Category Archives: Movie Reviews

The Young Lions
Directed by Edward Dmytryk
Written by Edward Anhalt from a novel by Irwin Shaw
1958/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
First viewing/YouTube rental

[box] Michael Whiteacre: Look, I’ve read all the books. I know that in 10 years we’ll be bosom friends with the Germans and the Japanese. Then I’ll be pretty annoyed that I was killed.[/box]

As usual, Marlon Brando is the standout in parallel stories that examine the personal lives of German and American soldiers during WWII.

Brando plays Christian Diestl, a charming German ladies man who works seasonally as a ski instructor in the Austrian Alps.  We are at a party welcoming in the New Year 1939 and Diestl’s current amour is American tourist Margaret Freemantle (Barbara Rush).  She is succumbing to his advances when she sees the New Year’s baby is wearing a swastika. Things get more sinister from there.  Christian himself is not political in the least but he thinks Hitler might be a good thing for Germany.  Margaret is horrified and makes a speedy exit.

The next thing we know it is 1940.  Diestl is now an officer serving in Occupied Paris.  He finds his duty, which is mainly rounding up resisters, distasteful.  His introduction to a French woman eases the pain.  He tries to get transferred to combat duty but is refused. A visit to his commandant’s sexy wife in Berlin does the trick, however.  The war becomes more and more disillusioning and painful for him.

On parallel tracks, we are introduced to Noah Ackerman (Montgomery Clift), a humble Jew from New York, and Michael Whiteacre (Dean Martin), a hard-drinking nightclub singer.  We see their respective romances with Hope Plowman (Hope Lange) and Margaret Freemantle, the American who spurned Christian earlier in the film.  Both men are drafted. Noah suffers mightily from the anti-Semitism of his captain, sergeant, and fellow GIs but fights back nobly.  Michael manages to get himself transferred to the special service.  But all three of our protagonists end up on the road to Berlin toward the end of the war.

This movie is two hours and 47 minutes long but kept my interest throughout.  That says something right there.  The story was somewhat cliched but was very well done and Brando, as always, was fascinating to watch.  I thought he did well with his accent and disappeared into his part.

The Young Lions was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Cinematography, Black-and-White; Best Sound; and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.

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The Crawling Eye (AKA The Trollenberg Terror)
Directed by Quentin Lawrence
Written by Jimmy Sangster; story by Peter Key
1958/UK
Tempean Films
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Philip Truscott: Cute little things, aren’t they?

Alan Brooks: Yeah. I’m gonna throw a bomb at that one. You watch on the screen, see what happens.[/box]

Slow pace and a cardboard alien hamper what could be an intriguing premise in this British B feature.

As the movie begins, climbers are rappelling down the face of Trollenberg in the Swiss Alps.  Suddenly one of them falls.  The other two try to save him until one of them sees that his face has been ripped off.

Segue to a train car, where our hero Alan Brooks (Forrest Tucker) is on his way to that a same mountain.  In his compartment are two sister en route to Geneva.  One of them, Anne is irresistibly compelled to get off at Trollenberg.  We find the sisters perform in a mind reading act.  No signals are necessary as Anne actually is telepathic.  She keeps getting terrifying visions of death on the mountain and something seems to be pulling her there.

Alan goes to visit his friend Professor Crevett at his mountain observatory.  Both believe the strange phenomenon Alan observed in the Andes is repeating itself.  Something, which is protecting itself with a cloud and intense cold, is mighty annoyed.

Don’t come here looking for camp or laughs unless you watch the MST3K version.  Nothing about it grabbed me.

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Desire Under the Elms
Directed by Delbert Mann
Written by Irwin Shaw from the play by Eugene O’Neill
1958/USA
Don Hartman Productions
First viewing/Amazon Prime

[box] They wa’n’t strong enuf fur that! They reckoned God was easy. They laughed. They don’t laugh no more. Some died hereabouts. Some went West an’ died. They’re all under ground–fur follerin’ arter an easy God. God hain’t easy. (He shakes his head slowly.) An’ I growed hard.  — Eugene O’Neill, Desire Under the Elms[/box]

More domestic disfunction in 1958, this time in New England.

Ephraim Cabot (Burl Ives) is a 76-year-old tyrant with a prosperous farm.  He works his three grown sons mercilessly and treats them with contempt.  The youngest, Eben (Anthony Perkins), seems to be the softest but he is secretly filled with steely determination to make all that Ephraim owns his own.  The source of this wealth was his own mother’s dowry.

Ephraim may be hard but he is also lonely.  He sets off to find a wife.  While he is gone, Eben digs up Ephraim’s secret cache of gold and buys up his half-brothers’ share of the farm. They take the money and set off to prospect for gold in California.

Ephraim comes back with a young Italian wife, Anna (Sophia Loren).  She is just as determined to make the farm hers as Eben is.  After a stormy start, they end up in each other’s arms.  Tragedy ensues.

This is an O’Neill drama with the gravitas of Greek tragedy and OK in its way.  It hinges, however, on believing the grand passion between Perkins and Loren.  I didn’t buy it for a minute.  Perkins is a fine actor but he is just not cut out to be any kind of romantic lead. Ives was certainly having quite a year!

Desire Under the Elms was nominated for an Oscar for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White.

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We had a mostly cool and beautiful holiday in the Pacific Northwest.  I’m ready to be back and watching my beloved old movies but not quite ready for the heat.

