TCM's Akira Kurosawa tribute

This month marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa (the actuall date of birth being the 23rd), and TCM is marking the occasion by showing Kurosawa's movies for the next four Tuesday nights in prime time. Tonight, I'm particularly looking forward to Throne of Blood, at 10:30 PM ET, as it's one that I surprisingly haven't seen before. The night, however, kicks off with a movie that I saw many years ago: Ikiru, at 8:00 PM.

The plot is fairly simple. Kanji is an old man who has spent his entire working life doing little to nothing as a government clerk, merely stamping papers, finds out that he's got incurable stomach cancer and that he's going to die in a matter of months. Well, his body is going to die; he soul has been moribund for years. Learning, though, that his body is about to give out, Kanji decides to spend the remaining time he has actually living, and to leave a legacy by trying to get a playground built for the neighborhood children.

Unfortunately, Ikiru is a movie that, like Brighton Rock, I don't remember quite so well. I first saw it maybe 20 years ago on one of the PBS stations, which would run classic foreign films. It's also where I first saw The Cranes Are Flying, Fritz Lang's M, and even The Seventh Seal. They had some more obscure stuff, and I think it was even my first exposure to Bollywood, which I distinctly remember not really getting at the time. (It didn't help that this was the late show.)

The Brothers Warner

TCM is showing The Brothers Warner tonight at 8:00 PM ET, with a repeat of it at 3:15 AM. I haven't seen this documentary, so I can't really comment on it.

However, they're showing three excellent movies in between, all of which I've recommended in the past:

The 1927 version of The Jazz Singer, at 9:45 PM;
Paul Muni in I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang, at 11:30 PM; and
Confessions of a Nazi Spy, at 1:15 AM. (To be honest, I thought about blogging on this movie, but it turns out I've already done it.)

The Big Knife

This being Oscar night, TCM is showing several movies about making the other side of the acting business. One that's interesting, if not necessarily great, is The Big Knife, airing at 10:15 PM ET.

Jack Palance plays Charles Castle. He's an actor who's been successful playing matinee-idol types, and the studio loves this because it brings in a lot of money for them. Castle isn't so sure he wants to keep playing such roles, and wants to do more "serious" stuff. Meanwhile, he's got a wife (Ida Lupino) who would be just as happy if he'd just leave Hollywood so that they can have a more normal life.

Into this comes producer Stanley Hoff (Rod Steiger), who presents another problem for Castle. Hoff wants Castle to up with the studio for another seven years, and is willing to do almost anything to get Castle to agree. This includes blackmail, as the studios knew quite a lot about the dark secrets of their actors back in those days. Those secretes here include relationships with actresses Jean Hagen and Shelley Winters.

To be honest, it's an interesting idea, but it doesn't quite live up to expectations. It's all based on a stage play by Clifford Odets, and the result is a movie that comes across as stagey, as most of the action takes place in one room of Charlie Castle's house. That, and it's Clifford Odets, who was never very subtle in getting his point across in his plays. The actors try, but don't really succeed. Still, it's interesting to see Palance, who had previously generally played heavies, trying to extend his range by playing a more sympathetic lead. Ida Lupino is good as always, as is Shelley Winters.

The Big Knife has been released to DVD.

I'm not a huge Tennessee Williams fan

TCM's The Essentials returns tonight at 8:00 PM ET. Alec Baldwin is co-host for a second season, sitting down with Robert Osborne to discuss movies that are "essential" for any self-respecting movie buff to see. This year's movies kick off with the 1951 version of A Streetcar Named Desire. To be honest, I don't care too much for it, in part because I'm not the biggest fan of Marlon Brando. His rending his shirt and screaming "Stella!" is the sort of thing that just screams for parodying. Not only that, but the movie as a whole comes across as too overwrought and melodramatic, and not in a good way. At least when Joan Crawford was doing things like Johnny Guitar or Queen Bee, it was campy fun. (Or at least, that's how it seems today; I'm sure she was dead serious at the time.) Then, there are the movies like last night's The Crowded Sky that are so bad they're funny. A Streetcar Named Desire doesn't even have that.

That having been said, A Streetcar Named Desire isn't the only Tennessee Williams-based movie I have a problem with. I tried to watch Baby Doll the last time it showed up on TCM, and after a half hour or so, I just couldn't take it any more. Even Suddenly, Last Summer, which I've blogged about before, has problems.

Still, if you're a fan of Tennessee Williams, or Marlon Brando, then I'm sure you'll love A Streetcar Named Desire. Besides, you've probably already seen it.

