The Tall Men
Directed by Raoul Walsh
Written by Sydney Boehm and Frank S. Nugent from a novel by Heck Allen
1955/US
Twentieth Century Fox
IMDb page
First viewing/Criterion Channel

Title card: Montana Territory – 1866. They came from the South, headed for the goldfields… Ben and Clint Allison, lonely and desperate men. Riding away from a heartbreak memory of Gettysburg. Looking for a new life. A story of tall men – and long shadows.

This Western didn’t grab me but the male leads are very good in it.

Ben (Clark Gable) and Clint Allison (Cameron Mitchell) have recently been discharged from the Confederate Army at the end of the American Civil War. They are en route to prospect for gold in Montana but need some capital. They try to rob wealthy businessman Nathan Stark (Robert Ryan). Instead he convinces them to become partners on his cattle drive from Texas to Montana.

Then Ben rescues starving Nella Turner (Jane Russell) from a watery grave. They banter and spar the way people who will get together by the end of the movie normally do. Then Stark begins to court her as only the monied can do.

The rest of the film is filled with Indian Attacks, bandits, and a showdown between Ben and Stark.

Jane Russell who sings the rather corny title song several times is the weak link in the cast of this movie. The men are strong and you have to root for Clark Gable of course. But I really couldn’t get too invested in what happened to the characters.

None But the Brave
Directed by Frank Sinatra
Written by John Twist and Katsuya Susaki; story by Kikumada Okuda
1965/Japan/USA
Warner Bros./Tokyo Eiga Co. Ltd./Toho Film Co. Ltd./Artanis Productions Inc./Sinatra Enterprises
First viewing/FilmStruck

[box] None but the brave deserves the fair. — John Dryden[/box]

Nepotism puts the nail in the coffin of Frank Sinatra’s sole directing credit.

The setting is an isolated island in the Pacific during World War II.  A platoon of Marines crash lands onto the island only to find it is already occupied by an small unit of Japanese soldiers.  There is no means of escape, supplies are very short, and the men decide to cooperate.  Matters come to a head when a boat comes to rescue the Japanese and the men move back into combat mode.

This movie is pretty bad and the main defect is the character of 2nd Lt. Blair, played by then Sinatra son-in-law Tommy Sands.  Blair is the kind of gung ho rookie that gets on everyone’s last nerve – unfortunately this includes the audience.  He is meant to provide comic relief but is just ultra annoying.  No wonder Tommy and Nancy divorced that year.

Le Amiche
Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni
Suso Cecchi D’Amico, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Alba de Cespedes from a novel by Cesare Pavese
1955/Italy
Trionfalcine
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood. — Lucius Annaeus Seneca [/box]

How refreshing to find a 1950’s movie in which the career woman is the most balanced and admirable character!  I liked this early Antonioni offering a lot.

Cleilia (Eleonora Rossi Drago) comes to Turin to prepare for the opening of a new studio of the Rome fashion house she works for.  She finds the project almost hopelessly behind schedule and must take charge of the lackadaisical workmen.  One morning, a maid runs into her room at the hotel announcing that the woman in the next room is dead.  It turns out that the woman, Rosetta, is not dead but nearly so due to a suicide attempt.  She recovers.  Gradually, Cleilia becomes part of Rosetta’s circle of friends.  She takes pity on the young socialite and gets her a job at the studio to distract her from her worries.

All of Rosetta’s friends have one type of man trouble or another.  The principal story involves Lorenzo, a painter, and his wife Nene (Valentina Cortese), a potter.  Lorenzo shows a portrait he painted of Rosetta at a show.  The show is not a success.  In the meantime, Nene is invited to show her ceramics at a celebrated gallery in New York.  Part of Rosetta’s problem is that she fell in love with Lorenzo while he was painting her.  After her recovery, she instigates an affair.  We continue to follow the friendship and romantic lives of our protagonists.

This has some of the familiar Antonioni themes of alienation and upper class ennui but there is also a sense of agency in these women that is very good to see for the period.  The men are really secondary.  For me the outstanding performance was that of Valentina Cortese who is being torn up by the conflict between her art and her love for her cheating husband.  I loved the ending as well.  Recommended.

Trailer (French subtitles)

The Rose Tattoo
Directed by Daniel Mann
Written by Tennessee Williams and Hal Kanter from Williams’s play
1955/USA
Paramount Pictures
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] “Everybody is nothing until you love them.” ― Tennessee Williams, The Rose Tattoo[/box]

The rest of the film is not as strong as Anna Magnani’s tour-de-force Academy Award winning performance.

Serefina delle Rose (Magnani) immigrated to the U.S. from Sicily and now lives somewhere in the South with her husband Rosario and fifteen-year-old daughter Rosa.  She is completely devoted and enthralled by Rosario, who wears a rose tattoo on his chest.  (Obviously, the rose symbolism is going to be taken to the limit in this movie.)  He is a truck driver and when caught hauling “something else” under his bananas gets into an accident and is killed.  Serefina is overcome with grief and spends her days in her nightgown and robe, embarrassing the hell out of Rosa.

Serefina continues with her business as a seamstress.  She becomes obsessed with preserving Rosa’s innocence.  She does not take it kindly when Rosa falls in love with a young sailor at a high school dance.

One day, a woman comes into pick up a blouse she wants to wear to a convention in New Orleans.  The blouse is not ready, one thing leads to another, and a terrific argument ensues.  The woman blurts out that Rosario was having an affair.  This is shattering news to Serafina and she intially refuses to believe it.  She ends up trying to pry the information from Rosario’s confessor at church.  She is unsuccessful but so distraught that she needs a ride home.

