Category Archives: 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

High Sierra
Directed by Raoul Walsh
Written by John Huston and W.R. Burnett based on a novel by W.R. Burnett
1941/USA
Warner Bros.
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#154 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Roy Earle: Of all the 14 karat saps… starting out on a caper with a woman and a dog.[/box]

Humphrey Bogart, while still a gangster, was given an opportunity to show his true range and the rest is history.  For me, this is a genius portrayal in a pretty iffy story.

Roy Earle (Bogart) is given an early parole from prison and goes immediately to the side of an associate who wants him to organize a jewel heist.  He goes to the Sierra cabin of the men who have been chosen to help him, Red and Babe  (Arthur Kennedy and Alan Curtis) and Babe’s girlfriend Marie (Ida Lupino).  There’s also the dog Pard who has seen every person he has gotten close to die.  Somewhat unwillingly, Earle acquires Pard and Marie, who exhibits a kind of dog-like devotion.

In the meantime, Earle had first saved an impoverished family from a car accident and then on their improbable re-acquaintance helps them out financially.  “Pa” (Henry Travers) is deeply grateful and treats Earle like some kind of royalty.  He falls hopelessly in love with crippled granddaughter Velma (Joan Leslie), despite a warning that she is love with someone from back home, and stakes her to an operation to fix her club foot.

This being 1941, everything that possibly can go wrong for Earle does go wrong and he ends up holed up on a mountain ledge basically waiting for the cops to shoot him down.

The story has a definite noir flavor with its doomed anti-hero and femme fatale but has way too many coincidences for my taste.  This is not to sell short Bogart’s fine performance which gives the hardened convict he plays a kind of desperation and pathos that makes him deeply sympathetic.  This was the last time he would receive second billing (under Lupino).

Trailer

Sergeant York
Directed by Howard Hawks
Written by Abem Finkel, Harry Chandlee et al based on the diary of Alvin C. York
1941/USA
Warner Bros.
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#151 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Alvin: What we done in France, we had to do. And some as done it, didn’t come back, and that kind of thing ain’t for buying and selling.[/box]

The biography of the great World War  I hero manages to be individual and broadly patriotic at the same time.

Alvin C. York (Gary Cooper) was a hard-drinking hard-working troublemaker in the Tennessee hills until his religious conversion.  Even when liquored up, he is an expert sharpshooter.  Soon after his conversion, he is drafted.  Alvin believes that killing is against the Bible and applies for conscientious objector status with the help of his pastor (Walter Brennan).  His application is turned down because he does not belong to an organized religion with a traditional objection to war.  He obediently reports for basic training.  He is gradually convinced to go into combat and finally to kill numerous Germans in the Battle of the Argone forest and take many more prisoner almost single-handed.  With Margaret Wycherly as Mother York, Joan Leslie as the love of his life and George Tobias, Ward Bond, Noah Beery Jr., and Howard Da Silva in character parts.

This movie has some wonderful performances, most notably that of Gary Cooper, for which the part seems to have been written.  It plays on both Cooper’s shy boyish charm and tough masculinity.

The DVD I rented had an excellent commentary.  According to this, the film was a key target in the Senate investigation of whether Hollywood was producing films to involve the United States in World War II before the attack on Pearl Harbor.  Warner Bros. was strongly in favor of American involvement in the war and the film, in fact, was seen as a way to stir up support.  However, Warners could also honestly tell the subcommittee  that it was an absolutely true story of one man.  The film went on to become the highest grossing film of 1941 and one of the highest grossing films of all time in 1941 dollars.

Gary Cooper won the Oscar for Best Actor for this film and William Holmes won for Best Film Editing.   Sergeant York was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Walter Brennan), Best Supporting Actress (Margaret Wycherly), Best Original Screenplay, Best Black-and-White Cinematography (Sol Polito), Best Black-and-White Art Direction, Best Sound Recording; and Best Scoring of a Dramatic Picture (Max Steiner).  Incredibly, this was Hawkes’s only nomination for an Oscar.

Re-release trailer

How Green Was My Valley
Directed by John Ford
Written by Philip Dunne based on the novel by Richard Llewellyn
1941/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#155 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Huw Morgan: [narrating] Men like my father cannot die. They are with me still, real in memory as they were in flesh, loving and beloved forever. How green was my valley then.[/box]

This is the film that famously trounced Citizen Kane at the 1942 Oscar ceremony.  There is no denying its beauty.

Huw Morgan (Roddy McDowall) looks back through the eyes of age at his childhood home in a Welsh coal-mining village and how a traditional way of life gradually fell apart. Gwyilm Morgan (Donald Crisp) and his wife (Sara Allgood) have a brood of six children – five boys and daughter Angharad (Maureen O’Hara).  Huw is much the youngest.  Gwylim and all the older boys work in the coal mine.  As the story begins, the eldest son weds Bronwyn (Anna Lee) and Huw becomes devoted to her.

