Monthly Archives: March 2015

Rope (1948)

Posted on March 24, 2015 | 3 comments

Rope
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Written by Arthur Laurents; adapted by Hume Cronyn from a play by Patrick Hamilton
1948/USA
Warner Bros./Transatlantic Pictures
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#221 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Rupert Cadell: Brandon’s spoken of you.

Janet Walker: Did he do me justice?

Rupert Cadell: Do you deserve justice?[/box]

I can’t help thinking that this one doesn’t take itself seriously enough to rank with one of the Master’s better films. Still, it’s lots of malicious fun.

The entire film takes place in real time in Brandon’s (John Dall) apartment. It begins with Brandon and his close friend Phillip (Farley Granger) strangling a prep school classmate with a rope. Both apparently conceived the crime as a lark designed to highlight their superiority over mere mortals and their artistry in carrying out the perfect murder. But Phillip gets cold feet immediately after the deed is done and is a nervous wreck for the rest of the story.

Brandon is so confident that he has invited the victim’s parents and fiancee, and the fiancee’s ex-boyfriend, to a party that very evening. He relishes the prospect of serving supper from the very chest in which they have stashed the body. Brandon also has gleefully invited Rupert Cadell (James Stewart) , the boy’s headmaster at prep school, to covertly gloat that he has brought Cadell’s Nietzschian philosophy to its ultimate triumph. But the party takes several turns that Brandon could not anticipate.

Hitchcock certainly had a lot of fun meeting the technical challenges of filming in a single location in what looks like a single take. This fun is transmitted to the audience along with several sly self-referential winks. (I especially like the dialogue about Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman appearing together in a movie called Something Something — or was that just Something?) The whole thing is just a little too gimmicky for me to give my heart to, however.

Rope was Hitchcock’s first color film.

Trailer

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Posted in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, 1948

The Red Shoes (1948)

Posted on March 23, 2015 | 4 comments

The Red Shoes
Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Written by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger from a story by Hans Christian Andersen
1948/UK
The Archers/Independent Producers
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#222 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Boris Lermontov: Why do you want to dance?

[Vicky thinks for a short while] Victoria Page: Why do you want to live?[/box]

This movie is very beautiful but very sad.

Boris Lermantov (Anton Walbrook) runs a leading ballet company in London. It is his life. Dancing is Victoria Page’s life. She has already danced principal parts elsewhere in the city. They meet courtesy of Victoria’s wealthy aunt and he brings her in as a kind of lady-in-waiting to the corps de ballet. At around the same time, he meets a young composer named Julian Coster (Marius Goering) when he comes in to complain that his music teacher lifted material from Coster’s own work for his ballet score. Lermantov is an astute judge of talent and hires him as an orchestra coach.

When Lermantov finally sees Vicky dance he is enchanted. She is selected to go to Paris with the troupe. Then Lermanov’s prima ballerina decides to get married. Lermantov does not believe that women can concentrate on more than one thing at once and fires her. When the troupe arrives in Monte Carlo, Lermantov is inspired to build a brand new ballet, “The Red Shoes”, around Vicky. He engages Julian to write the score. Because Lermantov apparently does not understand people too well, he decides the best thing for Vicky would be to have every meal in Lermantov’s office while Julian plays the score for her.

The ballet is a great triumph and Vicky is a rising star. Predictably, during all that dining, Julian and Vicky have fallen in love. For Lermantov, this is a major betrayal. He fires Julian. Vicky refuses to stay without Julian, so she is let go as well. The two young people marry. None of this changes the fact that Vicky was born to dance. While Julian is preparing his latest composition for performance in London, Lermantov seduces Vicky back into is grip with an offer to dance “The Red Shoes”, which had been retired from the repertoire upon her departure.

Julian ditches the premiere of his concert to beg Vicky to come back to him on the night of her first performance of the ballet. The two selfish men in her life decide to force her decide between her career as a dancer and her future as a woman. This results in tragedy for everyone, particularly Vicky.

This movie is absolutely exquisite in every respect, particularly during the ballet sequences. The color cinematography may never have been surpassed and the art direction is endless in its invention. It also explores the process of creation in a really profound way. The film is a jewel and should be seen by every film lover and every fan of the performing arts.

Somebody on the commentary says that Michael Powell saw the moral of the story as “Art is worth dying for.” While that may or may not be the case, I find this troublesome in the context of the story of The Red Shoes. It just seems unbearably tragic and unfair that a woman should be limited to either her art or her love life. Surely a man was never expected to make that trade-off. I hope those days are gone for good.

