April 18th 2013. Pick Of The Day.

Frank Tashlin's satirical masterpiece WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER? screens its last this day as the Film Forum's weeklong hug comes to a close. Tashlin provided star Jayne Mansfield with two of her most iconic roles with today's offering and THE GIRL CAN'T HELP IT, but SUCCESS might be her sharpest two hours on screen, as she expertly embodies and subverts the Blonde Bombshell cliche. Picked it already so today it gets the nix.

Otto Preminger's epic adap of Leon Uris' EXODUS screens for the second of its three day run as part of MOMA's Auteurist History of Film series. A director who routinely and lovingly courted controversy Preminger chose a doozy with this flick, a dramatization of the founding of the nation of Isreal that can still raise quite a few hackles to this day. Paul Newman plays the most handsome Jew ever born. Still, gotta skip it as today's Pick.

The Film Society's trib to Carlos Diegues, pioneer of Brazil's Cinema Novo movement of the 60's and 70's, continues today with the filmmaker's SUBWAY TO THE STARS. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy goes on an epic quest through a vibrant, colorful Rio de Janiero to find her again. Tempts, but I decline.

The Clearview Chelsea Cinemas offers up a screening of Neil Simon's CALIFORNIA SUITE, which bagged a second little gold guy for Dame Maggie Smith, who I hear has become quite the popular figure once more. Fun stuff but lightweight. My pick today has some heft to it, some importance, as its title none too subtly implies.

As the 1930's wound down America's fear of the growing instabilty in Europe finally hit the Hollywood dream factory. The moguls who ran the studios were all Jews who, denied assimiliation, created their own kingdom and cast themselves as the elite. This however did not forever remove the stigma their ethicity carried with the nation's true elite, a fact never lost on the moguls, and they were hesitant to relate to the suffering of Jewish Europeans they themselves were only once removed from. Even the Warner Brothers, who'd made their name in the 30's as the ripped-from-the-headlines social message studio, held out from fear of provoking a nation that had always maintained an isolationist agenda, even moreso in the wake of WWI. Plus, in the 30's the liberal Democrats were the true enemies of the Holywood moguls, as the unions and their growing influence threatened to diminish their power. How would it look if they teamed up with their common foe FDR against their common foe WITH FDR?

Jack Warner answered that question. Deciding that his distress and disgust at the events taking place overseas and the not insignificant growing popularity of the Nazis at home might tap a heretofore voiceless majority, and a market as well, he fast tracked a production that put the Fuhrer and his cronies front and center as the latest social ill to be condemned. Focusing on the exploits of real-life G-Man Leon G. Turrou and his infiltration of several Nazi spy rings in the leadup to WWII, Warner put his best to work on the project. Sol Polito and Ernest Haller served as DP's. Max Steiner composed the thrilling score. Hal Wallis oversaw production duties. The cast was rounded out by Paul Lukas, George Sanders and the larger-than-life Edward G. Robinson. And Warner handpicked Anatole Litvak, a Ukranian Jew who'd fled the Nazi scourge and knew a little something about employing an artistic medium for revenge. Boy did he ever! The result was the first anti-Nazi propaganda flick, completely unsolicited by any government agency. It sure as hell wasn't the last. Film played a small part in defeating that mass murdering bastard, so let's give the moguls, and Jack Warner in particular, a resounding thanks today.

Anatole Litvak's CONFESSIONS OF A NAZI SPY screens today, along with Robert Siodmak's HATRED, as part of MOMA's The Weimar Touch retrospective. What can I say, Hitler's grave remains an awesome dance floor.

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Be safe and sound and make sure the next guy is too, Stockahz! Back tomorrow with a new Pick! And might I add GO KNICKS!!!!

-Joe Walsh