Category Archives: 1946

Bedlam
Directed by Mark Robson
Written by Val Lewton (as Carlos Keith) and Mark Robson suggested by the William Hogarth painting “Bedlam”, Plate #8 of “The Rake’s Progress”
1946/USA
RKO Radio Pictures
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Lord Mortimer: A capital fellow, this Sims, a capital fellow.

Nell Bowen: If you ask me, M’Lord, he’s a stench in the nostrils, a sewer of ugliness, and a gutter brimming with slop.[/box]

This was the last of the horror films Val Lewton produced at RKO.  He went out on a high note.

Nell Bowen (Anna Lee) is the “protege” of Lord Mortimer, a sort of resident fool who keeps the vain fat man amused with her cockatoo and quips.  She and a Quaker witness an inmate falling off the roof of the insane asylum at Bedlam and are sure it was murder. It turns out that the victim was a poet Lord Mortimer had hired to write for a fête.  The overseer of Bedlam George Sims (Boris Karloff) is a bit of an amateur poet himself.  Although it seems fairly clear that Sims wrongfully committed the poet and set him up for the fall, all Mortimer really cares about is the fête.  Sims offers to feature some of his inmates in the entertainment and Mortimer is satisfied.

Although Nell is a thorough cynic, she cannot help but being disgusted by the evil Sims. He offers to give her a tour of the premises, which are open to public for tuppence.  Nell is further disturbed by the squalid conditions of the place and the obvious cruelty with which the inmates are treated.  Later at the fête an inmate who has been covered in thick gilt paint to give a recitation dies and Nell tries to convince her boss to get money from the City Council to reform Bedlam.

Sims convinces Mortimer to leave things as they are and Nell quits with an angry tirade. She tries to retaliate by selling her cockatoo, who has been trained to spout rude rhymes about Mortimer, to his political opposition.  Sims persuades Mortimer to sign commitment papers and before she knows it Nell is an inmate herself.  Nell’s friendship with the Quaker enables her to survive her ordeal.

Karloff shines without horror make-up as the cruel yet oddly pathetic villain of the piece. Anna Lee is not too convincing as a vixen but does better as the angel of the hospital.  For me, the highlight of the movie was Nicholas Musuraca’s wonderful atmospheric cinematography and the art direction that made every frame look like something out of a Hogarth painting.  It is really amazing what Lewton’s team could create on a shoestring budget.

The DVD contains an informative commentary by horror scholar Tom Weaver.

Clip

My Reputation
Directed by Curtis Bernhardt
Written by Catherine Terney from a novel by Clare Jaynes
1946/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Jessica Drummond: You know, it’s amazing how I can learn to like martinis. It’s an acquired taste like anchovies.[/box]

Taking over a role that might otherwise gone to Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck is absolutely terrific in a glossy Warner Brothers “woman’s picture” that manages to stay clear of melodrama.

The year is 1942 and the city is Chicago.  As the story begins Jessica Drummond (Stanwyck) has just lost her husband after two years of illness.  She has two adolescent boys.  Her mother (Lucille Watson) is the model of turn-of-the century manners and is aghast that Jessica refuses to wear black.  A friend of the family is helping Jessica manage the estate.  After a decent interval has passed, the mother urges Jessica to marry him.  In the meantime, Jessica, while keeping up a brave front, is going nearly crazy with loneliness.  This gets worse when the boys return to boarding school.  Best friend Ginna (Eve Arden) urges Jessica to join her and her husband at their cabin at Lake Tahoe instead of going South with her mother as planned.  Jessica takes Ginna up on the offer.

At Lake Tahoe, Jessica meets cute with Maj. Scott Landis (George Brent) when she breaks a ski.  They spend most of the remaining days together but Jessica energetically rejects Scott’s advances and they part abruptly.  Jessica can’t get him out of her mind when she returns home, however, and when Ginna spots him at a Chicago restaurant Jessica rushes there to “accidentally” run into him.

Before long, Jessica is in love and ready to throw caution to the wind.  She even persists with the relationship after Scott makes clear that he is not the marrying kind.  But does Jessica have the strength to carry on with the affair over the objections of her mother and children and the ugly gossip in her social set?

The plot is quite reminiscent of All That Heaven Allows but Stanwyck’s character has more backbone from the get go than Jane Wyman’s ever mustered.  She is absolutely radiant here and the part lets her explore a broad range of emotions.  The staid George Brent does not really convince as a free spirit but does not detract from the film either.  Both Eve Arden and Lucille Watson are their usual enjoyable selves.  The film was sumptuously shot by cinematographer James Wong Howe and looks beautiful.  The film has been described as a melodrama but I really didn’t see that.  At no point does Stanwyck play the victim of anybody.  Recommended.

The film was made in 1943 but was not released to the general public until 1946.

Trailer

Night Editor
Directed by Henry Levin
Written by Harold Jacob Smith from a story by Scott Littleton and a radio program by Hal Burdick
1946/USA
Columbia Pictures Corporation
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Jill Merrill: I don’t need you, I can buy and sell you. I don’t know why I bother seeing you.

Tony Cochrane: You don’t know why? I’ll tell you. You’re rotten through and through. Like something they serve at the Ritz,only its been laying out in the sun too long.[/box]

This was a fun pulpy film noir but what was it with the ending?

A reporter stumbles into his office, late, drunk and unable to go home.  The editor and some other reporters are playing poker.  The editor takes up the cautionary tale of homicide detective Tony Cochrane.

