tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72866739100440508112024-03-18T15:10:32.099-04:00Just a CineastTed S. (Just a Cineast)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12394770582776749331noreply@blogger.comBlogger6812125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286673910044050811.post-75531545066679398812024-03-18T12:35:00.002-04:002024-03-18T12:35:00.256-04:00Sedmikrásky
<p>I've argued before that there are a lot of critical types out there who seem to praise arthouse films to high heaven just because the movies aren't your traditional commercial fare. I tend not to care for the arthouse stuff, and I'm sorry to say that this view was confirmed when I recently watched one of the TCM <i>Imports</i> from a few months back, the Czech New Wave film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060959/"><b>Daisies</b></a>.</p>
<p>The movie starts off with a sense of the absurd, with the opening credits playing out over intercutting of the sort of industrial wheel Charlie Chaplin got mixed up with in <b>Modern Times</b>, and shots of the destruction wrought by bomber planes. After the credits, we get two women in bikinis, both named Marie. They talk about nihilism, with one of the two suggesting that the world has gone spoiled, so perhaps they should be the ones doing the spoiling! Cut to a shot that could just as well be the Tree of Knowledge from the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit.</p>
<p>After that, it's off to a restaurant where one of the two young women has gone with an older man on a date. The other Marie then shows up to crash the dinner, claiming to be the sister of the one on the date. After more absurdity involving a series of cuts in which each new scene is tinted a different color, the two women then leave the man alone on the train when he thought he'd be taking one of them home with him. Boy are they rude.</p>
<p>And they're not just nasty to other people. After a scene in which they annoy the hell out of everbody trying to watch the floor show at a night club. One of the Maries decides she's going to commit suicide, and the other Marie returns home to this. The non-suicidal Marie is ticked, less worried that her friend has tried to kill herself, and more about the cost of the gas that was used in trying to committ suicide. Who's going to pay for this? Dead men tell no tales! Obnoxious giggle.</p>
<p>It goes on like this for another hour or so, with more dates, more trying to strand the men on trains, and more intercutting with other absurdities back at their apartment. It doesn't seem to go anywhere, and there's really no plot to resolve.</p>
<p>People who like the absurd may enjoy <b>Daisies</b>, as will people who enjoy stuff that's decidedly not Hollywood. As you can guess, I mostly intensely disliked it. In the movie's defense, however, I will also add that director Věra Chytilová shows a high level of technical proficiency with the cinematography, the editing, and the changing use of color, with some of the effects being well done too. It's a shame that all of this is in the service of a badly plotless movie.</p>Ted S. (Just a Cineast)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12394770582776749331noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286673910044050811.post-73545076215475017942024-03-17T07:08:00.002-04:002024-03-17T07:08:00.141-04:00The Johnstown Flood
<p>Not too long ago, the George Eastman Museum restored the copy it had of the 1926 sielent film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017010/"><b>The Johnstown Flood</b></a>. TCM gave the movie its world television premiere, and since the movie sounded interesting, I decided to record it. TCM is showing again tonight as part of <i>Silent Sunday Nights</i>, overnight tonight at 12:45 AM (so technically March 18 here in the Eastern Time Zone but still March 17 in more westerly time zones).</p>
<p>As you may recall from American history, Johnstown is a smallish city in western Pennsylvania where a dam in the hills overlooking the town failed in 1889, sending a cascade of water down into the city below and killing a shockingly large number of people. The story is something that should be cinematically interesting, if you can do the special effects for the actual flood properly. With that in mind, this telling of the story centers on an engineer named Tom O'Day (George O'Brien). He works for John Hamilton, who owns a lumber concern in the region.</p>
<p>Hamilton also owns the dam that's going to break, not that I'm spoiling anything considering the title of the movie and the fact that it's based on real events. Hamilton uses the dam to control the level of the water and help float his logs down the river to get to where they're going to be sold off. And he's recently signed a large contract with a firm in Pittsburgh. It would mean a lot of money for all involved. But it also means that the water level in the dam is going to have to be kept high, with the logs hitting the dam and putting pressure on it. Tom understands -- and in fact most of the town does -- that if the water level isn't reduced, one big rain could lead the dam to burst, with disastrous consequences.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Anna Burger (Janet Gaynor) is the daughter of one of the forestry workers. She sees big old handsom Tom, and falls in love with him. The feeling is not quite mutual. Not that Tom doesn't like Anna, it's that he meets Hamilton's niece Gloria (Florence Gilbert) and understands that there would be good reasons for the two of them to wind up together. And they do seem to have some genuine feelings for each other. But there's still that dam.</p>
<p>The locals push ever harder for a state inspector to come in and look at the dam, which eventually happens. The company Hamilton signed the big contract with, however, tells him that if the water level in the dam gets lowered, they'll take their business somewhere that can fulfill the contract on time and on budget. So Hamilton hires a bunch of goons to "protect" the dam from the locals who want to lower the level of the water.</p>
<p>Now, of course, we all know that the dam will eventually burst, and in this version of the story, it does so just as Tom and Gloria are about to be married. Anna finds out about the dam break first, and rushes to town to try to save people....</p>
<p>What surprised me about <b>The Johnstown Flood</b> is that it's not really an epic at all. It runs a little over an hour, and the actual flood doesn't come until the final reel. Before that, it's a all the standard-issue stuff you'd seen in a disaster movie like the Clifton Webb version of <b>Titanic</b>. The build up is passable if not great, but th special effects in the final reel make up for it. The advancement of special effects meant that there would be better disaster movies in the years to follow, but <b>The Johnstown Flood</b> isn't a bad little movie. And with the restoration, it's also quite pretty to look at.</p>Ted S. (Just a Cineast)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12394770582776749331noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286673910044050811.post-38381321167384904382024-03-16T06:51:00.004-04:002024-03-16T06:51:00.301-04:00King Solomon's Mines
<p>Another of the movies that I had on my DVR and that is coming up again soon on TCM is MGM's 1950 version of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042646/"><b>King Solomon's Mines</b></a>. As usual, in order to be able to do a post on the upcoming airing, I sat down to watch the copy already on my DVR. That airing is coming up tonight at 8:00 PM, so now you get the review.</p>
<p>After some nice opening credits in Technicolor with backdrops of Africa as well as informing us what parts of Africa the movie was actually filmed in (what are now Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and eastern DRC), we're informed that the action is set in 1897 Africa, so when Britain was in control of a lot of east Africa, and when Europeans felt they had a moral duty to "civilize" the so-called Dark Continent. One such person is Allan Quatermain (Stuart Grainger), a safari guide working in British East Africa for the past 15 years, which is much longer than the average life span for a (white) guide in that part of the world.</p>
<p>Having come to the region from the UK is Elizabeth Curtis (Deborah Kerr). She's the wife of Henry, an adventurer who apparently had the crazy idea that King Solomon got his gold and gems from mines somewhere to the west of the British colony, in a part of Africa that's unexplored by the white man, and that supposedly many of the local tribes don't want to venture towards. Henry sent Elizabeth a "map" of the quality suitable for Hollywood movies of the era, where you wonder how anybody can find anything. Elizabeth would like Henry to guide her to where she thinks her husband would be if he's still alive, and to help she's brought along her brother John (Richard Carlson).</p>
<p>Allan isn't certain whether he wants to take on the job, but Elizabeth is offering a <i>lot</i> of money. Allan is a widower with a son back in England, and taking this job would help secure his son's future, so Allan reluctantly decides to take the job. It doesn't take long for Allan to think that perhaps he was right not to want to take on this job, as Elizabeth is one of those Victorian women who seems decidedly unsuited to going out on this type of adventure, being scared of every little thing and not properly provisioned.</p>
<p>Along the way, however, Elizabeth starts to become a bit more self-sufficient. She and Allan also go through that movie trope of developing feelings for each other even though there's still the question of whether Elizabeth's husband is alive or dead. The expedition also faces any number of westen tropes about Africa from the period: an animal stampede; local tribes that the guides aren't certain whether they're friendly; and a lot of wildlife. Much of this serves as a hook for a lot of lovely scenery.</p>
<p>There are a few set-pieces, if you will, in and among all the travelogue. One involves finding a white man out in the middle of nowhere (Hugo Haas), although Quatermain eventually determines who that white man is. There's also a lone African from a tribe Quatermain doesn't recognize at all; that guy joins them and his back story is revealed at the end of the movie. And then everyone gets to a cave that may just be what Henry thought was the titular mine. But is there anything there, and will they find Henry?</p>
<p>To be honest, I found large parts of <b>King Solomon's Mines</b> to be slow, largely because the characters have to trek quite a ways to get to the putative mines. There's only so much they can do along the way. With that in mind, the scenery might just be the best part of the movie. For 2024, that's a bit of a sad statement, only because getting color footage of exotic places is so commonplace. For 1950, when the movie was released, it would have been a big deal to audiences, and it's no surprise that this was one of the biggest box office hits of the year.</p>
<p>My comments about the scenery are not to imply that <b>King Solomon's Mines</b> is a bad movie, however. It's more that looking at it from almost 75 years on, it's the sort of stuff we've seen so many times since. But this would have been one the earliest, most previous Africa movies using studio backlots to stand in badly for Africa. So definitely give the 1950 <b>King Solomon's Mines</b> a watch.</p>Ted S. (Just a Cineast)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12394770582776749331noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286673910044050811.post-23801785554478807132024-03-15T12:00:00.003-04:002024-03-15T12:00:00.254-04:00Convicted Woman