Sometimes I wish I had a good laptop

I hadn't seen The Crowded Sky, before; it was the first of last night's air disaster movies. I'd do a blog posting on it, but it's really the sort of movie that could use a live-blogging post. It's one of those unintentionally funny movies, and had me laughing out loud at times where the producers clearly didn't intend it, to the point that I should have taken notes as to exactly what had me laughing at what point in the movie.

Despite being a fairly unknown movie, it has been released to DVD as part of the TCM Warner Archive Collection.

Seminal movies: Airplane!

TCM is showing a series of movies about airplane problems tonight, including the classic comedy Airplane!, at 10:00 PM ET.

I think everybody knows the plot, so the question then becomes one of what makes it a seminal movie. Airplane! probably did more than any other movie to make the spoof genre viable in Hollywood. Sure, there had been some other spoofs before. Mel Brooks made High Anxiety, his look at the movies of Alfred Hitchcock, a few years earlier. Also, there's Brooks' Young Frankenstein which was even earlier, as well as movies like Murder By Death. And, some of the great cartoons from Warner Bros. and MGM back in the 1940s are clearly lampooning their studios' products.

But there's something about Airplane! that's made it well-known to the point that it's entered the cultural consciousness in a way that the other movies haven't. It was only after Airplane! that spoofs really started to become common: Airplane! spawned a sequel; there was the series of Naked Gun movies, followed by things such as Loaded Weapon and Scary Movie. More than that, though, are some of the scenes. One of the most famous would be the "Surely you can't be serious" joke; I think you all know the punchline. And when it came to the teaching of Ebonics, one of the ways critics lambasted the idea was to use Barbara Billingsley's famous "Miss, I speak jive" sequence from Airplane!. There is also a lot of other great word-play and sight gags, with perhaps my personal favorite involving a bunch of reports and a bank of pay phones.

As for the spoofing, Airplane! has often been compared to Airport and the other disaster movies of the 1970s. There is a good deal of that in the movie. But Airplane! is an even bigger homage to Zero Hour!, which will be following at 11:45 PM. Both movies have been released to DVD.

TCM's John Garfield birthday salute

Having finished 31 Days of Oscar, TCM returns to normal programming with a March 4 birthday tribute: to John Garfield (1913-1952), who appeared in some 30 movies over the last 15 years of his life. One of his best-known movies is The Postman Always Rings Twice, and TCM is finishing up the salute with that movie, at 5:30 PM ET. (I'd argue that Garfield's other best-known movie is Gentleman's Agreement, even though his is only a supporting role. However, that's a Fox movie and not airing on TCM today.)

A movie that I've mentioned briefly is Between Two Worlds, having mentioned the fact that it's a remake of a movie I did a full review on, Outward Bound. (Has it really been two years since TCM has shown Outward Bound?) Between Two Worlds precedes The Postman Always Rings Twice, at 3:30 PM.

Girls' Day

Today is Girls' Day in Japan, which would be a good time to blog about a movie I've only mentioned in passing in the past: Too Many Girls.

Lucille Ball stars as Connie, the daughter of a wealthy man. She's in love with a writer with the ridiculous name of Beverly Waverly, a man of whom her father most definitely does not approve. How to keep her from seeing Waverly? Well, it seems as though the problem might be solved when she decides to go to her father's old alma mater, Pottawatomie College out in New Mexico. It's a "cow college" that just happens to have a male-female ratio of 1:10. Still, Daddy fears for his rebellious daughter's safety (or, more accurately, he doesn't trust her), so he convinces college jock Clint (Richard Carlson) to transfer to Pottawatomie, and serve as Connie's "bodyguard" unbeknownst to her. It's not too difficult an ask, since Clint has fallen in love with Connie himself.

However, he also gets a few more unexpected colleagues. When he met Connie's father, he was actually waiting to convince Argentine running back Manuelito (Desi Arnaz) to play football for his school. Two jocks from other schools: Jojo (Eddie Bracken) and Al (Hal LeRoy) had caught wind of this, and followed Manuelito. They, too wind up being smitten with Connie, and agree to become her "bodyguards" and transfer to Pottawatomie as well.

It's here that the action really starts getting wacky. Pottawatomie has a football team that's pretty bad (it's the lack of men on campus), and when it's found out that the four new students can play football, they kind of have to join the team, even though it will make their actual job more difficult. That, and they all fall in love, with Ann Miller, Frances Langford, and Libby Bennett. And when Connie finds out that the four guys have been hired by her father, she decides to quit Pottawatomie, which will force them to leave as well....

