Category Archives: Movie Reviews

Born Yesterday
Directed by George Cukor
Written by Albert Mannheimer from a play by Garson Kanin
1949/USA
Columbia Pictures Corporation
Repeat viewing/my DVD collection

[box] Harry Brock: Shut up! You ain’t gonna be tellin’ nobody nothin’ pretty soon!

Billie Dawn: DOUBLE NEGATIVE! Right? [/box]

Think what you will about the line-up for the 1949 Best Actress Oscars.  It is impossible for me to think anyone else deserved the award while actually watching Judy Holliday in this movie.

Harry Brock (Broderick Crawford) is a self-made man.  He refuses to say he deals in scrap metal, preferring to refer to himself as being in the junk business.  He has travelled to Washington, DC to grease some legislation on scrap steel with strategically placed bribe. His traveling companion is his fiancee of seven years, prototypical dumb blond Billie Dawn (Holliday).  Both Harry and Billie are hardly fit for polite society.  Since Harry is clearly beyond reform, Harry’s lawyer suggests that he get someone to educate Billie on the social graces.

Unfortunately for Harry, he hits on the idea of hiring Paul Verrall, an investigative reporter who dropped by to interview him.  Paul gives Billie an education far beyond anything Harry could imagine and wins her heart in the process.

Despite all the patriotic speeches that come out of Holden’s character, I really love this movie.  Crawford and Holliday are hilarious together and separately.  Not since Jean Harlow and Wallace Beery went at it in Dinner at Eight has there been such a duo.  The almost silent gin rummy game between the two of them makes me laugh out loud every time.  I don’t know who got the idea of casting Holden as an intellectual.  He did his best.  Holliday could be annoying as hell but I find her absolutely endearing.  Recommended.

Holliday won the Academy Award for Best Actress.  The film was nominated in the categories of Best Picture; Best Director; Best Writing; Screenplay; and Best Costume Design, Black-and-White.

Trailer

Clip – from the gin game

In 1950:

John Howard Lawson and Dalton Trumbo were imprisoned and the eight remaining members of the Hollywood Ten were convicted of contempt of Congress.  The passport of legendary singer-actor Paul Robeson was revoked because of his alleged Communist affiliations.  It was not reinstated until 1958.

Studio control of stars further eroded when James Stewart signed a precedent-setting independent (or free-lance) contract for a 45% share in the net profits of the Anthony Mann western Winchester ’73 (1950), and for the film version of the stage comedy Harvey (1950). These and the other films Stewart made for Universal Studios, for which he took no salary in exchange for a share of the profits, proved to be very lucrative.  Stewart was the industry’s top box-office star by mid-decade.

Adapted from Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic tale, the family-oriented Treasure Island (1950) was Disney’s first completely live-action feature film.  Marlon Brando made his feature film debut in director Fred Zinnemann’s The Men (1950). Shirley Temple announced her retirement from show business.  Al Jolson died.

Senator Joseph McCarthy accused the U.S. State Department of being filled with 205 Communists. The McCarran Internal Security Act, which among other things required the registration of Communist organizations and provided for investigation and detention of “subversives”, was passed over the veto of President Truman.

The comic strip “Peanuts” by Charles M. Schulz was first published. L. Ron Hubbard published Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health paving the way for the Scientology movement.  There was a failed assassination attempt by two Puerto Rican nationals on President Truman.

The Way West by A.B. Guthrie won the Pulitzer prize for literature and Rogers and Hammerstein’s musical South Pacific was honored for drama.  “Good Night, Irene” by The Weavers spent 13 weeks at the top of the Billboard charts.

The new decade began with another awful war.  Due to the deteriorating situation in Korea, President Truman ordered American military forces to join in the conflict on the side of South Korea on June 27.  On June 28, North Korea captured Seoul amid horrible slaughter by both sides.  On November 26, troops from the People’s Republic of China moved into North Korea and launched a massive counterattack against South Korean and American forces at Chosin, dashing any hopes for a quick end to the conflict.  On November 30,  Douglas MacArthur threatened to use nuclear weapons in Korea.  He would later be fired by President Truman for such statements.

*********************

The films I will select from can be found here.  I have previously reviewed the following 1950 films on this site:  , , , , , , , , , , , ,  (“Try and Get Me”), , and .  

Montage of stills from the Oscar winners

Madame Bovary
Directed by Vincente Minnelli
Written by Robert Ardrey from the novel by Gustave Flaubert
1949/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Emma Bovary: Is it a crime to want things to be beautiful?[/box]

How could MGM destroy a masterpiece of world literature?  Let me count the ways.

The story of the novel is bookended by scenes of the trial of Gustave Flaubert (James Mason).  He defends the morality of his work in a possible concession to the Hayes Code. So right off the bat we change a study of provincial manners and human frailty into an object lesson on the dire consequences of adultery.

Farmer’s daughter Emma Bovary (Jennifer Jones) was raised in a convent where a Swiss housemother provided the girls with romantic novels and fed them all the love stories of legend.  Emma imagined herself as the heroine of all these tales.  She returns to the farm where the first educated man she meets is Charles Bovary (Van Heflin), a simple country doctor who has come to set her father’s broken leg.  She marries him but the reality of marriage is a cruel disappointment.  She decides to devote herself to making a beautiful home for him and secretly begins taking loans for furnishings, etc.  She starts a flirtation with Leon Depuis, a presentable young villager who assists her, but before this can become anything more his mother sends him off to Paris to study law.

Emma decides that what she needs is a son who will not face the obstacles she is suffering as a woman.  But again, her hopes are dashed when the child turns out to be a girl. Next, a local pharmacist convinces her that Charles could win the Legion of Honor if he is the first to perform a surgery to cure club foot.  (The filmmakers give the botched surgery – one of the most memorable parts of the novel – a pass.)

