Category Archives: 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

The Seventh Victim
Directed by Mark Robson
Written by Charles O’Neill and DeWitt Bodeen
1943/USA
RKO Radio Pictures
First viewing/Netflix rental
#171 of !001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Doctor Louis Judd: One can take either staircase. I prefer the left. The sinister side.[/box]

This beautifully shot film is really more about death than it is about Satan worshippers.

Mary Gibson (Kim Hunter) attends a boarding school courtesy of her big sister Jacqueline (Jean Brooks). As the story starts, she has been asked to leave because her tuition has not been paid for the last sixth months.  Mary has not been able to locate Jacqueline.  She heads off to the big city to try to find her.

She meets a few men who want to help her, or say they do.  They are poet Jason, attorney Gregory Ward (Hugh Beaumont), and psychiatrist Louis Judd (Tom Conway).  We learn that Jacqueline has long believed that life is not worth living unless one can end it.  Gregory even helped her rig up a noose in a rented room.  Before long, we learn that Jacqueline is mixed up with a cabal of very ordinary looking Satan worshippers.  They believe she has betrayed them by seeking psychiatric help.  Mary is caught up in the web and witnesses some very disturbing goings on.

This film was made under the guidance of auteur producer Val Lewton and it shows in the atmospheric settings and lighting and the emphasis on unseen horror.  This time the horror is almost purely psychological.  Jacqueline’s death-wish permeates the entire story.  The plot could be a straight-forward mystery story if not for the artful way it is shot.  But Nicholas Musuraca proves he is a master of low-key lighting once again.   I don’t know if it is anything one needs to see before one dies but I enjoyed it.

The DVD I rented included a good commentary and an excellent documentary on Lewton’s career.

Trailer

Meshes of the Afternoon
Directed by Maya Derrin and Alexander Hamid
Written by Maya Derrin
1943/USA
First viewing/YouTube
#170 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

A young woman comes home to her apartment in Hollywood.  She falls asleep in an armchair and has a dream in which the objects around her turn sinister. Eventually, a man joins her and he is relatively sinister as well.  It is difficult to ascertain when the dream begins and ends.

Meshes of the Afternoon was not made for someone like me.  I have to admit that some of the images were beautiful and the effects were impressive for the time and circumstances of its making.

I watched this with soundtrack by Seaming that was commissioned by BIrds Eye View, for ‘Sounds and Silents’, and was performed live at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank, London, in 2011, and later performed again live at Latitude Festival 2011, and in 2012 at Opera North Howard Assembly Rooms in Leeds, supporting Hauschka.  I don’t know if that was cheating.

Clip – music here not what I listened to, fortunately

The Ox-Bow Incident
Directed by William A. Wellman
Written by Lamar Trotti from the novel by Walter Van Tilberg Clark
1943/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Repeat viewing/Netflix Rental
Number 168 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Major Tetley: This is only slightly any of your business, my friend. Remember that.

Gil Carter: Hangin’ is any man’s business that’s around.[/box]

This tightly wound morality play is only nominally a Western.

Gil Carter (Henry Fonda) and Art Croft (Harry Morgan) ride into town to find the place abuzz about some cattle rustlers who have been operating in the area over the past few months.  Then they learn that the rustlers have shot a rancher that is a close friend of the local tough guy.  The townsfolk are quick to assemble a lynching party to apprehend the culprit and administer justice at the end of a rope.  All the admonitions of local elder Mr. Davies (Harry Davenport) to leave the matter to the law fall on deaf ears.  Davies sends Gil to appeal to the sheriff but he is out at the ranch and his deputy is one of the more rabid advocates of vigilante justice.  Though Gil has little use for the mob leaders or sympathy for their cause, he and Art join them out of fear that they, as outsiders, may become suspects.

The hastily and illegally sworn-in “posse” goes up into the high mountains to search for the men.  No one is dressed for the intense cold.  The group stumbles upon three men sleeping around a camp fire – their leader, family man Donald Martin (Dana Andrews), a half-witted old man, and a Mexican desperado type (Anthony Quinn).   Although all protest that they have done nothing, they are found in the possession of the victim’s cattle and gun and the townspeople, under the leadership of a self-styled Confederate colonel, are not about to spend much time listening to explanations.  With Jane Darwell as a cackling old vigilante and Leigh Whipper (uncredited!!!?) as a preacher who comes along to pray over the culprits.

This film is an ensemble piece like Stagecoach that follows the character arcs of a number of different types as they face a dilemma together.  Henry Fonda is great, as usual, as the voice of conscience and stand-in for the audience.  This time, however, he starts from a place of seething resentment that makes it all the more resonant when he sees the light. We also get to know the “cowardly” son who can’t quite bring himself to do the wrong thing despite his tormenting macho father, the local clown who finds the situation quite funny, etc.  Dana Andrews is touching as he pleads for someone to look after his wife and small children in one of his better performances.  The black preacher and his reference to his own brother’s lynching bring the film’s moral into its modern American context.

