Category Archives: 1959

Darby O’Gill and the Little People
Directed by Robert Stevenson
Written by Lawrence Edward Watkin suggested by “Darby O’Gill stories” by H.T. Kavanaugh
1959/USA
Walt Disney Productions
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] King Brian: Three wishes I’ll grant ye, great wishes an’ small! But you wish a fourth and you’ll lose them all! [laughs][/box]

This pleasant family film might make good St. Patrick’s Day viewing if you’ve already seen The Quiet Man too many times.

Darby O’Gill (Albert Sharpe) is getting on in years.  He and his daughter Katie (Janet Munro) are caretakers of an aristocratic estate.  Since his wife died, Darby is more interested in spinning tales about leprechauns at the local pub than he is in his duties.  The Lord of the place decides it is time to retire Darby and replace him with the energetic young Michael McBride (Sean Connery).  When Darby learns of this demotion, King Brian of the Leprechauns decides it is time for the old man to join his kind permanently.

Before this can happen, however, Darby must keep Katie out of the clutches of the local bully and arrange her match with Michael.

This is exactly what any one would expect from a 50’s Disney presentation of The Old Sod.  It hits each and every stereotypical note with great affection.  Actually, it’s pretty entertaining and a good way to get acquainted with the pre-Bond Connery.

Clips – Sean Connery sings!

A Summer Place
Directed by Delmer Daves
Written by Delmer Daves from a novel by Sloane Wilson
1959/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Molly Jorgenson: I’m… I’m sure everything’s clean, mother.

Helen Jorgenson: You can never be too sure.[/box]

We can see the eventual inevitable demise of the Hayes Code in this and other Peyton Place style melodramas.

Bart Hunter (Arthur Kennedy) is the scion of one of the most prominent families on Pine Island.  He is married to Sylvia (Dorothy McGuire) with whom he has a teenage son, Johnny (Troy Donahue).  Bart’s alcoholism has brought the family to hard times and they must now rent out their mansion for summers to make ends meet.  They receive an offer from the wealthy Jorgenson family.  Ken Jorgenson (Richard Egan) used to work on the island as a life guard and Bart is not looking forward to him lording his new wealth and social standing but beggars can’t be choosers.  Ken comes with his prudish, social climbing wife Helen and lovely daughter Molly (Sandra Dee).

Ken and Sylvia had been lovers as teenagers and hardly a day passes before they are seeing each ofther on the sly.  Molly and Johnny also form an immediate, if more chaste, romance.  Ken’s wife seems to have been looking for an opportunity to cash in on a scandalous divorce and that is just what happens.  The parents try to separate the children permanently by sending them to different boarding schools but nothing can conquer their desire for each other.  With Beulah Bondi as a wise spinster aunt.

This is well-made melodrama but had some drawbacks for me.  I wish they hadn’t made the scorned spouses so utterly despicable.  Both are such terrible human beings that there hardly seem to be any ethical or moral questions involved in the infidelity.  Sex is a subtext to almost every situation, but in that late-50’s whitewashed way that makes it all seem pretty smarmy.

The Max Steiner theme music for the film became a major pop hit at the time and has been covered numerous times and used as background in many TV shows.

Theme music set to clips

Pork Chop Hill
Directed by Louis Milestone
Written by James R. Webb from a book by S.L.A. Marshall
1959/USA
United Artists/Melville Productions
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] I was drafted during the Korean War. None of us wanted to go… It was only a couple of years after World War II had ended. We said, ‘Wait a second? Didn’t we just get through with that?’ Clint Eastwood [/box]

The objective is valueless except as a chip at ongoing Peace Negotiations.  This hardhitting film takes a look at the challenges of leading men whose primary aim is not to be among the last casualties of the war.

Lt. Joe Clemens (Gregory Peck)’s platoon is ordered to play a key role in re-taking Pork Chop Hill.  He is supposed to work in concert with a couple of other platoons.  Clemens’s first job is to motivate men who spend all their time glued to the radio for news on progress at the Peace Talks.  Clemens must motivate these by tough talk and brute force.

