Category Archives: 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Children of Paradise (Les enfants du paradis)
Directed by Marcel Carné
Written by Jacques Prévert
1945/France
Société Nouvelle Pathé Cinéma
Repeat viewing/Criterion Collection DVD
#189 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Baptiste: You were right, Garance. Love is simple.[/box]

This is one of those reviews that is very hard to write.  I feel like saying this film is grandly beautiful and perfect in every way.  Everyone should see it.  The end.

The film was shown in two parts: “The Boulevard of Crime” and “The Man in White.”

The first begins on the titular boulevard in early 19th Century Paris, where the Funambles theater is located.  We are in a decidedly working class quarter of town and the theater is forbidden to use dialogue or sound, meaning that all of its productions are pantomimes.

We are cleverly introduced to the characters of Garance (Arletty) and three of the men who love her in the opening sequence.  Garance is portraying “Naked Truth” in a side show. After her stint sitting modestly in a bath, she meets Frédérick (Pierre Brasseur), a flirtatious would-be actor.  Garance brushes him off and goes to visit her friend the dandy master criminal Lacenaire, who is also an amateur playwright and cynical philosopher.  They go to watch the barker in front of the Funambles and Lacenaire takes the opportunity to pick the pocket of a wealthy man who is chatting up Garance.  Garance is accused of the crime but is rescued by the mimed testimony of Baptiste (Jean-Louis Barrault), who witnessed the whole thing.  Garance gives Baptiste a rose in thanks and the young dreamer is immediately hopelessly in love with her.

Frédérick goes back stage to ask for a job.  He gets nowhere until two of the actors have a fight and both he and Baptiste get their big breaks.  Baptiste shows Frédérick his own rooming house and departs for his nightly wander through the streets to observe humanity. He runs into a “blind” beggar and an invitation for drinks at a local tavern leads him again to Garance, who is there with Lacenaire.  He ends up taking her to get a room at his place and declaring his undying and passionate love.  Although attracted, she cannot respond in kind and he foolishly rejects her advances.  So she ends up sharing Frédérick’s bed instead.

The theater turns into a place where Baptiste’s heartbreak is reenacted on stage night after night.  Another heart is being broken, that of Natalie who has long pledged herself to Baptiste.  Natalie doggedly retains her faith that she and Baptiste were made for each other despite all evidence of his almost suicidal depression over Garance.  Garance has obtained work at the Funambles as well and has captivated a haughty count.  She spurns him but he asks her to remember him if she should need help or protection.  Garance has not been able to get Baptiste  out of her mind and the two are about to take things up where they left off when Natalie appears to claim her man and Garance departs.

As the curtain falls on the First Act, events lead Garance to take up the Count on his offer for protection.

Years pass.  “The Man in White” shows the success of all our characters in their chosen professions.  Frédérick is a celebrated actor on the legitimate stage; Baptiste is still at the Funambles but is an acknowledged genius of the pantomime; Lacenaire’s crimes make the headlines; and Garance returns to Paris a grand lady but an unhappy woman. Baptiste is now married to Nathalie and they have a six-year-old son.

The rest of the story follows the intricate interplay between Garance and the four men who have loved her.  With Pierre Renoir as the sinister Rag Man.

The only criticism I have ever heard of this film is that Arletty, who was 45 at the time the film was made, was not as desirable as the film made her character out to be.  I’m a straight woman so what do I know?  I thought she was quite alluring both physically and for her magnetic personality.

Every element of this lavishly staged film is beautiful – sets, costumes, music.  The writing itself is touchingly poetic and I mean that in a good way.  I never thought I liked mimes until I saw Barrault do it.  What a genius.  He’s also quite good with the greasepaint off.  The story of the filming of this big-budget extravaganza in Occupied France is almost as interesting as the film.

I always leave this film pondering how the insistence on a certain kind of love dooms real love.  But primarily, I think, this is a love letter to the theater.  Most highly recommended. The three hours simply fly by.

Jacques Prévért was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Screenplay.

Criterion Collection: Three Reasons

Re-release trailer

Henry V
Directed by Laurence Olivier
Written by William Shakespeare
1944/UK
Two Cities Films
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#180 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Henry: Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;/ Or close the wall up with our English dead!/ In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man/ As modest stillness and humility:/ But when the blast of war blows in our ears,/ Then imitate the action of the tiger;/ Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,/ Disguise fair nature with hard-favoured rage;/ Then lend the eye a terrible aspect. [/box]

Laurence Olivier’s debut as a director made Shakespeare as stirring and accessible as it would have been on stage and threw in some very innovative cinema to boot.

