Daily Archives: July 7, 2015

Stromboli
Directed by Roberto Rossellini
Written by Roberto Rossellini, Sergio Amedei et al
1950/Italy
Berit Films/RKO Radio Pictures
First viewing/Hulu

Karin: [Last lines] God… my God… help me! Give me the strength… the understanding… and the courage. God, God, God, oh my God, merciful God… God, God, God!

Beautifully shot, powerful, yet frustrating film.

Karin (Ingrid Bergman), a Lithuanian refugee, sits in an Italian woman’s camp after a bunch of hard knocks during the war.  Antonio, an inmate of the men’s camp, has fallen in love with her through the barbed wire fence.  He is about to be released and wants to marry her and take her with him to his island home.  She figures she might take him up on the offer if she doesn’t get her visa to go to Argentina.  The visa is denied and they are married.

The island Antonio takes Karin to is dominated by an active volcano.  The last eruption destroyed many of the houses and caused many islanders to emigrate.  The remaining inhabitants are ultra-conservative and traditional.  Karin loathes the place on first sight.  She openly says she is too civilized for such a place.

Antonio is surprisingly accommodating at first.  He gets a job as a fisherman and brings his meager wages home to Karin.  Karin goes to the priest to complain about the impossibility of her situation and he advises her to pray and try to make a good home for Antonio.  She brings a huge cactus into the house, takes down the family portraits and photos, and paints a bright mural on the wall.  Antonio is perplexed and dismayed.

Karin makes no attempt whatsoever to fit it.  All the women on this island are apparently in mourning and dress head to toe in black.  Karin bares her midriff and legs or wears trousers.  She disregards warnings from visiting a woman of ill-repute who has a sewing machine she wants to use.  She rows out to visit Antonio while he is trying to work.  She is caught in what she thinks are innocent embraces with other men a couple of times.  Naturally, Antonio is taunted as a cuckold.

Then the volcano erupts.  The experience is horrifying.  Karin announces she is leaving.  Antonio tries to lock her up.  Karin seduces the lighthouse keeper into freeing her and giving her a little money.  The pregnant Karin must climb the still smoking volcano to catch a boat on the other side of the island.

Karin is one seriously mixed up person in my opinion.  I could not figure out whether we were supposed to sympathize with her plight.  I both felt sorry for her and was totally exasperated by her.  Bergman is really good here.  You would not know she was a Hollywood movie star but for her exceptional beauty.  There are a couple of amazing documentary-like sequences — one of catching a feeding frenzy of huge tuna and one of the eruption and panicked evacuation of the village.  Worth seeing but I won’t be revisiting it any time soon.

Annie Get Your Gun
Directed by George Sidney
Written by Sidney Sheldon from the book of the musical “Annie Get Your Gun” by Herbert and Dorothy Fields
1950/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Repeat viewing/TCM DVD

If I went to battle with someone’s herd of cattle
You’d have steak when the job was done
But, if I shot the herder, they’d holler bloody murder
And you can’t shoot a male in the tail like a quail
Oh you can’t get a man with a gun — “You Can’t Get A Man With A Gun”,lyrics by Irving Berlin

Nice solid rendition of a classic stage musical.  Betty Hutton is no Ethel Merman but you can’t have everything.

It is the second half of the 19th Century.  Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show arrives in an Ohio town.  PR man Charlie Davenport (Keenan Wynne) tries to set up a shooting contest on an innkeeper’s property in exchange for rooms.  The innkeeper is having none of it.  Then he is offered game birds by backwoods Annie Oakley (Hutton), who has downed them with a single shot to the head – no buckshot in his diners’ teeth.  After more demonstrations of her shooting prowess, the innkeeper decides to take the show up on its bet – $100 if his “man” can beat sharpshooter Frank Butler (Howard Keel).

Annie takes one look at ladies man Butler and swoons.  She has never seen anything so pretty.  But she easily defeats him in the contest and his ego can’t handle it.  Nevertheless, Wild Bill (Louis Calhern) needs a gimmick for his failing show and decides a female sharpshooter is just the thing.

Annie starts out more or less as Frank’s second banana and the two fall in love.  Then Buffalo Bill and Charlie talk her into doing her special surprise trick to bring in a crowd. The spectacular feat of marksmanship sends Frank running for the hills.  Chief Sitting Bull (J. Carol Naish) is so impressed, though, he adopts Annie as his daughter and invests in the show.  Annie then makes a big splash with the crowned heads of Europe.  She finds Frank waiting when she gets home.  Who will blink first in the battle of the sexes?

This movie is faithful to the play and is more or less one hit song after another.  It is opened up to show several wild west show acts but has little to no dancing.  Howard Keel sure had a beautiful baritone.  I like the musical play and enjoyed this.

Annie Get Your Gun won the Academy Award for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture.  It was nominated in the categories of Best Cinematography, Color; Best Art Direction-Set Decoration-Color; and Best Film Editing.

Clip – “There’s No Business Like Show Business”

Bonus Clip – Judy Garland sings “Doin’ What Comes Natur’lly” before she left the production for health reasons.