Category Archives: Movie Reviews

The Major and the Minor 
Directed by Billy Wilder
Written by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder; suggested by a play by Edward Childs Carpenter; from a story by Fanny Kilbourne
1942/USA
Paramount Pictures
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] First Conductor: If you’re Swedish, suppose you say something in Swedish.

Susan Applegate: I vant to be alone.[/box]

Billy Wilder’s directorial debut is made with his characteristic panache but I found the premise vaguely icky.

Susan Applegate (Ginger Rogers) finally gets a job in New York City. On her first night as an in-home scalp masseuse, she is repeatedly propositioned by her randy middle-aged client (Robert Benchley).  This is the final straw and Susan decides to return home to small town Iowa.  She has saved the return fare in a sealed envelope but when she tries to buy a train ticket she discovers that the price has increased.  Broke, she disguises herself as a twelve year old to ride on the half-price children’s fare.

Conductors on the train find the disguise none too convincing and Susan slips into a sleeping compartment for shelter.  Surprisingly, the occupant Major Kirby buys Susan’s age hook, line and sinker leading to a number of risqué situations in which he tries to put Susan into bed with him to calm her fears of thunder, etc.

Kirby takes Susan to the military academy where he works as an instructor and is engaged to the very single-minded daughter of its commandant, Pamela.  He refuses to let Susan ride home alone, so she is subjected to the unwanted attentions of the teenage cadets.  Susan is put up in the room of Pamela’s kid sister Lucy (Diana Lynn) who is immediately wise to the ruse.  Lucy is willing to keep the secret, though, since she has little use for her sister and is trying to fight Pamela’s efforts to keep Kirby at the academy despite his desire to go on active duty in the army.  Lucy and Susan, who is falling for Kirby, team up to try to get him his wish.

There is nothing per se wrong with this highly rated film.  Rogers, in particular, is excellent. She might even pass for a precocious twelve-year-old.  The trouble is that she often acts more like a six-year-old.  The other problem is that there is something that just seems wrong with using a twelve-year-old’s age to get away with a bunch of double entendres, however witty.  Otherwise, I would say go for it.

Trailer

Went the Day Well?
Directed by Alberto Cavalcanti
Written by John Dighton, Diana Morgan, and Angus MacFail from a story by Graham Greene
1942/UK
Ealing Studios
First viewing/Lionsgate DVD

[box] Went the day well?/We died and never knew/But well or ill/Freedom, we died for you. — Title card[/box]

Ealing Studios is generally associated with comedies.  This fine early effort is anything but.

Although the film was made while the outcome was far from clear, the story is told in flashback from a time after the Allies have won WWII.  A group of German parachutists disguised as “Royal Engineers” takes over a small English town as an advance team for the upcoming invasion of Britain.  They are assisted in their nefarious scheme by local Fifth-Columnist Oliver Wilsford (Leslie Banks).

After initially cooperating, the villagers discover the identity of the soldiers fairly early on. The Nazis react by herding everyone into a church and terrorizing them.  Unfortunately, the villagers nominate Wilsford as their spokesman.  The rest of the story follows their heroic efforts to make their plight known to the authorities.

I was surprised at how graphic and hard-hitting this movie was.  The Nazis are, of course, beasts but the villagers are driven to equal brutality by the end of the piece.  The most loathsome of the characters, however, is the oily Wilsford.  The film must have been a powerful means of rousing the people during the darker days of the war when fears of invasion were running high.  Very interesting and recommended.

Trailer for the BFI restored release

The Murderer Lives at Number 21 (L’assassin habite… au 21)
Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot
Written by Henri-Georges Clousot and Stanislas-Andre Steeman
1942/France
First viewing/Hulu Plus

[box] Monsieur Colin: Life has never been very kind to me. And when I say life, I mean people. People are evil, father. [/box]

One part whodunit, one part black comedy, and one part film noir, this early effort by Master of Suspense Henri-Georges Clouzot (Diabolique, The Wages of Fear) is well worth a look.

