Jimmy the Gent Directed by Michael Curtiz Written by Bertram Millhauser from a play by Laird Doyle and Ray Nazarro 1934/USA Warner Bros.
First viewing/FilmStruck
[box] ‘Jimmy’ Corrigan: Sit down boys. Everybody sit down. Boys, have a seat. Now look, in the first place you got to get it out of your head that this is a racket. This is a respectable, high-class, A-Number One, business. And you boys got a chance to make some real dough. Only, you gotta watch yourself to keep outta jail. See?[/box]
With Michael Curtiz, James Cagney, and Bette Davis on the marquee you can’t really miss.
Tough guy Jimmy Corrigan (Cagney) is in the business of locating missing heirs of unclaimed estates. He is not over scrupulous on whether the heirs he locates are actually relatives of the deceased. That is until the day that “gentleman” Charles Wallingham lures Jimmy’s sweetie and second in command Joan Martin away from him. Jimmy then comically decides to outdo her boss in the posh department while at the same time denying him a mega-bucks score. With Allen Jenkins as one of Jimmy’s henchmen.
This doesn’t make a huge impression but is thoroughly entertaining throughout its running time. Cagney and Davis have good chemistry, though unfortunately she is still struggling to do her best in “pretty blonde” mode.
Diary of a Chambermaid Directed by Luís Buñuel Written by Luís Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carriere from a novel by Octave Mirbeau 1964/France/Italy
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
[box] Céléstine: It’s strange, how the country always seems sad. — I guess, people don’t have much fun here.[/box]
I was underwhelmed by Luis Buñuel’s remake of Jean Renoir 1946 film of the same name.
Parisienne chambermaid Celestine (Jeanne Moreau) finds work in the country with a most unorthodox family. Grandpa is a foot fetishist, husband is a womanizer, and wife is a prude. Completing the picture is a mischief-making next door neighbor and a fascist groundskeeper.
Celestine quickly has all the me wrapped around her little finger. Things liven up even more when she begins to play detective in the murder case of a little girl.
This is thoroughly Bunuelean but I found it less quirky and amusing than his better films. I had seen it before and remembered very little about it. This rewatching looks like it is headed for the same fate.
Topkapi Directed by Jules Dassin Written by Monja Danischewski from a novel by Eric Ambler 1964/USA Filmways Pictures
First viewing/Netflix rental
Elizabeth Lipp: Do you mind that I am a nymphomaniac?
Walter Harper: It’s your most endearing quality.
Despite some excellent performances I was underwhelmed by this heist movie.
Master criminals Elizabeth Lipp (Melina Mercouri) and Walter Harper (Maximilian Schelll) plan an elaborate scheme to steal a valuable emerald dagger from the seemingly impregnable Topkapi museum in Instanbul. Small-time con man Arthur Simpson (Peter Ustinov) inadvertently gets caught up in the plot at the behest of the Turkish security services.
Arthur gets much closer to the robbery itself than he had dreamed of being.
It’s not really fair for me to review this movie. I had a cold bad enough to take the luster off the most sparkling dialogue. Certainly everybody involved in the film looked like they were having a much better time than I was.
Peter Ustinov won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Kwaidan (Kaidan) Directed by Misaki Kobayashi Written by Yoko Mizuki from a novel by Lafcadio Hearn 1964/Japan Bungei/Ninjin Club/Toho Company/Toyo Kogyo Kabushiki Kaiga
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
[box] “Oh, very good,’ interrupted Snape, his lip curling. ‘Yes, it is easy to see that nearly six years of magical education have not been wasted on you, Potter. ‘Ghosts are transparent.” ― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince[/box]
Misaki Kobayashi delivers some of the most beautiful and spooky ghost stories ever.
The movie is an anthology of four different stories. The first, “The Black Hair”, concerns an unemployed samurai who deserts his beautiful wife in favor of the wealth and fame provided by a royal marriage in another town. Years later he looks up his first and only true love.
In “The Woman in the Snow”, a ghostly maiden spares the life of a young man stranded in a blizzard. In return, she makes him promise never to repeat the story. Ten years later, he forgets his vow.
“Hoichi, the Earless” is the longest and most memorable segment. It begins by depicting the tragedy when a samurai clan loses a sea battle. Centuries later, the ghosts of the losing side seek to relive their defeat by luring a blind biwa player to recite the story. It is all he and his friends can do to escape their clutches. The final story is “A Cup of Tea”, an unfinished tale in which a samurai official is driven mad by the image he sees in a tea cup.
This film is just gorgeous. The stories are told in a very theatrical, kabuki style with fantastic settings and costumes. The sea battle in “Hoichi” is especially striking with stylized scenes of the struggle alternating with images from a scroll painting. The narratives are measured and deliberate. Those preferring action-packed horror should stay away. Highly recommended to others.
I can’t believe the editors of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die totally dissed Kobayashi (Harakiri, Samurai Rebellion, The Human Condition), one of Japan’s really great filmmakers.
