Monthly Archives: January 2016

Robinson Crusoe
Directed by Luis Buñuel
Written by Hugo Butler and Luis Buñuel from the novel by Daniel Defoe
1954/Mexico
Producciones Tepeyac/Oscar Dancingers Production
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Robinson Crusoe: If anyone in England met such an odd creature as I was in my 18th year of solitude, it must either have frightened them or caused a great deal of laughter.[/box]

This is an entertaining retelling of the classic adventure story.  Director Buñuel keeps his surrealistic tendencies in check for the most part but there are some delicious traces here and there.

Robinson Crusoe (Dan O’Herlihy) has set to sea against the advice of his father.  On a voyage to collect slave from Africa a violent storm drives his ship westward and sinks it. Crusoe manages to swim to shore.  This turns out to be a desert island.  Fortunately, the wreck of the ship has washed up on some rocks and he is able to retrieve a number of supplies.  He discovers a couple of more survivors, a cat and a dog named Rex.

Crusoe’s days are busy with making a home for himself despite the fact that he was born a gentleman that never picked up a tool in his life.  He becomes quite skilled and clever at contriving ways to be comfortable.  The only thing he cannot conquer is his profound loneliness.

The death of Rex makes matters even worse.  Shortly thereafter, Crusoe discovers he has company.  These are cannibals from a nearby island who apparently have transferred a tribal war to Crusoe’s island.  Crusoe saves the life of a man who is being hunted down and names him Friday (Jaime Fernández).  He tells Friday his name is “Master”.  Trust is gradually built between the two until Crusoe finally has a friend (and servant).  Will
Crusoe survive to see England again?

Buñuel reveals himself to be quite capable at directing action.  More interesting is his very ironic treatment of the many religious references in the novel.  There’s also quite a commentary on the class system.  I enjoyed this.  I thought the English version I watched might have been dubbed but discovered that the script was written and spoken by the actors in English.  Fans of the book could do far worse.

Dan O’Hirlihy was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor.

English-language trailer

Late Chrysanthemums (Bangiku)
Directed by Mikio Naruse
Written by Sumie Tanaka and Toshirô Ide from stories by Fumiko Hayashi
1954/Japan
Toho Company
First viewing/Hulu Plus

[box]“You can be young without money, but you can’t be old without it.”
― Tennessee Williams[/box]

This is a sympathetic look at a group of retired geishas and the role money plays in their lives.

The story is very episodic and meandering.  Kin (Haruku Sugimura, the selfish daughter in Tokyo Story) saved her money wisely while she was a geisha.  Now she has become a moneylender and slumlord.  Some of her clients are former geishas themselves.  One is doing some type of menial labor and is gambling and hitting the sake too hard.  She has a sharp, modern daughter who is getting ready to marry an older man and is not a soft touch for money.  She lives with another ex-geisha who is working as a hotel maid and worrying about her unemployed son and the affair he is having with the mistress of another man.  Kin makes regular visits to the two to hound them about their unpaid debts and rent.

The other geisha’s know that as a young woman, Kin was romantic.  She attempted double-suicide with her lover Seki.  When the suicide failed, Seki was convicted of attempted murder.  After leaving prison, he made his way to Manchuria to do hard labor.

Seki is now back in town and Kin refuses to have anything to do with him.  Kin next gets a letter from another former lover who wants to visit her.  The remainder of the story moves from one woman to the next as they deal with their children and lovers and try to make ends meet.

I liked this movie a lot.  I’m still not sure what the message was, if any.  Kin is shown to be grasping and disliked by all, yet she is the only one that seems to have her life in order.  But the poorer women are not necessarily any better.  They are constantly scrounging for money, in one case just to buy sake and gamble.  They have children but these relationships are strained.  So what was a geisha to do?  The acting is excellent and the film is beautifully shot.  I also liked the score a lot.

It Should Happen to You
Directed by George Cukor
Written by Garson Kanin
1954/USA
Columbia Pictures Corportation
First viewing/Amazon Instant

Gladys Glover: The way it looks to me, Mr. Adams… there are two kinds of people. The ones who would do anything to make a name for themselves and the ones who would do almost anything.

This OK comedy gave us our first look at Jack Lemmon.  Judy Holliday isn’t bad either.

Gladys Glover (Holliday) has just lost her modeling job and is feeding the pigeons in Central Park and contemplating her future.  Documentary film maker Pete Sheppard finds her there and is quickly charmed.  She tells him she came to New York because she wanted to make a name for herself.  After he leaves, she spots an empty billboard and gets a brainstorm.  Gladys proceeds to use most of her savings to have her name advertised in giant letters on Columbus Circle for a month.

It turns out that the space had been traditionally been used by a big soap company that accidentally failed to renew its contract.  Playboy Evan Adams III (Peter Lawford) tries to pay Gladys to give up the space but no dice.  In the meantime, Pete has moved into Gladys’s apartment building and is trying to woo her.  He is dismayed by her lust for fame however.  Then Evan trades Gladys six other spaces for the one she has.  Gladys has finally made a name for herself.  Will she live to regret it?

I would have liked this better if the dialogue had been more realistic.  It feels very over-written.  Holliday is always charming though and Lemmon is appealing as a romantic lead and shows a budding talent for comedy.