A count invites the Bovary’s to a ball where Emma is swept off her feet by the handsome aristocrat Rudolphe (Louis Jourdan).  They begin a love affair but Rudolphe gets cold feet when it comes to running away with Emma.  The ever-trusting Charles rescues Emma from a suicide attempt and later unwittingly enables her to start a liaison with Leon, now a law clerk in Rouen.  Emma’s dreams are finally dashed permanently when her debts catch up with her, but not before the money lender gives her a lecture on the wickedness of her ways.

This is a handsome production and Minnelli’s staging of the ball scene, in particular, is marvelous and worth seeing.

The film’s problems begin with the characterization of Emma, who comes off as more like Scarlett O’Hara than the pathetic none-too-bright heroine of Flaubert’s novel.  The other characters and their dialogue ring one false note after another.  Maybe I would have loved it if I had not read the book but not as more than as a costume melodrama.

Madame Bovary was nominated for an Oscar for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White.

Trailer

In the Good Old Summertime
Directed by Robert Z. Leonard
Written by Albert Hackett, Frances Goodrich, Ivan Tors and Samuel Raphaelson from the play “Parfumerie” by Miklós Lázló
1949/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Veronica Fisher: Psychologically, I’m very confused, but personally I feel just wonderful.[/box]

Long-time readers will know that The Shop Around the Corner is one of my very favorite romantic comedies.  This musical remake really had no hope of measuring up.  It doesn’t really try.

The setting has been moved from a leather-goods store in Budapest to a music store in Chicago at the turn of the last century.  Andrew Delby Larkin (Van Johnson) meets cute with Veronica Fisher (Judy Garland) when he crashes into her on the sidewalk, elaborately destroying her hat and hairdo in the process of trying to make things right.  They become reacquainted when she comes into the music store where Andrew works as head salesman to look for a job.  She is hired and the two squabble continuously thereafter.

The shop is owned by the tempermental Mr. Oberkuchen (S.K. ‘Cuddles’ Sakall) who drives everyone crazy by soothing himself by screeching on his violin whenever he gets upset.  Mr. Oberkuchen and his bookkeeper Nellie (Spring Byington) are in love. The other employees are Oberkuchen’s nephew Hickey (Buster Keaton) and salesman Rudy.

The pen-pal storyline proceeds just about the same as the plot of The Shop on Main Street (and You’ve Got Mail (1998)) and I won’t repeat it.  In this version, the adultery subplot is replaced with a little drama concerning Andrew’s decision to lend Mr. Oberkuchen’s beloved Stradivarius to a friend for her violin audition.

Some of the dialogue is lifted directly from the script of The Shop on Main Street and those scenes are the best in the movie.  I even teared up at the very end when I heard the “take me out of my envelope” line.  The rest of it is MGM-style glossy fluff.  It was really good to see Buster Keaton on the screen and Garland has some entertaining numbers.

Trailer – the little girl the stars are walking with toward the beginning is Liza Minnelli

Mighty Joe Young
Directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack
Written by Ruth Rose from an original story by Merian C. Cooper
1949/USA
Argosy Pictures
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Crawford: [amidst animal growls] It can’t be; we’re a hundred miles from that country – but it is, I swear it is! Ali, get me my gun – *big* gun![/box]

Sometimes it is good just to sit there like a little kid and marvel at some awesome special effects.  This is a particularly good movie to do that with.

Little Jill Young lives on a farm in Africa with her widowed father and needs a friend.  So she buys a baby gorilla from some natives who are passing by.  She names her friend Joe. Father disapproves but of course the beast stays on.

Segue to perhaps 10 years later and we meet flamboyant nightclub owner and publicity hound Max O’Hara (Robert Armstrong).  He decides that the best thing for his club will be to hire rodeo champion Gregg (Ben Johnson) to come with him to Africa and lasso some wild animals.  There they run into Joe who is now a giant of perhaps the size of King Kong (though his relative size seems to vary throughout the film).  They antagonize poor Joe and all hell breaks loose.  Fortunately Jill (Terry Moore) shows up.  She is the only one Joe will listen to and manages to calm him down again.

Max sweet talks the lonely orphan into bringing Joe with her to the bright lights of Hollywood.  Joe’s act is a smash hit but he is miserable after hours in his cage and this makes Jill miserable too.  Then Max tries out a new act in which his patrons throw things at the ape for a prize and Joe absolutely freaks out.  He is caged again but escapes and most satisfactorily takes his revenge on the crowd and the premises.

The mean police want to shoot Joe as a dangerous animal.  But Max and Gregg have a scheme to get him out of the country first.  It doesn’t quite work out the way they planned. The day is saved when Joe is put to work rescuing children from a burning orphanage. With Frank McHugh as Max’s manager.

Well this was more fun than a barrel of monkeys!  I love Robert Armstrong’s almost campy performances as this type in the Kong films and here.  Joe is given so much personality that you have to love and root for him.  The now blind Schoedsack did a splendid job of keeping things moving along at a breakneck speed.

For me the highlight was the commentary featuring the reminiscences of Terry Moore and  stop-animation genius Ray Harryhausen with interjections by an animation enthusiast.  The commentary made the special effects even more awe-inspiring if possible.  Just think that each frame was individually shot, requiring subtle changes to a mind-boggling amount of moving parts! Check out the fire scene below for a fabulous example.  If you like this kind of thing at all, I would say it’s a must-see.

Mighty Joe Young won the Academy Award for Best Effects, Special Effects.

Clip – Joe at the burning orphanage