Category Archives: 1945

Spellbound
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Written by Ben Hecht and Angus McPhail (adaptation) suggested by the novel “The House of Dr. Edwardes” by Francis Beeding
1945/USA
Selznick International Pictures/Vanguard Films
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#193 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Dr. Alex Brulov: What is there for you to see? We both know that the mind of a woman in love is operating on the lowest level of the intellect![/box]

I’d be happier if Hitchcock stayed entirely away from Freud. Not one of my favorites.

Dr. Constance Petersen (Ingrid Bergman) is an all-business psychoanalyst at the Green Manors asylum run by Dr. Murchison (Leo G. Carroll).  We know this by the way she brushes off advances by her all-male colleagues.  The management has determined that Murchison is past his prime and is replacing him with the renowned Dr. Edwardes, whom nobody has met.  When “Edwardes” (Gregory Peck) arrives, all are amazed to see how young he is.  What Dr. Peterson can’t get over, however, are his matinee idol looks.  Her heart is lost immediately.

But Dr. Edwardes has mysterious panic attacks every time he sees dark lines on a white background.  Petersen and “Edwardes” are soon in agreement that he is an imposter. Problem is that “Edwardes” can’t remember who he actually is. The real Dr. Edwardes has disappeared and is now thought murdered.  Our “Edwardes” is convinced he is the murderer and flees.  Dr. Petersen follows since love and her professional training tell her the man is suffering from a “guilt complex”.

Petersen tracks her man down to New York City where she finds him registered as John Brown.  They start posing as a married couple while Petersen tries, and fails, to maintain her professional ethics as his psychiatrist.  After a couple of close shaves, Petersen and “Brown” take refuge in the home of her mentor Dr. Brulov (Michael Chekhov).  “Brown” is almost psychotically ill by this point, but Brulov reluctantly agrees to hide the couple and help to treat him for a few days.  And that’s all it takes to cure his amnesia and “guilt complex”.  It takes a bit longer to solve the murder mystery.  With Rhonda Fleming in a very early role as a psych patient.

Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world if our dreams did hold the key to all our repressed history and inner turmoil?  And if each dream symbol had an obvious correlate in the real world? What if a few conversations could unbury childhood trauma and restore us to some better adult self?  Sadly, it doesn’t work that way.  I find this a really irritating and simplistic story.  I just can’t help it.

Taking allowances for the time period in which it was made and my perhaps exaggerated reaction, there is nothing really wrong with the film.  The suspense is built by a Master after all.  The famous Dali dream sets are evocative.   And Ingrid Bergman looks exceptionally beautiful to me here.  She is allowed to have her hair kind of natural and tousled in soft curls and it makes her look like an angel.  What I could perhaps believe is that her love could go some way in curing any man.

Miklos Rózsa won an Academy Award for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.  Spellbound was nominated for Academy Awards in the following categories:  Best Picture; Best Supporting Actor (Michael Chekov); Best Director; Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (George Barnes); and Best Effects, Special Effects.

Trailer

The Lost Weekend
Directed by Billy Wilder
Written by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett from the novel by Charles R. Jackson
1945/USA
Paramount Pictures
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
188 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Don Birnam: Most men lead lives of quiet desperation. I can’t take quiet desperation![/box]

If this film did not have all the portentous theremin music, it might be perfect.

Don Birman (Ray Milland) has it all going for him.  He is young, handsome and witty, with a gift for writing and monied family.  He is also in the late stages of alcoholism.

On this particular weekend, Don has been sober for 10 days.  His faithful brother Wick has planned a long weekend at the family country house.  Beautiful, intelligent girlfriend Helen (Jane Wyman) must work and stay behind.  But a bottle of rye Don has hidden dangling outside the window keeps calling his name.  Witt once again spots Don’s excuses for lies and takes off it a huff by himself.  After drinking down the bottle, Don learns of $10 Witt left in the sugar bowl for the housecleaner, steals it, and goes on a four-day bender.

During Don’s lost weekend, he gets caught stealing from a woman’s purse at a club, cozies up to a girl he doesn’t love for money, pathetically attempts to hock his typewriter, and falls down some stairs, winding up in the alkie ward, all in worship of his God alcohol.  Wilder masterfully shows the obsessive devotion of the addict to his drug of choice to the exclusion of his own dignity or love for other people.  Finally, Don has had enough and is about to opt for the easy way out.  Fortunately, Helen stubbornly refuses to give up on him.  With Howard Da Silva as Don’s favorite bartender and Frank Faylen as a sarcastic truth-telling orderly.

I don’t know why but the Oscar-nominated score really got on my nerves this time.  The theremin music gives the proceedings a campy flavor reminiscent of horror or science fiction movies.  It is also ramped up to maximum volume and drama every time Don is going to make one of his frequent slips.  I hate being manipulated by screen music.

In general, though, this is an excellent film.  Wilder certainly captured the selfishness, self-loathing, and despair of the addict perfectly.  And who was to know that the urbane, light-hearted Milland had such depths in him?  It deserved the Oscars it got and should certainly be seen.

The Lost Weekend won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Writing, Screenplay.  It was nominated for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (John F. Seitz); Best Film Editing; and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture (Miklós Rósca)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Th4MFUZgpI

Trailer

Brief Encounter
Directed by David Lean
Written by Anthony Havelock-Allen, David Lean, and Ronald Neame from the play “Still Life” by Noel Coward (all uncredited)
1945/UK
Cineguild
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#191 of 1001 Film You Must See Before You Die

[box] Laura Jesson: I’ve fallen in love. I didn’t think such violent things happened to ordinary people.[/box]

I didn’t realize how brief the encounter really was until I watched this small masterpiece for the umpteenth time.