Alvaro Mangiacavallo, whose sister had been trying to make a match for him with Serafina any way, comes to the rescue.  The rest of the movie follows the uneasy courtship between Alvaro, “who has the body of Rosario, the face of a clown and smells like a goat”, and Serafina.

Burt Lancaster’s character is the big question mark in this film.  I’m uncertain as to whether the usually reliable actor was taking it way over the top or whether he is playing the character as written.  At any rate, his shenanigans add a comic tone to an otherwise dark story and seem incongruous.  Otherwise, there is nothing exactly wrong with the movie but it didn’t send me.

The Rose Tattoo won Academy Awards in the categories of Best Actress; Best Cinematography, Black-and-White; and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White.  It was nominated in the categories of Best Picture; Best Supporting Actress (Pavan); Best Costume Design, Black-and-White; Best Film Editing; and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.

Trailer

The End of the Affair
Directed by Edward Dmytryck
Written by Lenore J. Coffee from a novel by Graham Greene
1955/UK
Coronado Productions
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Sarah Miles: If there is a god, then he put the thought of that prayer in my mind, and I hate him for it.[/box]

This movie made me want to read the source novel and see the 1999 remake with Ralph Fiennes.  That’s another way of saying that I thought Van Johnson weakened this version of the story.

The setting is London during the tail end of WWII while V2 rockets are still flying.  Maurice Bendrix (Johnson) is an American war correspondent.  He is writing a novel about the British civiil service and gets friendly with Henry Miles (Peter Cushing) while looking for background.  At a party hosted by the Mileses, he looks in a mirror sees Henry’s wife Sarah (Deborah Kerr) kissing a man.  This leads him to invite her to lunch for more “background” and they begin a love affair.

The affair is passionate on both sides but Maurice is filled with doubts and jealousy.  Finally, they are able to spend five days alone together while Henry is traveling.  The house is hit by a V2 while Maurice goes off by himself to investigate something.  When he returns after the explosion Sarah flees and thereafter refuses to answer his calls or see him.

It turns out that Sarah thought Maurice had been killed and in her prayer promised God that she would end the affair if he lived.  Sarah is not a churchgoer and the rest of the movie deals with her crisis of faith and Maurice’s bitterness and attempts at reconciliation.

I was looking forward to this one for the subject matter.  I think Johnson was all wrong for his part.  I never got his attraction for Sarah or his anguish properly.  The movie was a bit more of a melodrama than I was ready for.  It needed some more bite or something.  I’m not sorry I saw it, however.

Clip

Killer’s Kiss
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Written by Stanley Kubrick
1955/USA
Minotaur Productions
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Gloria Price: It’s a mistake to confuse pity with love.[/box]

Stanley Kubrick’s second feature is strong on visuals but weak on plot and dialogue.

Davey Gordon is a boxer who has just lost his last chance at the championship.  He has decided to return to his uncle’s horse farm near Seattle.  One night before he leaves, he hears a woman, Gloria,  screaming in the apartment across the way.  He rescues her from a much older man’s unwanted advances.  The man, Vincent Rapallo, is the boss of the dime-a-dance joint where Gloria works.

Davey and Gloria hit it off and she plans to accompany him back to Seattle.  Vincent refuses to give up his pursuit, however.

This movie seems padded with filler at only 67 minutes.  It contains some of the corniest dialogue I’ve heard in awhile as well.  (The conversation between Davey and his uncle is priceless).  The acting is no great shakes.  The whole suffers from the post-production dubbing of the entire sound track.  The leading lady is not even voiced by the same actress.  Despite all this, you can clearly see a master craftsman in the making.  Some of the images are stunning and the staging of the action sequences is innovative.

Trailer

The Quatermass Xperiment (AKA The Creeping Unknown)
Directed by Val Guest
Written by Richard H. Landau and Val Guest based on a BBC television play by Nigel Kneale
1955/UK
Exclusive Films/Hammer Films
First viewing/YouTube

[box] Prof. Bernard Quatermass: There’s no room for personal feelings in science, Judith![/box]

This movie ticks all the boxes for classic 50’s science fiction.

Megalomaniac scientist Quatermass (Brian Donlevy) has secretly launched an experimental space ship.  It startles the population when it returns to earth.  Quatermass is in turn startled when, after some to-and-froing, it is discovered that only one of the three astronauts is still alive.  The other two have simply disappeared.  Their spacesuits are now empty shells.  Quatermass cannot get any information from the survivor, Victor Carroon, who is mute, appears terrified and has an abnormal respiration rate and pulse.

Quatermass takes Carroon to his laboratory for treatment over the objection of Carroon’s wife, who along with Quatermass’s own expert thinks the man belongs in a hospital.   Finally, the scientist is forced to relent and Carroon is taken to a clinic where he is to be kept in strict isolation.

I will not reveal everything that happens after Carroon is freed.  It’s nice and creepy, though.  Has a great ending as well.  With Jack Warner as the detective on the case.

I really enjoyed this movie from the very first minutes.  You know how you can tell something is going to be good just from the energy it puts out? Donlevy is fantastic as an eccentric who knows everything and won’t listen to anybody.  I find most 50’s sci-fi more fanciful and amusing than scary.  This one, however, manages to have some genuine thrills.  Recommended.

Trailer