Monthly Archives: March 2015

13 Rue Madeleine 
Directed by Henry Hathaway
Written by John Monks Jr. and Sy Bartlett
1947/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Charles Gibson: 22 potential agents. Most of them have a foreign background. All of them can speak French. One of them can speak German.[/box]

An enjoyable Fox film noir in the semi-documentary style about U.S. intelligence efforts in World War II.

A voice-over narrator sets up the process leading to the creation of the OSS and the recruitment and training of its first class of secret agents.  Their instructor is Bob Sharkey (James Cagney) a tough former businessman with years of experience in Berlin.  He is advised that one of his students is a German agent.  His task is to identify the spy, who is then to be unwittingly used to convey false information about American planning for the D-Day invasion back to the Nazis.  Sharkey intuits early on that Bill O’Connell (Richard Conte) is the bad apple based on his unexpected talents at the game.  O’Connell’s roommate is assigned to accompany him on a fake mission into Holland.  Unfortunately, O’Connell spots the ruse.

Now the only man sufficiently trained for the actual mission is Sharkey himself.  He must stay one step ahead of O’Connell and make contact with an elusive French resistance leader.  His life is in danger throughout.  With Annabella as a beautiful OSS communicator and Sam Jaffe as the mayor of a French town.

This is entertaining if not great.  Cagney is good as always and unforgettable in the classic Cagney style at the end.  Conte makes a totally unconvincing German but is so dynamic we don’t mind too much.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7yaT7OCwVA

Trailer

Hue and Cry
Directed by Charles Crighton
Written by T.E.B. Clarke
1947/UK
Ealing Studios
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Felix H. Wilkinson: Oh, how I loathe adventurous-minded boys.[/box]

This is said to be the first of the Ealing comedies.  My only real complaint is that my beloved Alistair Sim doesn’t appear in every scene.

A gang of kids spends its days playing at cops and robbers on the rubble of bombed-out post-War London.  They are all addicted to adventure comics, particularly the ones in “Trump” magazine.  One of the older boys is reading the magazine when he spots a car with the same license plate number as in one of the stories.  He thinks the car was used in a crime and reports it.  The policeman says no such number exists but likes the boy and gets him a job working at the Chelsea food market as a porter.

Some other similarities between real life and the comic occur and since no one will believe him, he looks up the comic’s writer, Felix H. Wilkinson (Sim).  It soon develops that someone is changing details in the comic and using it as code for criminal operations.  The boys and girls set to work in foiling the plot.

There are funnier Ealing comedies.  The main reasons to see this one are Alistair Sims’s two very funny scenes and to get a good view of London immediately after the Blitz. It’s also not a bad way to spend an hour and 15 minutes.

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The Red House
Directed by Delmer Daves
Written by Delmer Daves from a novel by George Agnew Chamberlin
1947/USA
Sol Lesser Productions
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Pete Morgan: Don’t put such a high price on courage, it’s an over-rated virtue.[/box]

This one seems to have slipped into the public domain with a corresponding deterioration in print quality. Despite this, Edward G. Robinson’s fantastic performance is easily discernible.

The Morgan farm is hidden away near some woods.  Only a circuitous back road leads there.  The shortest way from town is through the woods but Pete Morgan (Robinson) has made these strictly off-limits to trespassers.  Pete has a wooden leg and is getting on in years so the womenfolk, spinster sister Ellen (Judith Anderson) and adopted daughter Meg, persuade him to hire high schooler Nath Storm to help out.  Meg has a crush on her classmate but he is dating sexpot Tibby (Julie London).

Meg has been forbidden to enter the woods all her life.  On his first day, Nath wants to return home by the shortcut after dark but Pete tells him a tale about screams emanating from a red house in the woods to scare him off.  He is unsuccessful but when Nath is physically attacked there on his way home he must return to the farm to spend the night.

Nath and Meg form a bond while trying to discover the secret of the red house and Meg’s crush develops to full fledged love.  Pete becomes increasingly hostile to the boy and almost insane with anxiety about Meg.  With Rory Calhoun as the town bad boy.

This movie revealed the mystery a bit too early but was so atmospheric and well-acted that I didn’t care. The film really deserves a restoration so that we can all fully appreciate Bert Glennon’s cinematography and Miklos Rosca’s score.  If you are as big a Ronbinson fan as I am, definitely check it out.  It is currently available in multiple versions on YouTube and on Internet Archive.