The Red Shoes won Academy Awards in the categories of Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture. It was nominated in the categories of Best Picture; Best Writing, Motion Picture Story (Pressburger); and Best Film Editing.

Trailer

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Posted in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, 1948

Key Largo (1948)

Posted on March 22, 2015 | 6 comments

Key Largo
Directed by John Huston
Written by Richard Brooks and John Huston from the play by Maxwell Anderson
1948/USA
Warner Bros.
Repeat viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Frank McCloud: You don’t like it, do you Rocco, the storm? Show it your gun, why don’t you? If it doesn’t stop, shoot it.[/box]

Edward G. Robinson steals the picture right from under the noses of Bogart and Bacall. Claire Trevor helps him.

Frank McCloud (Humphrey Bogart) visits a hotel on one of the Florida keys to call on Nora (Lauren Bacall) and James (Lionel Barrymore) Temple, the widow and father of one of the soldiers who served under him in WWII. He doesn’t get a good reception on arrival when he finds out the entire place has been rented out to a bunch of thugs. Nora and James take to him immediately, though, and he is asked to stay.

Soon it emerges that the place has become the private domain of the notorious Johnny Rocco (Robinson) and his gang. Rocco has arrived in the keys from his hideout in Cuba to do a deal in counterfeit bills. He looks forward to a full-fledged return to America on that great day when Prohibition is reinacted. Rocco is a big bully, terrorizing the legitimate owners and guests. He is especially cruel to Gaye Dawn (Trevor), a pathetic lush and ex-nightclub singer who used to be his girl.

Rocco managed to time his arrival to coincide with a major hurricane. It is amusing to watch as the storm makes all the tough guys shiver. As soon as it is over, though, Rocco is back to his old ways and coerces Frank into skippering his boat back to Cuba. With Thomas Gomez as Rocco’s right hand man.

Robinson hasn’t been this mean since Little Caesar and he brings equal vitality and nuance to this part as he did fifteen years earlier. There was never anyone like him. I am hit or miss on Trevor. She is fantastic here. The scene where she is forced to sing in exchange for another drink is so real it is almost painful to watch. Bogart is back to playing his standard “I stick my neck out for nobody” hero in this one and Bacall kind of fades into the background in a fairly lady-like role. Not to say that they are bad by any means. Huston creates a really suspenseful hurricane. Recommended.

Claire Trevor won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress

Trailer

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Posted in Movie Reviews

I Remember Mama (1948)

Posted on March 22, 2015 | 1 comment

I Remember Mama
Directed by George Stevens
Written by De Witt Bodeen from the play by John Van Druten based on the novel “Mama’s Bank Account” by Kathryn Forbes
1948/USA
RKO Radio Pictures
First viewing/Netflix Rental

Katrin Hanson: [reading the novel that she’s just finished] “For long as I could remember, the house on the Larkin Street Hill had been home. Papa and Mama had both born in Norway but they came to San Francisco because Mama’s sisters were here, all of us were born here. Nels, the oldest and the only boy, my sister Christine and the littlest sister Dagmar but first and foremost I remember Mama”.

Now this is the kind of sentimentality that brings a tear to my eye.

The story begins as Katrin Hansen (Barbara Bel Geddes) looks back at her life in a Norwegian immigrant family living in San Francisco around 1910. The family’s heart is practical Mama Martha (Irene Dunne) who manages the family’s finances in such a way that they never have to break into the account at the bank.

The story is richly humorous with stories involving the rather scary, blustery Uncle Chris (Oscar Homolka), timid bride-to-be Aunt Trina (Ellen Corby), and perennial boarder Mr. Hyde (Sir Cedric Hardwicke), who entertains the family every night by reading from his vast collection of English literature. Our hearts are tugged when little Dagmar must go to the hospital – Rudy Vallee has a nice bit as her doctor – and when, in his turn, Uncle Chris gets ill.

The supporting performances in this one are especially good. Homolka chews the scenery but is so endearing in his ferociousness that we don’t mind. Irene Dunne can’t help but be good but her accent (she is the only one in the film with such a pronounced one) is spotty, lapsing off into an Irish brogue at points. This might not be for everyone but I liked it a lot. Recommended.