<p>I'm getting close to the end of all those B movies that TCM ran during the spotlight on B movies back in July or so. Today's selection is a prison movie from Columbia: <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032358/"><b>Convicted Woman</b></a>.</p>
<p>The movie starts off pleasantly enough, with a young woman named Betty Andrews (Rochelle Hudson) in a city park trying to get her shoe back from a dog. That's not relevant to the plot, other than her being in the park in the middle of the day is a sign that she is currently unemployed and looking for work. She had found a promising want ad in the paper, so she decides to go there and look for a job. That place is a department store, but she has to fill out an application form and then they'll inform her when there's an opening.</p>
<p>Betty goes into the female employees' lounge to fill out that form, and as she's doing so another woman comes in. Surprisingly, that woman looks a lot like Betty, and is even wearing the same dress! The woman then goes out onto the shop floor, where she sees a woman looking for a shop assistant. This other woman sees an opportunity. She takes the customer's $10 bill and claims she's going to make change, but she just disappears. And since Betty is wearing the same dress as the thief, it's unsurprising that the customer identifies Betty as the thief.</p>
<p>The case goes to trial, with a young reporter from the local paper, Jim Brent (Glenn Ford in an early role), covering it. He has quite a bit of sympathy for Betty, but there's not much he can do to help. Betty is found guilty, and despite the fact that the crime was only stealing $10, which seems like petty larceny, she's actually sent to the Curtiss women's prison for an entire year!</p>
<p>Under the direction of Chief Matron Brackett (Esther Dale), it's a tough place, leading one of the woman to commit suicide. Worse, the matron insists that the dead woman had pneumonia and that everybody knows it. Worse, if Betty tries to tell anybody about it, she's going to get in big trouble, like the worst jobs if not getting sent to solitary. Betty is able to get a call out to Jim, who shows up claiming to be her lawyer. When Jim prints the story, it comes to the attention of the Commissioner of Prisons, who appoints Mary Ellis (Frieda Inescort) the new warden. Mary has even more sympathy for Betty, because she was Betty's defense attorney at trial.</p>
<P>Mary sets about doing some Hollywood-standard prison reform, which is even going to involve furloughs, and that's going to lead to the climax over whether any of the women given a furlough is going to violate the terms, even if unwillingly.</p>
<p><b>Convicted Woman</b> is a B movie, to be sure, but it's not bad as far as B movies go. Glenn Ford was at the beginning of his career and the studios I think didn't yet know what they had in him which is why he's underused here. Rochelle Hudson does well, and the plot, while nothing new even in 1940, works well enough.</p>
<p>I don't know the next time <b>Convicted Woman</b> is going to show up on TCM, but having been released by Columbia, it might show up on their Cinevault Classics channel that's on the Roku Channel app.</p>Ted S. (Just a Cineast)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12394770582776749331noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286673910044050811.post-31357676708388262832024-03-14T12:42:00.002-04:002024-03-14T12:42:00.134-04:00Billy Budd
<p>When I was in high school, one of the books we had to read was Herman Melville's <i>Billy Budd</i>. It's really only a novella, because Herman Melville never actually finished it and what we have is what he left behind at the time of his death combined with some compilation and editing by his widow and later scholars. The book was popular enough, however, that in the late 1940s the material was adapted into a stage play; it's that play which is the basis for the 1962 movie <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055796/"><b>Billy Budd</b></a>.</p>
<p>The year is 1797, and if you remember the movie <b>Damn the Defiant!</b> that I reviewed a several weeks back, you'll recall that this was the year that the British Royal Navy suffered the Spithead mutiny, which was quite a serious thing. Edward Vere (Peter Ustinov) is the captain of the HMS <i>Avenger</i>, and in need of replenishing his crew. Since there's a war on and he's at sea, going to port and impressing the men there, as we've seen from other naval movies like <b>Mutiny on the Bounty</b>, is a non-starter.</p>
<p>Ah, but the laws of war suggest that in a time of war the Royal Navy may impress men from British-flagged merchant ships. After all, they're already sailors. So when the <i>Avenger</i> encounters the <i>Rights of Man</i>, Capt. Vere takes some of the crew, including a young foretopman named Billy Budd (Terence Stamp in his feature film debut).</p>
<p>Billy is considered a naïf by his crewmates, but he also has a strange sort of charisma, where practically everybody he meets loves him because he's just so... something or other. This even though he doesn't seem to have any desire to be a leader of men. He just wants to get on with his work. The only person who soesn't seem to like Billy is the ship's Master of arms, Claggard (Robert Ryan). That, however, is because Claggart doesn't like anybody. In a bit of reversal from <b>Mutiny on the Bounty</b>, it's Claggart who feels the need for iron discipline, while the captain has a more nuanced view.</p>
<p>Still, Billy is just so nice that he's going to try to get in the good graces of Claggart not out of any desire to toady up the a boss who has considerable power over him, but because it seems he's incapable of doing anything else. Claggart isn't stupid, and sees the power that Billy unwittingly has over other crewmen, so Claggart decides he's going to trump up charges against Billy by any means necessary. Knowing of the Spithead mutinies, Claggart gets his loyalists to try to fabricate evidence that Billy is part of an incipient mutiny.</p>
<p>When Vere calls Claggart and Budd in for a meeting, Budd has one of his few weaknesses, which is a nervous stammer. He's incapable of saying what he's thinking because Claggart's bullying has made him so scared. So he instinctively reacts physically, accidentally striking Claggart, who falls backwards and hits his head, killing himself. In a modern-day court of law on dry land, this would probably be negligent manslaughter, but at sea during war, it's a court-martial offense, and the penalty is death, even if everybody is secretly relieved that Claggart is dead and nobody really wants Billy to die if they had their way.</p>
<p>Herman Melville is not my favorite author, so when I had to read <i>Billy Budd</i> back in high school I wasn't too thrilled with it. This movie adaptation, however, really makes the material come to life, thanks in no small part to a series of excellent performances by the three leads. There's also smaller supporting roles for Melvyn Douglas and David McCallum, among others.</p>
<p>If you haven't seen <b>Billy Budd</b> before, do yourself a favor and watch it. It's much better than the Melville novella.</p> Ted S. (Just a Cineast)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12394770582776749331noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286673910044050811.post-14156865518404316462024-03-13T06:33:00.000-04:002024-03-13T06:33:00.243-04:00Love Is a Racket
<p>I've said on a lot of occasions how I like Warner Bros.' B movies. They also had a lot of good programmers in the 1930s, with a good example of this being a movie I recently watched off my DVR, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023157/"><b>Love Is a Racket</b></a>.</p>
<p>Jimmy Russell (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) is a reporter stereotyp, as we see when he gets a call waking him up at 5:00 -- PM, not AM. He writes the Broadway gossip column for one of the New York newspapers, and has a roommate in the form of Stanley Fiske (Lee Tracy), whose purpose in being there is never really quite mentioned. Also showing up at the apartment is Sally Condon (Ann Dvorak), who really holds a torch for Jimmy. But he's got a bit more of a torch for young Mary Wodehouse (Frances Dee), an up-and-coming actress.</p>
<p>Mary, for her part, has a couple of other guys interested in her, notably Broadway producer Max Boncour (Andre Luguet), as well as gangster Eddie Shaw (Lyle Talbot). One of Eddie's current rackets involves the dairy business, and in fact Jimmy has heard some gossip that might help blow the racket wide open. But Jimmy doesn't want to report it, in part because that's not his beat, and in part because it's not confirmed enough. One of Jimmy's colleagues, however, does try to report it, and Jimmy has to do some fast work to spike the story.</p>
<p>But the dairy racket is not the real thrust of the movie. That thrust involves Mary, who lives with her aunt and has been living beyond her means. She's written a couple of checks that are going to bounce, so somebody decides to be a good Samaritan and cover the checks for her. Of course, it's not all altruism. As you might be able to guess, it's Eddie who bought the checks, and he wants something back for having done so, which is specifically Mary as his girlfriend.</p>
<p>Jimmy isn't about to let that happen, so Eddie, who has decamped to Atlantic City, sends Mary a telegram threatening her, and Jimmy, being chivalrous, tells Mary he'll try to help her. But it's a ruse, and Jimmy is detained in Atlantic City by one of Eddie's underlings. He is able to escape and get back to New York, but when he goes to see Eddie, he finds that Eddie has just been killed!</p>
<p>As you can see, there's a lot going on in <b>Love Is a Racket</b>. To be honest, it's doesn't all quite mesh. But director William Wellman and his cast approach the material with such verve that they make this little pre-Code an eminently interesting watch. Objectively, it's not the world's greatest movie by any stretch of the imagination, but you could do a lot worse than <b>Love Is a Racket</b>.</p>Ted S. (Just a Cineast)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12394770582776749331noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286673910044050811.post-33726258540475820992024-03-12T13:04:00.000-04:002024-03-12T13:04:00.139-04:00Technically they're thirsty
<p>A lot of my movie watching is of films that were made before I was born, but now that I'm getting up there in years, there are a lot of movies made after I was born that getting to the "old movies" era. As an example, one of the movies I recorded last year off of TCM had just turned 40 years old: <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085701/"><b>The Hunger</b></a>.</p>
<p>The movie starts off in one of those early-80s nightclubs that played new wave music and had lots of neon and other wacky lighting effects. One couple invites another home with them, which would normally be a cue for some sort of kinky sex. Well, that sort of happens, but the sex concludes with the two members of the first couple taking the ankh necklaces they wear, and using them to stab the other couple to death! The living couple then drinks the victims' blood before putting the dead bodies into the incinerator.</p>
<p>This couple is Miriam (Catherine Deneuve) and John (David Bowie). Miriam is a vampire, and drinks the blood to keep herself looking so young, something that she's been doing for millennia. Intercut with this are scenes from a research center somewhere in midtown Manhattan. There are a bunch of monkeys kept in cages, and as Miriam and John are cutting up their victims, one of the monkeys is killing another. The next day, Dr. Roberts (Susan Sarandon) wonders what the heck happened. This isn't the sort of research she had been expecting to do on her monkeys.</p>
