Category Archives: Movie Reviews

Reviews of movies I have seen.

Angel Face (1952)

Posted on July 2, 2013 | 6 comments

Angel FaceAngel Face Poster
Directed by Otto Preminger
1952/USA
RKO Radio Pictures
First viewing
#244 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

 

Frank Jessup:  I’d say your story was as phony as a three dollar bill.

This is another great noir I’m catching up on late.  Not only does the female lead put the “fatal” in femme fatale, but it has a fascinating production history.

Diane Tremayne (Jean Simmons) is a confused rich girl.  She idealizes her father (Herbert Marshall) and hates her wealthy stepmother (Barbara O’Neill).  Frank Jessup (Robert Mitchum) is a working stiff who can’t win.  His troubles begin when the ambulance he drives is called to the Tremayne house because of a gas leak in Mrs. Tremayne’s bedroom.  Frank consoles the weeping Diane and when she follows him to a coffee shop he steps out on his girlfriend Mary with her.  So begins the cycle that lands Frank on trial for a murder rap and married to pathologically lovelorn Diane.

Angel Face 1

I enjoyed this very much.  It features uniformly good acting, wonderful cinematography by Harry Stradling Jr., a nice pace, and an awesome ending.

I love my DVD commentaries and this one contained the very juicy back story to the film.  Jean Simmons left England to be with beau Stewart Granger.  Howard Hughes was smitten with her, so RKO bought up her seven-year contract with the Rank organization.  Hughes was interested in more than a professional relationship and creeped Simmons out so much that she sued RKO to get out of the deal.  The case settled with Simmons agreeing to make three movies for the studio.  Since Hughes was famous for dragging out productions indefinitely, the settlement specified that the three movies had to be made within three years.  Eighteen days were left on the settlement when production on Angel Face began.

Hughes borrowed Preminger from Fox because he was known for being able to work fast. Preminger brought the equally speedy Stradling with him.  Before shooting started, Hughes attempted to change Simmons hair style so many times that she cut her hair short and wore wigs throughout the filming.  There is a scene where Mitchum slaps Simmons to snap her out of hysterics.  Preminger made the actors do the scene over and over until Mitchum hauled off and slapped Preminger.  Preminger rode Simmons so hard that Mitchum finally had to threaten to walk off the project.  The commentator opined that this conflict probably got a more engaged performance out of Mitchum.  Simmons, who was only 23, gave a wonderful performance despite her travails.

Every commentary I hear about Hughes’ years at RKO makes me like him less.

Trailer

6 Comments

Posted in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, Movie Reviews, Noir Month

Tagged , ,

Kansas City Confidential (1952)

Posted on July 1, 2013 | Leave a comment

Kansas City Confidential 
Directed by Phil Karlson
1952/USA
Associated Players and Producers
First viewing

 

[box] Tim Foster: What makes a two-bit heel like you think a heater would give him an edge over me?[/box]

Tough-as-nails heist noir about a “perfect” armored-car robbery.  A man meticulously plans the robbery and ensures that his team is always masked and do not know each other’s identity.  The heist involves a mock florist’s van and the innocent driver of the real van, a small-time ex-con, is hauled in and given the third degree.  The driver (John Payne) makes it his mission to round up the true criminals.  His quest takes him to a resort in Mexico.  With Jack Elam, Lee Van Cleef, and Neville Brand as robbers, Preston Foster as an ex-Police Chief, and Coleen Gray as the chief’s law-student daughter.

Although this is far from the “perfect” noir, I enjoyed it very much.  If some of the dialogue and acting is a bit over-earnest, the story is clever.  Karlson has a distinctive style reminiscent of Sam Fuller’s but a little bit more orthodox.  Very nice to meet up with a woman studying for the Bar Examination in a 1952 movie!

Clip – job interview sequence

 

Leave a comment

Posted in Movie Reviews, Noir Month

Tagged , ,

No Way Out (1950)

Posted on June 28, 2013 | 2 comments

No Way Out
Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
1950/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
First viewing

 

[box] Edie Johnson – Mrs. John Biddle: Yeah I’ve come up in the world. I used to live in a sewer and now I live in a swamp. All those babes do it in the movies. By now I ought to be married to the governor and paying blackmail so he don’t find out I once lived in Beaver Canal.[/box]

This is an interesting cross between a film noir and a message picture featuring Sidney Portier’s debut as a 22-year-old and dynamite performances by Richard Widmark and Linda Darnell.  It was quite a departure for director/screenwriter Mankiewicz who made this between his Academy Award winning turns in Letter to Three Wives and All About Eve.

