Daily Archives: November 10, 2016

Rio Bravo (1959)

Posted on November 10, 2016 | 2 comments

Rio Bravo
Directed by Howard Hawks
Written by Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett from a short story B.H. McCampbell
1959/USA
Warner Bros./Armada Productions
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#365 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Pat Wheeler: A game-legged old man and a drunk. That’s all you got?

John T. Chance: That’s WHAT I got.[/box]

Howard Hawks liked this story so much he remade it only seven years later as El Dorado. This original is still the best.

John T. Chance is sheriff of a Texas town in the Old West.  The citizenry is menaced by the Burdette brothers and their gang.  Finally Joe Burdette (Claude Akins), the meaner of the brothers, commits cold-blooded murder in front of Chance and is locked in jail.  The gang is still at large and Chance knows that brother Nathan will go to any lengths to free Joe.  He can rely only on his friends Dude (Dean Martin), who has elected to go into alcohol withdrawal especially for the occasion, and Stumpy (Walter Brennan), a gimpy old man.

Chance’s friend Pat Wheeler (Ward Bond) suggests he needs more help but Chance wants only pros.  The only real prospect is Colorado (Ricky Nelson), a young hot shot.  Colorado isn’t interested though, at least not until the gang kills his mentor.  On the margins of the central drama, a lady gambler named ‘Feathers’ (Angie Dickinson) is falling for our hero.

According to the commentary, this was Hawks and Wayne’s response to High Noon, which the co-conservatives felt was “phony”.  To their minds no sheriff worth his salt would spend his time begging for help from amateur citizens.  The Feathers-Chance relationship has a lot in common with Hawks’s To Have and Have Not.

This is not the world’s most innovative Western but it is entertaining throughout its almost 2 1/2 hour running time.  Dickinson is a lot of fun to watch.

Rio Bravo was Ward Bond’s final feature film.  He continued to star on TV’s “The Wagon Master”.

Trailer

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Posted in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, 1959

Tiger Bay (1959)

Posted on November 10, 2016 | 2 comments

Tiger Bay
Directed by J. Lee Thompson
Written by John Hawkesworth and Shelley Smith from a short story by Noel Calef
1959/UK
The Rank Organization/Independent Artists
First viewing/FilmStruck

[box] Mrs. Phillips: It’ll be all right, he says. A fat lot of good the police are. We’ve got one in the house and a murder’s done right under his nose and now here’s a child whose got hold of a gun and they don’t even know where she is![/box]

Hayley Mills’s film debut is a taut,  suspenseful thriller.

The setting is Cardiff, Wales.  Korchinsky (Horst Buchholz), a sailor, collects his paycheck and sets off to his girlfriend’s flat, planning to ask her to marry him.  Simultaneously, we are introduced to twelve-year-old Gillie (Mills), a London transplant.  The neighborhood kids won’t let her play with them because she doesn’t have a cap pistol.  The small cap “bomb” she owns doesn’t cut it.  She heads home to the flat she shares with the aunt whose prime goal seems to be to keep her out from underfoot.

Gillie guides Korchinsky to the building where both her family and the girlfriend now lives. They hit it off splendidly.  Soon after, Gillie overhears shouting in Polish in the girlfriend’s apartment and starts peeking through the keyhole.  Finally she sees Korchinsky kill his lover, who left him for another man.  She hides while he flees and sees him hide the murder weapon.  She picks it up with ideas of becoming a big wheel with the kids.

A police investigation begins.  This is the kind of neighborhood where distrust runs high and people are not inclined to cooperate, whether they have anything to hide or not.  Gillie outright lies, at first because she does not want to relinquish her prize.  Later, after Korchinsky finds her and tucks her firmly under his wing, their friendship becomes the prime motivator.  With John Mills as the inspector.

I really liked this one.  This film depends upon the difference between a child’s perspective and reality and works quite well.  The specter of an innocent youngster with a loaded gun alone guaranteed this would be a nail-biter for me.  The ramifications of Gillie’s lies as the film progresses add to the potential consequences and the suspense.  Hayley Mills inherited her father’s talent and made for a convincing tomboy heroine.  Recommended.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPoK4SWff4I

Clip with Hayley Mills commentary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU8GTKQFBAA

Trailer

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Posted in 1959