The famous play’s plot deals with the efforts of King Henry V, now matured from the dissolute Prince Hal of Henry IV Parts I and II, to reclaim what he believes is his rightful title as King of France.  He inspires an army to join him on his quest.  On arrival, the French are not prepared for him, and offer some leeway after a siege.  Later, they decide to fight and Henry’s vastly outnumbered army emerges victorious at the Battle of Agincourt. Historically, the decisive victory of English longbows over heavily armored French forces spelled the end of hand-to-hand combat as a method of warfare.

The film was intended as a morale-booster ahead of the Allied invasion of Continental Europe.  First-time director Olivier, if constrained by his budget and wartime shortages, knew no limits in cinematic vocabulary.  Each of the parts of the film has a distinct look. The play begins at the Globe theater, with the actors in theatrical costume and make-up and Olivier himself declaiming rather than speaking his lines.  We move on to the court of France where the scenery and costumes were made to resemble illustrations in the medieval Book of Hours.  The stirring battle sequences are realistic but still bathed in bright Technicolor.  The whole is set to a brilliant score by William Walton.

A viewer’s reaction will probably be colored by his appreciation for the Shakespearean language.  All is lifted intact from the play, although Olivier injects comedy where none was intended and also inserts a few bits from previous Shakespearean plays, notably the Henry IV plays.  I love this movie for its visuals and for the battle scenes, which in the hands of actor Olivier are truly stirring.  I especially like the part where an incognito Henry visits the common soldiers in their camp the night before the battle.

There is an excellent commentary on the Criterion DVD by film historian Bruce Eder, who is one of my favorite commentators, having done several of Criterion’s releases of British titles.  My favorite of these is his commentary to The Lady Vanishes.

Laurence Olivier won an Honorary Academy Award for “outstanding achievement as actor, producer and director in bringing ‘Henry V’ to the screen.” The film was nominated for Best Picture; Best Actor; Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Color; and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture (William Walton).

Trailer – is this the longest trailer of all time?

Laura
Directed by Otto Preminger
Written by Jay Dratler, Samuel Hoffenstein, and Elizabeth Reinhardt from a novel by Vera Caspary
1944/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime Instant Video
#176 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Mark McPherson: Yeah, dames are always pulling a switch on you.[/box]

Once you suspend your disbelief, this is a atmospheric and clever film noir with Gene Tierney at her best and a wonderful Oscar-nominated turn by Clifton Webb.  If you have not seen the film, stop reading this immediately and watch it.  It is impossible to describe the plot without spoilers.

The story is told both as flashbacks and in real time.  Laura (Tierney) has been murdered in her apartment with a shotgun blast to the face.  We quickly become acquainted with two men who loved her, both of whom are prime suspects.  There is effete, acerbic columnist Waldo Lydecker (Webb) who more or less adopted Laura as his protege.  He describes her as almost an ethereal being, far superior to mere mortals but owing entirely to him for her connections and acquisition of culture.  Then there is the weak but charmingly Southern Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price) who was engaged to marry her.  He sees a different but just as glorified Laura.  The last person on the suspect list is Laura’s aunt, Ann Treadwell (Judith Anderson) who is in love with Shelby herself.

Detective Mark MacPherson (Dana Andrews) becomes fascinated with Laura’s portrait and description in the course of his investigation.  One night, as he is dreaming in front of the portrait, Laura appears in the flesh.  She is nothing like what we would have imagined. Instead, she is a beautiful but no-nonsense career girl with a mind of her own.  And now she is another suspect in the murder of the woman whose body was found.  The rest of the movie follows the investigation.

This classic film noir features whip smart dialogue and a clever, if convoluted plot.  It also looks really gorgeous.  The performances, especially that of Webb, are excellent.  I can take or leave both Andrews and Tierney but they are both perfect for their parts here.  Yet somehow, while recognizing all its merits, this is not a favorite with me.  It might be that the story seems a bit too contrived or that the characters, while interesting, are not all that relatable with the exception of the living Laura.

Joseph LaShelle won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White. Laura was nominated for four additional Academy Awards:  Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Webb); Best Director; Best Writing, Screenplay and Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White.  How did this miss a nomination for its score?

