The Littlest Rebel Directed by David Butler
1935/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
First viewing?
[box] Virginia ‘Virgie’ Cary: You’re nice enough to be a Confederate![/box]
Poor Shirley, her parents die off at such an alarming rate… In this one, Virgie Cary is a little Southern belle when the Civil War breaks out and her Daddy goes off to the army. Virgie and her mother bravely face the hardships of war. Finally, their plantation is burned down by the Yankees and they have to go live in the slave quarters. Mother catches pneumonia. Father comes home and mother dies. The Yankees are looking for Daddy who is a Confederate spy. But when they are about to catch him, Virgie charms a Yankee colonel into giving him a pass and Union uniform so he can take Virgie to an aunt in Richmond. While the two are going through a Union camp, Daddy is captured and he and the colonel are sentenced to death. Can Virgie save the day? With John Boles as Daddy, Karen Morely as mother, and Bill Robinson as Uncle Billy, the faithful slave.
As with The Little Colonel, Bill Robinson’s dancing is the main reason to watch this film. Shirley keeps up with him nicely. Otherwise, it is business as usual.
Mildred Pierce 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 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.
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.
I take a break from the regularly scheduled programming to enjoy 30 days watching and reviewing little else but film noir beginning today. I will be going on vacation from June 7 to 15 and won’t be able to post. I’ll wrap up around July 7. I’ll review the very few films I have left from 1935 in the next few days and will continue to review the weekly selections from the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die Blog Club.
I’m pretty excited about this and hope you will join me.
What is film noir? Clip from the documentary Visions of Light
I’ve been a classic movie fan for many years. My original mission was to see as many movies as I could get my hands on for every year from 1929 to 1970. I have completed that mission.
I then carried on with my chronological journey and and stopped midway through 1978. You can find my reviews of 1934-1978 films and “Top 10” lists for the 1929-1936 and 1944-77 films I saw here. For the past several months I have circled back to view the pre-Code films that were never reviewed here.
I’m a retired Foreign Service Officer living in Indio, California. When I’m not watching movies, I’m probably traveling, watching birds, knitting, or reading.
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