Once they hit the field, the men are also bombarded with non-stop propaganda “advice” from the Red Chinese.

Perhaps the most discouraging factor is the constant miscommunication from headquarters, which consistently seems to be clueless as to the location of its troops and conditions on the ground. General staff is unable to increase supplies and unwilling to order withdrawal at this sensitive political juncture.  Despite or because of the enormous casualties, though, the troops at last become determined to keep the hill.  With Harry Guardino, Rip Torn, George Peppard, Woody Strode, Norman Fell, Robert Blake, and Martin Landau (in his film debut) as soldiers.

Louis Milestone brings as another anti-war film late in his career.  It is not as epic as All Quiet on the Western Front but hard-hitting for all that.  It made me think about all the paradoxes created by this modern way of fighting and negotiating at the same time.

Trailer

Invisible Invaders
Directed by Edward L. Cahn
Written by Samuel Newman
1959/USA
Robert E. Kent Productions
First viewing/Amazon Prime

[box] Dr. Adam Penner: Dear Lord, I pray that I am insane, that all that happened is only in my mind. I pray that tomorrow the sun will shine again on living things, not on a world where only the dead walk the Earth.[/box]

Invisible aliens and living dead certainly do save on the old special effects budget …

As the film begins, an atomic lab explosion kills scientist Karol Noymann (John Carradine). Noymann’s friend, Dr. Adam Penner, is prompted to resign his position as head of a nuclear commission by the concurrent accidental release of radiation.  When Penner returns home to the desert he is contacted by an invisible alien occupying Noymann’s dead body.  The alien announces that the countries of the world have 24 hours to surrender.  Otherwise, aliens, all clothed in bodies of the dead, will inflict mass destruction and take over.

Penner, another scientist, a military man (John Agar), and Penner’s lovely daughter all retreat to an impregnable bunker where they race against the clock to find a way to materialize the aliens and destroy them.

This is OK for what it is.  I doubt that I will have a clue what it was about by next week.

Trailer

Jazz on a Summer’s Day
Directed by Bert Stern and Aram Avakian
Written by Albert D’Annibale and Arnold Perl
1959/USA
Galaxy Productions/Raven Films
First viewing/Netflix rental

Never play anything the same way twice. — Louis Armstrong

I was in heaven during this, the granddaddy of all the great rock concert documentaries.

The film is set in Newport, Rhode Island on the weekend of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival and Americas Cup trials.  Performers are too numerous to mention but include Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson, Anita O’Day, Gerry Mulligan, Dinah Washington, Chico Hamilton, George Shearing, Thelonious Monk and Chuck Berry.

This is more than a straight-forward video of a concert.  We feel that we are really there on a sunny Saturday afternoon and evening.  While we listen, we see the rapt or distracted concert goers, the sea and the sailboats, and the parties on the margins.  The musicians are all in their prime and are photographed tellingly.  I’m a huge Dinah Washington fan and she was probably my favorite closely followed Mahalia Jackson.  Chuck Berry kind of sticks out like a sore thumb among the jazz performers but made me feel like dancing with his “Sweet Little Sixteen”.  Highly recommended to all music lovers.

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

Clip

Marie-Octobre
Directed by Julien Duvivier
Written by Henri Jeanson, Julien Duvivier and Jacques Robert from Robert’s novel
1959/France
Abbey Films/Doxa Films/Orex Films/Societe Francaise du Theatre et Cinema
First viewing/YouTube

[box] “Whatever happens, the flame of French resistance must not be put out.” -Charles de Gaulle[/box]

Some of France’s most recognizable actors of the era bring class but not enough oomph to this stage-bound drawing room mystery.

Members of a French Resistance cell hold a reunion 15 years after VE Day.  Marie-Octobre (Danielle Darrieux), the lone woman in the group, has discovered that one of their number had ratted out their leader before he was shot and killed by the Gestapo.  She and a trusted friend have orchestrated the dinner to ferret out the culprit.

