Category Archives: 1955

The Big Knife
Directed by Robert Aldrich
Written by James Poe from a play by Clifford Odets
1955/USA
The Associates & Aldrich Company
First viewing/Netflix rental

Smiley Coy: What do you think of women, kiddie?
Charlie Castle: Oh, there’s room in the world for ’em.

This is a Hollywood expose along the lines of Sunset Blvd. or The Bad and the Beautiful. Unfortunately, it lacks the former’s black humor or the latter’s production values and is an over-the-top mess.

Charlie Castle (Jack Palance) is a big movie star.  In his past life, he was a fiery idealist and theater actor.  His wife, Marion (Ida Lupino), is disgusted with him and wants him to leave the studio.  She is already living apart from him and threatens a divorce if he continues with his life style, which also includes numerous affairs.

Charlie has a problem though.  Ruthless studio head Stanley Shriner Hoff (Rod Steiger) is pressuring him to sign up for another seven years.  He makes Charlie an offer he can’t refuse when he threatens to reveal that Charlie was the driver in a hit-and-run collision with a child, a deed for which another man took the rap.  Hoff also knows that Charlie was accompanied by starlet Dixie Evans (Shelley Winters) at the time, something that Marion is not yet aware of.

I will not reveal all the twists and turns of the plot except to note that we get a couple of different women attempting seduction by means of blackmail and a murder conspiracy.  With Wendell Corey as Hoff’s right-hand man, Jean Hagen as a would-be adulteress, and Edward Everett Sloane as Charlie’s agent.

The dialogue is overwritten in the way that characterizes many films based on plays by Odets.  The story is too full of incidents for the time allotted and the ending leapt out at me from left field.  Finally, Rod Steiger hams it up ludicrously.  His bleached hair and hearing aid do not help.  The title led me to expect a film noir but I got an overblown melodrama instead.

Trailer

A Generation (Pokolenie)
Directed by Andrzej Wajda
Written by Bohan Czeszko from his novel
1955/Poland
Zespol Filmowy “Kadr”
First viewing/Hulu

[box] When a film is created, it is created in a language, which is not only about words, but also the way that very language encodes our perception of the world, our understanding of it. — Andrzej Wajda[/box]

Despite some evident propaganda obligations, Wajda reveals his mastery of the medium in his first feature film.

The setting is occupied Warsaw.  Stach Mazur lives in a slum bordering on the Jewish Ghetto.  He has launched his personal resistance against the Nazis by stealing coal from boxcars headed for Germany.  One day, he is spotted.  His comrades are killed and he is wounded.  He flees to a workingman’s pub.  The denizens, impressed by his courage, offer to get him a job.

Stach reports to work at a company that makes bunkbeds for German barracks.  He is the low man on the totem poll and worked inhumanely.  A workmate lectures him on the teachings of Karl Marx and the duty of workers to fight for their rights.  He puts Stach in touch with Dorota, a young woman who organizes a Communist youth militia.

The rest of the film follows the battles of the youth brigade with the Nazis.  Among other things, the young people support the uprising in the Ghetto.  Along the way, Stach falls in love with Dorota.  With a very young Roman Polanski as one of the partisans.

Wadja manages to combine beautiful composition with a brisk pace.  The story is kind of predictable but I was engrossed the whole time.

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

Clip – wow

House of Bamboo
Directed by Samuel Fuller
Written by Harry Kleiner and Samuel Fuller
1955/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Griff: But ever since you saved this guy’s neck, you’ve been acting funny, well I know what you’re trying to do, but you’re not going to get away with it, cuz I won’t let you.[/box]

This film offers Sam Fuller’s cockeyed worldview along with some beautiful color shots of post-War Tokyo.

As the film opens, a train guarded by Japanese police and U.S. soldiers is robbed and one of the soldiers is killed.  One of the robbers is wounded and gives the police some sketchy clues about an Eddie Spannier and the robber’s own secret wife before dying.  Next thing we know, Eddie (Robert Stack) appears in town, having been released from prison.  Eddie meets with the wife, Mariko (Shirley Yamaguchi), who is apparently innocent of any knowledge of her husband’s criminal connections.  He then strong arms a couple of Japanese pachinko parlor bosses into paying him protection money.  This brings him to the attention of Sandy Dawson (Robert Ryan), the gangster that runs the pachinko parlor racket in Tokyo and masterminds many other crimes.

Sandy takes a liking to Eddie and soon he is muscling out Griff (Cameron Mitchell) as Sandy’s “ichiban man”.  Mariko assists Eddie by becoming his “kimona woman” and staying over at his place.  The rest of the movie follows the further criminal exploits of the gang and the joint police/US Army investigation.

Although it all takes place in broad daylight, this is a solid film noir with several stunning shots and a cracking ending shootout at an amusement park.  Fuller gets in some digs at Ugly Americanism.  According to the commentary, Ryan was the only actor who picked up on Fuller’s homoerotic subtext.  It’s certainly pretty subtle.

