Category Archives: 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Reviews of movies included in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)

Posted on August 20, 2014 | 6 comments

Yankee Doodle Dandy
Directed by Michael Curtiz
Written by Robert Buckner and Edmund Joseph
1942/USA
Warner Bros
Repeat viewing/Warner Home Video DVD
#163 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] George M. Cohan: It seems it always happens. Whenever we get too high-hat and too sophisticated for flag-waving, some thug nation decides we’re a push-over all ready to be blackjacked. And it isn’t long before we’re looking up, mighty anxiously, to be sure the flag’s still waving over us.[/box]

James Cagney richly deserved his Oscar for this flag-waving musical biography.

This is the Cohan-approved story of Cohan’s life. Cohan (Cagney) tells the tale to President Roosevelt in flashback when he is called into receive the Congressional Medal of Honor for his songs “Grand Old Flag” and “Over There”. The film traces the showman’s story from his beginnings as part of his family’s vaudeville act, through the tough times trying to sell his first show, his courtship of his (fictional) wife Mary (Joan Leslie), to his overwhelming success on Broadway and on to old age. With Walter Huston as Cohan’s father, Rosemary DeCamp as his mother, and Richard Whorf as his partner Sam Harris.

This is a sentimental favorite from my youth when I watched it over and over on my parent’s TV. The production numbers are still fantastic as is Cagney’s performance. The story may stray over into sentimentality and morale-boosting patriotism but the times called for that, I think.

Yankee Doodle Dandy won three Academy Awards: Best Actor; Best Sound, Recording; and Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture. It was nominated for an additional five awards: Best Picture; Best Director; Best Supporting Actor (Huston); Best Writing, Original Story; and Best Film Editing.

Clip – “Yankee Doodle Boy”

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Posted in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, 1942

The Palm Beach Story (1942)

Posted on August 19, 2014 | 5 comments

The Palm Beach Story
Written and Directed by Preston Sturges
1942/USA
Paramount Pictures
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#159 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Wienie King: I’m the Wienie King! Invented the Texas Wienie! Lay off ’em, you’ll live longer.[/box]

This may not be the best Preston Sturges but it is my favorite. Of course that means I love it more than words can say.

Tom Jeffers (Joel McCrea) has invented a way to build airports downtown (that obviously will never work). He spends all his time trying to get the $99,000 needed to build a model. Consequently, he and his wife Gerry (Claudet Colbert) are about to be evicted from their apartment. In the first of a series of happy coincidences, the Wienie King, a prospective tenant, is taken with Gerry and gives her the money to pay the rent and more. The chronically jealous Tom is not happy about this.

Gerry decides the best thing for both of them is to divorce. This is easier said than done since they are clearly still gaga about each other after five years of marriage. But Gerry musters up the will power to take off for the railway station with no money or ticket. She believes, from experience, that with her looks she doesn’t need them. Of course, the appearance of a bunch of crazy hunters in the Ale and Quail Club gets her on the train. Her goal is Palm Beach, Florida where she hopes to meet a rich bachelor.

She doesn’t have to go that far. He appears on the train in the form of J.D. Hackensaker III (Rudy Vallee) who immediately starts buying her ruby bracelets and takes her the rest of the way to Palm Beach on his yacht. Tom is on Gerry’s trail, courtesy of the Wienie King, and Gerry introduces him as her brother, Tom McGlue. J.D.’s sister the wacky and man-hungry Princess Centimillia wants to make Tom the next of her serial marriages. Will love conquer all? With William Demerest as President of the Ale and Quail Club, Sig Arno as the Princess’s refugee protogee Toto, and the rest of Sturges’s stock company in small parts.

The fact that this is McCrea’s second sexiest performance (the first being in The More the Merrier) guarantees that I would love this movie but there is so much more! It also contains my very favorite performance by Astor – she and Vallee are really wonderful. And then there are all those great small parts, Practically the whole screenplay is quotable. The part when the Quail and Ale Club starts trap shooting inside the train is a little too much but otherwise this is practically perfect. Highly recommended.

Clips from the movie set to “Isn’t It Romantic?” (I prefer this to the trailer)

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Posted in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, 1942

Now, Voyager (1942)

Posted on August 18, 2014 | 3 comments

Now, Voyager
Directed by Irving Rapper
Written by Casey Robinson from the novel by Olive Higgins Prouty
1942/USA
Warner Bros
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#160 of 1001 Films You Must See Before You Die

[box] Dr. Jasquith: I thought you said you came here to have a nervous breakdown.