It seems that Cochrane (William Gargan) was a crack detective and devoted family man, especially close to his little son.  That all changed when he fell prey to socialite Jill Merrill (Janis Carter) and began an adulterous affair, from which he seems powerless to extricate himself.  While Cochrane and Jill are smooching on an isolated lover’s lane, they witness a man beating a girl to death in a car with a tire iron.  Cochrane is prevented by Jill, who fears publicity, and his own cowardice re his wife from going to the victim’s aid or investigating.  Jill opines that the girl probably deserved what she got anyway.  Naturally, Cochrane is assigned to the homicide investigation.

Unfortunately, Cochrane’s car left a tire print at the scene of the crime which he feels compelled to destroy, further implicating him in the crime.  But he doggedly pursues his leads even when they take him deep into Jill’s social circle.  There is really only one possible outcome.  I will leave it to viewers to see how the film gets there.

OK, so we know that under the Hayes Code adultery cannot pay.  I was not prepared for the sheer audaciousness of the ending though!  Another given of the period is that in any adulterous relationship the woman must be evil personified and the man her hapless dupe. Janis Carter may not be the world’s greatest actress but she does make a really wicked femme fatale.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1aZCcSc8Sw

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Three Strangers
Directed by Jean Negulesco
John Huston and Howard Koch
1946/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] David Shackleford: [to Crystal] You only want what you can’t have as long as you can’t have it.[/box]

This is a fun John Huston-penned thriller about his favorite topic, greed.  It contains dynamite performances by Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre.

Crystal Shackleford (Geraldine Fitzgerald, also fantastic) is in the possession of the idol of Chinese goddess Kwan Yin.  She believes that the goddess will grant one wish by three strangers at midnight on Chinese New Year.  So Crystal picks up lawyer Jerome Arbuthny (Greenstreet) and dipso Johnny West (Lorre) on the street, being careful not to learn their names, and takes them home.  Johnny is intrigued but Arbuthny scoffs at the whole project.  The three have different problems but money will help solve all of them and Crystal gets the men to agree to wish that an Irish Sweepstakes ticket will win and to pledge not to sell the ticket before the race.

After making the wish at midnight, the three exchange names and go on their merry way. We learn that the truly wicked Crystal’s real wish is to get her estranged husband back, apparently so she can make him suffer some more.  Arbuthny’s wish is to be admitted into a select lawyer’s club but he has been speculating with a client’s trust fund money and fears for his reputation if found out.  Johnny, besides drinking himself to death, has been an unwitting dupe in a robbery that ended in murder.  He is hiding out with his girlfriend Icey (Joan Lorring) and a gangster during the trial of the actual murderer.  Then the murderer decides to admit to the robbery and finger his associates for the murder and Johnny is in real trouble.

I won’t spoil the next developments.  Anyone who has seen Treasure of the Sierra Madre and can transpose the situation into this kind of story will have a pretty good guess.

Where to start?  Lorre is really the the hero if this film has one.  It’s so nice to see him without the usual tics and with a girlfriend who adores him.  You just have to love him. Greenstreet gets to shine in the third act with a truly manic and scary turn.  The multiple subplots did not detract from the story arc.  It’s amazing what strong writing can do.  Recommended.

Trailer

Morning for the Osone Family (Ôsone-ke no ashita)
Directed by Keisuke Kinoshita
Written by Eijirô Hisaita
1946/Japan
Shochiku Company
First viewing/Hulu Plus

[box] Taiji Osone: ‘Bushido is the way of dying.” I wish things were that simple.[/box]

Director Kinoshita moves seamlessly from pro-war propaganda to anti-war propoganda. Fortunately, he is also an artist and this is a very moving film with a wonderful central performance by Haruko Sugimura, who later played the selfish daughter in Tokyo Story.

The story follows the Osone family from 1943 to 1945.  We know it is Westernized when we see the family celebrating Christmas by singing “Silent Night” while mother accompanies on the piano.  The father, a professor, is deceased and a picture of grandfather in his military uniform hangs on the wall.  The Osone’s celebration is marred by the fact that they are also bidding Yukie’s fiance farewell as he goes off to join the army. Things get worse when eldest son Ichiru is picked up by the police for writing an article critiquing the war.  He remains a political prisoner until war’s end.

Unfortunately, the nominal head of the family is “Uncle”, the father’s brother, who is a fat cat colonel at Japanese military headquarters.  He immediately breaks off Yukie’s engagement since he can’t allow the fiance’s family to dishonorably unite itself with the sister of a “subversive”.  Afterwards, Uncle and his wife move in with the family when their house is damaged by bombing.  Uncle gets the best of everything and manages to wangle Yukie a job in the accounting department instead of going on to war factory work as ordered.

Mrs. Osone (Sugimura) is throughly intiminated by Uncle,  Middle son Taiji, a painter, is drafted.  He needs to get drunk to work up the courage to go.  Finally, in the darkest days of the war, the youngest son, a junior in high school enlists with the encouragement of Uncle.  Mrs. Osone is drafted into hard labor digging an air raid shelter but collapses due to malnutrition.  She develops some backbone after the surrender but by this time in looks like she may have literally or figuratively have lost all her children in the process.

Although this movie is obviously a propaganda effort to show the Japanese public the error of their government’s militaristic ways, more broadly its theme is the post-war dissolution of the Japanese family, a subject which Ozu would explore in many of his less broadly melodramatic masterpieces.  Despite all this, I was genuinely touched by the story.  It was effective propaganda, I think.  By the end I wanted the authorities to round up Uncle and try him as a war criminal.  Even better would have been if someone had just slapped him hard.  Recommended.

Clip – I saw a very interesting connection to The Best Years of Our Lives here – remember the Japanese flag taken from the body of a dead soldier that Al tries to give his son?  Here we see one of the children writing a message on a flag that a soldier will take off to war.