Monthly Archives: December 2014

Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945)

Our Vines Have Tender Grapes
Directed by Roy Rowland
Written by Dalton Trumbo from a book by George Victor Martin
1945/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing/Amazon Instant Video

[box] Martinius Jacobson: [Entering Bjornson’s new barn] You can still smell the new wood… finest smell on the earth.[/box]

MGM gets a family-themed drama right!  And you have not really heard the Christmas story until you hear Margaret O’Brien tell it.

The Jacobsons are Norwegian dairy farmers in Wisconsin.  The family consists of father Martinius (Edward G. Robinson), mother Bruna (Agnes Moorehead), and seven-year-old Selma (O’Brien).  Selma’s constant companion is her five-year-old cousin Arnold (Jackie “Butch” Jenkins).  The story is told through Selma’s eyes and is basically a slice of their lives.

Norwegian-speaking Ph.D. candidate Viola Johnson (Frances Gifford) arrives from Milwaukee for a year of practice teaching.  She considers the community to be an ignorant, hypocritical backwater and wants to get out of there as soon as possible.  Nels Halverson, the editor of the local newspaper, falls in love with her and tries to change her mind.

The story takes place over one school year.  We see times of happiness, sadness, and fear, all flavored with family love and a tradition of sharing with neighbors. The two kids get up to their share of mischief in the process.

Thank heaven nobody even attempts a Norwegian accent here.  The fine actors and screenplay keep this from getting too saccharine.  How can Edward G. Robinson and Agnes Moorehead, and together no less, let us down?  Margaret O’Brien can’t help but being adorable but even she is nicely toned-down.  I had a warm feeling throughout.  If this kind of story appeals, I can recommend it.

Trailer – Spencer Tracy promoting the film

Bonus – Margaret O’Brien’s version of the Nativity story

The Corn Is Green (1945)

The Corn Is Green
Directed by Irving Rapper
Written by Frank Cavett and Casey Robinson from a play by Emlyn Williams
1945/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Miss Lilly Moffat: That man is so stupid, it sits on him like a halo.[/box]

Bette Davis gives a solid, restrained performance as a teacher in a backward Welsh mining village who dreams of sending a gifted young miner to Oxford.

When locals get a letter from a mysterious L. Moffat M.A., they believe a colonel is coming to occupy a local establishment.  Instead they get Miss Lily Moffat, a bicycle-riding strong-willed spinster, who has inherited the place and some money and intends to set up a school.  It is clearly needed because the postmistress is virtually the only Welsh-speaker that can read or write, most of the inhabitants do not speak English, and boys go to work in the mine at age 12.  With Miss Moffat are her slightly dippy Salvation Army sergeant  housekeeper, Mrs. Watty (Rosalind Ivan), and the housekeeper’s minx of a daughter, Bessie (Joan Lorring).

Moffat enlists the help of another unmarried lady and a religious zealot as teachers. Virtually every other person of authority is against the idea, especially the Squire (Nigel Bruce).  She presses on anyway and spots a badly spelled but poetic essay on “how I would spend my holiday” from one of the miners.  This is Morgan Evans (John Dall).  Now Moffat has a new mission, to prepare the boy to win a scholarship at Oxford.

Evans proves to be a prodigious student but eventually buckles under Moffat’s strict regime.  When he has reached the end of his rope, Evans takes refuge in the bottle and becomes easy prey to the advances of Bessie, who has a bone of her own to pick with Moffat.  Moffat and Evans eventually make it up but Bessie is ever in the background to put a spanner in the works at the least opportune moment.

The highlight of the film for me was Joan Lorring’s charmingly malicious portrayal of Bessie.  The rest of the acting is very solid.  Davis is very good when she has a character of substance to play and is not allowed to ham it up.  This is a bit too predictable to become a real favorite but it is an entertaining way to spend a couple of hours.

John Dall was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and Joan Lorring received a nod for Best Supporting Actress.

Clip

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

The Picture of Dorian Gray
Directed by Albert Lewin
Written by Albert Lewin based on the novel by Oscar Wilde
1945/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

 

[box] Lord Henry Wotton: “If I could get back my youth, I’d do anything in the world except get up early, take exercise or be respectable.”[/box]

Oscar Wilde’s novel gets the MGM treatment. Features the quintessential George Sanders performance and a very sweet bit by Angela Lansbury.

Dorian Gray (Hurd Hatfield) is a callow, impressionable but beautiful youth when Lord Henry Wotton (Sanders) spots him sitting for his portrait being painted by his artist friend.  Wotton promptly starts filling the boy with aesthetic ideas about living for the moment during the few years allowed by youth.  Dorian ponders this and says he would give his soul if he could stay young while his portrait aged.  We soon find out that his wish has been granted.