Dr. Luther Brooks (Sidney Portier) is a newly licensed physician working at a county hospital.  He has the misfortune to be assigned to duty on the prison ward when Ray (Richard Widmark) and Johnny Bidell are brought in with gunshot wounds suffered in a shootout with police.  Ray is almost psychotically racist.  Brooks believes Johnny may have a brain tumor and does a spinal tap.  When Johnny dies during the procedure Ray accuses him of murdering his brother and plots revenge.  Brooks is desperate to get an autopsy done on Johnny to prove his diagnosis but Ray refuses.  Brooks then turns to Johnny’s estranged wife Edie (Linda Darnell) to try to get her consent.  Ray is one evil SOB and manages to terrorize everyone he can get his hands on.  With Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee as Brooks’ brother and sister-in-law.

This suffers from a little preachiness but is basically a gripping revenge tale.  Widmark makes a great psychopath and he is made even more repellant than usual by his racist rants.  Linda Darnell is quite good and Sidney Portier was solid right from the beginning.  This also features some beautiful cinematography by Milton R. Krasner.  Apparently the film flopped on release and then was buried for years because television didn’t want to touch it.   (Widmark must use the “n” word 100 times.)

Trailer

2 Comments

Posted in 1950, Movie Reviews, Noir Month

Tagged , , ,

The Phenix City Story (1955)

Posted on June 25, 2013 | Leave a comment

The Phenix City StoryPhenix City Story Poster
Directed by Phil Karlson
1955/USA
Allied Artists Pictures
First viewing
#297 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

 

[box] Albert L. Patterson: Rhett, I’m not stickin’ my neck out. Why should I? Phoenix City has been what it is for 80, 90 years. Who am I to try to reform it?[/box]

This semi-documentary film tells the story of a crusade to fight a vice racket that had run Phenix City, Alabama for the better part of a century.  While it is well-regarded, I could not get past some pretty bad acting and overblown writing.

The film was made during the murder trial for the assassination of Alabama Attorney General-elect Albert Patterson.  The version I watched began with a segment in which newsman Clete Roberts interviews many of the real participants in the events portrayed.  Rhett Taylor (Edward Andrews) is the boss of an organized crime racket that runs gambling, prostitution, and other criminal activities in Phenix City, which is near a U.S. Army Base.  He holds on to power through brutal strong arm tactics, including open murder, while the police look the other way.  Former Senator and local lawyer Albert Peterson (John McIntyre) is content to defend Taylor’s men in court, figuring that nothing can be done about the situation.  Peterson’s son John (Richard Kiley) comes home from service as an Army lawyer in Germany and soon is determined to fight the mob, spurred on by the violence and injustice he sees.  After several more murders, Albert is persuaded to run for Alabama Attorney General on a reform ticket.

Phenix City Story 1

Clip – in the vice den

Leave a comment

Posted in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, Movie Reviews, Noir Month

Tagged , ,

The Big Steal (1949)

Posted on June 22, 2013 | 2 comments

The Big Stealbig-steal-movie-poster-1949
Directed by Don Siegel
1949/USA
RKO Radio Pictures
First viewing

 

 

Lt. Duke Halliday: [to Joan] I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t like to turn around, Chiquita. Besides that there’s a guy behind me with a gun. Remember?

In the build up for my repeat viewing of Out of the Past, I thought I’d take a look at Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer’s other pairing.  While this one is pleasant enough, it doesn’t hold a candle to the 1947 classic and barely earns a noir classification in my book.

Mitchum plays Lt. Duke Halliday.  Duke is being framed by Jim Fiske (Patrick Knowles) for robbing a $300,000 Army payroll.  He chases Fiske to Mexico.  En route he runs into Army detective Capt. Blake (William Bendix) and steals his credentials.  When Duke catches up to Fiske he meets Joan Graham (Greer), to whom Fiske owes money.  Most of the movie is taken up Duke and Joan chasing Fiske with Blake in close pursuit.  With Ramon Navarro as a Mexican police official and John Qualen as a fence.

BIG-STEAL--1-

This is a cross between a romantic comedy and a caper action film.  Most of it takes place outdoors in the bright Mexican sunshine.  There is no femme fatale and no doomed protagonist.  There is a bit of noir photography toward the end and plenty of subterfuge.  It fits my broad definition of film noir as it is included in the Keaney Film Noir Guide.  It’s OK for a Saturday afternoon entertainment but nothing very memorable.  Jane Greer somehow has lost the luminous beauty she has in Out of the Past.  Part of it is undoubtedly the lighting.  She also is not flattered by dark lipstick.

