Category Archives: 1945

The Seventh Veil (1945)

The Seventh Veil
Directed by Compton Bennett
Written by Muriel and Sydney Box
1945/UK
Ortus Films/Sydney Box Productions
First viewing/YouTube

 

[box] The attraction of the virtuoso for the audience is very like that of the circus for the crowd. There is always the hope that something dangerous will happen. — Claude Debussy[/box]

I hate when a man’s cruelty and abuse is portrayed as disguising untold love in movies. Despite this, and my general distaste for psychoanalytic stories, I found myself absorbed in this film.  James Mason and Ann Todd were the principal reasons.

The film is told in flashback after a young woman’s suicide attempt and subsequent catatonia.  We learn that she was a famous concert pianist before her hospitalization.  Psychiatrist Dr. Larsen (Herbert Lom) gets her talking through hypnosis.

Francesca (Todd) was fourteen and living at boarding school when she applied for a scholarship to a music conservatory.  Unfortunately, she had just been caned on the hands for disobedience and failed the audition.  Her parents die shortly thereafter and she is sent to live with her only living relative, second-cousin Nicholas (Mason).  Nicholas is a confirmed bachelor and is none to happy to have Francesca around.  Then Francesca plays the piano for him and he has a new passion – making her a virtuoso.  He sends her to music college.

At college, Francesca falls in love with a swing band leader and wants to marry him.  But Nicholas snatches her off to Paris where he completes her training, makes her a star, and controls every aspect of her existence.  Finally, after seven years, they return to London. There, he hires a painter to paint Francesca’s portrait.  When the painter and Francesca fall in love, Nicholas, no longer able to force Francesca to his will as her guardian, goes off the deep end.  As a result, so does Francesca.  It is up to Dr. Larsen to save the day.

My plot summary does not do justice to how really cruel Nicholas is to Francesca.  The resolution of this film just drove me nuts.  Ditto for how two sessions of hypnosis and listening to a couple of records are just the cure for suicidal depression and anxiety amounting almost to phobia.  Nonetheless, Mason is mesmerizing and Todd is very, very good (although I kept imagining Joan Fontaine in the part).  It kept my attention throughout.  Recommended if the story appeals at all.

The Seventh Veil won the Oscar for Best Writing, Original Screenplay.

Trailer

Vacation from Marriage (1945)

Vacation from Marriage (AKA “Perfect Strangers”)
Directed by Alexander Korda
Written by Clemence Dane and Anthony Pelissier
1945/UK
London Film Productions/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer British Studios
First viewing/Amazon Instant Video

 

 

[box] Proverbs often contradict one another, as any reader soon discovers. The sagacity that advises us to look before we leap promptly warns us that if we hesitate we are lost; that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but out of sight, out of mind. — Leo Rosten[/box]

Just when I think that a year has no more treasures to offer along comes a hidden gem that makes it all worthwhile.

Robert Wilson (Robert Donat) is a mild-mannered clerk in The City of London who runs his life on a strict timetable.  Wife Cathy (Deborah Kerr) has a perpetual cold and fusses over him constantly.  Then, Robert is called up to the British Navy.  After a few initial rough spots, he finds he likes it.  The exercise and shaving off his mustache make him look years younger.  He even asks a nurse out dancing.

Robert has long forbidden Cathy to work.  With him gone, she decides to join the Womens Royal Naval Service (WRENS).  A kindly fellow WREN (Glynis Johns) takes her under her wing and gets her to start wearing make-up, also forbidden by Robert.  She starts falling for an officer.  One thing and another prevents Robert and Cathy from sharing a leave for three years.

When a meeting can finally be arranged, both are filled with trepidation.  Neither wants to go back to the life they had, yet expects the other to demand nothing less.  Their reunion reveals a lot – not only about who they are now but who they actually were to begin with.

I thought this was pretty great.  The dialogue sparkles, but in a most convincing way, and Donat and Kerr are magnificent.  I don’t know how they did it but Donat’s change in appearance was amazing.  This has one of the best ending lines ever, too.  The whole thing is set to a background of variations on “These Foolish Things”, which only makes it more romantic.  I imagine that the story resonated with a lot of couples at the end of the war.  Recommended.

Vacation from Marriage won the Oscar for Best Writing, Original Story.

Trailer

Anchors Aweigh (1945)

Anchors Aweigh
Directed by George Sidney
Written by Isobel Lennart suggested by a story by Natalie Marchin
1945/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Anchors Aweigh, my boys,/ Anchors Aweigh. Farewell to foreign shores,/ We sail at break of day-ay-ay-ay./ Through our last night ashore,/ Drink to the foam,/ Until we meet once more./ Here’s wishing you a happy voyage home.[/box]

Take out Gene Kelly’s dancing, and there’s not a whole lot left.  But what dancing!