I Remember Mama received Academy Award nominations in the following categories: Best Actress (Dunne); Best Supporting Actor (Homolka); Best Supporting Actress (Bel Geddes); Best Supporting Actress (Corby) and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (Nicholas Musuraca).

Trailer

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Posted in 1948

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

Posted on March 21, 2015 | 6 comments

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Directed by John Huston
Written by John Huston based on the novel by B. Traven
1948/USA
Warner Bros.
Repeat viewing/Warner Bros. DVD
#223 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Fred C. Dobbs: This is the country where the nuggets of gold are just crying out for you to take them out of the ground and make ’em shine in coins on the fingers and necks of swell dames.[/box]

John Huston’s tale of gold lust will never grow old.

Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) is a vagabond who has been reduced to soliciting hand-outs on the streets of Tampico, Mexico. He gets three windfalls in one day from the same American (memorably played by John Huston) and his luck appears to be changing. So much so that he takes a chance on purchasing 1/20 of a lottery ticket from a street urchin.

Eventually, Dobbs meets up with fellow-American Curtin (Tim Holt) and they get work as laborers. But their boss disappears with their wages and they end up sleeping in a flop house with old-time prospector Howard (Walter Huston). Howard tells them a cautionary tale about the effects of gold on men. When they finally recoup their money from the boss in a fight, they remember what the old man said and go to find him. Between their wages and the money Dobbs wins on his forgotten lottery ticket, they have the stake to go prospecting. They take Howard along for his expertise, figuring they will eventually have to carry him.

It turns out that Howard is in the best shape of all of them and the two younger men are unprepared for the long journey. Then they find a rich vein of gold and find they are in for months of back-breaking labor to mine it. As the gold piles up, Dobbs get increasingly paranoid about losing it. Early on, he demands that the men divide it equally at the end of each day.

The men are constantly in danger from rival prospectors and bandits. After they start back to civilization with their loot, however, it appears that the greatest danger is from each other. With Barton McLane as the crooked boss and Robert Blake as a street urchin.

This has to rank with the best screenplays ever written. The moral is clear early on but the psychology behind the greed is masterfully done. I love the way Dobbs starts referring to himself in the third person more and more as he slips into madness. This is the role Bogart should have won his Oscar for. It’s incredible he was not even nominated. Walter Huston is fantastic. He is unrecognizable without his teeth and even his distinctive voice is not much in evidence. A true classic. Very highly recommended.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre won Academy Awards in the categories of Best Supporting Actor (Huston), Best Director, and Best Writing, Screenplay. It was nominated for Best Picture.

Trailer

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Posted in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, 1948, Movie Reviews

Drunken Angel (1947)

Posted on March 21, 2015 | Leave a comment

Drunken Angel (Yoidore tenshi)
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Written by Keinosuke Uekusa and Akira Kurosawa
1947/Japan
Toho Company
Repeat viewing/Hulu Plus

[box] Dr. Sanada: Your filthy minds always imagine that angels come looking like dance hall girls but they’re like me.[/box]

Kurosawa really starts to show what he could do in his first collaboration with actor Toshiro Mifune and long-time composer Fumio Hayasaka.

Dr. Sanada (Takashi Shimura) practices medicine out of his hovel which borders on a stagnant sewage outfall in the poor side of town. He is a hot-tempered alcoholic. One day, gangster/yakusa Matsunaga (Mifune) comes into have his hand repaired after being nicked by a stray bullet. Needless to say, Matsunaga is even more volatile than the doctor. Matsunaga happens to mention his cough and Sanada quickly diagnoses TB, although this needs to be confirmed by an X-Ray. Although he assaults Sanada for his trouble, the doctor sees a glimmer of something worth saving in his patient and refuses to stop hounding and berating him until he takes his health seriously.

In the meantime, Sanada has been sheltering a young woman who was formerly the girlfriend of crime boss Okada, who gave her syphillis. Okada is expected to be released from prison any day. When he comes out, he expects to take over the turf he previously ruled which had been Matsunaga’s in the interim. The yasuka are organized in a kind of feudal hierarchy and Matsunaga is extremely loyal and subservient to his boss. He finds that, once he starts coughing up blood, loyalty does not run in both directions.

This is a really moving story about two deeply flawed human beings with sensitive souls. Mifune gives a bravura performance ranging from explosive to pathetic and Shimura is every bit his match. There are some brilliant directorial touches. I particularly liked a fight reflected in mirrors and taken into some paint cans and a Bergman-esque dream sequence. After seeing several older Kurasawa films, I can now really appreciate how big a difference Hayasaka’s score makes. HIghly recommended.