The sense of doom is unrelieved during the 75-minute running time.  There is little action but it is unnecessary.  Donald’s letter to his wife serves as the coda of the piece.  While the text seems totally unlike anything one would expect, it does underscore the film’s powerful message about the reasons we have law to temper the blind fury of the mob mind.

The Ox-Bow Incident was the last film to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar and in no other category.

Trailer

Shadow of a Doubt
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Written by Thornton Wilder, Sally Benson, and Alma Reville
1943/US
Skirball Productions/Universal Pictures
Repeat viewing/DVD Collection
#173 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

This story of evil in small town America was reportedly Alfred Hitchcock’s favorite of his films.  While I prefer others to this one, it is nonetheless excellent.

The film opens with shots of Charles Oakley (Joseph Cotten)  lying impassively on his hotel room bed surrounded by wads of money.  He is being pursued by police on suspicion of being a serial killer of widows he seduces for their money.  He decides to flee to the home of his sister Emmie (Patricia Collinge) across country in Santa Rosa, California.

The family greets news of his impending arrival with joy.  This is especially true of “Uncle Charie’s” namesake Charlotte, known as Young Charlie (Theresa Wright).  Charlie had been down in the dumps about her family’s boring existence and feels that her uncle’s arrival will liven things up.  This is more true than she could possibly foresee.

The family, especially his sister, is extremely proud of Uncle Charlie, thinking him to be some kind of business man.  He starts to integrate himself into their community.  He also starts to act very secretive and make dark pronouncements about the rottenness of the world and the people in it.  Soon detective Jack Graham (Macdonald Carey) and a policeman (Wallace Ford), posing as a journalist and photographer looking for the typical American family, start trying to insinuate themselves into the picture.

Naturally, it is love at first sight when Jack talks to Charlie.  She is resistant to believe that he could have done anything wrong.  Then she begins to put a number of disturbing clues together.  After that, she is not safe from her psychopathic, paranoid uncle.  With Henry Travers as Charlie’s father and Hume Cronyn as his murder-obsessed pal.

This is classic Hitchcock with plenty of suspense and great performances from all involved. I believe this to have been Wright’s career best.  I greatly prefer it to her Oscar-winning role in Mrs. Miniver.  Cotten transitions beautifully between a family man persona and evil personified.  I could have done without the romantic sub-plot but the era obviously could not.  Truly a must-see.

Shadow of a Doubt was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Story.

Trailer

Mrs. Miniver
Directed by William Wyler
Written by Arthur Wimperis, George Froeschel, James Hilton and Claudine West from the book by Jan Struther
1942/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#164 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Kay Miniver: But in war, time is so precious to the young people.[/box]

And yet another 1942 film that tugs at the heartstrings …

The Miniver family, headed by architect Clem Miniver (Walter Pidgeon) enjoys a peaceful middle-class existence with grown son Vin and two much younger children.  They can afford little luxuries like a frivolous hat or a new car.  Kay Miniver (Greer Garson) is the heart and soul of her family and displays a special kind of grace and charm to her neighbors.  Railway station employee Mr. Ballard (Henry Travers) thinks so much of her that he names a new rose he has developed in her honor – the “Mrs. Miniver”.  He intends to enter the rose in the annual Flower Show.

Snooty Lady Belden (Dame May Whitty) has always won the first prize for her roses and takes umbrage that lowly Mr. Ballard would dare to even enter the show.  She sends her granddaughter Carol (Theresa Wright) to persuade Mrs. Miniver to use her influence.  This does not work but for Vin it is love at first sight despite a prickly beginning.

The Minivers accept the coming of war with a stiff upper lip.  Vin immediately enlists in the RAF and is stationed at a nearby airbase.  Vin and Carol marry after a lightening courtship, over the objections of her grandmother.  The Minivers meet the many hardships and tragedies on the home front with courage befitting the bravest soldiers.  With Reginald Owen as an air warden.

Winston Churchill said that Mrs. Miniver did more for the war effort than a flotilla of destroyers.  It certainly is a sweet and touching piece of propaganda with some beautiful performances.  I preferred Wright’s Oscar-nominated leading actress performance in The Pride of the Yankees to her supporting role here – her English accent is pretty spotty for one thing – but I’m glad she was acknowledged in this breakthrough year.  This is an England that more closely resembles suburban America but that would only have made it more sympathetic to American audiences.  The ending is kind of hard to take.

I hadn’t known until today that Garson ended up marrying Richard Ney, the actor who played her son Vin in the movie.

Mrs. Miniver won six Academy Awards:  Best Picture; Best Actress (Garson); Best Supporting Actress (Wright); Best Director; Best Writing, Screenplay; and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (Joseph Ruttenberg).  It was nominated for an additional six Oscars: Best Actor (Pidgeon); Best Supporting Actor (Travers); Best Supporting Actress (Whitty); Best Sound, Recording; Best Film Editing; and Best Effects, Special Effects.

Trailer