Dorian starts out small by chasing innocent music hall singer Sybil Vane (Lansbury) and asking her to marry him.  Wotton convinces him to test her virtue by threatening to abandon her unless she spends the night with him.  She fails the test and he drives her to her suicide.

The story proceeds as Dorian sinks into the depths of some unnamed degradation while maintaining an angelic young exterior. One murder and another suicide later, Dorian escapes vengeance by Sybil’s brother.  The one good deed of his life will prove to be not marrying his cousin Gladys Hallward (Donna Reed).  With Peter Lawford as Gladys’s admirer and Sir Cedric Hardwick narrating the tale.

This movie works well for me until Angela Lansbury leaves it about half way through. Then, despite the more lurid goings on in the second half, it kind of runs out of steam.  I blame in part Lewin’s insistence that Hatfield maintain a completely blank expression.  It is just impossible to either care what happens to him or to really hate him.  The production values are what one would expect from MGM.  Hearing George Sanders spout cynical bon mots non-stop is worth the price of admission.

The DVD has a good commentary from a film scholar and Lansbury.

The Picture of Dorian Gray won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (Harry Stradling Sr.).  (We get some flashes of color at different reveals of the portrait.)  Angela Lansbury was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar and the film was nominated for Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWwLuepw3G4

Trailer

 

 

The Clock (1945)

The Clock
Directed by Vincente Minnelli
Written by Robert Nathan and Joseph Schrank from a story by Paul and Pauline Gallico
1945/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

 

[box] Alice Maybery: Sometimes when a girl dates a soldier she isn’t only thinking of herself. She knows he’s alone and far away from home and no one to talk to and… What are you staring at?[/box]

A poem.  Judy Garland never looked more beautiful than in the hands of her husband-to-be and Robert Walker is swooningly tender.  Sort of like a Brief Encounter with hope.

This is the simple story of a boy and girl who meet and fall in love in the big city, made more urgent by the fact that he is a soldier on perhaps his last leave before leaving for the front.  It is Sunday.  Corporal Joe Allen (Walker) is a lonely, small-town boy in New York City for the first time.  While kindly, random strangers are unwilling to chat with him.  Finally, he accidentally trips Alice Maybery and she loses the heel of her shoe.  He helps her to get it repaired and starts to make time.  She is distrustful but agrees to let him accompany her part way home.  The story is full of elisions.  One of my favorites comes here when she says she cannot go with him to Central Park, she absolutely must go home.  Cut to them laughing at seals at the zoo.  Then they go to the museum and stay until closing time.  She has a date that night and they part.  Joe catches up with her bus and she agrees to meet him under the clock at the Astor.

When Alice gets home, it looks like her roommate convinces her that it is insane to go out with a soldier she has essentially picked up in the street when she doesn’t even know his last name.  But the next cut is to the Astor and Alice is only five minutes late for her rendezvous.

The remainder of the film follows the development of their love, a harrowing separation,  and finally their desperate attempt to marry before Joe must catch his train.  With James Gleason as a kindly milkman.

I think this is just about perfect for what it is.  Despite what could seem a contrived plot, the lovers and their emotions seem very really to me.  I absolutely love Walker in this.  The look on his face in the moments up to their first kiss are almost unbearably sincere.  Poor guy was still recovering from David Selznik’s successful blitzkrieg campaign to steal wife Jennifer Jones from him.  Highly recommended.

I think this film got robbed at Oscar time.  I would have given at least nominations for most everything.  The technical aspects are quite beautiful and its New York is awe-inspiring for something filmed strictly on the MGM lot.  Penn Station never looked better.  The score is wonderful.  The National Board of Review did name The Clock one of the top ten films of 1945, however.

Trailer

Christmas in Connecticut (1945)

Christmas in Connecticutchristmas-in-connecticut-movie-poster-1945-1020427380
Directed by Peter Godfrey
Written by Lionel Hauser and Adele Comandini from a story by Aileen Hamilton
1945/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/Netflix rental

 

Elizabeth Lane: Everytime I’d opened my mouth he talked. I felt like Charlie McCarthy.

Another film to add to the list for the holidays. I love Barbara Stanwyck in romantic comedies and she is very lovable, as well as independent, here. Sidney Greenstreet is also a hoot. If this was made today, it would be a take-off on a much kinder and gentler Martha Stewart.

Elizabeth Lane (Stanwyck) writes a popular cooking and home decorating column for a woman’s magazine.  She can wax poetic about food and the joys of country living but cannot boil and egg and lives in a city apartment.  She gets most of her tips from her uncle  Felix (S.K. Skazal), a Hungarian chef.