Serial killer Monsieur Durand seems to slay with impunity, thumbing his nose at police by leaving his calling card with the body of each new victim.  Inspector Wenseslaus Wens (Pierre Fresnay) is on the case as is his annoying chanteuse live-in girlfriend Mila (Suzy Delair), who hopes that solving the crime will get her work.  Wens gets a break when a furniture remover finds a cache of Durand’s cards in a trunk located in the attic of a boarding house.

Wens rents a room there, disguised as a Protestant minister.  He finds plenty of suspects in the seedy establishment, but each is eliminated as the murders continue despite several arrests.  Wens promises to reveal the killer at a soiree held at the boarding house to celebrate clearing the names of the tenants. It would be criminal to reveal the nifty twist ending.

I thought this was a whole lot of fun.  The intricate plot highlights Clouzot’s already characteristic misanthropy as well as considerable wit.  The visuals are stylish and beautiful and I adore Fresnay anew with each performance.  Recommended.

Clouzot made this film for Continental Films, which was owned by the Nazi government.  This and other films he made during the war were used as grounds to ban him from future involvement in the film industry for life at his post-war trial for collaboration with the enemy.  Fortunately for future generations of film buffs, his sentence was soon commuted to two years.

Clip – opening

The Man Who Came to Dinner
Directed by William Keighley
Written by Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein from the play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart
1942/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Sheridan Whiteside: Is there a man in the world who suffers as I do from the gross inadequacies of the human race?[/box]

This is a wacky frenetic comedy something along the lines of Kaufman and Hart’s You Can’t Take It With You.

Sheridan Whiteside (Monte Woolley) is the grand old man of American letters and a beloved radio host, specializing in sentimental holiday specials.  He is also a nasty egomaniac who uses his acerbic wit to bully all in earshot to do his bidding.

He and secretary Maggie Cutler (Bette Davis) arrive in a small Ohio town to give a lecture. They are scheduled to dine at the home of local bigwig Ernest Stanley and his ditzy socialite wife (Billie Burke).  He slips on their icy steps before he can even get in the front door however and the doctor announces that he has broken his hip and cannot be moved.

Through threats of litigation, Whiteside manages to take over the entire household, relegating the Stanleys to cowering in an upstairs bedroom.  He terrorizes his nurse (the wonderful Mary Wicks – Now, Voyager) and starts running his media empire via long distance calls around the globe on the Stanley’s phone.  He also gives the Stanley children advice that causes both of them to run away from home.

The sojourn in Ohio does have the positive effect of allowing faithful Maggie to fall in love with local newspaper owner and aspiring playwright Bert Jefferson.  Fearful that Maggie will leave him, Whiteside schemes his seduction by actress Lorraine Sheldon (Ann Sheridan). who has her own personal axe to grind against Maggie.  But Maggie has a secret weapon in the form of Whiteside’s friend Banjo (Jimmy Durante).

I just loved Ann Sheridan in the part of the vain pretentious Lorraine, so uncharacteristic of her usual roles.  While a little bit of Durante goes a long way, he also is very good here.  The whole is a pleasant enough entertainment with some real laughs.

Clip – Jimmy Durante, Monte Woolley, and Mary Wickes

There Was a Father (“Chichi Ariki”)
Directed Yasujiro Ozu
Written by Tadao Ikeda, Yasujiro Ozu, and Takao Yanai
1942/Japan
Shochiku Eiga
First viewing/Hulu Plus

[box]The camellia against the moss of the temple, the violet hues of the Kyoto mountains, a blue porcelain cup — this sudden flowering of pure beauty at the heart of ephemeral passion: is this not something we all aspire to? And something that, in our Western civilization, we do not know how to attain?

The contemplation of eternity within the very movement of life. — Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog[/box]

I love the films of Yasujiro Ozu but this one, although exquisitely shot, was slow going for me.