<p>While Dr. Roberts pays the bills doing that research, Miriam and John have to pay the bills do keep their eternal life, which they do by giving classical music lessons, especially to budding violinist Alice (Beth Ehlers). She comes to her music lesson one day, and, taking a Polaroid of John, tells him that he looks awful. He certainly feels it, too. And when he looks at himself in the mirror, he starts seeing... wrinkles, and other signs of aging! As it turns out, John isn't a vampire by birth, but brought into the vampire business by Miriam. So he doesn't quite get the same eternal youth that Miriam does. And he's about to start aging extremely rapidly.</p>
<p>This is where the two stories are about to come together. Dr. Roberts is a gerontologist, doing research on aging. She can't promise eternal life, but she is working on longevity, trying to slow down the aging process. Not that there's been much success there, although there has been the opposite: speeding up the aging process. John, having read the book, decides to visit Dr. Roberts, who thinks John is a crank, leaving him to cool in the waiting room. It's only when she returns a few hours later that she realizes just how wrong she was.</p>
<p>Things get much more complicated when John wants out of this existence, resulting in his going missing, at least to the people in the outside world. Dr. Roberts goes to John and Miriam's place to look for John, and then the police come looking too....</p>
<p><b>The Hunger</b> is one of those movies that's stylish and certainly has a relatively uncommon atmosphere about it. That certainly makes it interesting, and in some ways compelling. But at the same time, large portions of the movie feel like they have more atmosphere than substance, with the plot a bit hard to follow at times and the ending being a bit bizarre. So I think <b>The Hunger</b> is going to be the sort of movie that isn't going to appeal to everybody.</p> Ted S. (Just a Cineast)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12394770582776749331noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286673910044050811.post-38239262441483112372024-03-11T13:15:00.001-04:002024-03-11T13:15:00.157-04:00Not the Donna Summer song
<p>I mentioned a few weeks back that <b>Call Me Mister</b> was one of the few films currently in the FXM Retro rotation that I hadn't written a blog post about. It turns out there's at least one other, although it's also one of the most recent films that the FXM Retro block runs: the 1994 western <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109198/"><b>Bad Girls</b></a>. It's got another airing tomorrow (March 12) at 1:15 PM, so I recently watched it to do the review here.</p>
<p>The movie starts off in the stereotypical movie western town of Echo City sometime in the 1890s. Four women have fallen on hard times, with the result that they've had to resort to working at the local brothel to earn a living. Meanwhile, the local branch of the Temperance Union has been campaigning against prostitution. So when Anita (Mary Stuart Masterson) kills in self-defense a john who tries to hurt her, nobody other than the other prostitutes has any sympathy for her. The town intends to hang her, but as she's on the gallows, three fellow prostitutes -- Cody (Madeleine Stowe), Eileen (Andie MacDowell), and Lily (Drew Barrymore) -- come to her rescue, literally absconding with her.</p>
<p>A lot of people are on the trail of the four women, notably the Pinkerton detectives. But it's a lone, man, Josh McCoy (Dermot Mulroney), who runs into them first. He claims to be a prospector, but none of the women believe him since he's not grizzled enough for that. But he gives the ladies the news that they're not going to be safe hiding out where they are.</p>
<P>Anita only went into prostitution because she's a widow. Her husband had a homestead in Oregon, and Anita would like to go there to claim her inheritance, but she's in need of money. Thankfully, Cody has saved up enough for the four of them to get to Oregon and work the land together. They just have to go to the bank to get it. And then they do, they discover that the Pinkertons have shown up in town as well. Worse, they and the Pinkertons have gotten there just as an old flame of Cody's, Kid Jarrett (James Russo) and his gang have decided to rob the bank!</p>
<p>Cody decides she's going to try to get Anita's money back from Jarrett, while the other three make their way to a ranch that just happens to belong to a man they met in town and whom they tricked into freeing Eileen from jail. Meanwhile, the four women figure out a way to try to get revenge on Jarrett, starting with double-crossing him on a train robbery....</p>
<p>It's easy to see why the four actresses in the lead role would want to make a movie like <b>Bad Girls</b>. Or, at least it's easy to see why they would have wanted to make what was in the original script. Script changes among other things led <b>Bad Girls</b> to be a critical failure upon its release in 1994. Personally, I think that terrible critical reception is mildly unfair.</p>
<p>The plot is mostly serviceable, in that it's something that you could have seen in any western from the golden era of westerns 40 years earlier, only with female protagonists instead of male protagonists. But that is in fact one of the problems with the movie, that there's pretty much nothing original in the movie beyond the female protagonists. The other big flaw for me was the too-modern filming techniques. <b>Bad Girls</b> repeatedly came across to me as one of those movies where the direction and cinematography are intrusive, with needless zooms and switching to slow motion.</p>
<p>Still, the four leads are appealing even if they aren't stretched enough. And as always, you may want to watch for yourself and draw your own conlusions.</p>Ted S. (Just a Cineast)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12394770582776749331noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286673910044050811.post-58415960572408092902024-03-10T15:26:00.003-04:002024-03-10T15:26:00.250-04:00Well, not Thelma Ritter
<p>One of the movies I recently watched off my DVR had 20 minutes between the end of the movie and the allotted time slot, so there was enought time for TCM to insert a two-reeler. That short was one of the <i>Crime Does Not Pay</i> shorts, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027102/"><b>A Thrill for Thelma</b></a>.</p>
<p>After the credits, and a montage of crime-related things like gunshots and sirens, we hand it over to Your MGM Reporter (played here by William Tannen; I'll have to look it up to see if MGM had different people playing the reporter). He's at the local Women's Prison, where the warden (an actress, not a real warden) and a police captain (again, an actor, not a real captain) want to inform everybody that Crime Does Not Pay. To let our viewers know this, they call in one of the women marching in formation: Thelma Black (Irene Hervey).</p>
<p>Flash back to two years earlier. Thelma is just graduating from school and talking to her classmates. Some of them are looking for men so they can settle down and start a family, but not Thelma. She wants excitement out of life while she's still young enough to enjoy it all. With that in mind, she goes to beauty school and even gets a job at a hoity-toity salon, where she eventually meets Steve (Robert Livingston).</p>
<p>One night, Steve and Thelma are out driving, when they pass a parked car that seems to be doing the Lover's Lane thing. Steve comments that perhaps they should stop and give such couples a fright, just to see their reaction. After all, these couples don't want to be found out by the general public. They even do it once, but in the aftermath, Thelma is horrified to think that Steve took the man's wallet. She thinks they should return the wallet forthwith, but Steve is having no part of that. When Thelma tries to turn around, Steve tries to take the wheel, and that results in a car crash. Not that it hurt Thelma or Steve; the incident forced another car off the road and that car crashed into a tree, killing the driver.</p>
<p>So now Thelma is a fugitive. She thinks about going to the police, but Steve reminds her that she was driving, and being the driver in a hit-and-run that resulted in someone in the other car dying is serious business. So now Thelma is in with Steve, straight down the line as Edward G. Robinson might have said in <b>Double Indemnity</b>.</p>
<p><b>A Thrill for Thelma</b> isn't a bad little short, although this one is only number 4 in the <i>Crime Does Not Pay</i> series and it really hadn't hit its stride yet. As always, the shorts in this series are laden with MGM moralizing, but they're still fun for the most part. It's been about a dozen years the the Warner Archive put all of the shorts out in a box set, so you should be able to find it somewhere.</p>Ted S. (Just a Cineast)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12394770582776749331noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286673910044050811.post-49678753094701313572024-03-10T11:09:00.000-04:002024-03-10T11:09:00.249-04:00Notes on the TCM March 2024 schedule
<p>I pointed out a month ago how TCM decided to start its annual <i>31 Days of Oscar</i> in the middle of the month in order to have the final day of the programming coincide with the actual awarding of this year's Academy Awards. Well, that final day has arrived, which means we get back to regular programming on TCM. Well, more or less regular.</p>
<p>Since the "regular" programming is only going to be three weeks, that means that a traditional Star of the Month wouldn't get a proper treatment, if you go by having one night a week for the rest of the month. Then again, you could argue that a month like this is when they should pick one of those "stars" who didn't have a whole lot of movies for whatever reason. But if you did that, this would also mean that the other regular features, especially the monthly spotlight, would also only get three nights.</p>
<p>So TCM decided to have two week-long spotlights. The Star of the Month is coming up later in the month, so when that comes I'll write up a post them. No; this first week of What's Left of March is the week for the non-star spotlight, and the theme is "Working Women". The movies are going to be more or less in chronological order, with each night being a later decade than the previous night. I will point out that 40s night on Tuesday brings another airing of the wonderful British World War II movie <b>Millions Like Us</b> (March 13, 4:00 AM), about British women who go to work at the start of the war to do their part for the war effort.</p>
<p>There are also a lot of morning and afternoon themes not only spotlighting individuals -- director Raoul Walsh gets a birthday salute tomorrow (March 11) -- but themes as always. I bring this up because the "Under Ground" theme on March 12 has a movie I was hoping to do a full-length post on. That on is <b>The Day They Robbed the Bank of England</b> (March 12, 9:00 AM). I recorded the previous airing and sat down to watch it to do a post on it, but unfortunately the recording somehow had picture and sound so out of sync that I couldn't stand to watch it. It's a lot like that scene in <b>Singin' in the Rain</b> where it looks like the man is saying no and the woman yes.</p>
<p>As it turns out, there's another movie airing March 12 that I decided to do a full-length post on, so I watched <i>that</i> instead. That's also why this post is getting posted today (March 10) instead of tomorrow, and along with a second post on a short. Actually, I've got several posts coming up later in the month on movies that are getting re-airs.</p>Ted S. (Just a Cineast)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12394770582776749331noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286673910044050811.post-1606460417057070472024-03-09T13:13:00.001-05:002024-03-09T13:13:00.136-05:00Humor? You've Got to Be Kidding!
