Category Archives: 1944

The Woman in the Window
Directed by Fritz Lang
Written by Nunnally Johnson from a novel by J.H. Wallis
1944/USA
Christie Corporation/International Pictures
Repeat viewing/TGG Direct DVD

[box] Richard Wanley: The streets were dark with something more than night.[/box]

What idiot decided to colorize a great film noir?

Stuffy, mild-mannered psychology professor Richard Wanley (Edward G. Robinson) sees his wife and children off for a long summer holiday in the country while he remains in the city to work.  His attention is suddenly struck by the portrait of a beautiful brunette in a gallery window.  His buddies, including D.A. Frank Lalor (Raymond Massey), comment that she is their dream girl.

After one drink too many, Wanley leaves his club and takes another look at the nearby portrait.  A face remarkably resembling the girl in the picture appears in the glass.  It is Alice Reed (Joan Bennett) who says she was the model.  She is clearly no better than she should be and basically asks him to take her for a drink and then up to her apartment “to see other paintings by the same artist.” There, the pair’s friendly chat over more drinks is interrupted by a gentleman caller.  He is enraged by jealousy and attempts to strangle Wanley with his bare hands.  Alice hands Wanley a knife to defend himself with.  They are left with a corpse on their hands.

Neither Wanley or Alice wants to go to the police so they take some mighty ill-advised measures to try to cover their tracks.  Then a blackmailer (Dan Duryea) comes along to muddy the waters.

I couldn’t easily find this film from my usual sources so when I saw a double-feature DVD (with The Stranger) on sale at Amazon for $5.38 I jumped at it.  I should have looked before I leapt.  I could hardly stand to keep my eyes on the screen of this colorized nightmare.  Of course Robinson, Bennett, and Duryea can’t help but be good in any color. The only downside to this film is the terrible Hayes-code inspired ending, which I will not spoil here except to say that the ending makes this film work best on its first viewing.

The Woman in the Window was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Music, Original Score.

trailer

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
Directed by Mervyn LeRoy
Written by Dalton Trumbo based on the book by Ted W. Lawson and Robert Consodine
1944/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Lt. Ted Lawson: And out there is Japan. My mother had a Jap gardener once. He seemed like a nice little guy.

Lt. Bob Gray: You know I don’t hate Japs yet. It’s a funny thing. I don’t like them, but I don’t hate them.

Lt. Ted Lawson: I guess, I don’t either. You get kind of mixed up.[/box]

This story of the 1942 Doolittle Raid bombing over Tokyo made for appropriate Veteran’s Day viewing but is hardly distinguishable from other combat pictures of the war years.  It doesn’t help that Air Force (1943) covered the same ground.

The plot is drawn from the factual account of the mission by one of its pilots.  Lt. Col. James Doolittle (Spencer Tracy) advocates bombing the Japanese home islands early in 1942, long before an invasion could even be contemplated, in order to bolster U.S. morale and divert Japanese fighters back to Japan.  He calls for volunteers for the ultrasecret mission.  Among these is newlywed pilot Ted Lawson (Van Johnson).  His faithful, adoring wife Ellen (Phyllis Thaxter) is expecting their first baby.  The first part of the story details the rigorous training of the crews Stateside for the specialized flying required by the dodgy logistics for the raid.

We get some pretty spectacular but brief footage of the raid.  The story then continues in China where Lawson and his crew are severely injured when their bomber crashes on the coast en route to safe haven in the interior.  Kindly Chinese attempt to care for the men with the few resources at their disposal.  With Robert Walker as the bombardier on Lawson’s crew and Robert Mitchum in a small role as another flyer.

The scenario has become routine to me by now.  At least they didn’t kill off Walker shortly after he pulled out his sweetheart’s picture!  Thaxter’s acting talents are wasted in the vapid romance during the first half of the film.  I thought part in China was more interesting.  Don’t watch this just to see Tracy as he has a relatively small role.  The protagonist is definitely Johnson.

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo won the Oscar for Best Effects, Special Effects.  It was also nominated for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (Robert Surtees and Harold Rossen).

Trailer

Arsenic and Old Lace
Directed by Frank Capra
Written by Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein from the play by Joseph Kesselring
1944/USA
Warner Bros.
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Abby Brewster: Now, Mortimer, you know all about it and just forget about it. I do think that Aunt Martha and I have the right to our own little secrets.[/box]

I hate to say it but Cary Grant is way too frenetic for my tastes in this wacky comedy.  The supporting players are superb, however, and all in all its a good time.

Mortimer Brewster (Grant) is a drama critic and has also written a couple of books ranting against marriage.  So it’s slightly embarrassing when he falls in love with the girl (Priscilla Lane) who lives next door to the two maiden aunts who raised him, Martha (Jean Adair) and Abby (Josephine Hull).  His Uncle Teddy (John Alexander) lives with the sisters and believes himself to be Teddy Roosevelt, frequently charging up “San Juan Hill” (the stairs), trumpet in hand, yelling “Charge!”  It’s a kooky family, but harmless, except for the insane psychopath Jonathan who left home years before.  Martha and Abby are sweet old ladies, known for their good works, and the favorites of the cops who walk the beat in their neighborhood.

