Monthly Archives: April 2016

Izumi (Fountainhead)
Directed by Masaki Kobayashi
Written by Zenzô Matsuyama from a story by Kunio Kishida
1956/Japan
Shôchiku Eiga
First viewing/Hulu

Water is the driving force of all nature. — Leonardo da Vinci

This movie demonstrates that love triangles can be just as tedious in Japanese as they are in English.  Pity.

I don’t have the character names in front of me.  This botany student goes with his professor to study plants in the mountains.  While there he witnesses the water war going on between some farmers who would like to improve their rice fields and a villa owner on whose property lies the only reservoir.  The student decides he will search for an additional water source.

We spend almost all our time on a second story, however.  The student falls for the villa owner’s beautiful secretary.  The owner is also taken with her.  The secretary can’t make up her mind.  In the meantime, a waiflike girl who met the student one time in a garden two years ago can’t forget him.  His friends try to make a match between the pair but the student is not interested.  We fumble around inconclusively for the next one and a half hours.

Kobayashi is one of my favorite directors.  He had a dud script on his hands.  At no time did I care who the characters ended up with.  Most of the time I was baffled by their actions.  I kept waiting for the water feud and the corrupt businessmen who wanted to turn the villa into a hotel to come back into the picture.  That could have made an interesting movie.

Earth vs. the Flying Saucers
Directed by Fred Sears
Written by Curt Siodmak, George Worthing Yeats, and Bernard Gordon from a book by Donald E. Keyhoe
1956/USA
Columbia Pictures Corporation/Clover Productions
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Gen. Edmunds: When an armed and threatening power lands uninvited in our capitol, we don’t meet him with tea and cookies![/box]

Ray Harryhausen’s special effects lift this B space invasion movie over the average 50’s fair.

Dr. Russell A. Marvin (Hugh Marlowe) is a rocket scientist.  He has just married his secretary Carol, who happens to be the daughter of the General commanding the space program.  They are rushing to a rocket launch when they see flying saucers.  At the beginning, they can hardly convince anyone of this but then the General steps into say that all previous rockets launched by the program have either crash landed or disappeared into the sea.

It turns out that the aliens were trying to communicate with Marvin via a continuous motion translation machine but their timing was off so the words came out really fast and sounding like spaceship noise.  Anyway, they capture the General and finally persuade the Marvins to talk with them.  They drained all knowledge from the General’s brain and attempt to demonstrate the futility of trying to prevent the takeover of earth.  They instruct Russell to order the leaders of the world to gather in Washington DC.

The U.S. Army is not to take this challenge lying down and race to develop “magnitizers” and “solidified electricity” to defeat the enemy.

There is little to differentiate this movie from dozens of similarly themed movies of the 50’s. Little that is except for Ray Harryhausen’s awesome stop motion special effects.  The final scenes of the saucer attacks on Washington landmarks are pretty thrilling, especially when you think how many moving parts he had in play.  There’s also a  cool alien hidden under those blank robot looking shells.

Trailer

The Catered Affair
Directed by Richard Brooks
Written by Gore Vidal from a teleplay by Paddy Chayefsky
1956/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing/YouTube

Agnes Hurley: You’re going to have a big wedding whether you like it or not! And if you don’t like it, you don’t have to come!

Once I got used to Bette Davis playing a dowdy Irish-American housewife, I began to enjoy this kitchen-sink drama.

Tom Hurley (Ernest Borgnine) is a cab driver.  He has been saving all his life to buy a taxi cab medallion and own a cab and now has the $4,000 necessary to do so.  His buddy will go in halves with him on the taxi.  When he arrives home dead tired, his daughter Jane (Debbie Reynolds) announces to him and her mother Agnes (Davis) that she plans to get married that Saturday.  Jane and her intended have the opportunity to drive a friend’s car cross country and want to use the time for a honeymoon.  She wants only her parents at the simple wedding. That means her Uncle Jack (Barry Fitzgerald) who lives with them will not be able to attend.  He is mightily offended to be excluded.

