This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. This being the first day of winter, the theme is Winter Sports. It's another one that's not overly difficult, with the biggest challenge being whether or not I've used the movies before. In one case, I did have to check. But you also get a bonus short this week.
I Met Him in Paris (1937). Claudette Colbert is engaged to Lee Bowman, but wants to take a trip to Europe before settling down and marrying. In Paris, she meets Robert Young, who is married but doesn't tell her, and Young's friend Melvyn Douglas, who keeps trying to sabotage Young's plans to be with Colbert. Douglas eventually falls for Colbert too, with Bowman showing up for the climax. When Colbert gets bored of Paris, she goes to the Swiss Alps, with Young and Douglas following her and engaging in various sporting events, notably a bobsled run.
Downhill Racer (1969). Robert Redford plays a downhill skier who is trying to make the US Olympic team, although he's a bit of a renegade, the sort of trope we've never ever seen in a movie before, have we. Or the romantic interest (Camilla Sparv) who could derail Redford's chances. At least with all those scenes in European mountain resorts, we have some nice scenery to look at.
For Your Eyes Only (1981). Probably Roger Moore's best outing as James Bond, with the main story being about the attempt to get a British submarine nuclear guidance system from a sunken sub before the Soviets do. There is an extended section in the Italian Alps where Bond meets a young figure skater, and where they watch the biathlon where the East German competitor is really a hired hitman whose job it is to get Bond, leading to the obligatory ski chase.
And for the short, TCM just re-ran Snow Gets in Your Eyes (1938) the other day, about a department store worker (Roger Converse) who tries to win his would-be girlfriend (Virginia Grey) by entering the store's promotional contest -- an indoor ski jump, in an era when department stores had several floors and apparently high enough ceilings to run an indoor ski jump contest.
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