Clip – opening

The Lost Moment
Directed by Martin Gabel
Written by Leonardo Bercovici based on the novel “The Aspern Papers” by Henry James
1947/USA
Walter Wanger Productions
First viewing/Amazon Prime Instant Video

[box] Lewis Venable: In that fearfully incredible moment I knew I had plunged off a precipice into the past. That here was Juliana beyond belief, beautiful, alluring, alive. How strange this was, this Tina, who walked dead among the living and living among the dead, filling me with a nameless fear! I had a sudden impulse to turn and leave, and then I remembered the letters.[/box]

The best thing about this noirish Gothic melodrama is Agnes Moorehead as an 105-year-old woman.

The setting is Venice, Italy sometime in the last half of the 19th Century.  A neer-do-well tells publisher Lewis Venable (Robert Cummings) how he can get his hands on priceless love letters written by poet Jeffrey Ashton to Juliana Borderau (Moorhead).  Using this information, Lewis poses as a writer needing lodging while he completes a novel.  Juliana, now 105, is desperately in need of money to keep the mansion.  She is convinced that as long as she has the house she will never die.  Venable is willing to pay the exhorbitant price she quotes in cash and in advance and moves in.  Juliana’s cold, suspicious niece Tina (Susan Hayward) thoroughly disapproves.

Late one night, Venable hears the piano.  He goes downstairs to find Tina, now looking radiant, playing.  She greets him as her lover Jeffrey and appears to have taken on the personality of a young Juliana.  Venable plays along, still hoping to find the letters, but soon enough his pretense turns to love.  When Juliana becomes ill, Tina warms up to Jeffrey in real life.  I am leaving out lots and lots of turmoil. With Warner’s favorite gangster Eduardo Ciannelli as a kindly priest.

Henry James took the same ghostly tone in The Aspern Papers as he did in The Turn of the Screw, which was captured on film as The Innocents.  I can’t compare the fictional works but The Lost Moment does not begin to compare with the film version of the other story. The film has plenty of atmosphere but the performances Cummings and Hayward bring it back to 20th century reality.  In the context of those performances, all the overwrought emotions and weird happenings just seem silly.   Moorehead is unrecognizable though and a reason for her fans to catch this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=624YRAzUFMw

Clip

Unconquered
Directed by Cecil B. DeMille
Written by Charles Bennett, Fredric M. Frank, and Jesse Lasky Jr. from the novel “The Judas Tree” by Neil H. Swanson
1947/USA
Paramount Pictures
First viewing/Netflix rental

Martin Garth: The King’s Law moves with the king’s muskets, and there are very few King’s muskets west of the Alleghenies.

There is something wrong on so many levels with seeing Boris Karloff playing an Indian Chief in Technicolor.

The setting is Colonial Pennsylvania.  Abby (Paulette Goddard) is found guilty of murder in 18th Century England and given the choice of hanging or being sold as an “indentured slave” (?) in America at public auction.  She chooses the latter option.  On the journey to the New World, Abby catches the eye of the evil Martin Garth (Howard Da Silva) and he insists on buying her on the spot.  However, somebody insists on an auction and Capt. Christopher Holden (Gary Cooper) stays in the bidding until he wins her and can set her free.  Holden then departs to rejoin his fiancee.

After his departure, Garth manages to regain possession of Abby through some lies and bribery.  After securing ownership papers, he puts his minion “Bone” (Mike Mazurki) in charge of the young woman while he goes off to hand out weapons to the Indians.  Garth has profited from fur trading in the territories and is determined to see no white settlements in his area.

In the meantime, Holden finds his fiancee has married his brother in his absence.  He reports for duty at one of the forts, near where Abby is toiling as a serving wench in Bone’s tavern.  He reclaims his purchase but when Garth shows a bill of sale it is Holden that is exiled.

It is not necessary to reveal all the twists and turns of the 2 1/2 hour plot.  Just know that Abby changes hands several times; she and Holden make several desperate escapes, one  over a waterfall; and Guyasuta, Chief of the Senecas (Karloff) is ever ready with a burning at the stake or a massacre.  With many familiar faces including Ward Bond, Henry Wilcoxon, Cecil Kellaway, and C. Aubrey Smith.

If Karloff is not bad enough, Da Silva and Mazurki are totally miscast for this kind of thing. The whole tone feels more like a WWII celebration of the American Way than a period piece.  But then I just don’t appreciate Cecil B. DeMille’s epics.  Cooper and Goddard are OK and there’s plenty of action for those who like this kind of thing.