Jefferson Jones (Dennis Morgan) was adrift for 15 days when his destroyer was torpedoed.  He spent the entire time day-dreaming about food.  A nurse that fell for him in the hospital wants him to experience the joys of home life and writes to Elizabeth’s magazine to see if she will take him on.  Elizabeth’s boss Alexander Yardley is at loose ends for Christmas himself and decides it would be a great circulation booster for Elizabeth to host the sailor at her home in Connecticut for Christmas dinner.

Christmas-in-Connecticut-1945-christmas-movies-18299317-1067-800

Elizabeth has no home but she does have a suitor with a suitable farm house.  He has been after her to marry him for months, maybe years.  She finally agrees, being able to think of no reason not to except that she doesn’t love him.  They plan to marry at the farm house and have Uncle Felix finesse the cooking.  They also end up having to borrow a baby.

Of course, Elizabeth falls in love with Jefferson almost at first sight so there are mix-ups aplenty.  With Una O’Connor as a housekeeper.

Christmas in Connecticut (1945) 2

The best way to describe this is “sweet”.  It was just what I was looking for yesterday.

Trailer

Spellbound (1945)

Spellbound
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Written by Ben Hecht and Angus McPhail (adaptation) suggested by the novel “The House of Dr. Edwardes” by Francis Beeding
1945/USA
Selznick International Pictures/Vanguard Films
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#193 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Dr. Alex Brulov: What is there for you to see? We both know that the mind of a woman in love is operating on the lowest level of the intellect![/box]

I’d be happier if Hitchcock stayed entirely away from Freud. Not one of my favorites.

Dr. Constance Petersen (Ingrid Bergman) is an all-business psychoanalyst at the Green Manors asylum run by Dr. Murchison (Leo G. Carroll).  We know this by the way she brushes off advances by her all-male colleagues.  The management has determined that Murchison is past his prime and is replacing him with the renowned Dr. Edwardes, whom nobody has met.  When “Edwardes” (Gregory Peck) arrives, all are amazed to see how young he is.  What Dr. Peterson can’t get over, however, are his matinee idol looks.  Her heart is lost immediately.

But Dr. Edwardes has mysterious panic attacks every time he sees dark lines on a white background.  Petersen and “Edwardes” are soon in agreement that he is an imposter. Problem is that “Edwardes” can’t remember who he actually is. The real Dr. Edwardes has disappeared and is now thought murdered.  Our “Edwardes” is convinced he is the murderer and flees.  Dr. Petersen follows since love and her professional training tell her the man is suffering from a “guilt complex”.

Petersen tracks her man down to New York City where she finds him registered as John Brown.  They start posing as a married couple while Petersen tries, and fails, to maintain her professional ethics as his psychiatrist.  After a couple of close shaves, Petersen and “Brown” take refuge in the home of her mentor Dr. Brulov (Michael Chekhov).  “Brown” is almost psychotically ill by this point, but Brulov reluctantly agrees to hide the couple and help to treat him for a few days.  And that’s all it takes to cure his amnesia and “guilt complex”.  It takes a bit longer to solve the murder mystery.  With Rhonda Fleming in a very early role as a psych patient.

Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world if our dreams did hold the key to all our repressed history and inner turmoil?  And if each dream symbol had an obvious correlate in the real world? What if a few conversations could unbury childhood trauma and restore us to some better adult self?  Sadly, it doesn’t work that way.  I find this a really irritating and simplistic story.  I just can’t help it.

Taking allowances for the time period in which it was made and my perhaps exaggerated reaction, there is nothing really wrong with the film.  The suspense is built by a Master after all.  The famous Dali dream sets are evocative.   And Ingrid Bergman looks exceptionally beautiful to me here.  She is allowed to have her hair kind of natural and tousled in soft curls and it makes her look like an angel.  What I could perhaps believe is that her love could go some way in curing any man.

Miklos Rózsa won an Academy Award for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.  Spellbound was nominated for Academy Awards in the following categories:  Best Picture; Best Supporting Actor (Michael Chekov); Best Director; Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (George Barnes); and Best Effects, Special Effects.

Trailer

And Then There Were None (1945)

And Then There Were None
Directed by René Clair
Written by Dudley Nichols from the novel by Agatha Christie
1945/USA
René Clair Productions
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

 

[box] Emily Brent: Very stupid to kill the only servant in the house. Now we don’t even know where to find the marmalade.[/box]

Agatha Christie murder mysteries are the kind of thing that works best on a first viewing. Still with this cast it’s hard to go far wrong.