Trailer

Allan Arkush – Trailers from Hell

Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing
Directed by Henry King
Written by John Patrick from a novel by Han Suyin
1955/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Dr. Han Suyin: Our gorgeous lie did not even last the night. [/box]

This romantic weeper exceeded my fairly low expectations.

The setting is Hong Kong in the closing days of the Chinese Revolution.  Dr. Han Suyin (Jennifer Jones) is a proud Eurasian.  She is a widow and lives for her work as a resident at a local hospital.  One of the board members convinces her to take a break and attend a cocktail party with him.  There she catches the eye of Mark Elliot (William Holden), an American correspondent.  He begins a dogged pursuit of her. She is almost immediately informed that he is married.  For some reason, she believes that she is immune from love and accepts his invitations on dates.  She is wrong.

The remainder of the movie tells their love story.  Once Mark has broken her resistance,   Suyin becomes completely devoted to him.  Their affair has many ups and downs.

The story is no great shakes but I thought the movie was well-made with some beautiful views of Hong Kong.  I can recommend it to folks who like this kind of thing.

Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing won Academy Awards in the categories of Best Costume Design, Color; Best Music, Original Song (for the title song); and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.  It was nominated for Best Picture; Best Actress; Best Cinematography, Color; Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color and Best Sound, Recording.

Trailer

The Violent Men
Directed by Rudolph Maté
Written by Harry Kleiner from a novel by Donald Hamilton
1955/USA
Columbia Pictures Corporation
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Lee Wilkison: Here in Archer we don’t pay much attention to that hogwash about the meek inheriting the earth.[/box]

Edward G. Robinson and some outstanding action sequences add spice to an otherwise fairly routine Western.

John Parrish (Glenn Ford) is a valiant ex-Union officer who has retired to a cattle ranch to recover from his war wounds.  As the story begins, he receives a clean bill of health to get married and go on a long honeymoon.  His fiancee Caroline desperately wants to return East to civilization.  While in town, John witnesses the cold-blooded murder of the Sheriff by two thugs hired by Lew Wilkinson (Robinson), the crippled owner of the Archer Ranch.  Wilkinson has managed to snap up most of the land in the valley for a song through threats and intimidation.  Although John deplores these tactics, he is determined to sell out himself for whatever price and refuses to get involved.

John goes out to the Archer Ranch for negotiations.  He meets Lew and the rest of the clan.  Lew’s brother Cole (Brian Keith) is a ruthless character.  Lew’s wife Martha (Barbara Stanwyck) is all sweetness and light.  We soon learn that under her cool exterior lies the most avaricious of the entire lot.  She is secretly in love with Cole.  The Wilkinson’s daughter Judith is on to her mother’s shenanigans.

Some thugs ride over to John’s place with efforts to encourage him to sell low but end up killing a couple of his ranch hands.  From here on out, it is war and John proves to be an equally ruthless adversary.

This Western contains a horse stampede, a cattle stampede, several conflagrations, and plenty of gunplay.  These were the high points of the film to me along with Robinson’s nuanced performance.  He starts out being a pure villain but ends by revealing a human interior.  The film’s range-war/reluctant-hero themes have been done many times before and since.  On balance, I would say it is worth seeing by Western fans.

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Illegal
Directed by Lewis Allen
Written by W.R. Burnett and James R. Webb from a story by Frank J. Collins
1955/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/My DVD collection

[box] Victor Scott: Well, every time you go into a courtroom, it’s a gamble.

Frank Garland: I’m the house, Victor. I never gamble![/box]

This film gives us another solid performance from Edward G. Robinson and the debut of Jayne Mansfield.  Otherwise, it is eye-rolling stuff.

As the film begins, Victor Scott (Robinson) is a District Attorney with a burning drive to win at all costs. His most recent success is convicting a man of murder on some pretty flimsy evidence and sending him to the chair.  At the last minute, Victor learns that a gangster has confessed to the crime and tries to call the execution off but it is too late.  Devastated, Victor quits his job and turns to the bottle.  His able assistant/ward Ellen Miles (Nina Foch) is unable to comfort him and he advises her to marry another lawyer from the DA’s office, Ray Borden (Hugh Marlowe).  Despite the fact that Ellen is actually in love with the much older Victor, she does.

After his drunken bender lands him in court for disorderly behavior on a charge that should have been assault, Victor starts work as a defense attorney.  His drive to win is undiminished and he turns to ever more shady methods of achieving an acquittal. Eventually, an embezzler turns to him for help.  Victor manages to coerce the victim bank into accepting less than half the money in exchange for an agreement not to prosecute.  It turns out that the bank is actually a front for gangster Frank Garland (Albert Dekker) and Victor has himself a new client.  This serves his-new found greed nicely until another murder gives Victor the most important case of his life.  With Mansfield as Garland’s “protege”/secretary.

