The Far Country
Directed by Anthony Mann
Story by Borden Chase
1954/USA
Universal International Pictures
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Luke: Well, I knew it was coming. I warned you, I did. Where’s there’s gold, there’s stealing. Where there’s stealing, there’s killing. I knew it was coming. I just did know it.[/box]

This is not too bad but far from my favorite of the Stewart-Mann Westerns.

Stewart plays the now familiar role of Jeff Webster, a rugged and scarred individualist who neither asks nor offers help to anyone.  Well, he does have a soft spot for sidekick Ben Tatum (Walter Brennan).  Jeff is wanted for killing some workers who tried to make off with the cattle he was driving to Dawson City, Yukon.  He is apprehended in Skagway.

Conniving town boss Gannon is not too upset about the homicides but is all about confiscating the cattle for disrupting a hanging he was conducting.  While in Skagway, Jeff meets sassy saloon owner Ronda Castle (Ruth Roman) and sweet French-Canadian waif Renee Vallon.

Jeff steals his cattle back and with, Ronda and Renee, in tow continues on to Dawson City, Yukon where they are mighty hungry for a good steak.  Hot on his heels are Boss Gannon and his thugs who are hungry for the miners’ gold and claims.  Much peril and love-triangle romance ensue.

This is OK but very predictable.  It was filmed on location and has some awesome vistas of Alaska and Canada going for it.

Trailer

Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto (Miyamoto Musashi)
Directed by Hiroshi Inagaki
Written by Hiroshi Inagaki and Tokuhei Wakao from a play by Hideji Hôjô and a novel by Eiji Yoshikawa
1954/Japan
Toho Company
Repeat viewing/Hulu

[box] “Fighting isn’t all there is to the Art of War. The men who think that way, and are satisfied to have food to eat and a place to sleep, are mere vagabonds. A serious student is much more concerned with training his mind and disciplining his spirit than with developing martial skills.” ― Eiji Yoshikawa, Musashi[/box]

The Samurai Trilogy of films about the legendary hero Miyamoto Musashi is excellent.  This first one is mostly background.

Takezo (Toshiro Mifune) is a boy with a dream.  He sets off for the war vowing to make a name for himself.  His friend Matahashi impulsively decides to join him, abandoning his fiance Otsu and his aged mother in the process.  The two young men are immediately set to work digging ditches.  They, in their rags, are clearly not thought of as samurai material. Then the side they have been working for loses the war.

The two are at lose ends and starving to death when they come upon a lonely cottage occupied by a mother and teenage daughter.  The two nurse the men back to health.  Both of the women are smitten with the brave Takezo but he repels their advances. After he defeats some bandits, he departs.  The mother seduces the cowardly Matahashi and later marries him.

Takezo returns to his village to bring news of Matahashi to his relatives.  They believe him really to be dead and from here on out Takezo is on the run.  He is finally captured by a Buddhist priest who is Otsu’s guardian.   He has a spiritual awakening and begins a long period of training as the samurai Musashi Miyamoto.

This is a solid picture.  It is mostly story with minimal fighting.  The trilogy builds gradually to some classic sword duels.  I am already looking forward to seeing Part II for 1955 and, especially, Part III for 1956.

Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto won an Honorary Oscar as the best foreign language film released in the United States in 1955.

Clip with awful dark print

Fan trailer (extraneous music inserted and in black-and-white)

The Country Girl
Directed by George Seaton
Written by George Seaton from the play by Clifford Odets
1954/USA
Paramount Pictures
First viewing/Netflix rental

Bernie Dodd: Oh I know, I know. They all start out as Juliets and wind up as Lady Macbeths]

1954 was Grace Kelly’s year.  Here she is acting against type and doing pretty well at it.  Bing Crosby does even better.

Frank Elgin (Crosby) was a big Broadway star until his son was killed in an accident and he started to drink heavily.  Now addicted to the stuff, he is minded by his much-younger wife Georgie (Kelly).  Bernie Dodd (William Holden) is staging a musical and has decided that Frank is ideal for the part.  He casts him over the producer’s objections and finds that Frank has lost all confidence.  Bernie, who is still stinging from his divorce, decides that Georgie is the root of the whole problem.  Frank only half-heartedly tries to stick up for her and his lies add to Bernie’s dislike of his wife.

For her part, Georgie keeps soldiering along but she is almost at the end of her rope.  She resents Bernie’s meddling and argues with him.  Finally, Bernie starts to send her away and discovers he may have read the situation all wrong.

Why can’t I be a fan of Clifford Odets?  I’m just not and his wordy dialogue does not work terribly well for me in movies.  At least, he did not turn this story into a domineering wife melodrama so I give him credit for that.  The acting is wonderful.  I thought Crosby disappeared into his part beautifully.  Kelly had the beauty disguised as a plain Jane going for her, always a hit with the Academy.  She carries it off pretty well, even flattening her voice for the role.

Grace Kelly won an Academy Award for Best Actress and George Seaton won for Best Writing, Screenplay.  The film was nominated in the categories of Best Picture; Best Director; Best Cinematography, Black-and-White and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White.

Trailer

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Directed by Richard Fleischer
Written by Earl Felton from the novel by Jules Verne
1954/USA
Walt Disney Productions
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Captain Nemo: I am not what is called a civilized man, Professor. I have done with society for reasons that seem good to me. Therefore, I do not obey its laws.[/box]

This is a good Disney live-action adventure with a surprisingly strong cast.

