Tag Archives: 1945

Hangover Square (1945)

Posted on June 28, 2013 | Leave a comment

Hangover Squarehangover_square-1945 poster
Directed by John Brahm
1945/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
First viewing

 

 

George Harvey Bone: All my life I’ve had black little moods.

The story is set in London, Laird Cregar plays George Harvey  Bone, a gifted young composer who is subject to strange blackouts when he hears discordant sounds.  He has no memory of what occurs during these episodes but the viewer knows that he becomes a vicious murderer.  When he consults a Scotland Yard psychiatrist (George Sanders) about his problem, the psychiatrist advises him to relax and take a break from his hard work on a piano concerto. Unfortunately, during his first night on the town George meets a beautiful but devious music hall singer (Linda Darnell) who manipulates him to get songs for her act.

Hangover Square 1

This was Laird Cregar’s last performance.  He is fine in the role though he might mug a bit much.  The movie is otherwise chiefly notable for its fantastic high-contrast cinematography, the score by Bernard Hermann, and a couple of impressive set pieces – a Guy Fawkes Day bonfire and the concluding concerto performance.

The DVD I rented was packed with extras.  There were two full-length commentaries and a documentary on Cregar.  Cregar certainly had a sad story.  He was a big and heavy man who went on a drastic weight loss regime in hopes of winning leading man roles.  He lost over 100 pounds for this film and had bariatric surgery shortly after it wrapped.  Five days later he died of a massive heart attack.  He was 31 years old.  One of the interviewees in the documentary speculated that Cregar probably never would have been a leading man no matter what he weighed but that he could have had a career similar to that of Vincent Price.

Trailer

 

 

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The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)

Posted on June 26, 2013 | 3 comments

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers
Directed by Lewis Milestone
1946/USA
Hal Wallis Productions
First viewing

 

[box] Sam Masterson: Don’t look back, baby.  Don’t ever look back.[/box]

There are some fine performances in this noirish melodrama about childhood secrets.

The film opens in 1928 in Iverstown with rebellious young Martha Ivers and Sam Masterson in a freight car preparing to run away to join the circus.  Detectives soon apprehend the girl and return her to her hated aunt (Judith Anderson).  The aunt is waiting along with Martha’s tutor and his timid son Walter O’Neill.  Sam briefly sneaks into the house to say goodbye to Martha.  When the aunt attacks Martha’s cat, Martha grabs a poker out of her hands and strikes her, killing her.  Walter is a witness and backs up Martha’s lie about a mysterious intruder.  His father does the same and the O’Neills have a lifetime grip on Martha and her money.  Martha goes on to marry Walter.

Segue to 1946 and Sam Masterson (Van Heflin) wrecks his car while driving through Iverstown.  He must stick around to have it fixed and soon meets sultry ex-con Toni (Lizabeth Scott) who has just been paroled from jail.  Sam catches up with District Attorney Walter when Toni is picked up for a parole violation.  Walter (Kirk Douglas) is terrified that Sam will blackmail Martha (Barbara Stanwyck) and him for the aunt’s death and is also jealous of his wife’s continued love for Sam.  He has Sam roughed up to encourage him to leave town but Sam does not scare easily.

Although I thought the story did not quite hold together, I enjoyed this, largely for the performances.  Barbara Stanwyck is my favorite actress of classic Hollywood and she is very good here as the wounded but steely Martha.  Van Heflin has more to do than in other films I have seen him in and is excellent.  Lizabeth Scott was OK but too obviously a stand-in for Lauren Bacall for her own good.  It was Kirk Douglas in his film debut that was the most interesting.

Douglas’s Walter is repeatedly referred to by Sam as looking like “a scared little boy.”  He is evidently a chronic alcoholic and spends much of his screen time drunk.  I could almost see Douglas smoothing out the lines of his face through sheer willpower as he tried to act weak and cowardly.  He couldn’t quite manage it.  That aggressive, macho Douglas persona was not to be repressed.  This is not to say Douglas was bad, far from it.  His star quality shines through and he is compelling.  It was just a whole lot of fun to see him play against type and to try to remember that he was supposed to be afraid of Sam and not the other way around.