Mortimer gets married on Halloween and returns home for a brief celebration.  Then all hell breaks loose.  He discovers a body in the window seat and learns that his aunts have been providing a service to elderly lonely hearts, a sort of mercy killing without any premonitions of death to mar the proceedings.  While Mortimer is coping with this new information, brother Jonathan (Raymond Massey) suddenly reappears with a body of his own to dispose of.  He also plans to use the basement for some repair work by drunken plastic surgeon Dr. Einstein (Peter Lorre), who botched his previous effort at disguising Jonathan’s face by making him look quite a lot like Frankenstein’s monster.  It gets zanier and zanier after that.  With Jack Carson as a policeman who writes bad plays on the side and Edward Everett Horton as the owner of an asylum.

Many in the cast were veterans of the long-running Broadway play and have their parts down cold.  I particularly like Massey and Lorre.  Lorre should have done more comedy.  His timing is great.  Grant overdoes it quite a lot I think, to an almost hysterical level.  I wonder that Capra didn’t calm him down but maybe this was what the director was looking for.

The movie was actually shot in late 1941 and early 1942 before Capra started his work with the Signal Corps.  Warners was contractually obligated to withhold release until the Broadway plan ended its run.  The producers of the play also refused to release Boris Karloff, who played Jonathan on stage, to work on the film.  I would have given anything to see Karloff in the part.

Trailer

Lifeboat
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
By John Steinbeck, Screenplay by Jo Swerling
1944/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Gus Smith: A guy can’t help being a German if he’s born a German, can he?

John Kovac: [referring to Willie] Neither can a snake help being a rattlesnake if he’s born a rattlesnake! That don’t make him a nightingale! Get him out of here![/box]

Hitchcock made other one-set movies but none as restrictive as this story of nine people floating at sea on a lifeboat.  No one could have done more to keep the action moving but this lacks enough scope to be counted among the Master’s greatest works.

After their freighter is torpedoed a motley cross-section of humanity is stranded on a lifeboat.  The people range from an industrial tycoon (Henry Hull) and a Connie, a ritzy journalist (Tallulah Bankhead) through several crew members (William Bendix, Hume Cronyn, Canada Lee, and John Hodiak) to a nurse and a young mother carrying a dead baby.  Into this volatile mix comes Willy (Walter Slezak), a German survivor of the sinking of the submarine that torpedoed the ship.  The German clearly has a more advanced knowledge of navigation and the others squabble over whether he can be trusted or should even be fed from their scant supplies.  Connie, already unpopular due to her snooty ways, is the only member of the Allied group that can communicate with Willy in his own language.  The situation goes from bad to worse as food and water begin to run out.

I like but don’t love Lifeboat.  The acting is the big plus.  Talullah Bankhead, despite her notorious picadillos on the set, is excellent.  I believe this is the only movie I have seen her in.  I like Slezak more and more each time I see him.  He makes a nasty but affable Nazi. The problem I have is that it’s impossible believe that Connie could have presented herself perfectly groomed and toting a well-stocked handbag and a typewriter into this situation.  Hitchcock had to resort to other lapses of logic to keep his story moving. There’s a bit more propaganda than might have been called for as well.

Lifeboat was nominated for Academy Awards in the following categories:  Best Director; Best Writing, Original Story; and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (Glen MacWilliams).  I’m surprised it didn’t get a nod for its special effects.

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

Clip – “The Lord is my Shepard”

Hail the Conquering Hero
Written and directed by Preston Sturges
1944/USA
Paramount Pictures
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith: I knew the Marines could do almost anything, but I never knew they could do anything like this.

Bugsy: You got no idea! [/box]

Eddie Bracken manages to salvage a shred of his dignity in another madcap wartime comedy from writer-director Sturges.

Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith (Bracken) comes from a long line of Marines including a father who died in battle shortly after he was born.  So Woodrow was devastated when he was discharged from the Marines after only one month for chronic hayfever.  He went to work in a shipyard to hide his shame from his mother.  Woodrow is drowning his sorrows in a bar when six marines drop in, having lost all their money gambling.  He treats them to a round of drinks and tells his sad story.   Sgt. Heppelfinger (William Demerest) gets a brilliant idea to call Woodrow’s mother and tell her he has been discharged for injuries suffered on Guadalcanal.

Woodrow reluctantly returns to his small town with the Marines in tow.  Nobody counted on a mother’s pride and Woodrow is appalled with his huge reception at the station.  All the big wigs have come out to make speeches, three different bands are playing, often at the same time, and Woodrow’s ex-girlfriend Libby (Ella Raines) is there to greet him with a kiss.  The Marines are delighted with this and keep building up Woody’s achievements, over his strenous objections, to the point where he is drafted as the reform candidate for mayor.

It was perhaps a mistake to watch this and The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek back-to-back. Hail the Conquering Hero is funny with some pointed satire of American politics but does not quite reach the heights of hilarity of the other film for me.  Maybe it is the comparative lack of slapstick or the very slightly more serious theme.  Bracken does quite well without a stutter and with a little more oomph than he had as Norval Jones.  (I just notice the man has no forehead or chin!)  I liked the orphan soldier who was so solicitous of Woodrow’s mother’s feelings.   Raines was quite OK but plays her character as a conventional ingenue.

Preston Sturges was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Screenplay for Hail the Conquering Hero, making two nominations in the same category for Sturges in 1944.  The other was for the screenplay of The Miracle on Morgan’s Creek.

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