Mr. U.N. Owen invites eight people, strangers to him and each other, to a weekend houseparty at his mansion on an isolated island.  There they join the married butler and housekeeper who are to tend to their needs.  There is no sign of their host, however.  After establishing that there is no way off the island until the ferry returns in two days and no telephone either, the guests begin speculating. After dinner, the butler plays a gramaphone record recorded by Owen accusing each guest and servant of some unpunished capital crime and vowing justice.  A copy of the song “Ten Little Indians” is prominently placed on the piano.

Guests start dropping by the methods described in the song.  A table centerpiece loses one Indian with each murder.  Things get even more interesting, if possible, when the guests convince themselves that Owen must be one of their number.  With Barry Fitzgerald, Walter Huston, Roland Young, Louis Hayward, Judith Anderson, Mischa Auer, C. Aubrey Smith, and June Duprez.

The solution to the mystery seemed obvious on a second viewing, eliminating all of the suspense that kept me going the first time.  Still, all these fine character actors attack their roles with gusto and Clair films everything like the artist he was.

Trailer

 

 

Leave Her to Heaven (1945)

Leave Her to HeavenLeave-Her-To-Heaven-Poster-1
Directed by John M. Stahl
Written by Jo Swerling based on a novel by Ben Ames Williams
1945/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Repeat viewing/YouTube

 

Mrs. Berent: There’s nothing wrong with Ellen. It’s just that she loves too much.

Gene Tierney can be one scary lady while looking lovely in some very beautiful clothes. The rest of this Technicolor noir looks great too.

When a woman comes on to you by saying you look like her father, run in the opposite direction – fast.  Author Richard Harlan (Cornel Wilde) doesn’t take this wise counsel when Ellen Berent (Tierney) uses this pickup line on him on the train to Taos, New Mexico where both will be staying with her family.  Ellen’s mission is to scatter her father’s ashes on a local bluff where both loved to ride.  We learn that father and daughter were inseparable.  Richard notices an engagement ring on Ellen’s finger early on but flirts with her any way. Then the ring is removed and next thing we know Ellen’s fiance Russell Quinton (Vincent Price) drops in to confront her.  Ellen announces that she and Richard are getting married – tomorrow. Oddly, this is the first Richard has heard of the ceremony but he is so smitten he goes along.

Leave-Her-To-Heaven-16

Richard has been waxing rhapsodic all along about his fishing cottage in rural Maine.  Ellen is keen to head there directly.  But first the two stop off in Warm Springs, Georgia where Richard’s younger brother Denny is being treated for polio.  Ellen works with the boy to get him to walk as a surprise for Richard but is appalled when everyone thinks that he is so much better he can now accompany the couple to the fishing cottage.  There is a caretaker living in the cottage as well.  Ellen starts planning how the couple can have some privacy.  With Jeanne Crain in an important sub-plot as Ellen’s adopted sister and Chill Wills as the caretaker.

Drowning2 Leave Her To Heaven

This is my favorite Gene Tierney performance.  She conveys a person who is inwardly tormented and outwardly controlled perfectly.  Her slight detachment from her roles adds to the effect here.  Fortunately, we get no psychoanalytic explanations for Ellen’s behavior. She is just a femme fatale.  The production is so gorgeous it might be a Douglas Sirk melodrama.  Recommended.

Leave Her to Heaven won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Color (Leon Shamroy).  It was nominated for Best Actress, Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Color, and Best Sound (Recording).  If there had been a Best Costumes award, I would have voted for this picture.

Clip – Cornel Wilde and Gene Tierney meet

Scarlet Street (1945)

Scarlet Streetscarlet street french poster
Directed by Fritz Lang
Written by Dudley Nichols from the novel and play “La Chienne” by Georges de la Fouchardiére and André Mouézy-Éon
1945/USA
Fritz Lang Productions/Diana Production Company
Repeat viewing/YouTube

 

Kitty March: If he were mean or vicious or if he’d bawl me out or something, I’d like him better.

No matter what The Book says, this is one of Fritz Lang’s American films that should be seen before you die.  It is delicously subversive while at the same time being 100% noir.

As the story begins, humble cashier Chris Cross (Edward G. Robinson) is being feted for some employment anniversary at his firm.  His boss is theatrically grateful and gives him a gold watch.  Chris looks with longing as the boss gets into a car with a beautiful blonde. We rapidly discover that Chris is profoundly lonely.  He walks many blocks out of his way to share the company of a co-worker.  While beginning to return from this strange part of town, he witnesses a young woman being beat up by her “boyfriend”.  He manages to deck the boyfriend.  The girl sends him after a cop so that the boyfriend can flee, then sends the cop off on a wild goose chase.