<p>I've mentioned the comedies of the 1960s, especially the "generation gap" comedies where older Hollywood was trying to keep being "with it" with the younger audiences of the day. A lot of such movies are ones that I don't find very good, because they come across as terribly dated, and probably weren't very funny at the time. Another one that really fits that description is <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061585/"><b>Doctor, You've Got to Be Kidding!</b></a>.</p>
<P>The movie opens up with a sequence during the credits of a red VW Beetle leading people on a chase through one of the suburbs of Los Angeles, with a couple of motorcycle cops leading the way. The car finally comes to a stop, revealing that it was driving to a hospital. Three men are bickering in the car, and then out comes an older woman, followed by a much younger woman. It doesn't take long to figure out that the younger woman, Heather Halloran (Sandra Dee) is the daughter of the older woman, Louise (Celeste Holm), and that Heather has gone into labor. However, at the hospital, Louise announces Heather has "<i>Miss</i> Halloran. For 'professional' reasons." The implication is that Heather got pregnant out of wedlock, which was a much bigger thing back in the days of the generation gap movie.</p>
<p>At this point, Heather does one of those scenes where we hear her thoughts over the action, and she's wondering how she got herself into this. Unfortunately, she doesn't mean how she got herself into this turkey of a movie, but how she got pregnant without a husband and three young men chasing her to the hospital. Cue the inevitable flashback....</p>
<p>Heather never seems to have had a father in her life, while Mom is the pushy stage mother right out of <b>Gypsy</b>. Mom thinks little Heather can sing, and Mom took the juvenile Heather to appear before various talent agents. Heather would rather just be the regular all-American girl, go off to college, get a job, and then a husband at some point down the road. Eventually she does graduate and becomes a secretary to young executive Harlan Wycliff (George Hamilton).</p>
<p>But Mom is still trying to get Heather into the entertainment business. To that end, she's brought in a songwriter, Pat Murad (Dick Kallman), to write some songs for Heather. Also showing up at the house is their next-door neighbor since Heather's childhood days, Dick Bender (Bill Bixby). He's held a torch for Heather since what one would guess were their high school days. Finally, there's Hank Judson (Dwayne Hickman). He's trying to break in as an actor, and has even gotten some work as an extra and a body double, but for the most part he's reduced to being a shoe salesman. When Heather buys a pair of shoes from him, he falls for her so shows up at the Halloran house unannounced.</p>
<p>Eventually, Mom actually does find Heather a singing job at a nightclub, not that she really wants to take it. So she claims she's going to get into a relationship with her boss Harlan. That doesn't quite work out, but by the time it doesn't work out, she finds out that she's pregnant. One would think Harlan is the father, but Heather doesn't seem to want him. At least there are three other guys who want her even if none of them is the biological father.</p>
<p>You can see why somebody would look at the premise behind <b>Doctor, You've Got to Be Kidding!</b>, and think that there's a great movie to be made here. But none of it works, at least not in my opinion. I think part of it is how the boundary-pushing is so stuck in the 1960s. But in addition, none of the characters outside of the one played by Sandra Dee is very appealing. I didn't want any of these guys to wind up with her at the end.</p>
<p>Still, as always, this is the sort of movie you should probably watch and judge for yourself. Some people, after all, do like this sort of 1960s movie.</p>Ted S. (Just a Cineast)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12394770582776749331noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286673910044050811.post-52061638130047443852024-03-08T10:00:00.002-05:002024-03-08T10:00:00.149-05:00British Intelligence
<p>I'm getting to the end of all those B movies that TCM ran during the spotlight to B movies back in July. Next up is one released at the start of the European theater of World War II, and obviously made in relation to the Nazis being the bad guys, but set during World War I: <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032283/"><b>British Intelligence</b></a>.</p>
<p>It's 1917, and World War I has more or less reached a stalemate that would eventually be broken by the arrival of the Americans. The British are trying to attack the Germans, but it seems as though every movie they make is figured out by a German agent the British only know by name, Strendler, and not appearance. They're going to have to get their best agent on the case. With that in mind, they call on a pilot, Frank Bennett (Bruce Lester) to pick up the agent.</p>
<p>But Bennett gets shot down and sent to a field hospital, where he's attended by nurses, including the very pretty Helen (Margaret Lindsay) while he's in hospital. He's so delerious that he thinks he's falling in love with her, but isn't really going to remember her when he gets out of the hospital. That's a plot point that's going to come up later in the movie.</p>
<p>The action switches to Berlin, where the Germans are giving an award to one of their agents, before informing said agent of her new assignment. That agent is one Fräulein Von Lorbeer, first name Helene, who just happens to be the same Helen that ministered to Bennett in the French field hospital! Helene's assignment is to get on a submarine that's heading for the Irish coast, although Ireland wasn't quite independent at the time, unlike World War II. From there, she'll make her way to Liverpool, while she'll get picked up by an agent Thompson.</p>
<p>Thompson takes her to London, where she is to play the part of a refugee and get herself ingratiated with one Arthur Bennett (Holmes Herbert), who is a new Cabinet minister and as such a ripe target for spying on. As you can guess, Arthur happens to be the father of Frank, who is going to come back home later in the movie and think he might recognize this "refugee".</p>
<p>Helene's contact in the house is one Valdar (Boris Karloff), the valet to Bennett who is also in the employ of the Germans. Valdar isn't overly open about exactly what Helene's duties are going to be. In fact, he suspects her of being too direct in trying to make contact with him. Valdar suspects Helene of possibly being a double agent and in cahoots with the British. But Helene finds that she also has reason to suspect Valdar of being the exact same thing.</p>
<p>Eventually, the Brits cotton on to the fact that the elder Bennett is in danger of being spied upon by the Germans, but they can't figure out who are the Germans in their midst. So they set up a trap and try to catch, well, somebody.</p>
<p><b>British Intelligence</b> is a movie that has a surprising amount of twists and turns for a B movie. You can see how it got made to try to get American audiences on the side of the British while they were at war and the Americans were still neutral. At the same time, with a pretty brief running time even for a B movie, at a shade over one hour, <b>British Intelligence</b> doesn't get much chance to rise to greatness.</p>
<p>It's a fine example of a B movie, however, and one that mostly works at what it sets out to do, which is fairly modest. So it's definitely worth watching if you get the chance.</p>Ted S. (Just a Cineast)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12394770582776749331noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286673910044050811.post-2391935676330356102024-03-07T06:49:00.002-05:002024-03-07T06:49:00.140-05:00As if some men in westerns aren't in fact violent
<p>Barbara Stanwyck was one of the people honored in TCM's <i>Summer Under the Stars</i> last August, and there are quite a few of her movies that I still haven't seen. Among those movies that TCM showed was <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048789/"><b>The Violent Men</b></a>.</p>
<p>Barbara Stanwyck is the female lead, although first we meet the male lead, played by Glenn Ford. That man is John Parrish, who owns a ranch in one of those western areas that was beginning to develop the range wars between new homesteaders and the old ranchers who wanted an open range. Parrish served with distinction in the Civil War, and is really back in town to sell his ranch so that he can move back east with his fiancée Caroline (May Wynn) and take of work that's less taxing to his health, even though the doctor says he has no real health concerns.</p>
<p>Having arrived back in town, Parrish is shocked by why he sees. Lew Wilkinson (Edward G. Robinson) is the biggest landowner in the area, married to Martha (Barbara Stanwyck) and with an adult daughter Judith (Dianne Foster). Lew owns the Anchor Ranch, and being worried about the encroaching farmers, wants to get them out of the valley. He's willing to buy them out, but, if they don't take his lowball offers, Wilkinson's men will use violence at the behest of Martha as well as his younger brother Cole (Brian Keith).</p>
<p>Parrish is willing, more or less, to sell, since he had been planning on moving back east and has a fiancée who really wants him to do so. The people who work for him, as well as the other farmers and smallhoders, learn that Lew and his Anchor Ranch have put in a bid for the Parrish spread, and they're none too happy about it, so they try to convince him not to give in. Parrish is planning on ignoring them -- until Wilkinson's men create an excuse to try to kill one of Parrish's men.</p>
<p>Lew, meanwhile, wants to preserve what he's got, but since he's getting old and was crippled in the previous range war, would really like to do it without violence. What he doesn't know is that Martha has been scheming behind his back together with Cole to use that violence that we saw earlier. Not only that, but she seems to be romantically interested in Cole, despite the fact that he's got a Mexican girlfriend. Still, Martha eventually realizes that since Lew doesn't want violence, he's getting in the way of her plans and she may have to do something about him too.</p>
<p>So we get a violent, almost military-like campaign by Martha and her brother-in-law Cole to go after Parrish and his men. Parrish, however, has an ace up his sleeve in that he served in the war and served with the cavalry, which gives him some valuable military experience that he's going to be able to bring to use to try to defeat the Wilkinsons.</p>
<p>Sometime in the early 1950s, probably with the advent of television, Hollywood started giving us more "adult" westren movies with themes and vistas that the small screen couldn't give us. <b>The Violent Men</b> is squarely in that tradition. Robinson did make a couple of westerns, and does well here in a role where he's not quite to the decrepit level of a Spencer Tracy in <b>Broken Lance</b>, but getting there, with others in the family taking over. Glenn Ford made several westerns, and is good here as the reluctant hero. Stanwyck, once again, is excellent as a woman who's become tough as nails out of necessity.</p>
<p><b>The Violent Men</b> is also a visually satisfying movie, with various locations in Arizona serving as the backdrop. Despite the themes not being particularly original, it's still a movie worth watching thanks to all those find acting performances.</p>Ted S. (Just a Cineast)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12394770582776749331noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286673910044050811.post-828143998514339592024-03-06T14:04:00.001-05:002024-03-06T14:04:00.249-05:00Fanfan the tulip
<p>I think I'm finally down to the last of the movies I recorded during TCM's tribute to Gina Lollobrigida. That movie was one of her earler foreign efforts, but not from her native Italy. Instead, it's the French film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044602/"><b>Fanfan la Tulipe</b></a>.</p>
<p>After the opening credits, we're given a joking montage about what a wonderful country France was in the mid-18th century, and how gallant the army was in fighting war. So gallant, in fact, that they waged war with much of the rest of Europe for seven years. (What we in the US generally refer to as the French and Indian War is in fact one theater of what was the Seven Years' War, from 1756 to 1763.) It is against this backdrop that our movie is set, somewhere in a more bucolic part of France.</p>
