Monthly Archives: January 2014

The Hound of the Baskervilles
Directed by Sidney Lanfield
Written by Ernest Pascal from the story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
1939/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] James Mortimer, M.D.: Mr. Holmes, we’ve admired you in the past as does every Englishman. Your record as our greatest detective is known throughout the world. But this – seeing how you work – knowing that there is in England such a man as you gives us all a sense of safety and security. God bless you, Mr. Holmes![/box]

Basil Rathbone is Sherlock Holmes.

The story adheres fairly closely to Conan Doyle’s original.  A doctor (Lionel Atwill) seeks the great detective’s assistance because he fears that the owner of a gloomy English estate has been murdered by a phantom hound which, legend has it, curses the family.  His heir seems ready to meet the same fate.  Holmes is secretly watching in the wings for much of this one with Watson (Nigel Bruce) taking a more prominent role than usual.  With John Carradine as the butler.

1939 was also notable for the first of the fourteen Sherlock Holmes mysteries in which Rathbone and Bruce were paired. This is short in time but fairly lavish on the production values.  The resemblance of the two leads to the illustrations of the original stories is uncanny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bNtdkkPWqI

Video promo

I had a fine time birding in the Sacramento Valley. I saw –

Thousands and thousands (and thousands) of this guy’s friends and family

Thousands of these beautiful birds:

Several of these

I also learned how to distinguish this guy

from this guy

In a few months people will be able to see the funny way the Goldeneyes court

It’s good to be home.

I’m starting off on my annual trek up to Roseville to visit my birder friend and see the winter waterfowl.  I almost certainly will be looking at something like this tomorrow:

I’ll be back to pick up where I left off on January 18.

The Women
Directed by George Cukor
Anita Loos and Jane Murfin from the play by Claire Booth Luce
1939/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Loew’s Corporation
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Crystal Allen: There is a name for you, ladies, but it isn’t used in high society… outside of a kennel.[/box]

I’ve been looking forward to seeing this for some time. Although I enjoyed the bitchy one-liners, I was surprised at how misogynistic it was.

Mary (Norma Shearer) thinks she is happily married to Steve until her friends find out about his affair and gleefully tell her about it.  Cousin Sylvia (Rosalind Russell) is the ring-leader of the gang that ferrets out the identity of his paramour Crystal Allen (Joan Crawford).  Despite her mother’s advice to overlook the matter and Steve’s pleading, Mary feels too humiliated to stay in the marriage and heads off to Reno.  With her on the train are Miriam Aarons (Pauline Goddard) who is divorcing to marry her married lover, Peggy (Joan Fontaine) who is leaving because she didn’t get her own way, and the Countess de Lave who is on her fourth divorce.  By the time Mary comes to terms with the fact that she is still in love with Steve, he has married Crystal.  Will justice be meted out to all these characters?

The ladies (there is not a single male in sight) are all sensational and the dialogue is lively. I wasn’t happy about the tone of the movie in some way.  It seemed to me that women were portrayed as spiteful, petty, envious cats with few redeeming characteristics.  Only Mary comes off well and only because she ultimately returns to domesticity.  The fact that it was women doing this hatchet job made little difference to me.  It’s a movie worth seeing, though.  Any one interested in 30’s design should check out the Technicolor fashion show sequence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZV0k77ih8Q

Trailer

Of Mice and Men
Directed by Lewis Milestone
Written by Eugene Solow based on the novel by John Steinbeck
1939/USA
Hal Roach Studios
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] George Milton: You had a cigarette and a drink and a look at a pretty dress, and it cost you fifteen bucks! You just shot a week’s pay to walk on that red carpet!

Candy: A week’s pay? Sure, but I worked weeks all my life. I don’t remember none of them weeks, but this – nearly twenty years ago – I remember that.[/box]

I find the modest dreams of common people to be the most touching and this is a story that breaks the heart.

George (Burgess Meredith) and Lennie (Lon Chaney Jr.) are itinerant workers on their way to a job stacking full bags of barley.  George soothes hulking, half-witted, childlike Lennie with tales of a little farm they will acquire when they save the money. Lennie, who has a sort of fetish for soft things, always wants to hear about how he will get to tend the rabbits. The two had to flee their last job when Lennie started petting the dress of one of the women on the ranch and George has to keep an eye on him at all times.

George and Lennie find their next ranch is not a happy place.  Curley, the owner’s son,.is pathologically jealous of his sensuous and terminally bored wife (Betty Field).  Added to this is the fact that Curley is a pugnacious runt who wants to pick a fight with every man he meets.  Curly is most jealous of mule skinner Slim (Charles Bickford) who, however, could easily lick him.

Candy is an old cook, who is devoted to an equally old, ailing and smelly dog.  The other men goad him until he allows one to shoot the dog.  Crooks is an African-American worker who is segregated off in the barn.  When Candy and Crooks hear of Lennie and George’s dream they are ready to buy in immediately.  But Slim unwittingly sets a tragedy in motion when he gives Lennie a puppy.

The ranch hands dream the sort of American dream that should be easily attainable if they could catch a break, which of course they can’t.  This is a Depression era story of circumstances dashing the most ordinary aspirations.  All this is captured most poetically in the excellent screenplay.  I particularly like the parallels between Lennie and the dog, and indeed between the wife and Lennie.  The acting is mostly fantastic.  Lon Chaney Jr. does not generally shine but here he occupies the character beautifully.

Of Mice and Men was nominated for four Academy Awards:  Best Picture; Best Sound Recording; Best Music, Scoring (Aaron Copeland); and Best Music, Original Score.

Clip – Bunkhouse brawl