Joe (Gene Kelly) and Clarence (Frank Sinatra) are awarded the Silver Star and four days leave in Los Angeles as the movie starts.  Seems that Joe rescued Clarence after a firefight in which both displayed conspicuous bravery.  Joe is the kind of sailor with a girl in every port and is anxious to hook up with his LA lady Lola.  Clarence, on the other hand, is shy around women and is looking for Joe to provide him with some leads and tips.  He figures that, since Joe saved his life Joe is responsible for him.

Joe can’t shake Clarence.  Then the two sailors get stuck seeing home a lost little boy (Dean Stockwell) who wants to join the navy.  The boy’s Aunt Susie turns out to be the girl of Clarence’s dreams.  She aspires to be a professional singer and Joe gets Clarence to promise her an audition for Jose Iturbe.  Complications ensue.

This is one of those musicals that feels more like a contrived way to showcase various talents than an integrated story.  Even if the plot did matter, though, it is fairly trite.  Kelly has three boffo numbers, Sinatra sings the Original Song nominee, Grayson trills through two, and Iturbi leads the orchestra in the title tune.    It all doesn’t add up to much in my opinion.

George Stoll won the Academy Award for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture.  Anchors Away was nominated for Oscars in the categories of Best Picture; Best Actor (Kelly); Best Cinematography, Color; and Best Music, Original Song (“I Fall in Love Too Easily” by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn).

Trailer

 

Objective, Burma! (1945)

Objective, Burma!Poster - Objective, Burma_03
Directed by Raoul Walsh
Written by Ranald MacDougall and Lester Cole; original story by Alvah Bessie
1945/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/Errol Flynn Adventures DVD

[box] Pvt. Nebraska Hooper: It’s sure peaceful so far.
Cpl. Gabby Gordon: That’s the way I like it… peaceful. I already said when I starved to death, I want it to be peaceful.[/box]

Raoul Walsh puts together some unusual and effective combat set pieces.  Otherwise, it’s routine Warner wartime material, including the ever-present George Tobias as the token Brooklynite.

Captain Nelson (Errol Flynn) is selected to head a force of paratroopers on an important mission into Japanese-held Burma to knock out a radar station.  Journalist Mark Williams (Henry Hull) insists on tagging along even though he is well along in middle age and inexperienced in such matters.  The affable Nelson agrees.

Things go swimmingly at first.  The men parachute in undetected and wipe out 30 Japanese and the radar station with no loss of life to themselves.  This looks like it will be a cakewalk.  The plane sent to retrieve them is getting ready to land when they detect a Japanese patrol looking for them.  The plane drops some supplies and returns to base.

Errol Flynn in Army Film

The men struggle to reach the next rendezvous point.  But by then the brass has decided that it is too dangerous to for a plane to land anywhere and orders the men to walk out through about 150 miles of jungle.  Finally, the orders are changed again and the men have to change direction away from the base and simply wait.  Then the radio is lost, supplies are exhausted, and Nelson and his men must get through on pure guts.

objective burma 5

The sequences with the dozens parachutes are beautiful and there is an ambush at night that is really striking.  Otherwise, I’ve seen a few too many combat movies now and this one was nothing special.  I always like Flynn but he seemed a little tired here.  On the other hand, my husband stayed awake throughout the entire thing, a rare tribute, and enjoyed it.

Objective, Burma! was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of:  Best Writing, Original Story; Best Film Editing; and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture (Franz Waxman).

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San Pietro (1945)

San Pietro (AKA “The Battle of San Pietro”) 
Directed by John Huston (uncredited)
Written by John Huston (uncredited)
1945/USA
U.S. Army Pictorial Services
Repeat viewing/Treasures from American Film Archives DVD
#190 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] War alone brings up to their highest tension all human energies and imposes the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to make it. — Benito Mussolini [/box]

The army got a whole lot more than it bargained for when it assigned John Huston to make this movie.

This is an account of the Battle of San Pietro Infine which was a major engagement from 8–17 December 1943 in the Italian Campaign of World War II involving Allied Forces attacking from the south against heavily fortified positions of the German “Winter Line” just south of Monte Cassino about halfway between Naples and Rome. The film contains graphic combat footage.  We are informed that the Italian campaign was more-or-less a feint to keep the German army occupied while preparations for the D-Day invasion could be completed.  Thus, the divisions involved in the campaign were under-manned and under-supplied.