The production history set forth in the commentary is pretty interesting.  Howard Hughes bought RKO the same year this was made.  Robert Mitchum, the studio’s biggest star, was arrested for possession of marijuana shortly before this was to go into production. Hughes decided to bet on Mitchum’s continued popularity and left him in the film. However, Lizbeth Scott, who was slated to play the Greer role, did not want her name linked with Mitchum’s and pulled out.  Several other actresses then refused the role.

Greer had previously been Hughes’ girlfriend but was now married.  Hughes had called her into his office and told her she would sit out her contract and not work again for the studio. He was forced to eat his words to get his movie made.  The movie started production and then Mitchum was sentenced to 60 days jail time.  Some of the contortions forced on the filmmakers undoubtedly affected the outcome of the finished film.  For example, Bendix and Mitchum share almost no screen time and there are less action scenes than had been planned.

Clip

2 Comments

Posted in 1949, Movie Reviews, Noir Month

Tagged , ,

Throne of Blood (1957)

Posted on June 19, 2013 | 4 comments

Throne of Blood (“Kumonosu-jô”)
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
1957/Japan
Toho Studios/Kurosawa Production Company
Repeat viewing
#320 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
IMDb users say 8.1/10; I say 9/10

 

[box] And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,/ The instruments of darkness tell us truths,/ Win us with honest trifles, to betray ’s/ In deepest consequence. (Macbeth, 1.3.132) [/box]

Kurasawa’s stylized Noh-inspired adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth has always seemed to me somehow the most “foreign” of his films.  The images are so beautiful that I can come back again and again despite the somewhat distancing acting and pacing.

The story takes place in 14th Century Japan.  The great Toshiro Mifune plays Washizu, the Macbeth counterpart, with full-throttle bravado, exaggerating each emotion in what I assume is the best Noh style.  Washizu and Miki, the Banquo counterpart, are returning to Spider’s Web Castle after victory in battle when they encounter an evil spirit in the forest. The spirit predicts that Washizu will be named master of the North Garrison that day and later will become Lord of the Castle.  She predicts that Miki will now be named commander of the First Fortress and that his son will later be Lord of the Castle.  The scene with the spirit is particularly creepy and effective.

Washizu and Miki are astonished when the Lord of the Castle appoints them to the positions predicted by the spirit.  Not content to let fate take its course, Washizu’s cold and cruel wife Asaji, brilliantly played by Isuzu Yamamoto, spurs her husband on to murder the current Lord.  The couple plots to frame a courtier named Noriyasu (Takashi Shimura) but fool almost no one.  The childless Washizu has a final opportunity to claim the Lordship and salvage the situation by naming Miki’s son as his heir but this too is foiled by Asaji’s announcement that she is pregnant.

Wasaji’s doom is sealed when he is convinced to murder his former friend Miki and his son.  Mifune’s horrified reaction to the vision of Miki’s ghost is unforgettable.  Wasaji’s hired man lets Miki’s son escape and the son and Noriyasu join forces with the castle’s enemies against Wasaji.  In the meantime, Asaji’s baby is stillborn and she goes mad from guilt over the murders.

By this time, Wasaji’s own men are losing faith in their commander.  Wasaji goes back to the forest to consult the evil spirit.  The spirit advises that he cannot be defeated until the trees of the forest advance on Spider Web Castle.  Various warrior spirits appear to admonish Wasaji about the toll in blood his rise has cost.  Wasaji rallies his worried men by telling them about this latest prediction.  But when they see Noriyasu’s troops advancing on the castle under a protective cover of trees, Wasaji’s troops turn on him, killing him in a hail of arrows.

The end of Throne of Blood is one of the most spectacular in film history.   The images of the huge trees moving through the fog and Mifune staggering, terrified, as one arrow after another pierces his body are mind-blowing.

The commentary on the Criterion DVD says that this is a film about fate.  I see it more as a film about human nature.  Nothing about the prediction said that Wasaji had to use bloodshed to ascend to the throne.  It was his own ambition and hubris that spelled his doom.  Perhaps that is the way evil spirits get the better of us all.

Japanese trailer (with subtitles)

 

4 Comments

Posted in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, Movie Reviews

Tagged , ,

Nightmare Alley (1947)

Posted on June 17, 2013 | 4 comments

Nightmare Alleynightmare_alley_1947 poster
Edmund Goulding
1947/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Repeat viewing

 

[box] Stanton Carlisle: It takes one to catch one.[/box]

I radically revised my opinion of this deeply cynical carnival noir for the better after a several year hiatus.  I liked it so much this time I can’t imagine what I was thinking before.  I must have been in a bad mood.