The non-sequitors in this movie are mind-boggling.  One of the most egregious is when Victor sucker-punches a witness in court to “prove” that he could have been unconscious when a fight took place.  Instead of Victor being disbarred, the case is dismissed!  There are many more.  Still, I wouldn’t call any film with this cast a total loss.

Trailer

Creature with the Atom Brain
Directed by Edward L. Cahn
Written by Curt Siodmak based on his story
1955/USA
Clover Productions
First viewing/Netflix rental

Frank, you may be a crackpot, but you’re also a genius.

This entry from schlock-meister “Jungle Sam” Katzman is actually fairly decent.

Gangster Frank Buchanan was sent up the river by a combo of traitors in his mob and lawyers from the DA’s office.  When he left for prison, he vowed that he would see them all dead, Now he is out of prison and has hooked up with a German neuro-scientist to carry out his fiendish plot.  In a secret lab, reached only by crawling through yards of filmy tunnel, the two use electrodes to animate corpses stolen from the morgue.  These they control with a television and microphone.  The zombified bodies start on a rampage.

The police are baffled and Det. Dave Harris turns to his friend Dr. Chet Walker (Richard Denning) for help.  The rest of the movie follows the grisly story as Buchanan expands his focus to include the new enemies on his trail and Walker’s wholesome 50’s wife and daughter.

This is somewhat repetitive but over all solid.  The zombies look pretty cool and the acting is quite acceptable.  Short, sweet, and OK for a break from classier viewing.

Floating Clouds (Ukigumo)
Directed by Mikio Naruse
Written by Yôko Mizuki from a novel by Fumiko Hayashi
1955/Japan
Toho Company
First viewing/Hulu

No adultery is bloodless. — Natalia Ginzburg

This is an interesting if frustrating film with some excellent acting.

The film is set in the immediate aftermath of the Japanese defeat in WWII and thereafter. As the film begins, Yukiko Koda (Hideko Takamine) is returning, penniless, to war-torn Tokyo from Indochina where she had been working in happier times.  Her first stop is at the home of Kengo Tomioka (Masayuki Mori).  She is greeted by his mother and wife.  He goes with her outside and we flash back to the beginning of their love affair when she arrived, as a young girl, to Vietnam.  The bloom is definitely now off the rose as far as Tomioka is concerned, though he offers to help her financially.  She refuses and goes to shack up at the empty house of a “friend”.

Yukiko survives by taking up with an American GI.  Soon enough, though, Tomioka is back in the picture.  He takes her to a mountain inn where he asks her to commit double suicide with him.  She declines and he starts flirting with the young wife of the owner and feels less like dying himself.  Back in Tokyo, the only way Yukiko can get by is by starting a relationship with the “friend”, who is now rich.  But Yukiko can’t seem to keep away from her unfaithful lover.

This is a very well made film.  I especially liked Masayuki Mori as the rat fink lover.  He is different in every movie I have seen him in.  It was kind of frustrating to watch though.  You knew from the first frame that the guy was a louse — before they even started their affair he was kind of insulting to her.  If people could only learn to accept it when the one they love doesn’t love them, the world would be a better place.  It might not have as many melodramas however.

Compilation of clips from various Naruse films set to nice music

Death of a Cyclist
Directed by Juan Antonio Bardem
Written by Juan Antonio Bardem and Luis Fernando de Igoa
1955/Spain/Italy
Guión Producciones Cinematográficas/Suevio Films-Cesáreo Gonzáles/Triumfal Cine
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] I am responsible only to God and history.  — Francisco Franco[/box]

This story of the destruction of couple by their selfishness and guilt is meant to be an allegory to Spain’s Franco regime.  I don’t know if I got many of the references but it sure is beautiful to look at.

A couple are driving down a lonely country road when their car accidentally hits an elderly bicyclist.  The man, Juan (Alberto Cosas), stops and determines that the rider is still breathing.  His companion, Maria José (Lucia Bosé), gets behind the wheel, beckons her companion to join her, and speeds off.

We learn that they were high school sweethearts and are now lovers.  Maria José is married to Miguel, a wealthy member of the elite.  Miguel is also Juan’s brother-in-law and used his influence to get Juan his position as an adjunct professor of mathematics at the university.

Both of the lovers are totally distracted by their guilt and fear of discovery.  Juan is so distraught that he makes a major error at school.  Matters get even worse when Rafa, a jealous and obnoxious critic, reveals that he saw the couple driving together on the road and threatens to tell Miguel.  Rafa refuses to reveal anything else he may know and report.

The couple themselves make matters worse and worse.  By the end of the story, each partner sees a different way out of their dilemma.

This is one of those film with a lot of long silences that would probably bear rewatching to fully understand.  If the viewer sticks with it, s/he will be rewarded with a very powerful, albeit a bit too pat, ending.  I can’t say I loved the film but I wouldn’t mind trying it again.  Both the cinematography and the actors are very beautiful.

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