Widower Shuhei Horikawa is raising his young son Ryohei.  He teaches at a junior high school in Tokyo.  When he takes the class on an outing, some of the boys disobey him by taking rowboats out on a lake. One of the boats capsizes and a boy drowns. Shuhei believes he could have been more forceful in preventing the tragedy and decides he can no longer be responsible for other people’s children.  He moves with Ryohei to his home town in the north and begins working on an assembly line.

Shuhei’s total focus is on getting Ryohei a good education.  He sends him off to a boarding school for junior high.  The boy’s separation from his father leaves a life long yearning in his heart.  Later, Shuhei decides he can make more money in Tokyo and even the weekly visits with his son must stop to be replaced by very occasional time together in the summer.  The boy graduates from university and becomes a teacher himself.  When he tells his father he want to quit and find work in Tokyo so they can live together at last, Shuhei disagrees saying that everyone’s great duty in these times is to put aside personal concerns and concentrate on doing one’s best in his chosen profession.

Even though by the end Ryohei has passed his physical for the draft, this is not treated as a matter of concern and the viewer would otherwise have no clue that total war was in the real life backdrop to this movie.  I found Ozu’s transition shots – to household objects, scenery, etc. – to linger longer than usual and to drag down the pace of this movie.  The understated love between father and son is quite touching and the ending is very moving  but I unfortunately found this one less contemplative than just plain slow.

The viewing experience was admittedly marred by the poor print and sound quality of the version I watched.

Clip – going away

Spitfire (AKA “The First of the Few”)
Directed by Leslie Howard
Written by Miles Malleson and Anatole de Grunwald; story by Henry C. James and Kay Strobe
1942/UK
British Aviation Pictures
First viewing/Amazon Prime Instant Video

[box] Geoffrey Crisp: [Sotto voce, to the heavens] They can’t take the Spitfires Mitch. They can’t take ’em.[/box]

This is a fairly standard biopic about the engineer who designed the Spitfire fighter used by the RAF to great effect in WWII.

RAF squadron commander Geoffrey Crisp (David Niven) tells the history of the plane they fly to his men. Segue to flashback.  R.J. Mitchell (Leslie Howard) was a very successful designer of seaplanes that consistently won important races.  But he dreams of building a plane that flies like a bird.  It takes him years to get the financing to realize his dreams.  He enjoys the constant support of test pilot Crisp, though.  When the two decide to take a holiday in Germany shortly before the outbreak of WWII, Mitchell becomes totally committed to his idea as a high-speed fighter plane.  He proceeds to work himself to death to get the plane into production before war breaks out.

Spitfire plays on all the standard biopic tropes of the inventor who overcomes great odds to bring his ideas to fruition.  There are some good shots of WWII bombers and fighters in action.

This was the last on-screen performance of Leslie Howard before his plane was tragically shot down in 1943.

Clip – opening

The Talk of the Town
Directed by George Stevens
Written by Irwin Shaw and Sidney Buchman; adaptation by Dale Van Every from a story by Sidney Harmon
1942/USA
Columbia Pictures Corporation
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Leopold Dilg: I don’t approve of, but I like people who think in terms of ideal conditions. They’re the dreamers, poets, tragic figures in this world, but interesting.[/box]

This is one of the few romantic comedies in which it is not obvious whom the leading lady will end up with.  It also contains an unusual amount of philosophy.

The New England town of Lochester is dominated by corrupt political boss Andrew Holmes.  Holmes’s decrepit factory is torched and a watchman killed in the fire.  The prime suspect becomes Leopold Dilg (Cary Grant), who is regarded as a bit of a radical due to his speech-making.

Dilg is arrested.  Seeing a guilty verdict as inevitable, he escapes from jail during the trial and goes to hide out in a house being rented by Nora Shelley (Jean Arthur), with whom he attended high school.  She is there preparing for a new tenant when he arrives.  She demands that he leave but relents when she sees he cannot walk on an injured ankle.  The tenant, esteemed law professor Michael Lightcap (Ronald Colman) arrives a day early. Much commotion ensues as Nora tries to keep Dilg hidden from the Professor.