Angharad loves the local preacher Mr. Gruffyd (Walter Pidgeon) from afar.  Her great beauty attracts the son of the local mine owner.  In desperation, she reveals her love to the minister, who obviously loves her too, but inexplicably he rejects her and she is doomed to a loveless marriage.

Meanwhile, the coal economy strains the family to the breaking point.  The sons become union men in defiance of their father and move out.  Then they are gradually forced to emigrate by diminishing wages and firings.  Huw eventually goes to work in the mine at a heartbreakingly young age.  Mine disasters plague the village.  But despite everything, humor and love ties everything and everyone together in the end.  With Barry Fitzgerald and Arthur Shields.

This is a spectacular looking film.  The landscapes and textures are brilliantly composed and shot.  Most of the acting is first-rate and Roddy McDowell gives one of the best performances ever by a child actor.  The thing that mars the movie for me is the discordant presence of the pedantic and boring Walter Pidgeon at its center.  His character is self-righteous in the extreme and rubs me the wrong way throughout.  It’s a shame because I know he is meant to be sympathetic.

How Green Was My Valley won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Donald Crisp), Best Black-and-White Cinematography (Arthur C. Miller), and Best Black-and-White Art Direction.  It was nominated for Best Supporting Actress (Sara Allgood), Best Screenplay, Best Sound Recording, Best Film Editing and Best Scoring of a Dramatic Picture (Alfred Newman).

Trailer

Citizen Kane
Directed by Orson Welles
Written by Orson Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz
1941/USA
RKO Radio Pictures
Repeat viewing/Warner Home Video Special Edition DVD
#150 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Leland: That’s all he ever wanted out of life… was love. That’s the tragedy of Charles Foster Kane. You see, he just didn’t have any to give.[/box]

What do you say about “The Greatest Movie Ever Made”?

If you are reading this you already know the plot.  Charles Foster Kane is sent away from his parents at a tender age to be raised in the lap of luxury and spends the rest of his life trying to find love.  His overbearing personality and neediness make this virtually impossible.  Although he becomes an opinion leader and Great Man, he is ultimately unsuccessful at attaining his goal through his media empire, political career, or two marriages.

The story is told through the device of sending an inquiring reporter out to interview people who knew Kane to find out the meaning of his last word “Rosebud”.  After a mock newsreel obituary summarizing Kane’s life, we see episodes as non-consecutive flashbacks through the eyes of various people being interviewed.   The film represented the screen debuts of many actors in Welles’s Mercury Theater company:  Welles himself; Joseph Cotten; Agnes Moorhead; Everett Sloane; and Ruth Warrick, among others.  Also with Dorothy Comingore as Welle’s second wife, George Coulouris as his banker guardian; and Ray Collins as his political rival.

Before I revisited the film,  I listened again to Roger Ebert’s fantastic commentary track and more personal one by Peter Bogdanovich, who was a friend of Welles’ before his death.  The Ebert commentary points out all the special effects tricks and innovations in cinematography involved in making the film.  For example, deep focus photography did not capture the above shot.  Two separate images were made and combined using an optical printer.

Citizen Kane had a comparatively low budget.  Many of the lavish scenes at Xanadu were basically put together using smoke and mirrors.  Rooms were decorated with a few pieces of furniture and lavish use of matte painting.  The above shot shows how a hallway was made with matte paintings and live actors.

Citizen Kane remains an ever-fresh and exuberant look at what happens when a boy genius is given free-reign over all the contents of a huge magic kit.  It is not my best-loved movie by far but I don’t have any problem with its status as “The Greatest Movie Ever Made”.

Welles and Mankiewicz won an Academy Award for their screenplay.  Citizen Kane was nominated in the following categories:  Best Picture; Best Director; Best Actor (Welles); Best Black-and-White Cinematography; Best Black-and-White Art Direction-Interior Decoration; Best Sound Recording; Best Film Editing; and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic Picture (Bernard Herrmann).  I think Gregg Toland was robbed.

Original Trailer

The Lady Eve
Written and Directed by Preston Sturges
1941/USA
Paramount Pictures
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#152 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Jean Harrington: You see, Hopsi, you don’t know very much about girls. The best ones aren’t as good as you probably think they are and the bad ones aren’t as bad. Not nearly as bad.[/box]

And Preston Sturges knocks a romantic comedy out of the park!

Charles Pike (Henry Fonda), known to his friends as Hopsi, is the heir to a vast ale fortune but it more interested in snakes than in beer.  He has been on a scientific expedition up the Amazon for a year.  When he boards the ship for home, he meets Jean Harrington (Barbara Stanwyck).  She is one of a trio of card sharks preying on rubes and immediately spots the naive Hopsi as one of them.  She seduces him to soften him up but is surprised to find herself falling in love.  The feeling is mutual.