<p>Fanfan (Gérard Philippe) is a peasant who has been fooling around with a young woman who is the daughter of a neighboring farmer. Apparntely, the old farmer is sick of it, so he's giving Fanfan an ultimatum to marry his daughter, or else. Fanfan, naturally, flees. Meanwhile, a military recruiter is trying to recruit people for the war effort and because he gets a finder's fee for each person recruited. Fanfan runs into the fortune-teller Adeline (Gina Lollobrigida), not realizing that she's a phony and that she's really the daughter of the military recruiter, in on Dad's act. Adeline tells Fanfan that his fortune involves joining up to fight, and ultimately winning the hand of a nobleman's daughter.</p>
<p>Who wouldn't want to marry a nobleman's daughter in the sort of society where the alternative is to be stuck as a peasant. So Fanfan signs up, and in short order runs across a carriage where he helps one of the women stuck in it. Wouldn't you know it, but the woman in question is the marquise de Pompadour, daughter of the King's mistress. So of course Fanfan thinks this is his destiny.</p>
<p>Much complicating matters is that Adeline finds herself falling in love with Fanfan and has even had a fortune-teller say things that lead her to believe she's destined to be with Fanfan, even though she really ought to know better. Fanfan gets in a series of misadventures, including one that has him winding up in the chambers of the marquise, something that's highly illegal. And Adeline decides to debase herself to try to save Fanfan's life. As you can guess from the tone of the movie, all of this is leading up to what should be a happy ending somehow. But how exactly is it going to get there?</p>
<p>When TCM ran <b>Fanfan la Tulipe</b>, Alicia Malone was presenting, and she made the comment that this was exactly the sort of movie that the young filmmakers who would pioneer what became the French New Wave railed against. In that light, it's easy to see the stodgy nature of the movie; indeed, it's the sort of thing that would fit in well with the British costume dramas of the era: they're lower-budgeted than what Hollywood could do, but clearly very competent within those budget constraints. There's really nothing particularly wrong with <b>Fanfan la Tulipe</b> other than it being a bit old-fashioned. But if this type of movie is your thing, it's not bad at all.</p>Ted S. (Just a Cineast)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12394770582776749331noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286673910044050811.post-55104430382542570512024-03-05T12:27:00.004-05:002024-03-05T12:27:00.254-05:00The Sterile Cuckoo
<p>A trope of romantic movies for decades has been the free-spirited woman meeting the uptight man and the two falling in love. Back in the 1930s, it was screwball comedies, but in later years the women didn't necessarily have to be heiresses, or rich at all. And you could get darker movies too, as I recently saw when I watched <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065037/"><b>The Sterile Cuckoo</b></a>.</p>
<p>The movie opens with Pookie Adams (Liza Minnelli) sitting at a bus stop with her father to get on a bus to go to her college somewhere in central New York. Already on that bus, and also going off to college, is Jerry Payne (Wendell Burton), although the two go to different colleges a few miles away. Pookie sees Jerry and, despite never having met him, decides she's going to pursue him romantically the way that Katharine Hepburn goes after Cary Grant in <b>Bringing Up Baby</b>. She's not going to take no for an answer, and gets one of the other passengers to change seats by lying that she and Jerry are brother and sister who are on ther way back from their grandmother's funeral!</p>
<p>Now, such things like that ought to set off red flags and blaring alarm sirens for Jerry. But he's captive on a bus where he can't really get away from Pookie, who isn't going to take no for an answer anyway. That, and Jerry is likely beginning to think with his little head instead of his big one. So when Pookie continues to contact him at school after he gets off the bus, he eventually gives in and decides to see her again.</p>
<p>The two start arranging trysts at various places in and around central New York, the movie having been largely filmed on location. And, they even get undressed and have sex, because sex has been on both of their minds, what with their being young and full of hormones. Jerry, however, starts to have some nagging doubts in his mind. How is he going to break the news to his parents? What if they don't like Pookie? The fact that later in the movie, he's told how his grades are suffering and it's going to require him to stay on over spring break, gives him further doubts.</p>
<P>But Pookie is determined, clingy, and manipulative. So she announces sometime between about Thanksgiving and Christmas break that she thinks she's missed her period and must be pregnant as a result. That's a serious thing, especially 50 years ago when there were much stronger stigmas surrounding both abortion and out of wedlock childbirth. But after Christmas, Pookie simply announces that she's no longer pregnant. And when Jerry asks what exactly happened -- was it a false alarm; did she have a miscarriage; and did she see a doctor -- Pookie simply won't answer those questions. Talk about your red flags!</p>
<p>Following a party where Pookie gets so drunk she embarrasses herself, Jerry, and his roommate Charlie (Tim McIntire), Jerry finally gets the gumption to suggest that perhaps the two of them should take a little time to be alone instead of together. And Pookie responds by simply dropping out of life all together! Why would anybody want to see her if she ever showed her face again?</p>
<p>The huge issue I had with <b>The Sterile Cuckoo</b> is how Pookie is just such a nasty, dislikeable character, but one the script argues we're supposed to look at as romantically kooky. We're supposed to root <i>for</i> these characters to wind up together in the last reel, instead of hoping that Jerry will learn from Bette Davis in <b>Old Acquaintance</b> and literally shake some sense into Pookie like Bette did to Miriam Hopkins. No! This woman has mentally unstable written all over her, and throws up one red flag after the other!</p>
<p>Liza Minnelli got an Oscar nomination, and to be fair to her, her performance is good -- it's just the script that's an absolute mess. The location shooting is pretty, but a lot of the camerawork feels to me like it's stuck in 1960s techniques (although I don't recall any ridiculous zooms of the sort that became a thing in the 1960s).</p>
<P>If you're OK with the sort of character Pookie is being whitewashed, then you'll probably enjoy <b>The Sterile Cuckoo</b>. If, like me, you're not, then you've been warned.</p>Ted S. (Just a Cineast)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12394770582776749331noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286673910044050811.post-26121450409845872232024-03-04T07:12:00.001-05:002024-03-04T07:12:00.138-05:00Mrs. Miniver
<p>Another of those movies that I'd seen bits and pieces of over the years, but had never seen all the way through, was the Best Picture Oscar winner for 1942, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035093/"><b>Mrs. Miniver</b></a>. I put it on my DVR the last time it showed up on TCM. Now, it's getting another airing, tonight at midnight (well, with the intro, a few minutes into March 5, or still late in the evening of March 4 in more westerly time zones). With that in mind, I made certain I could watch my DVR copy in order to do a post for the upcoming airing.</p>
<p>The movie starts off in the summer of 1939, looking at a supposedly middle-class (really, more upper-middle-class at the very least) family in Belham, a village in one of the Home Counties just south of London: the Minivers. Kay (Greer Garson), the matriarch of the family, lives a relatively carefree life, going to London to do some "extravagant" shopping, which means buying a new hat. And how is she going to tell her husband about it? Of course, her husband Clem (Walter Pidgeon), an architect, has decided on a big-ticket purchase of his own: a new car.</p>
<P>Kay returns home on the train, where the station-master, Ballard (Henry Travers), has been breeding roses. He's even come up with a beautiful rose he wants to name after Mrs. Miniver and enter in the local horticultural contest. But this is where the class issues of pre-war Britain start to rear their ugly head. Lady Beldon (Dame May Whitty) also breeds roses, and she wins the trophy every year simply because she's "Lady" Beldon. Heaven forfend somebody on the class level of a station-master should win.</p>
<p>At dinner that night, Lady Beldon's granddaughter Carol (Teresa Wright) stops by the Miniver place, presumably not prompted by Grandma, asking Mrs. Miniver to do what she can not to get the Miniver rose entered in the competition since Grandma wins every year and it would kill her not to win. Not that Kay can do much about it. But even more miffed is Kay and Clem's adult son Vincent (Richard Ney), a student at Oxford. He's gotten some "radical", at least by 1930s standards, ideas on class and is none too pleased with Carol's showing up. But it's obvious that the two are soon going to fall in love.</p>
<p>Soon is darn right, because September 1, 1939 is about to come up. Germany invaded Poland that day, and on the following Sunday, September 3, the UK declared war on Germany, with everybody in the village learning of the declaration as they're at church from their local vicar (Henry Wilcoxon). Clem, being in his 40s, with an adult kid and two younger children at home, isn't going to be asked to fight, but Vin probably is, so he preempts this by trying to get into the RAF, which eventually does happen with him getting stationed at an airbase near Belham.</p>
<p>At this point <b>Mrs. Miniver</b> becomes a sort of pastiche of all the things that would befall a family on the home front during the early stages of the European theater of World War II between the UK and Germany. There's the Battle of Britain, with the Nazis trying to bomb the UK, leading to the requisite air-raid scenes. France would fall, resulting in the evacuation from Dunkirk. Since Clem has a boat, he's asked to set out on his boat to help evacuate Dunkirk. Vin and Carol have a quickie wedding, with Lady Beldon finally relenting. One of the Nazi pilots is shot down but survives, winding up injured in the Minivers' garden, with Kay finding him. And on and on, leading to the climax set against Belham trying to hold their garden show while the war is going on....</p>
<p><b>Mrs. Miniver</b> is, like <b>Boys Town</b> yesterday, one of those movies where it's easy to see why it was such a huge success upon its release in the summer of 1942. The movie had been conceived earlier, while the US was still not in the war, with the aim of engendering sympathy among US audiences for the plight of the fellow English speakers on the other side of the Atlantic. But then Pearl Harbor happened, and now American audiences could see themselves facing the same issues as the Minivers and other cast members of the movie.</p>
<p>This being MGM, you can also the see the sentimentality that some critics, out of step with the public as always, would criticize. But there were British movies such as <b>Millions Like Us</b> that dealt with a lot of the same themes, just with a more hard-nosed look. In the drive to build morale, I think both approaches are needed, and with MGM behind it, the more sentimental approach makes the scenes of destruction a bit more surprising. That, combined with the high production values MGM always had, makes for a very well-crafted movie.</p>
<p>Best Picture of 1942? I'm not so certain; I think that if <b>Yankee Doodle Dandy</b> had been done in Technicolor it might well have won. But it's easy to see why <b>Mrs. Miniver</b> did ultimately win. It's also a movie that you should definitely watch if you haven't seen it before.</p>Ted S. (Just a Cineast)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12394770582776749331noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286673910044050811.post-78253565289901594482024-03-03T08:30:00.002-05:002024-03-03T08:30:00.129-05:00Also where the boys are