I’ve seen so many war documentaries in the past several months that the combat portions of this film did not seem like anything special.  However, Huston narrated the opening sequence as a kind of travelogue describing the green vineyards and olive groves of the countryside and the 700-year-old village and its church over shots of the total wreckage that was left after the battle.  The short film ends with scenes of the villagers emerging from their hiding places and attempting to rebuild their lives.  Huston’s narration of the abject gratitude of these people to their “deliverers” sounds deeply ironic to these ears. IMDb says that the army felt the original edit was too anti-war and cut it from its original five reels to the current 32-minute version.  I would give anything to see the film in its original state.

The film is in the public domain and is currently widely available on YouTube.

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State Fair (1945)

State Fairstate fair poster
Directed by Walter Lang
Written by Oscar Hammerstein II, Paul Green, and Sonya Levien from a novel by Philip Strong
1945/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Co.
Repeat viewing/Netflix

I’m as restless as a willow in a windstorm,/
I’m as jumpy as a puppet on a string./
I’d say that I had spring fever,/
But I know it isn’t spring. — “It Might As Well Be Spring”, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II

I probably like this more than it deserves. Don’t think anyone can argue with the songs though.

The Iowa State Fair is just around the corner and, on their farm, the Frack family is readying some entries into the competition.  Mother (Fay Bainter) is putting the finishing touches on her pickles and mincemeat and Father (Charles Winninger) is babying his prize boar, Blue Boy.  Daughter Margie (Jeanne Crain) has a severe case of spring fever in late summer and is suffering terminal boredom with the nerdy farmer who wants to marry her. Son Wayne is disappointed because his girlfriend cannot accompany the family to the festivities.

Margie and Wayne both meet someone interesting at the Fair.  For Margie, it is cynical newspaper man Pat (Dana Andrews) and Wayne hooks up with big band singer Emily (Vivian Blaine).  Even Blue Boy meets a sow to flirt with.  I won’t spoil the dramatic suspense of how the mincemeat and pig contests come out.  With Frank McHugh as a song plugger and Percy Kilbride as a neighbor.

state fair 2

OK, so nothing much happens and what does is utterly predictable.  A couple of the songs make my heart skip a beat though and the acting, particularly by Bainter and Winninger, is quite good.  It’s not too long and doesn’t have any really overblown numbers.  I don’t ask for anything more in my musicals.

Rodgers and Hammerstein won the Oscar for Best Music, Original Song for “It Might As Well Be Spring.”  Charles Henderson and Alfred Newman were nominated for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture.

“It’s a Grand Night for Singing”

The Southerner (1945)

The Southerner
Directed by Jean Renoir
Written by Hugo Butler and Jean Renoir from the novel “Hold Autumn in Your Hand” by George Sessions Perry
1945/USA
Jean Renoir Productions/Loew-Hakim
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

 

[box] The saving grace of the cinema is that with patience and a little love we may arrive at that wonderfully complex creature which is called man. — Jean Renoir[/box]

I’m a huge Renoir fan but for some reason this one has never captured me, despite its evident beauty.  I think maybe the story is a bit too “American” for a European sophisticate like Renoir to entirely pull off.

Sam Tucker (Zachary Scott) and his wife Nona (Betty Field) work as cotton pickers.  Two small children and Granny (Beulah Bondi) complete the family.  Sam decides to see about renting his own piece of land from his boss to work as a sharecropper.  He is full of enthusiasm about the rich earth, ignoring the dilapidated house, dry well, and other serious defects.  He counts on his neighbor to help out on the water front but discovers the man (J. Carroll Naish) is a jealous skinflint who had been hoping to get the property for himself.

Things go from bad to worse.  Granny complains non-stop.  One of the children gets sick from malnutrition and the only cure is to give him expensive milk and vegetables.  Then a flood comes.  Can the Tuckers hold onto their dream?

Don’t know if it’s me or the film, but both times I watched this I had kind of zoned out by the end.  Zachary Scott is very good, though.  It is nice to see him play something other than a mustachioed cad.  The usually reliable Beulah Bondi overdoes it.

The Southerner was nominated by the Academy in the categories of:  Best Director; Best Sound, Recording; and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HPgVVxOQSE

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The Story of G.I. Joe (1945)

The Story of G.I. Joe
Directed by William A. Wellman
Written by Leopold Atlas, Guy Endore, and Philip Stevenson based on books by Ernie Pyle
1945/USA
Lester Cowan Productions
Repeat viewing/YouTube

[box] Pvt. Robert “Wingless” Murphy: Look, this is a modern war, ain’t it? And I’m a modern guy, and the modern age is up in the air, not down here.[/box]

Burgess Meridith plays war correspondent Ernie Pyle but the plot focuses more on episodes from one platoon’s war as it fights its way north through Italy. The film is solid, if cliche ridden.