It Should Happen to You was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Costume Design, Black-and-White.

Trailer

The Glen Miller Story
Directed by Anthony Mann
Written by Valentine Davis and Oscar Brodney
1954/USA
Universal International Pictures
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Sy’s Assistant: He’s trying five saxes with a trumpet lead.

Si Schribman: Maybe it’s good and maybe it ain’t, but it’s radical![/box]

This is a very pleasant biopic with outstanding swing music provided by Glenn Miller and his orchestra.

Glenn Miller (James Stewart) keeps his trombone in the pawn shop between gigs.  He is more interested in arranging music than the trumpet, however.  Finally, his arrangements are noticed and he is hired by a band.  That is his signal to begin his brief courtship of Helen Burger (June Allyson), a girl he dated in college but hasn’t talked to in years. Although she is engaged to someone else, before we know it they are married.

Helen encourages him to form his own band.  The rest of the movie follows the orchestra from its shaky beginnings to great success.  All of this is accompanied by Glenn Miller’s biggest hits.  With Harry Morgan as a pianist and George Tobias as a backer.

This is quite outside director Mann’s normal range of genre pictures and he shows himself to be a competent director of “A” movies as well.  The whole thing is very solid if not particularly remarkable.  I enjoy big band music and liked it a lot.

Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Brkv5YVXbKI

Clip with Louis Armstrong

Champagne Safari
Directed by Jackson Leighter
Written by Lawrence Klingman
USA/1954
Jackson Leighter Associates
First viewing/Amazon Prime

[box] As far as I know it bombed. I never made a cent out of it but at one time I did have a print of it which I thought might interest Yasmin (her daughter) when she was old enough to understand it. I suppose I still have it around….somewhere….” — Rita Hayworth, 1973[/box]

Prince Aly Khan, the son of the Aga Khan, and his then wife Rita Hayworth invited her American friends Jackson and Lola Leighter to accompany their party on a trip through the Middle East and Africa.  The trip was about two years after their marriage and was planned as a second honeymoon.  At the end of the trip, Hayworth returned to America alone and despite some later attempts at reconciliation the marriage was over.

Leighter photographed the trip.  The film has the feeling of a home movie, with snippets of Hayworth posing for the camera.  The sights include the Valley of the Kings in Egypt and African Ishmaelis paying tribute to Aly, whose father was regarded “almost as a god”, in Kenya and Tanganyika.  Aly and the Leighters continued on to an animal safari but Hayworth went to pack her belongings.  Hayworth and the Leighters reunited for the ocean voyage back to the U.S.

This is an amateurish movie but might be of interest to Hayworth fans or for its glimpses of the last gasps of colonial Africa (the Mau-Mau rebellion had already begun in Kenya.)

Clip

The Vanishing Prairie
Directed by James Algar
Written by James Algar, Winston Hibler, and Ted Sears
1954/USA
Walt Disney Productions
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] “Trees were so rare in that country, and they had to make such a hard fight to grow, that we used to feel anxious about them, and visit them as if they were persons.”
― Willa Cather, My Ántonia[/box]

This is what a nature documentary looked like in the 1950’s.

The film starts out with a cartoon view of the American prairie.  Then the narrator creates a picture of what a party of early settlers would have seen as it crossed the wild prairie on the way to Oregon.  After the introduction, the film focuses on various prairie birds and animals, often creating little anthropomorphic stories to go with their behavior.

I enjoyed this for what it was.  There seemed to be more focus on birds than there was in Disney’s The Living Desert and I especially liked that part.  The movie spent a lot of time with prairie dogs who are, of course, super cute and easy to create drama and comedy around.

The Vanishing Prairie won the Academy Award for Best Documentary, Feature.

Clip – opening

Brigadoon
Directed by Vicente Minnelli
Written by Alan Jay Lerner
1954/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] All the music of life seems to be/ Like a bell that is ringing for me/ And from the way that I feel/ When that bell starts to peal/ I would swear I was falling/ I could swear I was falling/ It’s almost like being in love. – “Almost Like Being in Love”, lyrics by Alan J. Lerner [/box]

This has some nice songs and Minnelli does well with Cinemascope but it didn’t grab me.

Americans Tommy Albright (Gene Kelly) and Jeff Douglas (Van Johnson) have come to Scotland to hunt grouse.  One day, they stumble across a strange village that doesn’t appear on the map.  It is a wedding day and villagers are preparing for festivities.  Tommy is immediately taken by Fiona Campbell (Cyd Charisse) the beautiful older sister of the bride.

It develops that the village is under a protective spell that means it reappears only once every hundred years.  The villagers are not aware of the passage of time, nor do they age. If any villager leaves town the village will disappear entirely.  A young man who is jealous of the wedding threatens to do just that.  As the day comes to an end, Tommy is faced with deciding whether he wants to stay with Fiona or return to modern New York.

Again, this has good music and some lovely balletic dancing.   It lacks pacing or a compelling story, though, and I found it quite forgettable.  The Scottish accents leave a lot to be desired.

Brigadoon was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color; Best Costume Design, Color, and Best Sound, Recording.