<p>Back in Omaha, Flanagan is working at his mission when a group of kids playing in the street get much too rowdy. The break the window of one of the store owners, and that owner is understandably not pleased at all, considering how much it will cost to replace. And stuff like this has happened one time too often. So this time, the storekeeper decides not to vouch for the children or accept a fine, and let justice take its course, which for the boys is going to mean the reformatory since they're all much too young for prison.</p>
<p>Fr. Flanagan is horrified, since he knows reform school isn't going to do the kids any good. Indeed, he just got back from talking to one such guy who was "helped" by a stint in reform school, and look where that got him. Flanagan also believes that there's no such thing as a truly bad child. So he offers to take custody of these kids (if they don't have parents, you wonder why they weren't in an orphange) in excange for keeping them out of reform school. The judge relents.</p>
<p>But it's going to take money, and that's money that Flanagan doesn't really have. The local bishop (Minor Watson) would like to help, but thinks that not only is the case futile, he realizes that there are a lot of powerful interests in the press and elsewhere who don't like the idea for a bunch of reasons, some good and some not so good. It falls to Mr. Morris (Henry Hull), who runs a pawn shop, to help fund the house by giving Flanagan loans he knows are never going to get repaid.</p>
<p>Flanagan struggles for a year, but eventually finds a piece of farmland, and realizes the fresh air and physical labor would be just the thing for his young charges. And, having helped build the buildings, the boys should be more or less allowed to run the place, at least to the extent that minor children can run their own affairs, so kind of like a boarding school honor code, but a way of helping teach these children how to become good little citizens.</p>
<p>And that's only the first half of the movie. If you saw the opening credits, you'd have seen Mickey Rooney's name right next to Spencer Tracy's, and we haven't seen Rooney yet. Joe Marsh (Edward Norris) is a boy who had run in the same circles as the ones who wound up in Boys Town, but he's wound up robbing banks to the point that he's about to be sent to prison. He has a kid brother, Whitey (that's Mickey Rooney) he's been trying to raise, and even has a bit of money set aside for the kid. So perhaps Fr. Flanagan could appeal to Whitey to come to Boys Town?</p>
<p>The rest of the movie should be pretty obvious. Whitey doesn't like the idea of Boys Town, since he's the sort of kid that would be constantly getting into trouble, gambling and smoking and other such rule-breaking. He does of course eventually go to Boys Town, but he acts as if he should rightfully own the place and everybody should bow down before him. He's going to be redeemed, but it's going to take a crisis of conscience.</p>
<p>It's easy to see why <b>Boys Town</b> was a box office smash when it was released in 1938. It's one of those feel-good movies, at a time when there was still a depression on in the US and international events were getting darker. MGM turns on the mawk, and pours it on and on as only MGM could -- I can only imagine if Warner Bros. had tried to make this story it would have been rather darker. Surprisingly enough, however, it works. Spencer Tracy was beginning to get more into his fatherly roles when he got to MGM, and is perfectly cast as Fr. Flanagan. Mickey Rooney in many ways takes his Andy Hardy character and adds on the MGM view of what juvenile delinquency was like, or at least as much as they could show it in a prestige movie.</p>
<p>So if, like me, you actually haven't seen <b>Boys Town</b> yet, do yourself a favor and watch it.</p>Ted S. (Just a Cineast)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12394770582776749331noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286673910044050811.post-52076149825762103092024-03-02T12:00:00.002-05:002024-03-02T12:00:00.142-05:00Don't Bet on Blondes
<p>I've posted quite often how I think Warner Bros. tended to have the best B movies. They're breezy, and often so much fun. One that I recorded because it sounded like a fun plot was <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026289/"><b>Don't Bet on Blondes</b></a>. Having watched it, I wasn't wrong in my presumption.</p>
<p>The movie starts off with a montage of sporting events, with newspapers informing us how "Odds" Owen (Warren William) sets odds on each of them. He's good at what he does, but since sports betting may not be quite legal, there are always bettors looking to scam the oddsmakers. One such cas occurs when a man comes in looking to put $2500 on a 20-1 shot in a big horse race. When the horse wins, Odds will have to pay out $50K. Except that he figures the bet was placed by the owner of the horse, who had engaged in blood doping. Don't cash the ticket, or Odds will reveal the truth.</p>
<p>Not long after that, Odds reads about Lloyds of London, and how they underwrite insurance policies against all sorts of oddball things. When he asks one of his assistants about this, he realizes that insurance and sports odds have a lot in common. Both of them involve analyzing data, seeing how much something has happened in the past, and then figuring out how likely something is going to happen in the future. It's also presumably more legal than sports books, although a lot more regulated.</p>
<P>But with that in mind, Odds decides he might just get out of the sport book game and get into being the American who sells the policies for the wacky events. (One running joke involves insuring the vocal cords of a champion husband-caller, played by character actress Maude Eburne.) In addition to being lucrative, it also brings Odds a lot of more positive publicity.</p>
<p>And then looking for an insurance policy is Col. Youngblood (Guy Kibbee). He's the grandson of a General Youngblood, who fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. He's also one of those believers in the "lost cause", thinking that the South never really lost the civil war. And he's going to write a book to prove it. (I guess they had vanity presses even in the 1930s.) But he needs time to write that book, and time is money. He's getting his money from his daughter Mariliyn (Claire Dodd), a prominent actress and also frequently in the papes for her choice of date partners. If she gets married, she's going to retire from the stage, and where would that leave Col. Youngblood? So Youngblood wants to take a policy out that his daughter doesn't get married for another three years.</p>
<p>Odds takes the policy, and then sets about making certain that whoever dates Marilyn once is not going to date her a second time, lest he get ideas about marrying Marilyn. Odds also takes a personal enough interest in the case that Marilyn sees him on more than one occasion. After the second or third time this happens (the date in question being played by Errol Flynn just before he became a star), Odds thinks that perhaps the best strategy is to start dating her himself, with the intention that he can string her along until the policy terms expire.</p>
<p>You can probably guess what happens next. One is that when Marilyn shows up at Odds' office, she happens to see her father paying the premium on an insurance policy, not that she knows what it's about. The other more obvious thing is that Odds begins to find himself falling in love with Marilyn.</p>
<p><b>Don't Bet on Blondes</b> is predictable, but Warner Bros. was good at making this sort of movie. It's also well cast, with Warren William being suave enough for the lead, and all of the character actors doing well. It only runs 59 minutes, but it doesn't feel too short. So if you can find <b>Don't Bet on Blondes</b>, bet on it being entertaining.</p>Ted S. (Just a Cineast)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12394770582776749331noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286673910044050811.post-41920557896672629522024-03-01T07:03:00.002-05:002024-03-01T07:03:00.140-05:00The Best House in London
<P>Mores were really changing in the 1960s, something that I've noted quite a few times regarding the sort of comedy that got made during the era. Some were "generation gap" comedies, as older stars tried to keep up with the changing times, often without much success. Then there were movies not set in the US, and not set in the 1960s, such as <b>Hotel Paradiso</b> which I blogged about a few weeks back. A movie that falls into that second class that I recently watched is <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064081/"><b>The Best House in London</b></a>.</p>
<p>The movie starts with a pre-credits scene of one Walter Leybourne (David Hemings) having a tryst in a 19th century hot-air balloon with a woman. Then after the credits, we see Josephine Pacefoot (Joanna Pettet), who happens to be Walter's cousin. She's leading protests about the social ills that have led to women becoming "fallen women", which is a euphemism for prostituted. She blames society for this phenomenon, and thinks that something should be done to rehabilitate the women.</p>
<p>The third main character happens to be a dual role for Hemings. Benjamin Oakes is a man of many talents, mostly in the field of promotion. He goes around finding interesting new things, and tries to promote them with photo spreads in the various newspapers in Britain. His latest discovery is an Italian nobleman who is trying to build a lighter-than-air aircraft along the lines of the zeppelin, but this being Victorian London, the real zeppelin had not yet been invented. (In fact, a running theme throughout the movie is a pastiche of things that did exist at one point or another in Victorian England, but were not all contemporaneous with each other.) Benjamin sees the protest Josephine is leading, and decides to work with her.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Josephine's uncle Sir Francis (George Sanders) is a wealthy man with various land interests, not only in London and the rest of the UK, but in India as well, where he runs a poppy plantation turning the poppies into opium. He's disowned his son Walter for cowardice during the Crimean War, leaving his estate to Josephine. He's also got a mistress Babette (Dany Robin), but what he doesn't know is that Babette is also having an affair with with Walter, who is trying to get use Babette to get dad to amend his will.</p>
<p>Everything comes together in another way, which involves what to do with all those "fallen women". The government has decided that perhaps they should try what the French do, which is to have an "official" bordello where the authorities will more or less look the other way. Sir Francis offers one of his unused mansions to host the place, being a money-spinner for him. But when he gets called to India to deal with his opium plantation, he turns over the management of the place to Babette, which brings Walter into the picture. And of course Josephine and Benjamin don't want such a place to exist period.</p>
<p><b>The Best House in London</b> is yet another of those movies where you can see why the people making it thought it was going to be a really clever idea. But it's of those things that really doesn't work in the execution. A lot of the jokes fall flat, and the constant string of anachronisms doesn't work either.</p>
<p>As always, however, you may want to watch and judge for yourself.</p>Ted S. (Just a Cineast)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12394770582776749331noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286673910044050811.post-46688513633794472302024-02-29T10:00:00.000-05:002024-02-29T10:00:00.156-05:00So You Don't Trust Your Wife
<p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1jPGYb0Gtpk/XmQrpJF74NI/AAAAAAAABIo/8fzks6wPLuwYrvoC7yyDOSK6nV5he4SSQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/mcdoakes.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin-left:52px; cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 338px;" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1jPGYb0Gtpk/XmQrpJF74NI/AAAAAAAABIo/8fzks6wPLuwYrvoC7yyDOSK6nV5he4SSQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/mcdoakes.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a></p>
<p>It's been almost four years since I did a post on one of the Joe McDoakes shorts, but recently one of the movies I did a post on had enough space before the next movie started on TCM that they put in one of the Joe McDoakes shorts: <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0126037/"><b>So You Don't Trust Your Wife</b></a>.</p>