Trailer

Meet Me in St. Louis
Directed by Vincente Minnelli
Written by Irving Brecher and Fred F. Finklehoff from the book by Sally Benson
1944/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Repeat viewing/Warner Home Video Special Edition DVD
#177 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Through the years/ We all will be together,/ If the Fates allow/ Hang a shining star upon the highest bough./ And have yourself/ A merry little Christmas now. — “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, lyrics by Ralph Blane[/box]

A musical lover’s musical with the poignancy of a happy family in a simpler time.

The year is 1903 and the place is St. Louis, Missouri, where the Smith family is looking forward to the opening of the World’s Fair.  They are relatively well-to-do.  Father Lon (Leon Ames) is a lawyer and mother Anna (Mary Astor) stays home and makes ketchup with housekeeper Katie (Marjorie Main).  There are three older children —  young Lon, who is about to go off to Princeton, and daughters Rose (Lucille Bremer) and Esther (Judy Garland), whose lives revolve around boys.  There is a longish gap before we get to 12-year-old Agnes and little 5-year-old Tootie, everybody’s baby and quite the scamp.  Both of the little  girls adore everything gruesome.

Rose is waiting for a marriage proposal from her beau and Esther has a crush on the boy next door, John Truett.  Esther and John finally meet and gradually fall in love.  The father announces he has received a promotion which means the family will have to move to New York.  The girls are devastated that their own plans will be ruined and nobody looks forward to leaving the comfortable home they have made or to missing the World’s Fair they have waited for so long.  That’s it, the whole story in a nutshell.

I have seen this movie more times than I want to count and I cry every time.  Every single time.  It always starts by “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas but I ususally mist up when Ames and Astor start singing “You and I” (that’s producer Arthur Freed dubbing Ames).  I must identify with with the powerlessness of children in the face of decisions, even well-intentioned decisions, made for them by their parents.  Sure the crises seem trivial but when we are young trivial things take on an immense importance.  There is also a deep nostalgia or longing for the kind of idealized family life Minnelli captures so well here.  This had to have had a powerful effect on folks at home during World War II when so many people were separated.

I haven’t gotten to the more obvious pleasures of this film, which are the fabulous color photography and lighting, the wonderful songs, and the phenomenon which is Margaret O’Brian’s Tootie.  That Halloween profile in courage is among my favorite scenes ever.  I don’t think Judy Garland ever looked more beautiful or sounded better.  I will leave my mash note at that.  Highly recommended.

Author Sally Benson was the original Agnes Smith and, yes, in real life the family eventually did move to New York.

Margaret O’Brien won a Special Academy Award for Best Child Actress of 1944.  Meet Me in St. Louis was nominated in the categories of: Best Writing, Screenplay; Best Cinematography, Color (George J. Folsey); Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture; and Best Music, Original Song (“The Trolley Song”).

Re-release trailer

Gaslight
Directed by George Cukor
Written by John Van Druten, Walter Reisch, and John H. Balderston from the play “Angel Street” by Patrick Hamilton
1944/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#179 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Gregory Anton: Jewels are wonderful things. They have a life of their own.[/box]

A gorgeously mounted thriller with an Oscar-winning performance by Ingrid Bergman.

A beautiful opera singer is murdered in her London townhouse.  The body is discovered by her devastated young niece Paula.  Paula (Bergman) is sent to Italy to study singing.  Years pass and the murder is not solved.  Paula’s teacher begins to notice that Paula’s heart is not in her music.  That is because it has been given to suave Continental pianist Gregory Anton (Charles Boyer).  They marry soon thereafter.  Paula, the trauma of her aunt’s death having been overcome by love, is persuaded to move with her new husband to her aunt’s house in London.

Gregory wastes no time in isolating Paula from the rest of the world.  He then begins a course of verbal abuse.  This, coupled with mysterious noises coming from overhead and the flickering of the house’s gaslights, begins to convince Paula that she is really going insane.  On one of the couples rare excursions, policeman Brian Cameron (Joseph Cotten) recognizes Paula from her resemblance to her aunt whom he greatly admired as a boy. Brian opens the closed case file on the aunt’s murder and starts working it.  Meanwhile, things go from bad to worse in the Anton household, Gregory having found an ally in the saucy young housemaid Nancy (Angela Lansbury in her film debut).  With Dame May Whitty as a nosy neighbor.