 Nora gets hired as Lightcap’s secretary/cook.  Leopold gets introduced as Joseph the gardener.  Lightcap enjoys philosophizing about the law and life with “Joseph” and starts falling for Nora.  After he learns Joseph’s true identity, Lightcap must choose between following the letter of the law and turning him in or helping to establish his innocence.  This decision is complicated by the fact that Lightcap is about to be nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court and needs to keep his name out of the papers.  With Edgar Buchanan as Dilg’s lawyer and Glenda Farrell as the watchman’s girlfriend.

I watched this with my husband and he laughed out loud several times.  For some reason, it didn’t produce the same reaction in me.  I did enjoy it more than on my previous viewing, however.  All the acting is quite good.  I especially enjoyed Coleman.  It’s in the vein of a lot of Capra’s work with the common man against the corrupt establishment.

The Talk of the Town was nominated for seven Academy Awards: Best Picture; Best Writing, Original Story; Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (Ted Tetzlaff); Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White; Best Film Editing; and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.

Clip – Professor Lightcap meets “Joseph the Gardener”

One of Our Aircraft Is Missing
Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Written by Emeric Pressburger and Michael Powell
1942/UK
British National Films/The Archers
First viewing/Amazon Prime Instant Video

[box] Else Meertens: Do you think that we Hollanders who threw the sea out of our country will let the Germans have it? Better the sea.[/box]

This was the first film to carry the joint credit “Written, Produced and Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger” which would be used on 14 feature films over the next 14 years.  It shows the team could tackle realistic action as well as fantasy.

An RAF crew sets off for Stuttgart on a bombing raid.  After successfully delivering their pay load, their plane is hit by anti-aircraft fire.  The crew must parachute to safety over the Nazi-occupied Netherlands.  They are helped to escape to England by brave Dutch patriots led by a couple of resourceful women.

This film was made with the cooperation of the Air Ministry, the RAF, and the Royal Netherland Government in London.  It is an extremely well-made morale-boosting propaganda piece in which the true heroes are not the British flyers but the Dutch.  There is no musical score, just the hum of the planes, the bombs exploding, and incidental music on radios, etc.  It opens with one of the more unusual credit sequences I have seen. Quality shines throughout as could be expected from the pedigree of the movie’s crew, which had David Lean in the editing room and Ronald Neame behind the camera.

The film contains Peter Ustinov’s screen debut as a Dutch priest.

One of Our Aircraft Is Missing was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Writing, Original Screenplay and Best Effects, Special Effects.

Mini-clip – We have not come to invade Holland … yet

King’s Row
Directed by Sam Wood
Written by Casey Robinson from the novel by Henry Bellamann
1942/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Madame Marie von Eln: I only know that you have to judge people by what you find them to be and not by what other people say they are.[/box]

Ronald Reagan is the best thing about this film.  It’s another highly-rated drama that I wish I liked more that I do.

The story takes place in King’s Row, a small town, on both sides of the turn of the last century.  It begins with a lengthy sequence during the childhoods of the main characters. Parris Mitchell and Drake McHugh are fast friends although they could not be more different  Parris is a serious, polite, studious boy being raised by his immigrant grandmother. (Maria Ouspenskaya).  Drake is a popular, devil-may-care lad.  Parris’s childhood sweetheart is Cassandra Tower.  The town views her entire family with suspicion as her mother never leaves her upper-story bedroom and her father calls himself a doctor without practicing medicine.  She runs to Parris in tears when Doctor Tower (Claude Rains) takes her out of school to be taught at home.

All these people come from the right side of the tracks.  One day the boys go to goof off at the railroad yard and tomboy Randy Monaghan from the wrong side tags along.

Segue to several years later.  Parris’s (Robert Cummings) great dream is to become a doctor.  He studies for the exams to get into a Vienna medical school under the tutelage of Dr. Tower.  He begins a romance with Cassandra (Betty Field in a blonde wig), who is not allowed to leave the house, on the sly.