<p>Since this is a short, and relatively close to the end of the McDoakes series, there's not all that much here. One night, Joe McDoakes (George O'Hanlon) is in bed, while his wife Alice (Jane Frazee) is in the other twin bed in the room. She's worried about finances, so Joe informs her that he has a life insurance policy, and that as a result she'll be taken care of if anything should happen to him.</p>
<p>But this gives paranoiac Joe a horrible idea: he begins to think that Alice will find him worth more to her dead than alive, what with that substantal (for 1955 standards) insurance policy. It doesn't help that everything that happens, from the headling in the morning newspaper to a handyman showing up with an ax. Eventually as a result of all the worrying, Joe winds up in a sanitarium!</p>
<p>As I said, there's not a whole lot here, and once again, it's pretty much a one-joke short. But it mostly works, and I suppose that's a reason why series like this were popular until episode TV led movie studios and theaters to come up with other ways than the full night of movies to compete with the idiot box.</p>
<p>I'm not 100 percent certain if I've mentioned it before, but the Warner Archive did put out a box set of the Joe McDoakes shorts. I haven't checked to see if that set is complete. But you can buy it at <a href="https://www.ccvideo.com/the-joe-mcdoakes-collection/883316200629">Critics' Choice Video</a> and at <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Joe-McDoakes-Shorts-1942-1956-Discs/dp/B0040BJGWS/">Amazon</a>. (For some reason, Amazon kept wanting to change my search of McDoakes to McDonalds, which is why I couldn't find it on Amazon at first.</p>Ted S. (Just a Cineast)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12394770582776749331noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286673910044050811.post-8663814960685255092024-02-28T13:08:00.002-05:002024-02-28T13:08:00.242-05:00The Art of Love
<p>Norman Jewison died back in January. I knew that TCM would likely wait until after <i>31 Days of Oscar</i> to do a programming tribute to him; looking ahead to the March schedule I see that there is one planned for some time after <i>31 Days of Oscar</i>. But I'll post on that closer to the day of the actual tribute. I had a movie on my DVR that was directed by Jewison and is unsurprisingly not part of the programming tribute, so I've decided not to delay my post on it to coincide with the tribute. That movie is <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058920/"><b>The Art of Love</b></a>.</p>
<p>After an animated opening credits sequence that looks like it's imitating the <i>Pink Panther</i> style in large part because it was made by the same people (DePatie-Freleng), we cut to a shot of Dick Van Dyke punching his fist through a bunch of art canvases. It's more or less OK, however: Van Dyke is playng Paul Sloan, a starving artist living in a garret apartment in Paris, together with his friend, equally struggling write Casey Barnett (James Garner). Paul has decided to give up the dream of becoming an artist and plans to move back to America to marry his fiancée Laurie. Casey is distressed by this because the two of them have been living off allowances sent by Laurie's wealthy father. If Paul goes back to the US, so do the allowances.</p>
<P>Casey tries to sell some of Paul's canvases, and comes up with an idea. He's trying to write a book based on the American owner of a dive nightclub, Madame Coco (Ethel Merman) and the young women who make up the floor show there. Madame Coco is struggling too, so Casey comes up with the idea that she should buy a couple of the paintings in order that Paul will have enough money to stay in Paris, at which point Casey will too, and can complete the book that will be a big advertising boost to Madame Coco.</p>
<p>Paul, meanwhile, has gone to his art dealer, Zorgus (Roger C. Carmel). In a conversation, Zorgus mentions that a lot of artists are bums, but that bums have a way of becoming famous after death and their paintings suddenly becoming worth a lot more even though they're no better artistically than before the artist's death. With that in mind, Paul mentions it to Casey, and they joke about suicide, with Casey beginning to write a phony manifesto on one of the bridges over the Seine.</p>
<p>But Paul sees a car on the bridge with the headlights still on and the doors open. A woman is threatening to jump off the bridge! Paul doesn't think about his own life any more and decides he's going to try to save her. She falls in the river while he falls on top of one of the barges carrying cargo down the Seine. Thankfully, he's able to save the woman, a young girl named Nikki (Elke Sommer) who had been living with an uncle in Strasbourg but tried to make it in Paris. Not having done so, she decided to try to kill herself instead of going back to Strasbourg. The next day, after the trip has traveled some distance away from Paris, Paul convinces her to get on a bus for Strasbourg.</p>
<p>But at the bus stop, Paul sees a newspaper that has announced the suicide of an American in Paris. As you can guess, that American was one Paul Sloan. Paul of course knows he's not dead, but since he doesn't have any ID with him he wouldn't be able to prove it to the authorities. Or he just doesn't think about that, this being a comedy. Instead, he decides to make his way back to Paris. There, he finds that with his suicide having been publicized in the media, his paintings are selling like hotcakes. Casey concocts a nutty plan to keep Paul in hiding, making new paintings, until showing up at an art show claiming amnesia.</p>
<p>Complicating all of this is that Laurie has decided she's going to come to Paris, although she doesn't know about Paul's supposed suicide or any of the stuff that's followed from there. (She not being the wife, the embassy wouldn't inform her, I guess.) Things fairly quickly spiral out of control from there, as you wonder how the writers are going to extricate themselves from all of this and come up with an ending that satisfies the still-in-place Production Code along with giving viewers the requisite happy ending.</p>
<p><b>The Art of Love</b> was part of an evening of Dick Van Dyke movies on TCM, presented by Dave Karger. In his outro after the movie, he mentioned that it was a flop. It's really not hard to see why. The movie is an absolute mess. It's not nearly as funny as it would like to think it is, and it seems like there are so many absurd plot holes surrounding Paul's "death" not being found out. It also doesn't help that the Casey character becomes increasingly mean, and taking big part in one of those "comedies of lies" that I tend not to like.</p>
<p>I can see why the people involved with <b>The Art of Love</b> wanted to make it, but can also see where it fails. But as always, judge for yourself.</p>Ted S. (Just a Cineast)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12394770582776749331noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286673910044050811.post-44052277732787935812024-02-27T08:55:00.003-05:002024-02-27T08:55:00.129-05:00Call Me Mister
<p>It turns out that there is at least one movie in the FXM Retro rotation that I hadn't blogged about before, at least according to my most recent search of the blog. That movie is <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043370/"><b>Call Me Mister</b></a>. I recorded it the last time it showed up, figuring that if I hadn't seen it before, it would show up again soon enough and I could do a post on it. With that in mind, the next airing is tomorrow (Feb. 28) at 8:55 AM.</p>
<p>The movie released in 1951 but based loosely on a Broadway revue that was first staged in 1946, starts off by informing us how on the evening of August 14, 1945, America was waiting for the news that eventually did come out of Japan, namely that Japan had surrendered to end World War II. The action then switches to Japan, since there were many many soldiers who were not going to be part of the occupation long term and they needed to be shipped back home.</p>
<p>One of those soldiers is Sgt. Shep Dooley (Dan Dailey). He was a vaudevillean before the war, and supposedly pressed into war service so quickly that he carried his tap dancing shoes with him throughout the Pacific. So now he wants to dispose of them on the black market. Good luck with that. Anyhow, while in Tokyo, he walks into a store that's selling kimonos. Who does he run into but one Kay Hudson (Betty Grable). She was his partner in vaudeville before the war, and was even married to him, but the marriage went sour in large part because Shep was a ladies' man and a smooth operator, consistently leaving Kay in the lurch. However, she was never able to finalize the divorce before the war.</p>
<p>Kay is in Japan as part of a group called the CATs, the Civilian Actress Technicians, a group set up by the Army to provide entertainment, but not quite the way the USO did. Instead, the CATs looked for talent within the members of the armed forces, and trained them to put on shows themselves. Kay having been an enertainer stateside, this is the perfect sort of service for her, and would have kept her far away from Shep, or so she thought. What bad luck running into him here.</p>
<p>But there are servicemen stationed in lots of places in Japan, and the army is looking at putting on some shows over in the Kyoto area in the west of Japan. They just need some volunteer CATs. Kay, wanting to get away from Shep again, volunteers, going with her friend Billie (Benay Venuta). At the base where she ends up, she's consistently told nobody can spare men to put on a show, at least until Capt. Comstock (Dale Robertson) sees her. She's so good looking that of course he's willing to let his men do the show just so he can keep her close by. One of his men has natural talent, but that man, PFC Stanley Poppoplis (Danny Thomas) is stuck doing KP. Will he get discovered by Kay?</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, Shep finds out that Kay has run off to Kyoto, so he follows her out there, making up a story that he's been transferred to Kyoto. He even gets himself put in the show, what with being a more natural performer than any of the regular servicemen. But his story is a lie, and he when he goes back to Tokyo, he finds that the boat that was supposed to take him back to the States to be demobbed has already sailed, leaving him technically AWOL.</p>
<p>And that's part of where all the problems I had with <b>Call Me Mister</b> are. Dan Dailey worked well with Betty Grable, but in <b>Call Me Mister</b> he's being asked to play a character that's more like the sort of schmoozer Jack Carson was playing over at Warner Bros. If the Shep character were a supporting character and not supposed to end up with the leading lady at the end, it might work. But here, we're rooting against Shep until the orders from above that you know are going to come to reunite Shep and Kay as well as to satisfy the Production Code.</p>
<p>The 1951 release date that I mentioned also doesn't help. Fox had made a number of good morale-boosting musicals during World War II, and then followed that up after the war by making nostalgic musicals set a generation or two before the release date. This one, however, is only set five years or so before the release, so the old-fashioned pre-war style (musical numbers staged by Busby Berkeley) really make the film seem old-fashioned in a bad way. The movie isn't a period piece, but gives off vibes of being dated.</p>
<P>In many ways, that's a shame, since Grable is always appealing, and Danny Thomas does quite well relatively early in his career. There are also one or two good numbers, with "Goin' Home Train" probably being the best of them. So give <b>Call Me Mister</b> a chance, even though it's decidedly not the best movie from any of the people involved.</p>Ted S. (Just a Cineast)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12394770582776749331noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286673910044050811.post-58921570926041709642024-02-26T13:36:00.002-05:002024-02-26T13:36:00.139-05:00Tale Tale
<p>I recorded several horror movies off of TCM last October; needless to say this includes a couple starring Vincent Price. One that I hadn't seen before was the horror anthology <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057608/"><b>Twice-Told Tales</b></a>.</p>