Unconquered was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Effects, Special Effects.

The Egg and I
Directed by Chester Erskine
Written by Chester Erskine and Fred F. Finklehoffe from the novel by Betty MacDonald
1947/USA
Universal International Pictures
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] “Sunday! In the country Sunday is the day on which you do exactly as much work as you do on other days but feel guilty all of the time you are doing it because Sunday is a day of rest” ― Betty MacDonald, The Egg and I[/box]

Betty (Claudette Colbert) and Bob MadDonald (Fred McMurray) are newlyweds.  Bob has just returned from the war and surprises his bride on their wedding night by telling her he has quit his desk job and bought a chicken farm.  Seems he spent his time in the trenches dreaming of fresh air and farm animals.  Instead of walking out, as I might have done, Betty takes this news with some grace. Her fortitude is tested when she discovers that the farm has long been abandoned and only a mountain of work will make things right.  To say the least, Betty has a steep learning curve, particularly with her cantankerous wood-powered stove.

These trials are eased some what by laughter at the antics of the odd-ball town folks.  The Kettles in particular are a hoot.  Pa (Percy Kilbride) has never worked a day in his life and feels free to borrow any of the MacDonalds’ property he can get his hands on.  Ma (Marjorie Main) has the patience of Job in managing both Pa and her brood of about twelve kids, although she never can quite remember the names of the children.

The story is principally a light-hearted look at the challenges overcome by the couple and the idiosyncrasies of country life.  It is marred somewhat by an extraneous subplot dealing with Betty’s jealousy of Bob’s interest in their gentlewoman neighbor’s fancy modern farm.  The main reason I keep coming back to this one is Ma and Pa Kettle.  Every scene they are in is pure gold.  No wonder their characters launched a series of popular B films.

Marjorie Main was nominated for an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress for her performance in The Egg and I.

Trailer

Monsieur Vincent
Directed by Maurice Cloche
Written by Jean-Bernard Luc and Jean Anouilh
1947/France
Edition et Diffusion Cinematographique/Office Familial de Documentaire Artistique/Union Generale Cinematographique
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] We cannot better assure our eternal happiness than by living and dying in the service of the poor, in the arms of Providence, and with genuine renouncement of ourselves in order to follow Jesus Christ. – St. Vincent De Paul[/box]

This biopic of St. Vincent DePaul is appropriately reverent yet enlivened by the fire brought to the character by the great Pierre Fresnay.

The setting is France during the first half of the 17th Century.  Following a time as priest to the nobility in Paris, Father Vincent resolves to become a servant of the poor and accepts a parish in a poor village.  When he arrives, the local aristocracy are in a frenzy that there has been an outbreak of the plague and are living it up locked tight in a mansion.  They have locked up the poor woman who has the plague in her house and plan to set the house on fire when she has died.  Vincent immediately heads there, discovers the woman did not have the plague but has died of her illness, and rescues her starving daughter.  The poorest family in the village is the only one that will take the little girl in.

Vincent’s goodness inspires some of the local elite to provide for the poor and attracts some noblewomen to help with distributing food.  But Vincent’s Paris patron soon calls for him, agreeing to provide for many thousands of poor people if he will return.  He finds himself at the mercy of the aristocracy, though, and is eventually made pastor to the French galleys by the King, forcing him to witness the suffering of the galley slaves.

Eventually Father Vincent goes back to live among the poor.  He establishes a shelter and hospital.  Once again, a coterie of noblewomen support his work.  But caring for the poor is a smelly, nasty business and the recipients of their generosity are rarely grateful.  The noblewomen also are really more interested in organization and in-fighting than they are in helping the poor.  Vincent discovers that the best caretakers are poor servant girls from the country.

By the end of his life, Father Vincent established an order of priests devoted to service in poor villages and an order of working nuns, as well several hospitals.

As saintly biographies go, this is refreshingly free of pious preaching.   It’s hard not to be inspired with Vincent’s humility and sincere desire to ease the misery of the poor.  The principal reason to watch this, however, is Pierre Fresnay’s awesome performance.

Monsieur Vincent received an Honorary Oscar as the most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States during 1948.