Too Many Girls has no grounding in any reality that I can think of. I don't think I ever knew a college like this. Nor was college football ever been this way. The closest I got to New Mexico was the Four Corners, but Too Many Girls isn't like any other cinematic rendering of New Mexico I can think of. That having been said, the movie is a riot, with Eddie Bracken getting a bunch of great lines, notably when he tells Hal Le Roy, "Get your own ten girls!", or after he catches Carlson singing the song "I Didn't Know What Time It Was" to Ball. Bracken goes back to the other two guys to tell them what he saw, and asks Desi to hold his hand while he sings the song, in order to get the atmosphere right! Then there's Desi Arnaz trying to guess what sort of perfume Ann Miller is wearing. And, of course Miller gets to dance, which is another highlight of the movie. The other dance highlight is the finale, which has the student body celebrate after winning a big game by... doing a conga line across the campus! (I suppose it beats storming the field.) Yes, it's silly stuff. But it's really fun silly stuff.

The movie has the songs of Rogers and Hart, and is one of the few directed by George Abbott. Abbott was better known for his work on Broadway, and indeed, this is an adaptation of a Broadway play. Abbott went on to live an extremely long life, getting trotted out once a year for the Tony Awards for the sole purpose that Broadway could show how it was honoring its past simply by having some old guy walk out and wave to the audience. He died in 1995 at the ripe old age of 107.

Too Many Girls has been released to DVD, as part of a box set containing all three of the movies that Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz made together. This was actually the movie in which they first met.

Operation Petticoat

I've made brief mention of the movie Operation Petticoat several times, but never done a full post on it. TCM is showing the movie again tomorrow morning at 7:00 AM ET.

Cary Grant stars as Lt. Cmdr. Matt Sherman, a submarine captain in the western Pacific at the beginning of America's involvement in World War II. Sherman and his portion of the Navy were caught just as unawares of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor as were the folks at Pearl Harbor itself, with the result being that the good captain has a vessel that may not be very seaworthy, but one that he has to take to sea anyhow, or else the Japanese are sure to destroy it. So, his orders are to beat a hasty retreat and, if he can do any damage to the Japanese, so much the better. Sherman is helped by his second-in-command, Lt. Nick Holden (Tony Curtis). Lt. Holden is a user, a man who grew up on the tough streets and learned how to be manipulative in order to get the things he wants or needs. This turns out to be a good thing, as it makes him able to procure a number of supplies that the ship needs, even if he has to go around Navy regulations in order to do it. (That's putting it mildly.)

Eventually, the sailors set off, and the retreat is eventful, to say the least. Along the way, Lt. Cmdr. Sherman's sub meets up with a group of stranded Army nurses, and Lt. Holden does everything to make sure they get taken aboard -- after all, who wouldn't want women with them in the tight spaces of a submarine? This forms the basis of the bulk of the humor in the movie, as the male crew have their natuarl raging hormones which make them want to be with the women, even though it's really more important that they get away from the Japanese.

And even though it's beem more than 50 years since its release, Operation Petticoat still holds up as a pretty good service comedy. A lot of this is due to the acting skills of the two leads, Grant and Curtis, who were both adept at comedy, albeit different types of comedy. However, they are by far not the only good members of the cast. Several of the supporting players would go on to success in television sitcoms, notably Dick Sargent (Bewitched), Gavin MacLeod (The Mary Tyler Moore Show), and Marion Ross (Happy Days).

Happily, Operation Petticoat has been released to DVD.

David Niven, 1910-1983

David Niven and Kim Hunter in A Matter of Life and Death

Today marks the 100th birth anniversary of David Niven, who won a Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of a troubled retired army officer in Separate Tables. Somewhat surprisingly, I haven't recommended too many of his movies before. And when I recommended The Bishop's Wife, I used a photo of Cary Grant and Loretta Young to illustrate it.

Still, Separate Tables is a quite good ensemble movie, about a group of people in the fading glory of post-war Britain who spend their summer holiday every year in the same seaside hotel, knowing each other in a way, but never really knowing each other. Niven's army officer falls in love with a reserved young woman played by Deborah Kerr (who is really too old for the rold, but that's another story), whose introversion may be a sign of deeper mental instability. She doesn't know Niven's secret -- nobody there really does -- but everybody knows there's some reason to avoid the man. This is all set against the backdrop of a fine cast of other peoplw who have problems of their own: There's Burt Lancaster and Rita Hayworth as ex-lovers; a young Rod Taylor trying to spice up his relationship (with Audrey Dalton); Gladys Cooper as the overbearing mother of Deborah Kerr; Wendy Hiller as the owner of the hotel; and a few I've probably missed.

If you want to see the acting ability of David Niven, Separate Tables isn't a bad place to start. Unfortunately, Amazon claims the DVD is out of print.