Daily Archives: November 19, 2016

A Summer Place
Directed by Delmer Daves
Written by Delmer Daves from a novel by Sloane Wilson
1959/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Molly Jorgenson: I’m… I’m sure everything’s clean, mother.

Helen Jorgenson: You can never be too sure.[/box]

We can see the eventual inevitable demise of the Hayes Code in this and other Peyton Place style melodramas.

Bart Hunter (Arthur Kennedy) is the scion of one of the most prominent families on Pine Island.  He is married to Sylvia (Dorothy McGuire) with whom he has a teenage son, Johnny (Troy Donahue).  Bart’s alcoholism has brought the family to hard times and they must now rent out their mansion for summers to make ends meet.  They receive an offer from the wealthy Jorgenson family.  Ken Jorgenson (Richard Egan) used to work on the island as a life guard and Bart is not looking forward to him lording his new wealth and social standing but beggars can’t be choosers.  Ken comes with his prudish, social climbing wife Helen and lovely daughter Molly (Sandra Dee).

Ken and Sylvia had been lovers as teenagers and hardly a day passes before they are seeing each ofther on the sly.  Molly and Johnny also form an immediate, if more chaste, romance.  Ken’s wife seems to have been looking for an opportunity to cash in on a scandalous divorce and that is just what happens.  The parents try to separate the children permanently by sending them to different boarding schools but nothing can conquer their desire for each other.  With Beulah Bondi as a wise spinster aunt.

This is well-made melodrama but had some drawbacks for me.  I wish they hadn’t made the scorned spouses so utterly despicable.  Both are such terrible human beings that there hardly seem to be any ethical or moral questions involved in the infidelity.  Sex is a subtext to almost every situation, but in that late-50’s whitewashed way that makes it all seem pretty smarmy.

The Max Steiner theme music for the film became a major pop hit at the time and has been covered numerous times and used as background in many TV shows.

Theme music set to clips

Pork Chop Hill
Directed by Louis Milestone
Written by James R. Webb from a book by S.L.A. Marshall
1959/USA
United Artists/Melville Productions
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] I was drafted during the Korean War. None of us wanted to go… It was only a couple of years after World War II had ended. We said, ‘Wait a second? Didn’t we just get through with that?’ Clint Eastwood [/box]

The objective is valueless except as a chip at ongoing Peace Negotiations.  This hardhitting film takes a look at the challenges of leading men whose primary aim is not to be among the last casualties of the war.

Lt. Joe Clemens (Gregory Peck)’s platoon is ordered to play a key role in re-taking Pork Chop Hill.  He is supposed to work in concert with a couple of other platoons.  Clemens’s first job is to motivate men who spend all their time glued to the radio for news on progress at the Peace Talks.  Clemens must motivate these by tough talk and brute force.

Once they hit the field, the men are also bombarded with non-stop propaganda “advice” from the Red Chinese.

Perhaps the most discouraging factor is the constant miscommunication from headquarters, which consistently seems to be clueless as to the location of its troops and conditions on the ground. General staff is unable to increase supplies and unwilling to order withdrawal at this sensitive political juncture.  Despite or because of the enormous casualties, though, the troops at last become determined to keep the hill.  With Harry Guardino, Rip Torn, George Peppard, Woody Strode, Norman Fell, Robert Blake, and Martin Landau (in his film debut) as soldiers.

Louis Milestone brings as another anti-war film late in his career.  It is not as epic as All Quiet on the Western Front but hard-hitting for all that.  It made me think about all the paradoxes created by this modern way of fighting and negotiating at the same time.

Trailer