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Daily Archives: February 15, 2014

Golden Boy (1939)

Posted on February 15, 2014 | 7 comments

Golden Boy
Directed by Rouben Mamoulian
Written by Lewis Meltzer, Daniel Taradash, Sara Y. Mason and Victor Heerman from a play by Clifford Odets
1939/USA
Columbia Pictures Corporation
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Joe Bonaparte: [Last Lines] Poppa, I’ve come home.[/box]

This is worth seeing if only for the very young William Holden and an amazing performance by Lee J. Cobb — oh, wait! there’s Barbara Stanwyck too.

Joe Bonaparte (Holden) is the light of his father’s (Cobb) life. Joe is a fine violinist and Poppa has bought him a rare Italian violin for his 21st birthday. But Joe is sick of the ribbing he takes from the guys and anxious to make money. It turns out that he is also a fabulous boxer. He seeks out manager Tom Moody and Moody reluctantly substitutes Joe for an ailing fighter. He wins the fight and Moody takes over his management. But Joe still has ties to home and his music. Moody sends out his girlfriend Lorna (Stanwyck) to seduce him back into training. She is more successful than Moody intended, hooking Joe into the bargain. When gangster Eddie Fuseli (Joseph Calleia) tries to buy Joe, Moody resists but Joe, thinking he has been spurned by Lorna, goes along for the opportunity for a championship fight. Has Joe sold his soul into the bargain?

When you are dealing with a Clifford Odets screenplay you know you are in for some very literate dialogue and heaping helpings of social consciousness. Other than that, this is a fairly predictable boxing movie. But the acting pulls this above the ordinary. Lee J. Cobb, only seven years older than Holden, absolutely disappears into the character of his just-off-the-boat Italian father. It is truly wonderful to behold. And then Holden is extraordinarily gorgeous with his mop of curly hair and Stanwyck is her very able self. I enjoyed it.

Victor Young received an Academy Award nomination for his beautiful original score.

For TCM clip from movie go here: http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/221247/Golden-Boy-Movie-Clip-You-Better-Than-That-.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuE4nHiXTf0

TCM Intro by Robert Osborne

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Posted in Movie Reviews

Daybreak (Le jour se leve) (1939)

Posted on February 15, 2014 | 6 comments

Daybreak (Le jour se leve)
Directed by Marcel Carné
Written by Jacques Viot and Jacques Prévert
1939/France
Productions Sigma
First viewing/Netflix rental
#134 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] M. Valentin: You’re the type women fall in love with . . . I’m the type that interests them.[/box]

This has many fantastic elements but the story didn’t hang together well for me on this first viewing.

The story is told as a series of flashbacks as François (Jean Gabin) sits in his bachelor apartment waiting out the police and contemplating the events leading him to fire a fatal shot. François works as a sandblaster in a filthy factory. (Why in American films do the characters so frequently have no visible means of support?) One day Françoise (Jacqueline Laurent) comes in to deliver flowers to a foreman’s wife and François is instantly in love with the young beauty. It seems to him a match made in heaven because they are both orphans named after St. Francis. He starts seeing her but it soon appears that there is another man in her life.

François follows her to a rendezvous with Valentin (the superb Jules Berry) a middle-aged dog trainer with a silver tongue. At the bar, Valentin’s ex-assistant and mistress Clara (Arletty) strikes up a conversation with François. The two begin an on-again-off-again tryst but François continues to see and pine for Françoise. Valentin shows up to try to break up the relationship, claiming to be the girl’s father. Things take their inevitable course until Valentin ends up in Francois’s apartment with a bullet in his gut.

The acting in this, with the exception of the ingenue’s, is absolutely outstanding. Gabin is at his intense working class hero best and Jules Berry makes a very interesting, even mesmerizing, villain. Likewise, the film is exquisitely shot. I loved the touch of the ringing alarm clock at the end. However, I never did fully understand the nature of Françoise’s relationship with Valentin and I had a hard time buying into Francois’s desperation for some reason. While I could understand why this is a key work of French poetic realism (and another great 1930’s French proto-noir), I didn’t love it. Maybe it will take me more than one viewing.

Daybreak was remade as The Long Night in 1947 by director Anatole Litvak with Henry Fonda, Barbara Bel Geddes, Vincent Price and Ann Dvorak. I’d like to see that sometime.