighty deceased first wife Elvira (Kay Hammond) is conjured up during a séance and appears visible only to him, proceeding to hilariously haunt him and induce jealousy from Ruth.

In the role of presenter to the screening, Christine Ebersole, who starred as Elvira on the Broadway stage in “Blithe Spirit,” noted that in the film role Kay Hammond had to be painted a light shade of ethereal green.

The paint job provided the necessary “ghostly quality” needed for a spirit from the beyond, and Ebersole expressed hope that the green coating “didn’t shortened her life” due to the chemicals. Hammond apparently passed at age 71 from undisclosed causes.

“To Be or Not To Be,” a comedy about the Nazi occupation of Poland released in 1942, generated a share of controversy and divided reviews, which are interesting due to the director Ernst Lubitsch coming from a Jewish family and born in Germany.

Jack Benny as Joseph Tura and his wife Maria (Carole Lombard in her last movie role) lead a troupe of Polish actors who turn the tables on Hitler’s lunkheads who have taken control of Warsaw.

Maria copes with her egotistical husband’s comical attempts to play Hamlet on stage and fends off the advances of a lovestruck Polish air force lieutenant (Robert Stack) in her dressing room.

The film turns insanely funny for its sharp dialogue and the clever deceptions against the Third Reich goons by impersonating Nazi officers to save the resistance fighters.

“Jeopardy” host Ken Jennings, who vaulted to celebrity by his record-breaking 74-game winning streak on the quiz show, noted that “To Be or Not To Be” personified the “Lubitsch touch,” which is a sophisticated, cosmopolitan style with an urbane quality.

Jennings observed that the movie raised the question of whether it was in bad taste. At the time, there only two types of films involving Nazis. They were either an “existential threat” or “clowns and buffoons,” and this film straddled the line between these two categories.

A real delight was the 50th anniversary screening of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” an irreverent, anarchic take on the Arthurian legends, with Graham Chapman as King Arthur and the Python members playing multiple roles.

Presenter Patton Oswalt showed up for the morning screening wearing pajamas and a bathroom, telling the audience that comedians don’t get dressed before noon. As such, Oswalt captured the spirit of what he called the “wellspring of pure absurdity” that came with “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.