Drake’s (Ronald Reagan) only goal is to marry Louise Gordon, the daughter of the town’s only practicing physician.  Dr. Gordon (Charles Coburn) is adamantly opposed to the marriage.  Later Drake begins seeing Randy (Ann Sheridan).

The plot is very, very complicated.  Suffice it to say that one tragedy or another, sometimes more, befalls all of these people.  Parris eventually returns home and becomes America’s first psychiatrist, trying to straighten out the lives of these unhappy people and himself.

I think I have mentioned before that I am not a fan of Bob Cummings.  Here he seems to me to be totally miscast as a solitary, sensitive youth.  He probably would have been better in the role of Drake, though I can’t see him reacting to Drake’s tragedy with the aplomb and subtlety that Reagan displays.  Next to Reagan, Ann Sheridan gives the best performance in the film though of course Rains and Coburn are very good as well.

The production values are top-notch.  The score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold is beautiful but distracting.  I just couldn’t get into the story and I found the ending to be ludicrously abrupt and pat.  Your mileage may vary.

Kings Row was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Picture; Best Director; and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (James Wong Howe).

clip – opening

The Pride of the Yankees
Directed by Sam Wood
Written by Jo Swerling and Herman J. Mankiewicz based on an original story by Paul Gallico
1942/USA
The Samuel Goldwyn Company
Repeat viewing/Warner Home Video DVD

[box] Hank Hanneman:  I’ll tell ya somethin’. A guy like that is a detriment to any sport. He’s a boob with a batting eye. He wakes up, brushes his teeth, hikes out to the ballpark, hits the ball, hikes back to the hotel room, reads the funny papers, gargles and goes to bed. That’s personality, hm?

Sam Blake: The best.[/box]

These old movies have been giving the tear ducts quite a workout lately.  This excellent profile in courage does it without melodrama.

The film, made with the cooperation of Lou Gherig’s widow, tells the story of the life the famed Yankee slugger.  We see Gherig (Gary Cooper) growing up in a working-class immigrant family in New York.  His mother’s great dream is for him to become an engineer like his uncle and she works as a cook at Columbia University to get him into school.  He dutifully studies engineering but his athletic prowess soon becomes evident, first as a college football hero.  Sportswriter Sam Blake (Walter Brennan) spots him at batting practice and brings him to the attention of the Yankees.

At first Gherig resists to please his mother but when she gets sick and the family needs money he agrees.  After a few games on the bench, he gets his chance.  He trips as he goes to the plate and Eleanor (Theresa Wright), the daughter of the White Sox owner, calls him “tanglefoot” giving him a permanent nickname in Chicago.  But Gherig hits a homer and from such antagonist meetings movie love is born.

Eleanor and Gherig date and then marry, enjoying a idyllic love.  The humble, low-key Gherig goes on to break many batting records.  His most lasting achievement was playing 2,130 straight games.  When tragedy breaks this record, Gherig is the epitome of grace under fire.  With Babe Ruth as himself and Dan Duryea as a Ruth-boosting sportswriter.

The story begins with a title card written by Damon Runyan comparing Gherig’s courage with that of boys on the battlefield.  I hadn’t really caught that before and it gave the film an added appeal.

I have absolutely no interest in baseball and I love this movie.  Cooper is fantastic in it.  I don’t think he gets enough credit as an actor.  His style is so subtle he almost doesn’t seem to be acting but you can see the character’s every thought in his eyes.  I defy anybody not to at least mist up in the last five minutes.  I started before that.

The supporting players are all excellent and the script, with very little flash or fanfare, keeps the viewer gripped in the story.  This practically perfect classic really should be seen before you die.

The Pride of the Yankees won the Academy Award for Best Film Editing.  It was nominated for an additional ten Oscars: Best Picture; Best Actor; Best Actress; Best Writing, Original Story; Best Writing; Screenplay; Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (Rudolph Maté); Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White; Best Sound, Recording; Best Effects, Special Effects; and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture (Leigh Harline).

Clip – the Farewell speech – with some footage of the real Gehrig