Monthly Archives: March 2017

From the Terrace
Directed by Mark Robson
Written by Ernest Lehman from a novel by John O’Hara
1960/USA
Linebrook
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Mary St. John: Yes. She has something I haven’t got – niceness. But then I have something she hasn’t got.

Alfred Eaton: Me?

Mary St. John: No. Honesty and guts. She has no guts.[/box]

The valiant efforts of a talented cast cannot save the turgid dialogue of this potboiler.

David Alfred Eaton (Paul Newman) comes home from WWII to find his mother (Myrna Loy) a hopeless alcoholic who is also under the grip of a blackmailer.  Alfred is a misunderstood youth having disappointed his father (Leon Ames) by surviving his beloved brother, who died at an early age of spinal meningitis.

Dad wants young Alfred to work his way up the ropes at the family mill but Alfred wants none of it.  He founds an airplane manufacturing venture with some friends.  Unfortunately, Alfred gets interested in Mary St. John (Joanne Woodward), the naughty daughter of a tycoon.  The tycoon opposes the marriage until Alfred’s father has a heart attack.  After that he is all in favor.  For some reason the highly sexed Mary and Alfred never really make the marriage work.

After rescuing his drowning grandson, Alfred gets a job offer from a Wall Street wheeler dealer.  He becomes a complete workaholic like his father, leaving Mary alone for weeks and months at a time while he travels on business.  She retaliates in the predictable ways. Can the love of good girl Natalie rekindle David’s passion for life?

The first thing you have to get past is that Paul Newman’s character could possibly prefer ultra-bland non-actress Ina Balin as Natalie to Joanne Woodward.  Worse, though, are the stilted dialogue and cliched plot points.  If you have to choose one John O’Hara saga for 1960, I would go for Butterfield 8.  Or if you are not a melodrama fan, you could give them both a miss.

Trailer

The Warped Ones (Kyônetsu no kisetsu)
Directed by Koreyoshi Kurohara
Written by Nobuo Yamada
1960/Japan
Nikkatsu
First viewing/FilmStruck

I wouldn’t mind a little bow. In Japan, they bow. I love it. Only thing I love about Japan. Donald Trump

Warped is right.

Three delinquents are released from the reformatory.  They are all weirdos who immediately revert to their lives of crime and meanness.  The lead weirdo is also a jazz fanatic who makes the funniest faces seen outside a zoo.

Early on the group attacks a journalist and his girlfriend who helped lock them up.  They strike the man with their stolen car and abduct the girlfriend.  The lead weirdo rapes the girlfriend.  After this she can’t leave him alone, largely because she is pregnant and her boyfriend refuses to acknowledge her ordeal.  This gives the weirdo the opportunity to do yet more awful things to her.

I did not want to spend 75 minutes of my life with these people.  This is at least the third Japanese film I have seen where a woman seeks to form a relationship with her rapist.  Yuck.

Sons and Lovers
Directed by Jack Cardiff
Written by Gavin Lambert and T.E.B. Clarke from the novel by D.H. Lawrence
1960/UK
The Company of Artists
First viewing/YouTube rental

 “That’s how women are with me ” said Paul. “They want me like mad but they don’t want to belong to me.” ― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

This handsome film is a well-acted adaptation of Lawrence’s classic novel of desire, both repressed and unleashed.

Paul Morel (Dean Stockwell) is a rebellious artist living in an impoverished English mining town.  His mother (Wendy Hiller) dotes on him and his drunken miner father (Trevor Howard) fails to understand him.  Paul has had a long-term relationship with Miriam.  She loves him deeply, but religion as preached by her mother forbids her from letting him get physical.  Paul’s mother disapproves of the friendship and seems likely to frown on any girl Paul gets serious about.  This is not a real problem since he has vowed never to get married while she is alive.

Paul’s filial devotion prevents him from accepting an offer to study painting in London. Instead, he goes to work at a corset factory.  There he meets Clara Dawes (Mary Ure), a suffragette who has separated from her husband due to his infidelity.  Clara is open to “free love” and she and Paul begin an affair.  But Paul’s heart really belongs to mother.

All the acting is of a very high standard but I thought that Hiller, who failed to snag a nomination, was the best thing about this movie.  The story is interesting and the visuals are simply gorgeous.  Recommended.

Freddie Francis won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White. Sons and Lovers was nominated in the categories of Best Picture; Best Actor (Howard); Best Supporting Actress (Ure); Best Director; Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium; and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White.

Trailer

BUtterfield 8
Directed by Daniel Mann
Written by Charles Schnee and John Michael Hayes
1960/USA
Afton-Linebrook
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Tom, the Bartender: Without her this place is dead. She’s like catnip to every cat in town.[/box]

Elizabeth Taylor is not bad here but was better in other, better, films.

The Hayes Code is still in force.  Gloria Wandrous (Taylor) works as a “model” but sleeps around and drinks heavily.  Her latest conquest is wealthy married cad Weston Liggett (Laurence Harvey).  Liggett has the audacity to leave her $250 after a night of passion.  She retaliates by stealing his wife’s mink coat.

The next day, Liggett pursues Gloria.  He chases her until she catches him and they begin a rapturous week of true love.  She forgets all about the mink, which he still does not know is missing.