The story mainly takes place in flashback as Laura Jesson (Celia Johnson) sits in her living room and thinks about the man she just said goodbye to while her husband does the crossword.  A recording of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 is playing in the background.

It’s a simple story.  Laura goes to the nearest town every Thursday to do errands and watch a movie.  Laura meets Dr. Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard)  when he removes a piece of grit in her eye in a railway station tearoom.    The next Thursday she gives him a seat at her table in a crowded restaurant and they go to the movies together.  He asks her to meet him the following week.

After vowing not meet him, Laura is there.  The movie is bad so they take an outing on the river instead.  It is then that Alec confesses his love and Laura cannot deny hers.  The following week Alec has borrowed a friend’s car and they go driving.  At the end of the day, Alec says he is going to skip the train and wait for Laura in his friend’s empty apartment.  Laura cannot stay away.  But the guilt and shame is too much for her and she needs to find the strength to call things quits.  With Stanley Holloway as the station master who is flirting with Joyce Carey’s tearoom operator.

Why can’t love be simple?  Lean and the actors make you care about these people so much that the very British and restrained sexual tension is palpable.  We can understand every move they make and root for their love while at the same time understanding why it is all wrong.  The cinematography and frame composition is as beautiful as the story.  Most highly recommended.

Brief Encounter was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Writing, Screenplay.

Re-release trailer

Children of Paradise (Les enfants du paradis)
Directed by Marcel Carné
Written by Jacques Prévert
1945/France
Société Nouvelle Pathé Cinéma
Repeat viewing/Criterion Collection DVD
#189 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Baptiste: You were right, Garance. Love is simple.[/box]

This is one of those reviews that is very hard to write.  I feel like saying this film is grandly beautiful and perfect in every way.  Everyone should see it.  The end.

The film was shown in two parts: “The Boulevard of Crime” and “The Man in White.”

The first begins on the titular boulevard in early 19th Century Paris, where the Funambles theater is located.  We are in a decidedly working class quarter of town and the theater is forbidden to use dialogue or sound, meaning that all of its productions are pantomimes.

We are cleverly introduced to the characters of Garance (Arletty) and three of the men who love her in the opening sequence.  Garance is portraying “Naked Truth” in a side show. After her stint sitting modestly in a bath, she meets Frédérick (Pierre Brasseur), a flirtatious would-be actor.  Garance brushes him off and goes to visit her friend the dandy master criminal Lacenaire, who is also an amateur playwright and cynical philosopher.  They go to watch the barker in front of the Funambles and Lacenaire takes the opportunity to pick the pocket of a wealthy man who is chatting up Garance.  Garance is accused of the crime but is rescued by the mimed testimony of Baptiste (Jean-Louis Barrault), who witnessed the whole thing.  Garance gives Baptiste a rose in thanks and the young dreamer is immediately hopelessly in love with her.

Frédérick goes back stage to ask for a job.  He gets nowhere until two of the actors have a fight and both he and Baptiste get their big breaks.  Baptiste shows Frédérick his own rooming house and departs for his nightly wander through the streets to observe humanity. He runs into a “blind” beggar and an invitation for drinks at a local tavern leads him again to Garance, who is there with Lacenaire.  He ends up taking her to get a room at his place and declaring his undying and passionate love.  Although attracted, she cannot respond in kind and he foolishly rejects her advances.  So she ends up sharing Frédérick’s bed instead.

The theater turns into a place where Baptiste’s heartbreak is reenacted on stage night after night.  Another heart is being broken, that of Natalie who has long pledged herself to Baptiste.  Natalie doggedly retains her faith that she and Baptiste were made for each other despite all evidence of his almost suicidal depression over Garance.  Garance has obtained work at the Funambles as well and has captivated a haughty count.  She spurns him but he asks her to remember him if she should need help or protection.  Garance has not been able to get Baptiste  out of her mind and the two are about to take things up where they left off when Natalie appears to claim her man and Garance departs.

As the curtain falls on the First Act, events lead Garance to take up the Count on his offer for protection.

Years pass.  “The Man in White” shows the success of all our characters in their chosen professions.  Frédérick is a celebrated actor on the legitimate stage; Baptiste is still at the Funambles but is an acknowledged genius of the pantomime; Lacenaire’s crimes make the headlines; and Garance returns to Paris a grand lady but an unhappy woman. Baptiste is now married to Nathalie and they have a six-year-old son.

The rest of the story follows the intricate interplay between Garance and the four men who have loved her.  With Pierre Renoir as the sinister Rag Man.

The only criticism I have ever heard of this film is that Arletty, who was 45 at the time the film was made, was not as desirable as the film made her character out to be.  I’m a straight woman so what do I know?  I thought she was quite alluring both physically and for her magnetic personality.

Every element of this lavishly staged film is beautiful – sets, costumes, music.  The writing itself is touchingly poetic and I mean that in a good way.  I never thought I liked mimes until I saw Barrault do it.  What a genius.  He’s also quite good with the greasepaint off.  The story of the filming of this big-budget extravaganza in Occupied France is almost as interesting as the film.

I always leave this film pondering how the insistence on a certain kind of love dooms real love.  But primarily, I think, this is a love letter to the theater.  Most highly recommended. The three hours simply fly by.

Jacques Prévért was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Screenplay.

Criterion Collection: Three Reasons

Re-release trailer