Here’s what we saw when we stopped in Stevenson, Washington on the Columbia River Gorge.

… and a rose at Portland’s International Test Rose Garden.

On the Bowery
Directed by Lionel Rogosin
Written by Lionel Rogosin, Richard Bagley and Mark Sufrin (all uncredited)
1956/USA
Rogosin Films
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] “This is a good place,” he said. “There’s a lot of liquor,” I agreed.” ― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises[/box]

This ground-breaking documentary of how drunks try to survive on skid row is marred by an obviously fictional story and amateur acting.  Nevertheless, Rogosin’s photography of the real thing is stunning and profound.

The story follows Ray as he arrives in the Bowery after a summer working on the railroad with his savings and s suitcase.  We follow the clean cut man as he slowly deteriorates into a bum who has hocked his clothes for his last drink and now must be fed a concoction of Sterno to stave off the DT’s.  Ray’s older friend Gorman, a fellow drunk and long-time Bowery resident, tries to help him.

The scenes of life in the Bowery are absolutely harrowing.  The faces of the drunks are heartbreaking.  Despite the horror, the photography is hauntingly beautiful.  The film was recently lovingly restored.  Recommended.

On the Bowery was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary, Features.

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Lust for Life
Directed by Vincente Minnelli
Written by Norman Corwin based on the novel by Irving Stone
1956/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Paul Gauguin: With all your talk of emotion, all I see when I look at your work is just that you paint too fast!

Vincent Van Gogh: You look too fast![/box]

Vincent Minnelli gives us a visual feast and Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn bring great painters to life.

The story covers the life of the great expressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh (Douglas) from age 25 until his death by suicide at age 37.  Mental illness will haunt him all his life.  The son of a minister, Vincent begins with a burning desire to spread the word of God to the poor.  His superiors at theology school in Belgium do not believe the unconventional man has what it takes and recommend against assigning him a parish.  Desperate, Vincent begs to be sent to the most undesirable district and he is finally accommodated and sent to preach to a community of dirt poor miners.  Vincent is capable only of rambling and incoherent sermons and does not attract a following.  Finally he decides to be of more direct help by going down into the mine and into the hovels of the workers.  When inspectors come to see how he is doing, they are appalled at his style of living and his rags.  He is relieved of his ministry.  This is the first of many failures and he goes back home to recover.

Vincent begins to draw frantically.  He also falls in love with his widowed cousin.  His behavior is still out of control and he disgusts his cousin.  He goes to the Hague where he studies painting with a cousin and sets up house with a prostitute.  This ends badly as well and he is called back home when his father is stricken.  After his father dies, he goes to Paris to live with his devoted brother Theo (James Donald), an art dealer.  There he meets the Impressionists and begins to develop his own colorful, passionate style.

Vincent goes off to Arles in Provence and throws himself feverishly into his painting.  He is lonely and drinking heavily, however, and his brother decides that the painter Paul Gaugin (Quinn), who had taking a liking to Vincent, might be just what is needed.  Theo pays Gaugin’s expenses and the two painters begin to live together.  Sadly, the fiery and orderly Gaugin is a bad match for Vincent, who has difficulty getting along with anybody, and this relationship too ends in disaster.

This movie is absolutely beautiful to look at.  It is lit to look like the paintings from each period of the artist’s career and Minnelli frequently stops to show us the actual works. Douglas and Quinn are both superb in their parts.

I have read Van Gough’s letters to his brother and was tremendously moved by them.  The story is accompanied by Theo’s narration of imaginary letters (the Estate would not allow any direct quotes).  Douglas does not quite capture the sensitivity of the artist but it’s close enough and I really enjoyed the movie.

Anthony Quinn won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.  Lust for Life was nominated in the categories of Best Actor; Best Writing – Best Screenplay, Adapted; and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color.

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The Rainmaker
Directed by Joseph Anthony
Written by N. Richard Nash from his play
1956/USA
Hal Wallis Productions/Paramount Pictures
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

Noah Curry: We don’t believe in rainmakers.
Bill Starbuck: What DO you believe in mistah? Dyin’ cattle?

For me, this starts with Katharine Hepburn cast as a forty-year-old virgin and goes downhill from there.

Lizzie Curry (Hepburn) is smart, capable, and one heck of a good cook.  However, she is “plain” (?!) and speaks her mind so naturally she can’t snatch a man.  This is her one aim in life.  She has a close family that loves her but her brother Noah (Lloyd Bridges) is getting fed up with her spinsterhood.  Her father is trying to set her up with the sheriff (Wendell Corey) but he is commitment-phobic and won’t even come over to taste Lizzie’s homemade limeade.

In the meantime, Bill Starbuck (Burt Lancaster) a conman who claims he can relieve the current drought for one hundred dollars appears to shake things up.  He gives both Lizzie and her younger brother (the “stupid one”) the courage to stand up for themselves and makes Lizzie feel beautiful at last.

This movie is not actually too bad though Lancaster cuts the line between flamboyance and ham acting perilously close.  It rubs me wrong on a whole lot of different levels, though.  Hepburn is forced to play both below apparent age and grievously against type.  Hepburn may not be conventionally beautiful but there is no way in the world anybody could perceive her as plain.  The story is the epitome of 50’s sexual politics.  Lots of people love it for its romance however.

The Rainmaker was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Actress and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.

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