That night the family entertains the fiance’s parents at dinner.  The Hallorans are much better off financially than the Hurleys.  They start talking about their daughters’ formal weddings and the apartment they plan to gift to the couple.  Between her brother threatening to move out, the Hurleys’ comments, and implications of acquaintances that Jane must be “in trouble” to want such a rushed marriage, Agnes rebels and insists on a fancy catered wedding.  Her hidden reason is that she was denied a big wedding and never has felt really loved by her husband.

The formal wedding turns out to be a bad idea for a number of reasons, not least that Tom will not be able to afford his cab.  We follow the tense wedding preparations for the remainder of the film.  With Rod Taylor as Jane’s fiancé.

Ernest Borgnine had one golden year following his Oscar-winning performance in Marty before he was relegated to playing one-dimensional bad guys (expertly I might add).  This is one of the nuanced and moving roles he had in him.  Davis is good too but slips in and out of a New York Irish accent.  It’s quite a shift from her glamour roles and she ends up being very moving.  Debbie Reynolds is fine but has the same trouble maintaining a consistent accent.  The writing is solid and I was in tears by the ending of the film.  Recommended for fans of domestic drama.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv_ksA4S–Q

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This was my contribution to the Bette Davis Bogathon hosted at “In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood”.  Many excellent articles about the actress’s films and life are gathered here.

Le Mystere Picasso
Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot
No writer credited
1956/France
Filmsonor
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] You should have an idea of what it is you want to do . . . but it should be a vague idea. – Pablo Picasso[/box]

This documentary takes you inside the mind and hands of a genius.

Director Clouzot and cinematographer Claude Renoir film Pablo Picasso as he paints a number of transparent “canvases”.  We see the artist’s decisions, failures, and triumphs.

This is just mesmerizing.  Mostly it is simply time-lapse photography as Picasso paints set to a musical accompaniment.  Everything he did looked great to me on the first go and then he would work and work until he completely transformed the painting.  The last couple of canvases in particular are great.  Picasso doesn’t talk much but when he does that is fascinating too.  Highly recommended.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSoJUMnLc1o

Montage – greatly speeded up

The King and I
Directed by Walter Lang
Written by Ernest Lehman based on the musical play by Oscar Hammerstein III based on Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon
1956/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Repeat viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] King: When I sit, you sit. When I kneel, you kneel. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera![/box]

When Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr begin to polka, I know I am in musical movie heaven.

Anna Leonowens (Kerr) arrives in Bangkok with her young son to take up a position teaching the children of the King of Siam (Brynner) and his many wives.  The King is interested in making Siam more Western and “scientific”.  At the same time, he is bound by hundreds of years of tradition that have made him an autocratic ruler.  Anna’s first struggle is when he refuses to give her the private house he has promised her and requires her to live in the women’s quarters of the palace.

Over time, the King comes to rely more and more on Anna’s counsel.  This comes to play particularly when the King fears that Siam will become a European colony,.  Anna helps him organize an elaborate banquet to convince the British Ambassador that he is not a barbarian.  Unfortunately, some ancient prerogatives prove to be a bridge too far for the King.   With Rita Moreno as the King’s slave and cocubine.

Yul Brynner had years on Broadway to perfect this role and perfect it he did.  It all feels very fresh, though. He brings to the part just the right blend of stubborness and doubt. Brynner is the principal reason to see this film but Kerr is very good as well and the production is lavish and beautiful.  We don’t even have a dream ballet!  Instead, we get a production of “The Small House of Uncle Thomas” a Siamese-flavored retelling of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  This always holds my interest.  Recommended.

The King and I won Academy Awards in the categories of Best Actor; Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color; Best Costume Design, Color; Best Sound, Recording, and Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture.  It was nominated in the categories of Best Picture; Best Actress; Best Director; and Best Cinematography, Color.

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

Trailer

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