Ingrid Bergman goes from rosy cheeked enthusiasm to pallid distress during the course of the film, demonstrating a range unexplored in her previous work.  Boyer’s interpretation takes few risks with his suave persona but he does look like someone a woman could plausibly both love and fear.  I preferred Anton Walbrook’s more brutal portrayal of the role in the 1940 British version of the story. Angela Lansbury was fantastic right out of the box, taking every nuance of her rather small part and making her character sleazy, cheeky and totally memorable.  The claustrophobic Victorian sets are a thing of beauty as are Bergman’s costumes.

Ingrid Bergman won the Oscar for Best Actress for Gaslight, which also won the award for Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White.  The film was nominated in the categories of: Best Picture; Best Actor (Boyer); Best Supporting Actress (Lansbury); Best Writing, Screenplay; and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (Joseph Ruttenberg).

Trailer (spoilers)

The Man in Grey
Directed by Leslie Arliss
Written by Doreen Montgomery, Margaret Kennedy, and Leslie Arliss
1943/UK
Gainsborough Pictures/The Rank Organization
First viewing/Amazon Instant Video
#172 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Lord Rohan: [after Hester bites him. Aroused with excitement] I never thought I’d find a woman with a spirit as willful as mine. You take what you want and the devil with the consequences. So do I![/box]

I certainly could have died without having seen this Regency romance bodice-ripper.

The story is told in flashback after two of the character’s descendents meet at an auction of goods from the Rowan estate.

Lovely, sweet Clarissa (Phyllis Calvert) attends a finishing school in Bath.  She alone befriends the charity student who joins their midst, Hester Shaw (Margaret Lockwood). Hester runs away with some sort of scoundrel and leaves Clarissa for several years.  In the mean time, their families arrange a “suitable” match between Clarissa and the haughty, cruel Lord Rowan (James Mason).  They care nothing for each other, Rowan having married to produce an heir, and live as separately as possible.

Clarissa happens to see an advertisement for a play Hester is appearing in in St. Albans. On her way to the performance, the coach is highjacked by a handsome rascal Peter Rokeby (Stewart Granger) who poses as a highwayman to get the vehicle to stop.  He hitches a ride and steals a kiss at goodbye.  Clarissa is surprised to see that he is playing Othello to Hester’s Desdemona in a very poor offering of that work.  She is so delighted with finding her friend that she offers Hester a job as governess to her young son.  Rowan refuses to hire Hester in that capacity but agrees that she can stay on as companion to Clarissa.

As we have previously learned, Hester is a manipulative, deceiving trollop and was made for the surly Rowan.  They begin an affair but Hester has marriage on her mind.  After another chance meeting between Clarissa and Rokeby, she decides that the best way to get Clarissa out of the picture is to bring her and Rokeby together.  Hester succeeds in kindling the fire of love between the two but is forced to resort to more drastic measures to get rid of Clarissa.

Hollywood “women’s” pictures have nothing on this one for intrigue and innuendo. Indeed, it seems specially designed to appeal to the mildly sado-masochistic fantasies of part of its target audience. I found it rather turgid myself.  If you are coming for Mason, he has been much, much better elsewhere and basically has a supporting role, the meaty stuff having been reserved for the ladies.

This film also has the unfortunate distinction of being the most racially-problematic British film I have seen yet.  Clarissa has a small Black page boy who, though somewhat heroic, is the butt of every one of the rare jokes.

Trailer

Fires Were Started
Directed by Humphrey Jennings
Written by Humphrey Jennings
1943/UK
Crown Film Unit
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime Instant Video (included in a package called “Britain Is Calling”)
#167 of 1001 Films You Must See Before You Die

I can think of no more stirring symbol of man’s humanity to man than a fire engine. ~Kurt Vonnegut

This docu-drama is a touching testimonial to the brave firemen who battled against terrible odds during the Blitz.

The story is a slice of life showing one day at an East Side London fire house during the early days of the Blitzkrieg before a national fire service was organized.  We basically follow   a new man joining this company as he is shown around, participates in off-hour activities, and later goes to help put out a massive riverside fire caused by the bombing of a warehouse holding explosives.

The fire was a reconstruction but the roles were played by real fireman and the whole thing is grittily authentic.  For me, the most touching part was when the men were standing around the piano at the firehouse right before the alarm rang singing “Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone”.  It is amazing to think that these men lived through danger like that and had to do it all over again the next night.  Jennings and his crew also captured some hauntingly beautiful images.  Recommended.

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