Love has made Gloria a new woman.  When Liggett’s wife returns to their city apartment she finds the mink missing.  Gloria is the only person who could have taken it and Liggett now confronts her in a fury.  Many complications ensue.  With Dina Merrill as the long-suffering wife, Mildred Dunnock as Gloria’s mother, Bettie Field as a catty neighbor and Eddie Fisher as Gloria’s best friend.

I watched this with my husband and brother.  My brother liked it more than I did and my husband liked it less.  Both my husband and I correctly predicted the ending, driving my brother crazy in the process.  A good time was had by all.

Anyway, Taylor did remarkably well for someone who refused to speak to the director (she was forced to make the film to complete her MGM contract) and looks absolutely scrumptuous.  The script veers from witty and catty repartee to all-out melodrama by the end.  The movie was better than I expected from its low IMDb rating.

Elizabeth Taylor won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in BUtterfield 8.  The film was nominated for Best Cinematography, Color.

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I have to go back to Nevada for a few days.  May not be able to post until March 19.

Village of the Damned
Directed by Wolf Rilla
Written by Stirling Silliphant, Wolf Rilla and Ronald Kinnoch from the novel The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham
1960/UK
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer British Studios
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] David Zellaby: You have to be taught to leave us alone.[/box]

Before Rosemary’s Baby, we had Village of the Damned.

It is 11 AM in a typical small English village.  Professor Gordon Zellaby (George Sanders) is trying to reach his brother-in-law Major Alan Bernard, who is coming to visit the Zellaby manor for the weekend.  Suddenly Zellaby falls, motionless, to the floor.  Gradually we see others fallen.  Bernard goes to investigate the sudden interruption of the phone call and finds that people and animals have gone down in a 5-km radius around the town.

He goes for military reinforcements and it soon becomes clear that all is well outside a certain boundary but anyone who crosses the line will be stricken.  Before too long, all is abruptly back to “normal”.  No one can discover a reason for the temporary paralysis.

Two months later, every woman of child-bearing years in the village is pregnant.  This includes Zellaby’s much-younger wife Althea.  The fetuses are perfect and of an advanced stage of development for their term.  They are all unusually large newborns with dark eyes. Their mental development is ahead of normal by months and years as they grow.  All the  children, including Zellaby’s son David, are curiously emotionless and prefer to keep company only with each other.

Many believe these children must be destroyed.  Zellaby sees them as potentially a boon to mankind and talks the authorities into giving him a year to instruct them.  It will be a difficult year …

This film has a pretty brilliant premise and many effective scenes. Sanders is great in perhaps the least cynical role he ever played.  Martin Stephens (The Innocents) who plays David Zellaby is also really good.  The film is best at first when nothing is explained and goes slightly downhill thereafter but is still eerie and entertaining.  Recommended.

Trailer (spoilers)

North to Alaska
Directed by Henry Hathaway
Written by John Lee Mahin, Martin Rakin and Claude Binyon from a play by Ladislas Fodor and an idea by John H. Kafka
1960/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Sam McCord: Ahh, women! I never met one yet that was half as reliable as a horse![/box]

This is the first of the series of entertaining two-fisted rom-coms John Wayne would make in the 60’s.

Sam McCord (Wayne) and George Pratt (Stewart Granger) are partners in an Alaskan mine that has just hit pay-dirt.  George has been engaged for several years to a woman who lives in Seattle and can now afford to marry her.  He has been pining for her the entire time.  The men need to buy some heavy equipment in Seattle and, since Sam is the better businessman, he goes to both do the deal and fetch the fiancee home.

When Sam arrives, loaded with presents, only to find that the fiancee has married another man.  That night he goes to a bordello called the Hen House and gets roaring drunk.  He meets beautiful bad girl Michelle AKA “Angel” (Capucine).  In his inebriated state, he decides it would be a fine idea to take her back to Alaska for George.  She goes for the promise of riches but rapidly falls for Sam.  He is pig-headedly oblivious.

The rest of the film covers Angel and Sam’s comically fiery relationship on the ship and in Alaska, punctuated by a number of brawls between the menfolk.  With Ernie Kovacs as the villain of the piece and Fabian as Granger’s horny kid brother.

This is entertaining but I doubt it will stay in my memory for very long.

Trailer

Late Autumn (Akibiyori)
Directed by Yasujiro Ozu
Written by Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu from a novel by Ton Satomi
1960/Japan
Shochiku Eiga
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Mamiya: You know, it’s people that complicate life. Life itself is surprisingly simple.[/box]

In the late autumn of his career, Ozu made this comic twist on his eternal marriage plot.  I smiled throughout.

As the film begins, friends get together after a memorial service for Akiko’s (Setsuko Hara) late husband.  They are three businessmen, one widowed and two married, who were friends of the widow and her husband in college, Akiko and Akiko’s daughter Ayako.  The men all had crushes on Akiko in school and are half in love with her still.  They privately decide to take on the job of finding a mate for Ayako.  Ayako herself is not interested in marriage, mostly because she does not want to leave her mother alone.

The men bumble their way through the whole affair.  One of their most outrageous maneuvers is to convince Ayako that her mother would marry the widower but for her. Somehow, almost despite themselves, everything works out perfectly in the end.

This is kind of a remake of  with Hara as the parent instead of the child and Chisu Ryu in a cameo as Hara’s brother.  I find the three male matchmakers to be utterly charming and hilarious.  It’s a tender film that examines the generation gap and the inevitable flux of life with a light touch.  Recommended.

Trailer (which fails to capture the tone of the film)