Charlotte: About that, I’ve decided not to have one.[/box]

If Bette Davis had only ended up with Claude Rains, I might have been able to get behind this picture. Then again, maybe not …

Charlotte Vale (Davis) was a “late” and unwanted child. She is totally dominated by her demanding mother (Gladys Cooper) who is driving the sensitive old maid straight into a nervous breakdown. Charlotte’s kind sister-in-law brings in Dr. Jasquith (Rains) to the rescue. In an uncharacteristic act of kindness, mother allows Charlotte to go with him to a sanitarium.

Jasquith is a miracle worker and the sister-in-law sends Charlotte off to stretch her wings on a South American cruise. She gradually blossoms and falls in love with the unhappily married Jerry (Paul Heinreid). Jerry cannot leave his invalid wife or his unhappy, unwanted younger daughter and they agree to part forever. Jerry continues to torment Charlotte with camillia corsages however.

Jerry’s love (from afar) gives Charlotte the courage to stand up to her mother and to develop a social life of her own. His unexpected reappearance causes her to break her engagement to a scion of Boston society greatly angering her mother. But the glory of an impossible love will see dear Charlotte through.

I am immune to the charms of Paul Heinreid. Added to that are strong elements of dubious Freudian psychology and womanly self-sacrifice that drive me crazy. While I realize that it was demanded by the Hayes Code, the ending is the nail in the coffin for me. All the acting is rather good (my favorite by far is Rains) and the production values are top-notch. Steiner’s repetitively saccharine love theme does nothing for me. Sorry to be a downer about this much-loved melodrama.

Now, Voyager won the Academy Award for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture (Max Steiner). Bette Davis and Gladys Cooper were nominated for their performances in the film.

Trailer – cinematography by Sol Polito

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Posted in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, 1942

To Be or Not to Be (1942)

Posted on August 18, 2014 | 4 comments

To Be or Not to Be
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch
Written by Edwin Justus Mayer from an original story by Melchior Lengyel
1942/USA
Romaine Film Corporation
Repeat viewing/Streaming on Hulu Plus
#161 of 1001 Films You Must See Before You Die

[box] Maria Tura: It’s becoming ridiculous the way you grab attention. Whenever I start to tell a story, you finish it. If I go on a diet, you lose the weight. If I have a cold, you cough. And if we should ever have a baby, I’m not so sure I’d be the mother.

Josef Tura: I’m satisfied to be the father.[/box]

This satire of the Nazi occupation of Poland has become much funnier with age.

Josef (Jack Benny) and Maria (Carole Lombard) Tura star as Hamlet and Ophelia in a Warsaw production of Macbeth. Their company is also preparing a play about Nazism. A young Polish pilot (Robert Stack) has fallen hard for Maria. They start having trysts in her dressing room nightly as Josef starts Hamlet’s famous soliloquy, causing the pilot to walk out on him each time he hears the words “to be or not to be”. The final performance of the play is on the night the Nazis invade Poland. The pilot escapes to England where he begins flying for the RAF.

Segue to 1941 and “Professor Siletski” visits Polish fliers and confesses that he is going to Warsaw on a secret mission for the British. He collects the names and addresses of all of their friends and family at home. When the pilot gives him Maria’s name, the professor has never heard of her. He correctly guesses that Siletski is a Nazi spy. He flies to Warsaw to try to stop Siletski before he gives the names to the Gestapo.

Siletski gets there first. The rest of the movie is devoted to the hilarious efforts of the actors to fool the Nazis and save the day while posing in the costumes from their aborted play. With Felix Bressart and Lionel Atwill as members of the troupe and Sig Ruman as a Gestapo colonel.

This film has definitely got the Lubitsch touch and a high percentage of great comic zingers. There is some pathos, too. Unfortunately, in the aftermath of Lombard’s tragic death (this was her last film) and American entry into the war in Europe, audiences didn’t find it too funny at the time. Lombard and the supporting cast are always wonderful. Jack Benny showed a surprising range as a comic actor.

To Be or Not to Be was nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture (Werner R. Heymann).

Three Reasons to watch – Criterion Collection

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Posted in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, 1942, Movie Reviews

Casablanca (1942)

Posted on August 17, 2014 | 7 comments

Casablanca
Directed by Michael Curtiz
Written by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch from a play by Murrey Burnett and Joan Allison
1942/USA
Warner Bros
Repeat viewing/Warner Home Video DVD
#165 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Rick: Ilsa, I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you’ll understand that.[/box]

Unless you have reached this blog by mistake, you undoubtedly know this film and exactly why it is a timeless classic.