When Hopsi gets evidence that Jean is a con artist he immediately dumps her without giving her a chance to explain.  She gets her revenge by showing up at Hopsi’s house disguised as Lady Eve Sidwich and seducing him all over again.  With the great Eugene Pallette as Hopsi’s father, Charles Coburn as Jean’s father, and William Demerest as Hopsi’s bodyguard/nanny.

I have watched this movie so many times that it is hard to talk about it.  What I know is that each time when the credits roll I get a warm feeling and spend the entire rest of the film grinning.  Barbara Stanwyck is at the absolute height of her beauty at age 34 and very funny.  And who knew Henry Fonda would be such a master at pratfalls!  He really was very multi-faceted for a “movie star.”  Needless to say, the dialogue kills me.

Trailer

Sullivan’s Travels
Written and Directed by Preston Sturges
1941/USA
Paramount Pictures
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#156 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] John L. Sullivan: I want this picture to be a commentary on modern conditions. Stark realism. The problems that confront the average man!

LeBrand: But with a little sex in it.[/box]

Hollywood made many good movies about making movies and this is one of the very best.

Given the state of world affairs, director John L. Sullivan is fed up with making comedies and decides to make a socially relevant film about the downtrodden called Oh, Brother Where Art Thou.  Studio executives, not wanting to lose their cash cow, point out that Sullivan knows nothing about the poor or their problems.  He recognizes the justice of this and sets off in picturesque hobo rags looking for trouble.  At first, due to the ever vigilant studio watch dogs, all he finds is his way back to Hollywood where he meets a struggling would-be actress (Veronica Lake) to share his journey.  When Sullivan sets out alone on his farewell venture to give money to the poor, however, he finds all the trouble he could ask for and much more.  With the regular Sturges stock company including William Demerest as a press agent, Eric Blore as Sullivan’s valet, Robert Grieg as his butler, and Jimmy Conlin as a prison trustee.

I adore Preston Sturges, Joel McCrea, and this movie.  It is more serious than most of Sturges’ comedies so it took me more than one viewing to fully warm up to it but now my admiration is unreserved.  Even the dead-pan Veronica Lake warms up a bit and gives probably her best performance.  This film has it all: razor-sharp dialogue; hilarious slapstick; romance; pathos; and a message.  It is truly a picture that should be on everyone’s bucket list.

Trailer

Dance, Girl, Dance
Directed by Dorothy Azner
Written by Tess Seslinger, Frank Davis, and Vicki Baum
1940/USA
RKO Radio Pictures
First viewing/Netflix rental
#149 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Judy O’Brien: Go on, laugh, get your money’s worth. No-one’s going to hurt you. I know you want me to tear my clothes off so you can look your fifty cents’ worth. Fifty cents for the privilege of staring at a girl the way your wives won’t let you. What do you suppose we think of you up here with your silly smirks your mothers would be ashamed of? We know it’d the thing of the moment for the dress suits to come and laugh at us too. We’d laugh right back at the lot of you, only we’re paid to let you sit there and roll your eyes and make your screamingly clever remarks. What’s it for? So you can go home when the show’s over, strut before your wives and sweethearts and play at being the stronger sex for a minute? I’m sure they see through you. I’m sure they see through you just like we do![/box]

I liked this movie but don’t exactly know if belongs in the “must-see” category.  Certainly the work of a pioneering woman director should not be forgotten, however.

“Bubbles” (Lucille Ball) and Judy O’Brien (Maureen O’Hara) are dancers in Madame Lydia Basilova’s (Maria Ouspenskaya) troupe.  The troupe falls on hard times and the girls are left to their own devices.  “Bubbles” easily gets work based on her sex appeal and willingness to flaunt it.  The more timid and “classy” Judy struggles.  Finally “Bubbles” becomes a burlesque star under the moniker Tiger Lily White.  She gets Judy a break performing a “classy” ballet number in the show mainly to get the crowd yelling for more Tiger Lily.

In the meantime, Judy develops a crush on soon-to-be-divorced Jimmy Hayward (Louis Hayward).  Hayward is gun-shy however and Judy’s blue eyes remind him too much of his ex-wife’s (Virginia Field) so he usually ends up in the arms of Bubbles.  The conflict builds up to a memorable cat fight.  With Ralph Bellamy as a ballet impresario.

This is an all-around solid picture with a little bit of commentary about the objectivization of women.  Of course, it being 1940, the whole thing needs to resolve into a battle over a man, and a drunk at that.  You would never catch me in a fight over the affections of Louis Hayward but that is neither here nor there.  Even here, you could see why Lucille Ball made it big as a comedienne.  She is a kick in the pants.

I had not known Maureen O’Hara could dance,  She does some very graceful footwork.

Clip – Hula audition