Clip

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfCPkMDAe_E

Just for fun, here is a montage of clips set to Lucinda Williams singing “Drunken Angel”. I like this quite a bit.

And on to 1948

Posted on March 20, 2015 | 3 comments

In 1948 movie news, a Supreme Court decision forced studios to divest themselves of their theater chains. Block booking, the system by which an exhibitor was forced to buy a whole line of films (both popular films and B films) from a studio was also deemed illegal. This marked the beginning of the end of the studio system, and was partially responsible for a major slump in business for all the studios in the late 1940s.

Maverick film producer, aviator, and eccentric industrialist Howard Hughes purchased RKO Studios. He led RKO during a long period of decline until the mid-1950s. Bela Lugosi (as Count Dracula) and Lon Chaney, Jr. (as The Wolf Man) portrayed their iconic horror characters for the last time in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Hamlet was the first non-American film to win the Best Picture Oscar and the only film adapted from one of William Shakespeare’s plays to receive the award.

In U.S. news, Harry S. Truman defeated Thomas E. Dewey, the Republican nominee, in the biggest presidential election upset in the country’s history. Earlier in the year Truman ended racial segregation in the U.S. armed forces by executive order. The Supreme Court outlawed religious instruction in public schools. Alger Hiss was indicted for treason. The first monkey astronaut was launched into space. Tales of the South Pacific by James Michener won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature and Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire won for Drama. “Buttons and Bows” as sung by Dinah Shore topped the Billboard charts for 10 weeks. The song would go on to win the Oscar for Best Original Song.

On January 12, 1948, Mahatma Gandhi began a fast in an effort to stop communal violence in the Partition of India. He would be assassinated on January 30 by a militant Hindu nationalist. War raged between the State of Israel and a military coalition of Arab states and Palestinian Arab forces. Daniel François Malan was elected President of South Africa ushering in the era of apartheid. The Berlin Blockade began. The Olympics were held in London after an eight year haitus due to World War II.

***********************************************

I have previously reviewed the following 1948 releases on this site: ; ; ; ; ; ; ; and .

The list of films that I will select from can be found here and here. Based on my current ratings of this very strong year, I would guess my top ten favorites to be, in no particular order: The Red Shoes; Oliver Twist; Hamlet; Red River; The Treasure of the Sierra Madre; Raw Deal; Bicycle Thieves; The Fallen Idol; Drunken Angel; and Force of Evil. I’m looking forward to seeing how these stand up to re-watches and against the “new” films available for the year.

Montage of stills of 1948 Oscar Winners

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Posted in 1948, Movie Reviews

1947 Recap and 10 Favorites List

Posted on March 20, 2015 | 4 comments

What a great year for film noir it was! I have now seen 75 films that were released in 1947. A few shorts, documentaries, and B movies were reviewed only here. The total also includes a few I’ve seen before that were not easily available this time around. In that category, Raoul Walsh’s Pursued deserves special mention. As of the time I first watched it, it probably would have made the top half of my favorites list. It features gorgeous black-and-white cinematography by James Wong Howe and a cast that includes Robert Mitchum, Teresa Wright, and Judith Anderson. Another film I liked several years ago that I did not see this time was The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer with Cary Grant, Myrna Loy and Shirley Temple.

There were many, many films that could as easily have filled the bottom three slots on my top-ten list. The ones I selected mostly reflect my bias for film noir. As usual, the list represents my personal favorites and does not attempt to arrive at the “best” films of the year.

10. They Made Me a Fugitive – directed by Alberto Cavalcanti

9. Ride the Pink Horse – directed by Robert Montgomery

8. Crossfire – directed by Edward Dmytryk

7. Miracle on 34th Street – directed by George Seaton

6. Quai de Orfevres – directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot

5. Brighton Rock – directed by John Boulting

4. Nightmare Alley – directed by Edmund Goulding

3. Black Narcissus – directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

2. Odd Man Out – directed by Carol Reed

1. Out of the Past – directed by Jacques Tourneur

The Bishop’s Wife, Body and Soul, The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer and Pursued dropped out of my predicted favorites list to make way for They Made Me a Fugitive, Ride the Pink Horse, Crossfire, and Brighton Rock. All but Crossfire were new to me. The complete list of films I viewed for 1947 can be found here and here.