You also know the story, but here goes. Rick (Humphrey Bogart) is a cynical, heart-broken American who cannot return to his native land for some unspecified reason. He has retreated to Casablanca, now ruled by the Vichy French in the form of Prefect Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains). Casablanca has become a way station for a grab bag of European refugees hoping for escape to pre-War America. Rick entertains these at his Cafe Amercain and maintains a strict neutrality.

The excitement begins when we learn that two German couriers have been murdered for valuable letters of transit signed by General DeGaulle. (It is never explained why the Vichy Government or the Nazis would feel compelled to honor such letters of transit..) Ugarte (Peter Lorre), a black marketeer, has come into possession of them and hopes to sell them for a phenomenal price to resistance leader Victor Lazlo (Paul Heinreid) and his companion Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman). Just prior to his arrest, Ugarte hides the letters with Rick.

We immediately learn that Ilsa is the woman that broke Rick’s heart in Paris. He remains very bitter and is unwilling to stick his neck out for her or Lazlo. Will he come around? With Conrad Veidt as Major Strasser, the Gestapo Officer on Lazlo’s trail, and Sydney Greenstreet as Signor Ferrari, the corrupt owner of a rival night club.

When viewed for the twentieth time, one begins to see some pretty glaring plot holes in this movie and to be troubled by the astonishing civility of the Nazis it portrays. (Why does Strasser care a hoot about letters of transit?) But those just don’t matter and I spent the last half of the film, once again, with mist in my eyes. Everyone is just so beautiful and the dialogue so perfect. This is really one of the glories of the studio system and must-see viewing. My DVD has a couple of excellent commentaries. I can highly recommend the one by Roger Ebert.

Casablanca won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Writing, Screenplay. It was nominated in the categories of: Best Actor (Bogart); Best Supporting Actor (Rains); Best Cinematography; Black-and-White, Best Film Editing; and Best Score (Max Steiner).

Clip – La Marseillaise – just one of the many great emotional moments in the film

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Posted in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, Movie Reviews

In a Lonely Place (1950)

Posted on July 28, 2014 | 3 comments

In a Lonely Place
Directed by Nicholas Ray
Written by Andrew Solt and Edmund H. North from a story by Dorothy B. Hughes
1950/USA
Columbia Pictures Corporation/Santana Pictures Corporation
Repeat viewing/Amazon Instant Video
#242 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Dixon Steele: I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.[/box]

This is one of the must-see movies in the film noir canon,with one of the all-time great screenplays and a career performance by Humphrey Bogart – a classic of American cinema.

Dixon Steele (Bogart) is a genius screen writer with a bit of a drinking problem and a hair-trigger temper. His first instinct when he gets angry is to slug someone. He hasn’t written any hits since returning from the war, which has evidently scarred him in some way. His agent has gotten him a commission to adapt a pot-boiler novel for the screen.

After displaying his character traits by getting into a brawl with a jerk at his favorite bar/restaurant , Dix asks air-head cigarette girl Mildred, who has read the book, to tell him the story at his apartment. The star-struck lass agrees, breaking a date with her steady to do so. They run into Dix’s new neighbor Laurel (Gloria Grahame) when they get to the complex. Mildred stays for awhile, relating the truly vapid plot, and Dix sends her off with $20 to the nearest taxi stand.

Mildred is found suffocated and dumped in a gully. Dix’s wartime buddy Brub Nicolay (Frank Lovejoy) just happens to be working as a detective in the homicide bureau and comes to bring Dix, the prime suspect in to Headquarters. Dix is amazingly flippant about the whole affair. Laurel, who saw Mildred arrive and depart the apartment, is called in later to establish his alibi.

Dix and Laurel are immediately attracted. The lonely Dix feels that he has at last met his match and they fall deeply in love. Laurel inspires him to get back to work on his writing. Dix is thinking marriage. Sadly, however, love does nothing to change Dix’s volatile nature and the tension surrounding the investigation causes him to lash out more than usual. Various incidents begin to trouble Laurel so much that she begins to think he might be guilty of the murder. When Dix insists on an early elopement, Laurel has a heartbreaking decison to make.

I feel so much pity for the characters in this movie. Bogart, with his sad eyes, is absolutely convincing as a witty and sensitive man with a huge character flaw that seems beyond his control. Gloria Grahame is heartbreaking as Laurel, who I think makes the only sane decision a woman could despite loving all the better parts of Dix.