Trailer

 

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The Spiral Staircase (1945)

Posted on June 24, 2013 | 4 comments

The Spiral Staircase
Directed by Robert Siodmak
1945/USA
RKO Radio Pictures
First viewing

 

[box] Constable: She’s dead!

Dr. Parry: Well, in that case, Constable, I certainly can’t do her any harm.[/box]

A very noir filmmaking team at RKO (director Siodmak, cinematographer Musuraca, and composer Webb) put together this glossy thriller.

It is sometime near the turn of the last century and a serial killer is on the loose in a small town.  This maniac has been focusing on women with some kind of physical infirmity and pretty mute Helen (Dorothy McGuire) seems a likely next victim.  Young Dr. Parry (Kent Smith) has taken a professional and romantic interest in Helen and thinks she can be cured of her traumatic loss of speech.

The story is confined to one dark and stormy night at the Warren household, where Helen works as a companion to the invalid matriarch (Ethel Barrymore).  The house is filled with creepy characters not the least of which is the cantankerous and vaguely ominous Mrs. Warren.  Other suspicious types include her womanizing obnoxious son Steve  (Gordon Oliver and pedantic stepson Professor Warren (George Brent) who hate each other and who each have a yen for the professor’s secretary Blanche (Rhonda Fleming).  Then we have the dipsomaniac cook Mrs. Oates (Elsa Lanchester) and her menacingly silent handyman husband.  Poor Helen has a rough time of it, complicated by her inability to call for help.

This is a fun thriller with a nice score and beautiful art direction and cinematography.  Dorothy McGuire has an expressive face though I kept thinking that it was really well suited for comedy.  I jumped a couple of times but I wondered if another actress would have made for a scarier movie.  This may be the only role I have seen Ethel Barrymore in. She was very good and kept you guessing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzVqyZH8tvI

Re-release trailer

 

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Mildred Pierce (1945)

Posted on June 1, 2013 | 3 comments

Mildred PierceMildred Pierce Poster
Directed by Michael Curtiz
1945/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing
#176 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Ida: Personally, Veda’s convinced me that alligators have the right idea. They eat their young.[/box]

To start off the film noir fest with a bang, here is a studio big-budget effort that garnered Joan Crawford a long-awaited Best Actress Oscar, along with six other Academy Award nominations.  In 1996, the film was deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected for preservation in the United States Library of Congress National Film Registry.

The story is based on James M. Cain’s novel of the same name.  There are some key differences from the book.  Mildred Pierce is a middle-class housewife who makes money on the side baking cakes and pies.  She lives for her two daughters Veda and Kay and tries especially hard to placate her difficult, grasping elder daughter Veda.  Mildred and her husband Bert separate amicably after arguing about his visits to a lady friend and Mildred’s child-rearing style.

Mildred Pierce 2

Mildred finds work as a waitress and struggles to satisfy the increasingly spoiled Veda’s demands for the finer things in life by selling pies.  When Veda finds her mother’s waitress uniform and accuses her of being a peasant, Mildred decides she must have more money and opens a restaurant, with the help of perpetual suitor Wally.  Along the way, she meets the equally entitled shiftless socialite Monte and it looks like she will be burdened by two ungrateful whiners for life.  A darker fate perhaps awaits …  With Joan Crawford as Mildred, Ann Blyth as Veda, Jack Carson as Wally, Zachary Scott as Monte and Eve Arden as Mildred’s wise-cracking friend Ida.

 

Mildred Pierce 1

I thought this was pretty terrific.  A little bit of Joan Crawford goes a long way with me but here she was remarkably restrained with the old eyebrows.  It may be her best performance.  Ernest Haller’s cinematography is beautiful, particularly the night scenes.  The script is tight and it moves right along.  I love Eve Arden and was delighted to see her at her best here, in an Oscar-nominated performance.  Of the men, I was most impressed with Jack Carson.

This is not quite what I think of as noir.  There is a lot of high key lighting, glamour, and a lack of grim city streets.  However, it does have that expressionist lighting.  My definition of noir for this exercise is basically any film that is included in Michael F. Keaney’s Film Noir Guide.  Keaney came up with 745 films from the period 1940-1959 made in the “noir style” in any of several different genres, including melodrama.  Keaney sees the “noir themes” in Mildred Pierce as betrayal, obsession, and greed.

Trailer

 

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