Tyrone Power gives a career-topping great performance as womanizing carnival barker Stanton Carlisle, who seizes the main chance by romancing mentalist Zeena (Joan Blondell) to gain access to a code that enabled her and now alcoholic partner Pete (Ian Keith) to hit the big time as a mind-reading act.  Stanton is not above pushing Pete over the edge with a quart of moonshine to get him out of the picture.

In the meantime, Stan is two-timing Zeena with Molly, a beautiful hootchy-cootchy dancer. When he gets what he wants out of Zeena, he promptly ditches her for Molly and they strike it rich doing a mind-reading act in big city nightclubs.  But Zeena’s tarot cards have predicted a big fall for Stan and he may have met his match in the lady he seeks to exploit when he decides to turn spirtualist.

Nightmare Alley 1

Molly

This is a profoundly bleak movie, haunted as it is by the specter of the carnival geek, an “attraction” consisting of a man-beast who bites the heads off of chickens, played by a carnie who has sunk so low he will work for a bottle a day and a place to sleep it off.  (Funny how the word geek has morphed in the last 66 years!)  It was not too surprising to learn that both the director and the author of the source novel committed suicide.  This may have turned more people off alcohol than any movie but The Long Weekend.

Tyrone Power is a revelation in this.  I had never really “got” his appeal but he is both absolutely gorgeous in his many t-shirted scenes and shows off some real acting chops here.  Joan Blondell and Ian Keith are stand-outs as the over-the-hill vaudevillians.  The story and dialogue are deliciously hard-boiled.  Proceedings are slightly marred in the last 60 seconds by a ray of hope that appears from nowhere in Hollywood fashion.

 

“Trailer”

 

4 Comments

Posted in Movie Reviews, Noir Month

Tagged , ,

Home again, home again …

Posted on June 16, 2013 | 2 comments

We were blessed with sunny weather and mild temperatures in Alaska and had a wonderful time.  While we saw lots of humpback whales and bald eagles and some awe-inspiring scenery, the highlight of the experience for me was seeing several Arctic terns, including one on the nest with a chick, near the Mendenhall Glacier outside of Juneau. These birds migrate from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back every year, and I had never seen one.  They are beautiful and are elegant fliers.

Any way, I’m rested and relaxed and ready to watch some film noir!

The video shows a colony of Arctic Terns and Sandwich Terns in Northumbria.  There were only 3 or 4 birds at the location in Alaska.  I got the impression that we were there a bit late in the breeding season.

2 Comments

Posted in Movie Reviews

On vacation

Posted on June 7, 2013 | 3 comments

I’m off to watch whales, birds, and glaciers in Alaska.  I’ll be back June 17 to resume noir month. Movies early on the schedule include Ossessione, Where the Sidewalk Ends, Nightmare Alley, This Gun for Hire, and Throne of Blood.

Bald eagle in slow motion catching salmon

3 Comments

Posted in Movie Reviews

Murder, My Sweet (1944)

Posted on June 6, 2013 | 8 comments

Murder, My Sweet (AKA “Farewell, My Lovely”)murder_my_sweet_1944 Poster
Directed by Edward Dmytryk
1944/USA
RKO Radio Pictures
Repeat viewing
#173 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

 

[box] Lindsay Marriott: I’m afraid I don’t like your manner.

Philip Marlowe: Yeah, I’ve had complaints about it, but it keeps getting worse.[/box]

This fun early noir is based on the novel Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler.  The title was changed because studio executives worried that the film might be taken for a musical given Dick Powell’s starring role.

Marlowe (Dick Powell) is approached by thug Moose Malloy (Mike Mazurki) to locate an ex-girlfriend named Velma.  Shortly thereafter, Lindsay Marriot hires Marlowe to accompany him to a remote spot to buy back a jade necklace that had been stolen from a lady friend. Marriot is murdered before the trade is made and Marlow is knocked out.  The next day, Ann Grayle (Anne Shirley) leads him to the owners of the necklace, her father Mr. Grayle and his wife Helen (Claire Trevor).  A series of twists and turns leads to the solution of both the missing-person and the murder case.

Murder My Sweet 1

Philip Marlowe meets Moose Malloy

I think of this as “noir light” since it is short on the characteristic doom.  All the actors do well in their parts.  Claire Trevor makes a great femme fatal and Powell is particularly good at delivering Chandler’s sarcastic hard-boiled dialogue.  It’s hard to believe that he’s the same guy that played the tenor in all those Busby Berkeley musicals. This is just a very entertaining detective story.

Trailer

8 Comments

Posted in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, Movie Reviews, Noir Month

Tagged ,