The screenplay is by turns witty and satiric and incredibly moving. The movie also looks gorgeous. The pathos is heightened by the George Antheil score. Absolutely recommended.

Trailer – cinematography by Burnett Guffey

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Posted in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, 1950, Movie Reviews

The Reckless Moment (1949)

Posted on July 28, 2014 | Leave a comment

The Reckless Moment
Directed by Max Ophüls
Written by Mel Dinelli, Sidney Garson, et al from the Ladies Home Journal story “The Blank Wall”
1949/USA
Columbia Pictures Corporation
First viewing/Korean import DVD
#226 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Martin: Hell is other people…[/box]

The List introduced me to this film and for that I am grateful.

Lucia Harper’s (Joan Bennett) husband is in Berlin at Christmas and she is left to head the household of her father, seventeen-year old daughter Bea and younger sons. They are a respectable, tight-knit middle class family. Clearly Lucia is not used to making important decisions on her own nor does she want to bother her husband. Her daughter has taken up with a much older man, Ted Darby and Joan feels she must break it off. She confronts the man and he offers to stop seeing Bea in exchange for a pay-off. Instead, Lucia goes home and tells Bea what Ted said. Bea meets him, they argue, and Bea pushes him, causing him to hit his head on an anchor and, unbeknownst to her, killing him.

In the morning, Lucia finds the corpse. In her panic, she takes the body out to sea in a motor boat (they live in Balboa) and sinks it with the anchor. The body is soon discovered. Then bad guy Nagel, an associate of the deceased, gets his hands on Bea’s love letters to Ted and sends his buddy Martin Donnelly (James Mason) to threaten Lucia that they will go to the police with the letters unless she pays them $5,000 more or less immediately.

But Lucia doesn’t have the money and can’t think of a way to get it without involving her husband, which she still is unwilling to do. Fortunately for her, Martin develops an affection for her. Now they are both in great danger from the ruthless Nagel.

So far I have found Ophül’s American films a mixed bag but I really liked this one. The acting is first rate and the story is interesting and beautifully filmed. This part was totally against type for the usually seductive Bennett and she was excellent in it. Mason is Mason. I don’t think I have seen him with a bit of an Irish brogue in his accent before.

I have to admit I was frustrated with the ending, however. I felt like a certain undeserving party got let off the hook too easily. Maybe I should have worked for the Hayes office! Actually, I don’t know how they got away with this in 1949.

Fan trailer – montage of clips and stills (spoilers)

Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

Posted on July 27, 2014 | 3 comments

Kiss Me Deadly
Directed by Robert Aldrich
Written by A.I. Bezzerides based on the novel by Mickey Spillane
1955/USA
Parklane Pictures Inc.
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#308 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Velda: You want to avenge the death of your dear friend. How touching. How sweet. How nicely it justifies your quest for the great whatsit.[/box]

I still don’t exactly understand how the conspiracy was supposed to work here but it doesn’t matter much anyway. Style is the thing and this move is full to over-flowing with it.

Tough-guy private eye Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) is driving down a lonely road in his ultra-cool convertible at night when he is waved down by a frantic blonde, Christine (Cloris Leachman in her big-screen debut). She takes one look at the car and has Mike’s number “You have only one real lasting love – you.” Christine is clearly terrified. She has just escaped from an asylum and is naked under her coat. She tells Mike to forget her if he is able to deliver her to her bus stop. If not she pleads, “Remember me.”

They do not make it to the bus stop. The car is waylaid by some mysterious men and the two are taken to a secret location where they are evidently pumped full of drugs. Mike has hazy, hallucinatory dreams. When the men are through with them they take the car and push it off a cliff. Christine dies but Mike survives and wakens from a coma to the ministrations of his secretary/lover Velda and the unwanted attentions of Lt. Murphy, who takes away Mike’s P.I. license and gun permit.

Mike decides that, if Christine knew something, it must be valuable and, ignoring his lack of official sanction, investigates it. He meets many shady characters and witnesses throughout the very convoluted plot. Suffice it to say that he comes to blows with most of them and tortures the rest. The exception is Christine’s roommate Lily, who is afraid of a similar fate. To her he gives shelter. Otherwise, the mayhem continues until the spectacular climax that closes the film. With Albert Dekker and Jack Elam as bad guys and Percy Hilton as a pathologist.