4 Comments

Posted in 1947, Movie Reviews, Top Ten Lists

The Paradine Case (1947)

Posted on March 20, 2015 | Leave a comment

The Paradine Case
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Written by David O. Selznick and Alma Reville from a novel by Robert Hichens
1947/USA
Vanguard Films and The Selznick Studio
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

Gay Keane: Well, nice people don’t go murdering other nice people.

This was David O. Selzncik’s last opportunity to interfere with Hitchcock’s movie-making and he went all out, even writing the screenplay. It’s not a terrible movie but it’s not classic Hitchcock. I also have a problem with attempting to sympathize with lawyers who commit malpractice right and left.

Barrister Anthony Keane (Gregory Peck) and his wife Gay (Anne Todd) are very happily married as the film begins. Then he gets a referral from solicitor Simon Flaquer (Charles Coburn) to defend the young and beautiful Mrs. Paradine (Alida Valli) who has been accused of poisoning her husband and stands to be sentenced to death. Unfortunately for all concerned, Keane is bewitched by his frosty client on first sight. At this point, good judgement goes completely out the window.

Although his marriage is in grave jeopardy, Keane is determined to acquit Mrs. Paradine at all costs. Against her explicit wishes, he begins to investigate the role of Mr. Paradine’s valet Andre LaTour (Louis Jourdan) in the crime. The rest of the story is mostly a courtroom drama and I will not reveal it any further. I will say that Keane makes several bone-headed mistakes including violating a key maxim of all good trial attorneys: “Never ask a witness a question if you do not know the answer.” With Charles Laughton as the judge, Ethel Barrymore as the judge’s wife, and Leo G. Carroll as the prosecutor.

This is an OK courtroom drama but not particularly Hitchcockian. Its defects can probably all be laid at the feet of Selznick starting with the casting which resulted in a hodgepodge of accents in its Hollywood London. It also moves at a sluggish pace, again due to Selznick’s omnipresence in the editing room.

Ethel Barrymore was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her three minutes of screen time in The Paradine Case. Her part was originally bigger but several scenes were lost in Selznick’s extensive cutting of the film.

Trailer

Ride the Pink Horse (1947)

Posted on March 19, 2015 | Leave a comment

Ride the Pink Horse
Directed by Robert Montgomery
Written by Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer from a novel by Dorothy B. Hughes
1947/USA
Universal International Pictures
First viewing/Criterion DVD

Frank Hugo: You know, Gagin, I like you. There are two kinds of people in the world: ones that fiddle around worrying whether a thing’s right or wrong, and guys like us.

I prolonged my 1947 viewing a bit to be able to see this long unavailable film which was just released on DVD March 17. It was certainly worth the wait!

Tough guy ‘Lucky Gagin’ (Robert Montgomery) arrives in San Pablo, Mexico with two aims. One is to collect blackmail money from Frank Hugo (Fred Clark) for an incriminating check in his possession and the other is to kill Hugo, who had his friend Shorty bumped off when Shorty tried the same stunt. Gagin is tougher than he is smart, however, and ‘Lucky’ may be quite the misnomer. On arrival, he acts like the personification of the Ugly American, disrespecting all the Mexicans he meets while lavishly tipping in compensation.

Despite his ill treatment, naive teenage villager Pila spots Gagin as a sure murder victim and persists in sticking to him like glue. Gagin also finds an ally in Pancho (Thomas Gomez), who runs the merry-go-round at the fiesta then taking place. (It is from the wooden horses that the film gets its title.)

It takes Gagin a while to catch up with Hugo. In the meantime, he runs into a U.S. government agent who is anxious to get his hands on the check as evidence. After he does locate his man, Gagin winds up bleeding for most of the rest of the story while being ministered to by Pilar and hidden by Poncho.

The plot does not bear 5 minutes of serious scrutiny but the whole thing is so stylishly done that I didn’t mind a bit. Russell Metty’s lighting and the caustic dialogue carried me along oblivious to the many lapses in logic. My one complaint is that the story had a perfect natural ending but continued for another few minutes so we could all go home happier.

Thomas Gomez was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance in Ride the Pink Horse.

Trailer – does not reflect the beautiful restoration on the just-released DVD

Monthly Archives: March 2015

Rope (1948)

The Red Shoes (1948)

Key Largo (1948)

I Remember Mama (1948)

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

Drunken Angel (1947)

And on to 1948

1947 Recap and 10 Favorites List

The Paradine Case (1947)

Ride the Pink Horse (1947)

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