The evening consists of a tangled web of questions, accusations, confessions and lies. Then the group must struggle over what penalty the guilty party deserves.

What could have been a suspenseful story of courage and betrayal is reduced to a lot of talk, talk, talk.  Duvivier keeps his camera moving within the confines of the salon and the actors keep the conversation lively but this could have been a much better film with a few selected flashbacks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ-l9qASJkM

Clip (no subtitles)

The Head 
Directed by Victor Trivas
Written by Victor Trivas
1959/West Germany
Rapid Film
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Dr. Brandt, alias Dr. Ood: Yes, I’m sick. Yes, I’m sick, and you’re the only one who knows it, but I don’t care. You belong to me and me alone. Professor Hartmann experimented on my brain. The results were fantastic. It made a genius of me. Hear me, a genius! [He clutches the window in a parody of the crucifixion.] But these spells are the debt I paid. The price of my genius was madness. My whole being became sick. The moon, and the wind, and that confounded dog![/box]

This film represents the absolute nadir in the career of the great French actor, Michel Simon.

Dr. Ood is mad, completely mad.  He learns that Prof. Dr. Abel (Simon) has succeeded in keeping a dog’s head alive after its death.  Abel hires Ood as an assistant because of his interest in organ transplants.  Abel is dying of heart failure and needs Ood to perform a heart transplant.

Ood double-crosses Abel by ditching his body and preserving his head.  Ood’s next project is to attempt to graft the head of a saintly but hunch-backed nurse onto the body of stripper.

This is kind of a combo of the ever popular head-in-a-box genre with shades of Frankenstein.  The version I watched was dubbed and was very bad.  I don’t think the dubbing had anything to do with it.  On the other hand, it does have its cheesy charms.

From the IMDb trivia: Michel Simon, a major star in France at the time, had used some tainted makeup on a previous film that had resulted in his body and face becoming temporarily partially paralyzed. Since that time he had been unable to find work and took a role in this low-budget German horror film because he needed the money and only his head would be shown, and he didn’t think a film of this caliber, which could adversely affect his career, would be seen on the rest of the continent. Unfortunately he was wrong, and the film was in fact a hit on both sides of the Atlantic.

Clip

Jungle Cat
Directed by James Algar
Written by James Algar
1959/USA
Walt Disney Productions
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] “The smallest feline is a masterpiece.” ― Leonardo da Vinci[/box]

This Disney True-Life Adventure focuses on a family of jaguars living in the Amazon.  Mama is spotted and Papa is a black panther.  Their two cubs are similarly colored.  Between many great scenes of jaguars hunting and playing, we get lots of monkeys and  birds.  The jaguars also engage in combat with an anaconda and a crocodile.

The movie is all I have come to expect from Disney’s 1950’s nature documentaries.  The sequences are well edited to create little comedies and dramas.  It all may not be strictly scientific but it is entertaining.

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

DVD Promo

… And the Wild, Wild Women (Nella città l’inferno)
Directed by Renato Castellani
Written by Suso Cecchi d’Amico from a novel by Isa Mari
1959/Italy/France
Riama Film/Rizzoli Film/Francinex
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] “Be thine own palace, or the world’s thy jail.” ― John Donne, The Poems of John Donne[/box]

Dubbing does not do this movie any favors.

The film is set in a contemporary women’s prison in Rome.  Egle (Anna Magnani) is a bold, brassy career convict.  She takes timid newcomer Lina (Giulietta Masina) under her wing. Lina has been brought low by a bastard whom she still loves.  Most of the film is an episodic slice of life.  Another plot line involves an inmate who falls in love with a man she glimpses on the street.

It turns out there are a number of Italian films of this era on Amazon Instant in versions that have been dubbed into English.  I always find dubbing to be a major distraction.  I think that Magnani may have dubbed her own voice.  One can sense that this is a great, flamboyant performance.  (She received many awards at film festivals).  The rest of the actresses, including Masina, were pretty clearly dubbed by voice actresses.  Someday, I’d like to see the original version.

American Trailer