Monthly Archives: February 2015

Miracle on 34th Street
Directed by George Seaton
Written by George Seaton; Story by Valentine Davis
1947/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Mr. Shellhammer: But… but maybe he’s only a little crazy like painters or composers or… or some of those men in Washington.[/box]

A treat every single time I see it. I always forget how pointed some of the satire is. It’s not just about jolly old Kris Kringle.

Doris Walker (Maureen O’Hara) has been burned by romance and has decided to run her life on common sense.  She is raising her daughter Susan (Natalie Wood) to have no illusions as well.  No fairy tales and definitely no Santa Claus.

Doris is the executive responsible for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.  Her Santa is hitting the bottle.  So she enlists the help of the kindly bearded stranger who reported the man.  He does so well on the float that Macy’s hires him to be its store Santa.  On duty, this Santa refers customers to rival Gimbel’s if Macy is out of the toy a child desires.  This proves to be an enormous hit and publicity coup for the store.

After the parade, Doris learns he calls himself Kris Kringle and believes himself to be Santa Claus.  Worried, she sends Kris for an evaluation by company psychologist Mr. Sawyer (the wonderful Porter Hall).  Kris passes the mental acuity test with flying colors.  Then he offers some advice to the neurotic, chronically angry Sawyer.  This makes Sawyer so mad that he tells Doris Kris is apt to break out in a homicidal fit at any moment.  Fortunately, the doctor at the old folks’ home where Kris lives says he is harmless.  It is decided that someone who lives close to the store should take Kris in for the season.  This turns out to be Doris’s neighbor Fred (John Payne), who sees this as an opportunity to step up his wooing of Doris.  Kris likes the idea because he wants to work on Susan.

Kris is aggravated into mild violence during his next encounter with Sawyer.  Although unharmed, Sawyer has the poor man sent to Bellvue.  Kris, despondent because he thinks Doris was in on the maneuver, intentionally fails his mental test.  Then Fred, a lawyer, comes to the rescue during a sanity hearing in which his defense is that Kris is, in fact, Santa Claus.

This movie captures not only the happiness of a Christmas but its crass commercialism. As such, it is even more applicable now than when it was made.  The dialogue is really witty.  I especially love the trial scenes when Christmas takes on a political dimension as well.  A classic for a reason.  Why is this not on the 1001 Movies List???

Miracle on 34th Street won Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Gwenn); Best Writing, Original Story; and Best Writing, Original Screenplay.  It was nominated for Best Picture.

The DVD I rented contained an excellent commentary by Maureen O’Hara recorded at her home in Ireland in 2006.  She was one sharp old lady.  Many nice remembrances especially of Natalie Wood.  O’Hara said she appreciated the young actress because she had started out at age seven herself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ce_op2qG24

Trailer – Fox trots out its stable of stars – may contain one of the earliest uses of the expression “groovy”!

Snow Trail (Ginrei no hate)
Directed by Senkichi Taniguchi
Written by Akira Kurosawa
1947/Japan
Toho Company
First viewing/Hulu Plus

[box] I’m not always great in pictures, but I’m always true to the Japanese spirit. — Toshiro Mifune[/box]

Toshiro Mifune made his screen debut in this film.  He’s very good but I recommend you watch this for Takashi Shimura’s brilliant performance as a thief redeemed by a mountain.

A gang of three bank robbers have made the novel decision of hiding out disguised as ski tourists in Nagano.  This is made odder still by the fact that none of them skis.  They are Takasugi, Ejiima (Mifune), and Nojiro (Shimura), who is the gang leader.  The police are confident they are trapped like rats in a corner because there is only one road leading down from the mountains and the conditions for cross country travel are too severe for non-mountaineers.

The gang initially hides out in a hot spring resort but is forced to flee when one of the other guests spots Nojiro’s tell-tale missing fingers while bathing.  They are forced to make their way to an abandoned ranger’s hut.  There they divide the money three ways in case they must split up.  When they hear the police dogs in the distance, they set off again through the snow.  During the chase, Takasugi’s gunfire causes an avalanche that kills him and blocks off the road so that the police cannot follow.

Through sheer determination Ejima and Nojiro make it to a remote ski lodge occupied by an old man, his granddaughter, and mountain climber Honda.  They have heard nothing of the bank robbery and welcome the fugitives with simple hospitality.  Nojiro’s hard heart is gradually melted by the warmth of the girl and the beauty of the surroundings.  Ejima, on the other hand, proves that he is psychopath with no notion of how to behave in polite society.  He reacts like a tiger trapped in a cage.  Eventually Ejima can stand no more, and by threatening the granddaughter, forces Honda to guide the men over the mountain.

The journey is extremely dangerous.  Ejima’s selfishness threatens all of them. Honda holds fast to his mountaineer’s code and risks his life repeatedly to prevent the men from falling to their deaths.  By the end of the road, it is Nojiro that will have to prove what he is made of.

I had no idea what to expect from this and ended up loving it.  It is beautifully and realistically shot on location.  The mountain journey is quite suspenseful.  But most of all, this is one of Shimura’s finest performances.  His role starts out rather small and builds until one feels enormous empathy for his character.  Recommended.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-muXnmgw-to

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Brighton Rock
Directed by John Boulting
Written by Graham Greene and Terrence Rattigan from the novel by Greene
1947/UK
Charter Film Productions
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Rose: People change.