It is 1868 and ships have been disappearing at sea.  It is rumored that a sea monster is the cause.  A government enlists scientist Prof. Pierre Aronnax (Paul Lukas) and his apprentice Conseil (Peter Lorre) to investigate.  The ship they are on also sinks in a burst of flames but Aronnax and Conseil survive.  A third survivor is Ned Land (Kirk Douglas), a boisterous harpooner.  The three are picked up from the sea by the Nautilus, the submarine responsible for the sinkings.

The men are introduced to Captain Nemo (James Mason).  He appears to be slightly (or more) insane.  Anyway, he has created this fabulous vessel, a unique source of energy to power it, and the ability to survive solely on products harvested from the sea.  Ordinarily, survivors are killed but in this case Nemo lets all of these survive for the sake of conversation with the learned professor.

Ned is looking for a way to escape from the moment he boards the sub.  The professor, however, is more interested in learning Nemo’s secrets.  The rest of the story deals with the adventures of the sub and Nemo’s guests/hostages.  These include a battle with a giant squid.

I don’t think I have seen this movie before.  My main connection to it is the submarine ride at Disneyland.  Disney certainly spared no expense on the production or the host of A-list actors. This is one of Douglas’s most light-hearted roles.  He is good at it and even sings a couple of sea shanties.  The effects are fairly seamless for 1954 and a good time should be had by all who enter into the spirt of the thing.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea won Academy Awards for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color and Best Effects, Special Effects.  It was nominated for Best Film Editing.

Trailer

Executive Suite
Directed by Robert Wise
Written by Ernest Lehman based on the novel by Cameron Hawley
1954/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Narrator: It is always up there, close to the clouds, on the topmost floors of the sky-reaching towers of big business. And because it is high in the sky, you may think that those who work there are somehow above and beyond the tensions and temptations of the lower floors. This is to say that it isn’t so.[/box]

The fantastic cast could not quite overcome the didactic story line.

Avery Bullard is the Chief Executive Officer of Tredway Corporation, a publicly traded company which makes furniture.  It has been a one-man operation and he has not even bothered to replace the last Executive Vice President.  One fine day he drops dead of a stroke en route to a hastily called board meeting in another city.

Board member George Caswell (Louis Calhern) sees the boss die on the sidewalk.  It is awhile before the body is identified.  He takes advantage of his insider information to sell a large block of the company’s stock short, expecting it to take a nose dive when the death becomes public.  We get to know the other board members and their sometimes messy private lives before they learn of the death.

Loren Shaw (Fredric March) is the corporate controller.  His eye is firmly on the bottom line at all times.  Frederick Alderson (Walter Pidgeon) is Bullard’s aging right-hand man.  Josiah Dudley (Paul Douglas) is sales manager.  He is having an affair with his secretary, played by Shelley Winters.  Dean Jagger plays a kind of eminence gris of the board.  McDonald Walling (William Holden) is the company’s research manager and is a driven young hot-shot.  He is married to Mary, played by June Allyson.

The final board member is Julia Tredway (Barbara Stanwyck), the daughter of the company’s founder.  She owns a large chunk of the stock but has not been active on the board.  She is apparently in despair over the demise of her affair with Bullard even before she learns of his death.  Serving as Secretary to the Board is Erica Martin (Nina Foch).

Once he learns of the boss’s death, Shaw takes over and is determined to take Bullard’s place via a hastily called board meeting.  It looks like he has enough dirt on enough of the members to accomplish his mission.  But he may be stymied through an impassioned speech by one of the members and help from an unexpected quarter.

I found this film highly predictable and burdened by its speechy critique of cutthroat capitalism.  The cast, of course, acquits itself admirably and the whole production is of a high standard.  Shelley Winters managed to make her tiny part the most natural and memorable thing about the movie for me.

Executive Suite was nominated for Academy Awards in the following categories:  Best Supporting Actress (Foch); Best Cinematography, Black-and-White; Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White; and Best Costume Design, Black-and-White.

Trailer

Them!
Directed by Gordon Douglas
Written by Ted Sherdeman and Russell S. Hughes from a story by George Worthing Yates
1954/USA
Warner Bros.
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

The Ellinson Girl: [screaming hysterically] AHHH! THEM! THEM! THEM!.

This started the trend in giant creature movies that would dominate the sci-fi genre over the next two or three years.  It is probably the best of them all.

The story begins in a Southwestern desert near an atom bomb test site as a little girl walks down a road clutching her dolly with a blank expression on her face.  A couple of policemen pick her up.  Officer Ben Peterson (James Whitmore) tries to bond with her but she appears to be catatonic.  On the way to the hospital, the policemen pass a uninhabited trailer.  The trailer has been torn to pieces but no money has been taken. Later, they stop by a similarly uninhabited general store and find the body of its owner.  All the money is in the till.  Some sacks of sugar are spilled out on the floor.  They take a cast of a track nearby and send this to Washington for identification.

The owner of the trailer was an FBI agent and soon agent Robert Graham (James Arness) joins the investigation.  Finally, the detectives are surprised to see that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has become involved.  The USDA send out scientist Dr. Harold Medford (Edmund Gwenn) and his scientist daughter arrive to assist in the investigation.

The good doctor is reticent about what could be causing the damage until he is more sure.  He wants to keep the news from the public to avoid panic.  Finally, the giant ants are sighted.  The rest of the film follows the efforts to destroy the creatures and keep them from reproducing.

They played this on TV a lot when I was a kid and I thought it was pretty darn scary.  I think I was more scared of the actual ants than the film’s apocalyptic warnings about nuclear testing.  The movie is still pretty effective and tautly paced with some good dialogue.  You learn a lot about the habits of your garden ants.  It’s a nice example of what a studio could do with the stuff of which many poverty-row flicks were made.

Them! was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Effects, Special Effects.

Trailer