The girl talks Chris into joining her for a drink and introduces herself as Kitty (Joan Bennett).  The two start lying to each other almost immediately. She tells him she is an actress and he lets her believe he is a professional painter, instead of the Sunday amateur he actually is.  He asks if he can see her again and she tells him she can write to her.

scarlet street

When Kitty and her “boyfriend”Johnny (Dan Duryea) get together, she tells him about her conversation and Johnny sees a meal ticket. (I keep putting “boyfriend” in quotes since Duryea’s is one of the all-time great characterizations of a pimp.)  A highlight of the film is the non-stop sparring between Kitty and Johnny.

In the meantime, we find out exactly why Chris is so lonely and miserable.  His wife of five years (Rosalind Ivan who seemed to specialize in shrews, see The Suspect) is an absolute harridan.  She browbeats him into doing all the chores, compares him unfavorably to her first husband, and is especially contemptuous of his paintings, which she threatens to give to the trash man.

1akfcscarletstreet3Kitty begins her money-extraction campaign with a date at an outdoor cafe during which she wangles $100.  But Johnny “needs” $1000 and soon Kitty gets herself setup in an apartment. This has the added advantage of giving Chris a place to paint in safety. Chris begins robbing the till at his company to meet his cash flow needs.

Johnny’s appetite is insatiable and he starts eyeing Chris’s paintings greedily.  After all, didn’t Kitty say that he sold his art for $50,000?  I won’t go further into the plot except to say film noir, and this is definitely one, is not big on happy endings.  With Margaret Lindsay as Kitty’s roommate and friend.

Scarlet Street, 1945 1

Every single person in this film is a phony or an out-and-out liar and Kitty and Johnny are two of the most vulgarly materialistic characters in cinema.  So as a subtext, Lang gives us a blackly comic satire of American manners mid-century.  This is also a great example of Lang’s “little man strikes back” theme as seen in such movies as Fury.  Edward G. Robinson is just perfect as a lonely, sensitive soul with blind fury carefully hidden away in the dark recesses of his heart.  Recommended.

This movie is in the public domain, which means there are a variety of ways to see it but no properly restored extra-filled DVD release.  I found that the clearest print was an HD version on YouTube.  Unfortunately, the sound was ever so slightly out of synchronization in that version.

“Trailer” – actually a montage of clips (with major spoiler)

The Lost Weekend (1945)

The Lost Weekend
Directed by Billy Wilder
Written by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett from the novel by Charles R. Jackson
1945/USA
Paramount Pictures
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
188 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Don Birnam: Most men lead lives of quiet desperation. I can’t take quiet desperation![/box]

If this film did not have all the portentous theremin music, it might be perfect.

Don Birman (Ray Milland) has it all going for him.  He is young, handsome and witty, with a gift for writing and monied family.  He is also in the late stages of alcoholism.

On this particular weekend, Don has been sober for 10 days.  His faithful brother Wick has planned a long weekend at the family country house.  Beautiful, intelligent girlfriend Helen (Jane Wyman) must work and stay behind.  But a bottle of rye Don has hidden dangling outside the window keeps calling his name.  Witt once again spots Don’s excuses for lies and takes off it a huff by himself.  After drinking down the bottle, Don learns of $10 Witt left in the sugar bowl for the housecleaner, steals it, and goes on a four-day bender.

During Don’s lost weekend, he gets caught stealing from a woman’s purse at a club, cozies up to a girl he doesn’t love for money, pathetically attempts to hock his typewriter, and falls down some stairs, winding up in the alkie ward, all in worship of his God alcohol.  Wilder masterfully shows the obsessive devotion of the addict to his drug of choice to the exclusion of his own dignity or love for other people.  Finally, Don has had enough and is about to opt for the easy way out.  Fortunately, Helen stubbornly refuses to give up on him.  With Howard Da Silva as Don’s favorite bartender and Frank Faylen as a sarcastic truth-telling orderly.

I don’t know why but the Oscar-nominated score really got on my nerves this time.  The theremin music gives the proceedings a campy flavor reminiscent of horror or science fiction movies.  It is also ramped up to maximum volume and drama every time Don is going to make one of his frequent slips.  I hate being manipulated by screen music.

In general, though, this is an excellent film.  Wilder certainly captured the selfishness, self-loathing, and despair of the addict perfectly.  And who was to know that the urbane, light-hearted Milland had such depths in him?  It deserved the Oscars it got and should certainly be seen.

The Lost Weekend won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Writing, Screenplay.  It was nominated for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (John F. Seitz); Best Film Editing; and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture (Miklós Rósca)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Th4MFUZgpI

Trailer