Ida: I’ve never changed. It’s like those sticks of rock. Bite one all the way down, you’ll still read Brighton. That’s human nature.[/box]

At only seventeen years old, Richard Attenborough’s Pinkie Brown makes Harry Lime look like a pussycat.  Brighton Rock is an absolutely gripping British film noir.

A title card informs us that between the wars, the English seaside resort of Brighton used to be over run by gangs preying on racegoers.  When the former gang leader is killed, fresh-faced Pinkie Brown takes over the collection of much older hoodlums through sheer force of will.  The deceased was fingered by a reporter named Fred Hale.  His newspaper has enlisted him to play “Kolley Kibber” out on a walking tour of Brighton for the day.  The gimmick is that the first person to challenge “Kolley” will win a prize and anybody picking up one of the cards he leaves around will win a smaller prize.  Fred’s picture appears on the front page of that day’s edition.

Forearmed, the gang is ready for revenge.  The first act of the film follows Fred’s terrified flight from the thugs.  One of Fred’s ploys is to enlist a good-natured lush, Ida (Hermoine Baddeley), to spend the day with him.  He begs her not to leave him for a minute.  He’s a goner when she does.  She gets back just in time to catch a brief glimpse of Pinkie.  Then we see Pinkie elaborately establishing his alibi for the crime.  Part of this is to order his men to distribute cards around town as though Fred had been in action later in the day.

But henchman Spicer, already very nervous about the gang’s involvement in murder, slips up.  He leaves a card under the tablecloth in a cafe where he stops for a beer.  Pinkie is irate and goes to retrieve the card.  Unfortunately for her, the waitress, Rose, has already found the card and reveals that she has an excellent memory for faces.  So Pinkie begins wooing the innocent young Catholic, who quickly adores him.

Meanwhile, Ida does not believe that Fred’s death was a suicide as ruled in the coroner’s inquest.  She takes it on herself to see that justice is done.  The remainder of the film is taken up with her investigation and Pinkie’s increasingly heartless efforts to stay one step ahead of the law.

Greene was a convert to Catholicism and a great student of human nature.  He certainly was not afraid to name Satan and incarnate him.  There is a very interesting morality play buried deep in what is basically a crime film.  I’d like to read the source novel some time.

This is a great movie, so dynamic that I was able to ignore the numerous coincidences and remain thoroughly engrossed.  It all hinges on the performances of Attenborough and Baddeley, both probably at career heights.  But the film is also full of unforgettable set pieces like the Hanes chase, the ghost train at the pier, the double cross at the racetrack, the gramophone recording and more.  Highly recommended.

Clip – sorry folks, it was the best I could do

For better clips on TCM go here

One Wonderful Sunday (“Subarashiki nichiyôbi”)
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Written by Akira Kurosawa and Keinosuke Uekusa
1947/Japan
Tojo Company
First viewing/Hulu Plus

Masako: All you people, applaud. All you young lovers, applaud for your dreams.

This film provides a very interesting glimpse into the wreckage that was Toyko immediately after World War II.  The ending has some major problems but until then Kurosawa shows off his developing mastery.

Yuzo and Masako have been engaged since before the war but, despite working, are too poor to marry and set up household.  Being too honest to participate in the black market, Yuzo sees little way out.  The couple meets only on Sundays.  On this particular Sunday, they have to figure out a way to amuse themselves on only the 35 yen they share between them.  Masako’s challenge is to prevent Yuzo from sliding into complete despair.  She is relentlessly cheerful, recalling the dreams they used to share of one day opening a cafe.

The film follows the two as they engage in the activities open to them.  Most everything seems to go wrong.  They tour a model house which is hopelessly out of their price range; visit a filthy rented room that is similarly too expensive. Yuzo plays a game of sandlot baseball with some children and damages a shopowner’s sign.  Yuzo looks up an old army buddy who has opened a cabaret but it turns out the place is the hangout of gangsters and the man refuses to see him.  Then a torrential downpour starts.  They try to go to a concert but are priced out of the cheap seats when scalpers buy them all up.

The couple retreat to Yuzo’s flat, where he seems lost in depression and beyond the reach of Masako.  But they are young and together they somehow survive the day and plan for next Sunday.

Evidence of the American occupation is everywhere in this film from the ruins of bombed out buildings and empty lots to English-language signage all around.  The general run of Japanese seem to be ruthless profiteers out only for their own survival.  The lot of children seems to be particularly bleak.  What chance does a young couple that retains an ounce of idealism have? According to Kurosawa, there is hope if they can hold on to their dreams.

It is interesting to contrast the more muscular Kurosawa to the softer Ozu film of the same year.  Both One Wonderful Sunday and Record of a Tenement Gentleman explore Tokyo at its lowest ebb.  But though both films end with a plea for compassion, the poverty in the Ozu film is incidental to the human story while it seems to be part of a more political polemic in the Kurosawa.

Kurosawa makes dynamic use of his beloved rain and wind.  The scene in Yuzo’s apartment drags on endlessly as we watch him mope with and without the support of Masako.  But the length seemed to add to the realism for me.  The ending sequence, however, went on and on to much less effect only to culminate in some too obvious speechifying,  Nonetheless recommended to anyone interested in the period or the filmmaker.

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