Kwaidan was an Academy-Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film.
Theater admission numbers had dropped dramatically to below 1 billion. The trend started to reverse itself with the arrival of blockbusters and multi-plexes, but Hollywood would never get back to its glory days in the 1940s and 1950s.
Sony began marketing the first reel-to-reel video tape recorder designed specifically for home use in 1964 — however, widescale consumer use of video tape recorders didn’t really take off until the mid-1970s.
Alan Ladd died at the age of 50, due to a lethal combination of alcohol and drugs. Peter Lorre died of a heart attack/stroke at the age of 59. Elizabeth Taylor married Richard Burton for the first time.
Ronald Reagan’s last feature film appearance before his retiring from the screen was in director Don Siegel’s The Killers (1964) in which he played a ‘heavy’ for the first time. Two years later, he would be elected governor of California.
After three civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights act of 1964 but this did not stop the violence as it continued to increase in many American cities. The Act outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. It prohibited unequal application of voter registration requirements, racial segregation in schools, employment, and public accommodations. Resistance to the public accommodation clause continued for years on the ground, especially in the South. Resistance by school boards continued into the next decade, with the most significant declines in black-white school segregation only occurring at the end of the 1960s and the start of the 1970s. Lyndon Johnson was returned to office in a landslide victory over Barry Goldwater.
A parent wrote to the US Attorney General complaining that the lyrics to “Louie Louie” by The Kingsmen were obscene. After 2 years of investigation, the FBI dismissed the complaint because the lyrics of that recording were “unintelligible at any speed”.
The great soul singer Sam Cooke was shot dead at a motel under disputed circumstances.
“I Want to Hold Your Hand “spent seven weeks atop the Billboard Charts, making it the number one single of the year. At one point, songs by The Beatles occupied the top 5 places on the Billboard Top Ten. Both Beatlemania and the British Invasion took Amereica by storm. Other British groups also found success including The Rolling Stones and The Animals and together with the American talent of The Supremes and Bob Dylan many say this was one of the greatest years for music in the last century. Also one young loud talented boxer by the name of Cassius Clay won the Boxing World heavyweight championship from Sonny Liston. Time Magazine’s Man of the Year was Lyndon B. Johnson. No Pulitzer Prize was awarded for either literature or drama in 1964.
Although the U.S. denied that it had combat soldiers in South Vietnam, U.S. soldiers routinely participated in combat operations against the Viet Cong. The number of U.S. soldiers in South Vietnam rose to more than 16,000 by year’s end with 122 combat deaths in just that year.
The President of South Vietnam Ngô Đình Diệm initiated a brutal crack-down on protests by Buddhists against his (largely Roman Catholic) government that caused consternation in the U.S. and concern that the Diệm government was failing. In November, Diệm was overthrown and killed in a coup d’état by his military, with the tacit acquiescence of the United States. A military junta headed by General Dương Văn Minh replaced Diệm.
A Legend or Was It? (Shito no densetsu)
Directed by Keisuke Kinoshita
Written by Keisuke Kinoshita
1963/Japan
Shochiku Eiga
First viewing/FilmStruck
[box] Legend remains victorious in spite of history. Sarah Bernhardt [/box]
Set in the last days of WWII, this film is powerful but completely tragic.
We are told from the colorful beginning that this is a tale so tragic that the participants never speak of it. Then we segue into flashback and black-and-white. The Sonobe family – grandma, mother (Kinuyo Tanaka), son and two daughters – have evacuated from Tokyo to Hokkaido. As the story begins, another son has returned from the war due to illness. The family is resented by most of the local villagers but has managed to feed itself because the mayor’s son wants to marry the oldest daughter. She doesn’t like him but has agreed to the marriage.
The brother informs his family that the mayor’s son was guilty of atrocities in China. This is enough to cause the sister to reject him and allows the villagers’ resentment to grow into real hate. The son reveals himself to have been fully capable of war crimes. All this domestic tragedy is set to the bad news coming in from the front.
Well, the movie certainly delivers all the sadness it promised. There is a very interesting counterpoint between the villagers’ fanatical patriotism and the family’s growing conviction Japan will lose the war. Despite the unremitting bleakness, the movie is well and powerfully made and acted.
Stop Train 349 (Verspätung in Marienborn) Directed by Rold Hädrich Written by Jim Henaghan, Victor Vicas and Norman Borisoff from a story by Will Tremper 1963/France/Italy/West Germany Da Ma Produzione/ Hans Oppenheimer Film/Hoche Productions et al
First viewing/Amazon Instant
[box] There are many people in the world who really don’t understand, or say they don’t, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin. And there are even a few who say that it is true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Lass’sie nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin. – John F. Kennedy, 1963[/box]
After a somewhat cheesy opening, this topical political thriller works really well.
By treaty, the East Germans allowed the U.S. Army to operate a sealed train between West Berlin and West Germany, crossing East German territory. On this run of the train there is an unscheduled stop within East Germany and a East German escapee jumps onto the train. A sympathetic nurse unlocks a sealed door and attempts to hide him.