At 43, war correspondent Ernie Pyle is so much older than the G.I.’s he travels with that they call him “Pop”.  Early on he embeds himself with a platoon led by Lt. Walker (Robert Mitchum), with whom he develops a special rapport, and he keeps returning to the unit as it fights its way from North Africa toward Rome.

We get to know some of the men fairly well, marking several out for an early demise by the poignancy of their romantic attachments.  The progress of the platoon is marked first by defeat, then by costly victories, until it gets bogged down by German fire from a monastery building that the brass refuses to bomb.  With combat veterans as some of the members of the platoon.

The film works fairly well but bogs down, with its protagonists, about half way through at the monastery.    It was released shortly after Pulitzer Prize-winner Pyle was killed on Okinawa by Japanese machine-gun fire.

Robert Mitchum received his one and only Academy Award nomination for his performance in The Story of G.I. Joe.  He can’t be ever bad but he certainly had more nomination-worthy parts. (My vote would go to his unforgettable Harry Palmer in The Night of the Hunter.) The film was nominated in the categories of Best Writing, Original Screenplay; Best Music, Original Song (“Linda” by Ann Ronnell); and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.

Clip – Listening to “Linda” over Nazi radio

 

 

My Name Is Julia Ross (1945)

My Name Is Julia Ross
Directed by Joseph H. Lewis
Written by Muriel Roy Bolton from a novel by Anthony Gilbert
1945/USA
Columbia Pictures Corporation
First Viewing/YouTube

[box] Julia Ross: The next time I apply for a job, I’ll ask for *their* references.[/box]

This is an above-average “B” thriller with plenty of chills.  Dame May Whitty is the standout.

Julia Ross (Nina Foch) is recovering from an operation that left her unemployed and behind on her rent.  She has searched for work everywhere but has no luck until she spots a new employment agency in the paper.  When she applies as a secretary, the main qualification for the position seems to be a lack of relatives or sweetheart.  Julia qualifies and passes the interview with employer Mrs. Hughes (Whitty). She is surprised to find that it is a live-in situation and she is to move in that night.

After moving in, Julia is offered a refreshing cup of tea as a nightcap.  When she wakes up, all her possessions and clothes have been destroyed and Mrs. Hughes and son Ralph (George Macready) are referring to her as Marion, Ralph’s wife.  After another night of induced sleep, Julia finds herself with the mother and son in an isolated Cornwall house.  Her tormenters easily convince the locals “Marion” is insane.  Julia begins to fear for her life. Based on Ralph’s erratic behavior, it seems evident that her death might be unspeakable.

Dame May Whitty and George Macready make quite a team as the villains of the piece.  Whitty is simply perfect – the lovable old lady that we know from so many pictures, with a secret heart of iron.  The ending isn’t up to the rest of the film but still recommended for noir aficionados or anyone with a soft spot for Whitty.  It’s only about an hour long and currently on YouTube.

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Blithe Spirit (1945)

Blithe Spirit
Directed by David Lean
Adapted for the screen by David Lean, Ronald Neame, and Anthony Havelock-Allen from a play by Noel Coward
1945/UK
Two Cities Films/Noel Coward-Cineguild
Repeat viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Madame Arcati: Time is the reef upon which all our frail mystic ships are wrecked.[/box]

I always feel like I should enjoy this more than I actually do. If Margaret Rutherford could be in every scene perhaps I would.

Charles Condomine (Rex Harrison) is a successful mystery writer.  He lost his first wife Elvira (Kay Hammond) several years ago and is now married to Ruth (Constance Cummings).  Charles is writing a new book with a fake medium and decides to host a seance for research purposes.  He does not count on the medium he gets, the eccentric, earnest, no-nonsense Madame Acarti (Rutherford).

Somehow, Madame Arcarti manages to summon Elvira from the other side.  Elvira and Ruth are natural antagonists, Charles is stuck in the middle, and Arcarti can’t seem to put the genii back in the bottle.

Lean’s forte was certainly not comedy and Coward was notoriously unhappy about the way his smash hit stage play turned out on screen.  Where the dialogue should sparkle it just kind of fizzles, despite the expert delivery of the actors.  Margaret Rutherford must have directed herself (it probably helped that she had played the part on stage) and breathes life into the movie each time she appears.  It is almost worth seeing just to catch her performance.

Blithe Spirit won the Academy Award for Best Effects, Special Effects.

Original Trailer