As an exercise in pure B-movie style with all the stops pulled out, this is hard to beat. It was hard to select stills. They are all so awesome. But they don’t fully capture the visual artistry of the film with its crazy angles and roaming camera. The dialogue is a pulpy delight and the delivery of the actors matches it perfectly. I imagine that Godard and Tarantino got a lot of inspiration from this one. Highly recommended for those that like this kind of thing.

Trailer – cinematography by Ernest Lazlo

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Posted in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, Noir Month

Tagged film noir

Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

Posted on July 19, 2014 | 4 comments

Sweet Smell of Success
Directed by Alexander Mackendrick
Written by Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman from a novella by Ernest Lehman
1957/USA
Norma-Curtleigh Productions/Hill-Hecht-Lancaster Productions
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#341 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Sidney Falco: If I’m gonna go out on a limb for you, I gotta know what’s involved!
J.J. Hunsecker: My right hand hasn’t seen my left hand in thirty years.

This is in the top 50 of my non-existent 100 Greatest Films list. It has everything – a brilliant screenplay, unforgettable performances, and exquisite cinematography of the shiny night streets of New York City.

Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) is a press agent who lives to get items about his clients into J.J. Hunsecker’s (Burt Lancaster) gossip column. He is a dynamo of ambition who will lie, cheat, steal, and humiliate himself to achieve his goals. Sidney even goes so low as to pimp his date (Barbara Nichols) to get what he wants.

sweet smell of success 3

As the story starts, J. J. is punishing Sidney for failing to break up a romance between his sister Susan (Susan Harrison) and the squarest jazz guitarist on the face of the earth, Steve Dallas (Martin Milner). J.J.’s possessiveness of his sister is of epic proportions, bordering on the sexual. When Sidney discovers that Susan has agreed to marry the musician, J.S. gives him a second chance to do his dirty work. With Sam Levene as Dallas’s agent and Emile Meyer as a crooked cop.

Often I find Odets’s screenplays to be stagy or preachy but this one works perfectly. It might just be the most quotable movie ever made. The film is savage in its indictment of the press run amok and ruthless ambition but so enjoyable on so many levels that the medicine goes down painlessly. The performances are spot-on. Curtis was never better and Lancaster shows previously unexplored talents in slinging barbs. New York is a dark and glittering jewel in James Wong Howe’s capable hands and Elmer Bernstein’s jazz score adds to the atmosphere. Must-see viewing.

Astoundingly, Sweet Smell of Success did poorly at the box office and was totally snubbed by the Academy.

Trailer – cinematography by James Wong Howe

John Landis on Sweet Smell of Success – Trailers from Hell

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Posted in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, 1957, Noir Month

The Killers (1946)

Posted on July 18, 2014 | 2 comments

The Killers
Directed by Robert Siodmak
Written by Anthony Veiller from a story by Ernest Hemingway
1946/USA
Mark Hellinger Productions/Universal Pictures
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#198 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Jim Reardon: She took a powder. The dough went with her.[/box]

This classic is everything a film noir should be from its doomed hero and femme fatale to its fabulous chiaroscuro cinematography and hard-bitten dialogue.

A couple of thugs (William Conrad and Charles McGraw) invade a small town diner and terrorize its occupants, announcing that they are waiting to kill “The Swede” (Burt Lancaster), an attendant at the local gas station. When he does not show up for dinner, they release their hostages and customer Nick Adams runs out to warn his friend of the killers’ arrival. But he is content to patiently wait out his demise as if he deserved it, saying only that he “did something wrong – once”, a phrase that could be the motto for many a noir hero with a Past.

Insurance man Jim Reardon (Edmond O’Brien) comes to town to investigate the circumstances of death in connection with the Swede’s life insurance policy and is intrigued by the story. He probes further and we slowly learn through flashbacks connected to the people he interviews just how the Swede was double-crossed by the lady he loved, one Kitty Collins (Ava Gardner). Reardon is allowed to stay on the case when he finds that the Swede’s sad story may lead him to the $250,000 proceeds of a payroll robbery. With Albert Dekker as the ringleader of the robbers and Sam Levene as a police detective.

Anyone who wanted a lesson in film noir style could start with a triple bill of Double Indemnity, Out of the Past, and this film, all of which are must-see viewing. I am particularly fond of the opening diner scene in this movie. That dialogue seems to be lifted intact from the Hemingway story and could not be bettered.

The Killers was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories: Best Director; Best Writing, Screenplay; Best Film Editing; and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture (Miklós Rósza). How it missed out on Best Cinematography, Black and White is beyond me.