This doesn’t work too well because an obnoxious and nosy U.S. journalist (Jose Ferrer) is soon onto a story. At the border between East and West Berlin the train is again stopped by East German and Soviet authorities demanding the refugee, which the Army denies harboring. Tense negotiations ensue.
After the introductory bad “theme song” with shots of Berlin this becomes a taut thriller. One is really unsure of the fate of the refugee to the very end. The negotiations struck me as very realistic. Recommended to those looking for an obscure gem. I watched a dubbed version.
Clip – does not reflect the quality or tone of the rest of the film
The Disaster Artist Directed by James Franco Written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber from a book by Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell 2017/USA Good Universe/New Line Cinema, etc.
First viewing/theatrical showing
[box] Greg Sestero: Tommy, dude, this really isn’t necessary.
Tommy Wiseau: No, no! Very necessary. I need to show my ass to sell this picture.[/box]
I and the rest of the audience of the showing of this movie at the Palm Springs International Film festival laughed our asses off.
This is the story of the friendship of cult director Tommy Wiseau (James Franco) and actor Greg Sisteros (Dave Franco). Both had an unlikely dream of making it in Hollywood. Unfortunately, Hollywood did not agree so Wiseau decided to do it himself by making The Room, now considered one of the worst movies ever made.
The plot delves into the inexplicable personality of the truly unique Wiseau with humor and some sympathy. We laugh at Wiseau’s clueless efforts while ultimately admiring his never losing faith in himself or his project. The scenes of the friends are interspersed with the making of the movie. Before the credits role we are treated to a number of shot-for-shot divided screen recreations of The Room. If you liked Ed Wood (1994), you might like to give this one a try.
Wiseau has always refused to reveal much about his background or personal life and the film leaves many questions unanswered. I had a hell of a good time though. I hope Franco is nominated for a Best Actor Oscar. He makes the film work.
We were treated to a Q&A with the scriptwriters and Greg Sisteros after the film.
The Room Directed by Tommy Wiseau Written by Tommy Wiseau 2003/USA Wiseau-Films
First viewing/YouTube
[box] Johnny: YOU ARE TEARING ME APART, LISA![/box]
It’s as if Ed Wood made a love-triangle soap opera punctuated with soft-core porn.
The movie takes place in an alternative universe masquerading as San Francisco.  Johnny is a bank employee who has been engaged to Lisa for the last five years.  They make love two or three times a day.  She is bored and starts an affair with Johnny’s best friend Mark on the eve of their nuptials.  When Johnny finds out about Lisa’s duplicity  SPOILER
he kills himself.
Obviously, the above is a pretty thin plot for a 99 minute movie. Â So there are several other characters who drop in for little particular purpose. Â What really adds to the running time however, are the endless soft-focus sex scenes featuring the aging Wiseau’s bare buttocks and with Mark, who is at least more attractive. Â Wiseau also seems to like to toss footballs around more than the average guy.
I watched the movie alone and must admit it was an experience. Â But it is even better with other people. I managed to find a youtube video with three young people commenting as they watched this for the first time that made me laugh pretty hard.
You have to admit the guy had a vision, demented as it may have been. Â In the future, though, I will stick to my beloved bad sci-fi.
Montage of “worst” moments does not fully convey the impact of this terrible, terrible film
The Skydivers
Directed by Coleman Francis
Written by Coleman Francis
1963/USA
Crown International Pictures
First viewing/YouTube
[box] Joe Moss: Coffee? I LIKE coffee![/box]
The director’s Beast of Yucca Flats was so bad it was good. This later effort is just plain bad.
One has to work pretty hard to find the plot. I think it goes something like this. A married couple is running a sport skydiving business. It is failing largely because fatalities keep it shut down while the FAA investigates. For some reason not related to their physical attractiveness each of the spouses is hit on by outsiders whom they reject. Acid does not react well with parachute material.
[box] Harry Rowe: Suzy, you’re a broad. Get lost![/box]
Unlike most ultra-low budget dreck this film has a cast of thousands. Not a one of them can act. I watched the Mystery Science Theater 3000 riff-track of the movie after seeing the film straight and it was an improvement.
I’ve been a classic movie fan for many years. My original mission was to see as many movies as I could get my hands on for every year from 1929 to 1970. I have completed that mission.
I then carried on with my chronological journey and and stopped midway through 1978. You can find my reviews of 1934-1978 films and “Top 10” lists for the 1929-1936 and 1944-77 films I saw here. For the past several months I have circled back to view the pre-Code films that were never reviewed here.
I’m a retired Foreign Service Officer living in Indio, California. When I’m not watching movies, I’m probably traveling, watching birds, knitting, or reading.
Photographs and videos found in this blog, unless indicated, are not owned by me and are here only for the purpose of education and discussion. Media found here are not intended for any commercial purpose. Copyright infringement is not intended.
Written material belongs to me and is copyrighted by flickersintime.com