Trailer (no subtitles)

Dead Reckoning
Directed by John Cromwell
Written by Oliver H.P. Garrett, Steve Fisher et al
1947/USA
Columbia Pictures Corporation
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Captain Warren ‘Rip’ Murdock: You know, you do awful good. I came here to – but go ahead. Put Christmas in your eyes and keep your voice low. Tell me about paradise and all the things I’m missing. I haven’t had a good laugh since before Johnny was murdered.[/box]

Columbia attempts to replicate the magic of Bogie’s Warner Brother’s films noir with mixed results.

Captain “Rip” Murdock (Humphrey Bogart) and his fellow paratrooper Johnny Drake are on their way to Washington on an unknown mission atthe end of the war .  When Johnny finally discovers that he is to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor there, to great publicity, he makes a speedy getaway.  Rip deduces Johnny’s real name from some engraving on the back of his Yale pin and takes off for Johnny’s home town.

Oddly for someone so afraid of being found out, that is exactly where Johnny headed. Johnny suspected that Rip would end up there and leaves him a letter with the bartender at a shady bar/casino run by the gangster Martinelli.  The singer at the club is Mrs. ‘Dusty’ Chandler (Lizabeth Scott) for whom Johnny had pined throughout the war.  Before Rip can catch up with his correspondence Johnny and the bartender are both dead and the letter is MIA.

It develops that Johnny was the prime suspect in the murder of Dusty’s husband but managed to elude the police.  After the briefest of mourning for the dead Johnny, Dusty has thrown herself at Rip’s feet and teams up with him to find Johnny’s killer and clear Johnny’s name.  With Wallace Ford as a safe cracker.

Having got its hands on Bogie, Columbia decided to recycle all the tropes from Warner Brothers films like The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca, right down direct quotes in the dialogue, in Dead Reckoning. Unfortunately, instead of Mary Astor or Ingrid Bergman, Lizabeth Scott has to deliver the other half of the repartee. And try as she might, despite her husky voice and languor, she just is no Lauren Bacall.  It all came off a bit forced to me.

Trailer

Possessed
Directed by Curtis Bernhardt
Written by Silvia Richards and Ranald MacDougall; story by Rita Weiman
1947/USA
Warner Bros.
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Louise: “I love you” is such an inadequate way of saying I love you. It doesn’t quite describe how much it hurts sometimes.[/box]

Whatever you might think of Joan Crawford’s acting style, she sure does make a convincing crazy person.

As the film opens, we see the dazed and disheveled Louise Howell (Crawford) wandering the streets of Los Angeles and calling out for “David” to random strangers.  She soon suffers a complete breakdown into catatonia in a diner and is taken to the hospital.  We are then treated to some psychiatric mumbo jumbo as the doctors try to determine what is wrong with her and who she is. They give her a drug which allows her to talk.

Segue to flashback.  Louise has been having an affair with bachelor engineer David Sutton (Van Heflin).  This is evidently the first big love of Louise’s life and David is unsuccessfully trying to bring the relationship gently to a close over her clinging, pleading, and threats.  Louise is the private nurse to the pathologically jealous and chronically invalid wife of wealthy construction magnate Dean Graham (Raymond Massey).  David approaches Graham and asks him for a job in northern Canada, evidently with the intention of getting as far away from Louise as possible.  He gets the job.

That very night Graham’s wife commits suicide by drowning.  His children have been away at school.  When they arrive home, teenage daughter Carol, who has received letters from her mother accusing Graham and Louise of an affair, blames Louise for her mother’s death.  Louise wants to quit but Graham asks her to stay on and help raise his young son.

Years pass and David visits from Canada.  He continues to spurn Louise’s ceaseless advances.  She tries once again to quit her job.  Instead, Graham asks her to marry him.  Although she tells him she doesn’t love him, she agrees to the match.  But David takes to hanging around and soon is seeing the now 20-year-old Carol.  He feels for her what he never felt for Louise.  And so begins Louise’s further descent into madness.

She begins seeing and hearing things and becomes convinced she assisted Graham’s wife to suicide.  In her desperation, Louise launches a chain of events that eventually lands her in a strange city babbling to strangers.

Joan Crawford is completely over the top but it suits Louise’s bizarre character perfectly.  My main trouble with the movie was that it seemed to be asking for sympathy for her plight and painting the man as the villain of the piece and I just couldn’t buy it.  Instead, Louise comes off as an early stand-in for Glenn Close’s character in Fatal Attraction and I felt sorry for David.  If the plot and star appeal, this is certainly a well-made entry in the small noir/melodrama/woman’s picture genre.

Joan Crawford was nominated for an Oscar as Best Actress for her performance in Possessed.

Trailer