<p>I recognized the title, because that is actually the title of a collection of short stories by 19th century American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. This movie adaption has three stories from Hawthorne, although only one of them is actually from Hawthorne's original. The other connection is that Vincent Price is the star in all three of the stories, obviously not playing the same character.</p>
<p>The first story is <i>Dr. Heidegger's Experiment</i>. Heidegger, first name Carl, is actually played by Sebastian Cabot; Price plays Heidegger's best friend Alex. The two are elderly best friends, who have stood by each other for decades, Alex helping Carl try to get over the death of his fiancée many years prior. When a storm knocks the top off of the fiancée's crypt, the two men are shocked to discover an exceedingly well-preserved corpse, with some sort of water dripping onto the crypt from a crack above. Heidegger extracts some of the water, and finds that it has remarkable restorative properties, making a withered rose bloom again. In a bit of science that wouldn't be much tried today, he decides to experiment on himself, and he too becomes young again! It also works for Alex, at which point Heidgger gets the thought of injecting it into the fiancée's corps to see if she can come back to life. It turns out there's more going on, of course....</p>
<P>Next up is <i>Rappaccini's Daughter</i>. Price plays Rappaccini, a former professor at a university in Italy who has become a recluse since his wife left him. He lives with his adult daughter Beatrice (Joyce Taylor) in an apartment that opens out to a walled courtyard. In a second-story apartment overlooking that courtyard is Giovanni (Brett Halsey). He sees Beatrice and immediately falls in love with her, but she's dangerous, in that her blood is toxic such that if anybody touches her they'll die. Giovanni doesn't want to believe this at first, and continues to try to get close to Beatrice, which enrages Dad, with nasty consequences.</p>
<p>Finally is <i>The House of the Seven Gables</i>, which is based on a full-length book by Hawthorn and which has been turned on its own into a feature-length film. Price plays Gerald Pyncheon, who returns to the titular house after 17 years. It turns out that the house is cursed for all Pyncheon men, the curse having been proclaimed 150 years earlier as a result of the Salem witch trial. But Gerald is convinced that there's buried treasure somewhere on the grounds, and he's going to find it. His sister, and a descendant of the man who put the curse on the house, both try to stop him. But Gerald is so greedy that he might even kill his own sister and wife to try to get at that treasure.</p>
<p><b>Twice-Told Tales</b> is a well-done movie, thanks to presence of Vincent Price, good original stories by Hawthorne, and atmospheric saturated color. Being an anthology film, it has the added plus that if you don't like one of the stories, you don't have to wait too overly long for the next one to start: each segment is in the 35-40 minute range. It's definitely worth watching if you get the chance.</p>Ted S. (Just a Cineast)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12394770582776749331noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286673910044050811.post-28846740612413804592024-02-25T09:21:00.000-05:002024-02-25T09:21:00.124-05:001:08 Courage
<p>A have a tendency to record the movies that Eddie Muller picks for <i>Noir Alley</i> in part because of the likelihood they'll be interesting, and in part for Eddie's presentation of the movies. One that I hadn't seen before was <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038199/"><b>Two O'Clock Courage</b></a>, which ran several months back. I've finally gotten around to watching it, so now it's time for the review.</p>
<p>The movie opens with a man on a corner of two city streets at night, with a cut on his head from which he's bleeding. He seems a bit out of it and, in trying to cross the street, is nearly run down by a taxi. The driver, Patty Mitchell (Ann Rutherford), gets out, and realizes that there's something wrong with this man. This becomes even more obvious when we learn that the man (Tom Conway) is an amnesiac! (As Eddie mentioned, amnesia seems a way overused plot device in noirs, although <b>Two O'Clock Courage</b> is really more of a mystery than a noir.)</p>
<p>To help the man figure out who he is, Patty has him look through his pockets; perhaps he's got some ID or something that will help jog his memory as to who he is. The somethings suggest that his initials might be D and R, and that he's been to the Regency Hotel. That's not much, so Patty offers to take the man to a police station, where they're more likely to be able to help. However, when they get to the local police precinct, they see someone hawking a newspaper. The screaming headline announces the murder of one Robert Dilling, famous theater producer. The story gives a description of a possible suspect, and that description fits our amnesiac fairly well!</p>
<p>Patty decides to do something that gives us a movie. If she just turned the man over to police, we wouldn't have much of a movie, so she suggests that the man get out of town. He feels he has to prove his innocence, so stays in town, and she decides to spend her shift helping the man as the two of them go about trying to solve the mystery. It seems like a daft idea, should cost Patty a day's pay at least since she's not picking up any fares, and ought to get her charged with aiding and abetting or obstruction of justice. But as I said, we wouldn't have a movie otherwise.</p>
<p>Needless to say, it's not too long before Patty and the amnesiac are found by others, investigating police detective Brenner (Emory Parnell) and reporter Al Haley (Richard Lane). Patty makes matters worse for her and her companion by making up a giant lie about the two of them having just gotten married and him being Clarence Smith, a reporter from Dayton who just stumbled on his case and decided to mix business with pleasure. But at least it's a way not to get thrown off the case.</p>
<P>The murder mystery gets ever more complicated, although at least our amnesiac is able to discover his identity halfway through the movie, one Ted Allison. Ted was in town over a play that a now deceased man (not the murder victim) wrote, and which is now the subject of a royalty dispute. Perhaps all of that might have had something to do with the murder. But who killed Dilling, and why? And was it Allison?</p>
<p>To be honest, you probably shouldn't think too hard to try to solve the murder mystery in <b>Two O'Clock Courage</b>. It's convoluted, and not particularly realistic. The movie straddles the line between post-war noirs with the amnesia (hence why Eddie selected this one for <i>Noir Alley</i> and the comedic murder mysteries that had been a big thing in the late 1930s and early 1940s. (The movie was released in mid-1945.) Being a B movie at only 68 minutes, <b>Two O'Clock Courage</b> doesn't try too hard, but that's something that really works in the movie's favor. It's the sort of thing you should sit back and relax with, rather than the closer attention that prestige movies demanded.</p>
<p>Tom Conway is good in his role; it's a shame that he didn't become quite as succesful as his brother George Sanders. Ann Rutherford also does well. And well down the credits as Helen, one of the beautiful young things Allison knows at the Regency, is a woman credited as Bettejane Greer. If you didn't guess it from the opening credits, that is indeed a young Jane Greer, who would go on to at least one big thing with <b>Out of the Past</b>.</p>
<p><b>Two O'Clock Courage</b> is definitely worth watching if you can find it.</p>Ted S. (Just a Cineast)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12394770582776749331noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7286673910044050811.post-91290700216359287092024-02-24T11:20:00.003-05:002024-02-24T11:20:00.150-05:00Dangerously Slight
<p>A movie that I had surprisingly not seen despite it being part of the "Turner Library" of movies that for years made up the bulk of TCM's programming is <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036365/"><b>Slightly Dangerous</b></a>. So the last time that it showed up on TCM, I decided I'd record it in order to be able to watch it and then do a review here.</p>
<p>After the credits, a voiceover tells us about the town of Hotchkiss Falls, a made-up place supposedly in the mid-Hudson valley, which wouldn't be too far from where I am if it actually existed. But the towns here, places like Kingston and Poughkeepsie and Newburgh, are the same sort of boring places that the voiceover man tells us Hotchkiss Falls is. Anyhow, one of the residents of Hotchkiss Falls is Peggy Evans (Lana Turner), who typifies how boring the town is. She works at the soda counter of the local five-and-dime, and is getting a bonus for showing up on time for 1,000 consecutive shifts. Big deal, she thinks.</p>
<p>The place is so boring, that she gets into a debate with one of her co-workers about whether she could do her job blindfolded. A patron comes up, orders a sundae, and sure enough Peggy is able to fulfill the order properly while blindfolded. But as she was doing it, the store's new manager, Bob Stuart (Robert Young), walks in. Seeing a professional no-no, he calls Peggy into the office. It leads to an exchange in which Peggy, realizing how boring Hotchkiss Falls is, says she'll be Peggy Evans until the day she dies.</p>
<p>That gives her an idea as she thinks that she'll be Peggy Evans until the day Peggy Evans dies. With that in mind, she writes a note that could be construed as a suicide note, and goes running off to the big city, not telling a soul where she's gone. In New York, she starts thinking about getting a complete makeover, not just hair and clothes, but a new name as well. But she can't decide on what an appropriate new name would be.</p>
<p>Peggy decides to go to one of the newspapers to take out a classified ad that would presumably be like the billboard Gladys Glover rents in <b>It Should Happen to You</b>. But a sign painter is working over the evidence, and knocks down his paint bucket, hitting Peggy and temporarily knocking her unconscious. Having just undergone a makeover, she doesn't have any ID in her new pocketbook and no identifying marks on her new outfit. And when she comes to, she decides this would be a perfect opportunity to pretend to have a case of amnesia.</p>
<p>Editor Durstin (Eugene Pallette) decides to take Peggy's picture and put it in the papers to see if anybody can recognize her. Bob sees the story, and thinks he recognizes Peggy. But it's not an absolute, since part of the makeover involved getting her hair dyed blonde. And at the newspaper offices, we see that Bob isn't the only person who thinks he recognizes the mystery woman, although we know the rest of them are wrong.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Peggy has been devious, looking through old newspapers at the library for a missing persons case that might involve someone who would now be close to her age. Eventually, she finds a Carol Burden who was supposedly kidnapped as a very young girl. Carol had a nurse named Baba (Dame May Whitty), so Peggy says she can remember the word "baba". Durstin has his researcher go through the files and he naturally finds the Burden case, with Caro's father Cornelius (Walter Brennan) being a very wealthy man.</p>
<p>However, they've already had to deal with other frauds claiming to be Carol Burden, so they're going to put Peggy-claiming-to-be-Carol through her paces to expose the fraud and prosecute to the full extent of the law. And of course Bob Stuart is waiting in the wings to recognize Peggy as well.</p>
<p><b>Slightly Dangerous</b> is the sort of escapist light comedy that you can understand why audiences in 1943 when it was released would love. With a war raging in the real world, and Lana Turner being so glamorous, it's obviously just what the doctor ordered. And Lana Turner shows herself to be pretty adept at comedy as well. Somewhat more surprising is that Walter Brennan and Dame May Whitty also prove to do well in this sort of comedy. Not that they're bad actors, but <b>Slightly Dangerous</b> is rather more different from what they normally did.</p>
<p>If you want to escape with a slightly different comedy, don't hesitate to try <b>Slightly Dangerous</b>.</p>Ted S. (Just a Cineast)http://www.blogger.com/profile/12394770582776749331noreply@blogger.com0