Monthly Archives: January 2023

The Hasty Heart
Directed by Vincent Sherman
Written by Ranald MacDougall from a play by John Patrick
1949/UK
Associated British Picture Corporation (Warner Bros.)
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Sister Parker: He’s a foundling, his father left his mother before he was born. Do you know what that means?
Yank: He sure is!

This is a warm, sentimental film about solidarity in adversity.

The story takes place just after the end of WWII in Burma. The able-bodied are being shipped home in droves but there remain a group of wounded men in the camp hospital. Cpl. Lachlan ‘Lachie’ MacLachlan (Richard Todd) was wounded in one of the last battles. His injured kidney was removed but his remaining kidney is defective and he does not have long to live. MacLachlan is as Scottish as can be and has a very dour disposition and no friends.

Instead of telling Lachie his prognosis, the commanding officer decides to put him in a ward with five recovering men. He and ward nurse Sister Parker encourage the other patients to try to make Lachie’s last day great.

This does not start out well as Lachie does his best to alienate all the other patients. The one he irritates most is “Yank” (Ronald Regan). But everybody softens eventually.

I enjoyed this movie. It contains one of Patricia Neal’s first screen performances. She is good as always but has not developed her distinctive persona yet. Richard Todd earned a well-deserved Best Actor Oscar Nomination.

The Secret Garden
Directed by Fred M. Wilcox
Written by Robert Ardrey from a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett
1949/US
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Mary Lennox: Dickon, I need you. All you have to do is listen. What good is a secret if there’s no one to tell it to?

It is an adaptaion of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s children’s novel and might make good family viewing.

Mary Lennox’s (Margaret O’Brien) parents die of cholera in India and she is sent to live with her Uncle Craven (Herbert Marshall) in his huge creepy mansion. Her crotchety uncle wants to have as little to do with Mary as possible. Mary doesn’t care as she is rude and spoiled herself.

Eventually she locates her uncle’s son (Dean Stockwell) in the vast house and discovers he is very spoiled and manipulates people by feigning illnesses.

Dickon , brother of a housemaid, tells Mary of a secret garden behind a high wall which has no apparent entrance. A sympathetic raven finds the key. The remainder of the film is devoted to the childrens’ adventures, which humanize and humble all concerned. With Elsa Lanchester as a cheeky maid.

I’ve never read the book. Probably would have got more out of the movie if I had. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Margaret O’Brien play a brat but she is really good at it.

The Search
Directed by Fred Zinnemann
Written by Richard Schweizer, David Weschler, and Paul Jarrico
1948/US
Praesens-Film for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental

“Today, as yesterday, a nation is judged by its attitude towards refugees. – Elie Wiesel”

This was made in the American-occupied sector of Germany shortly after the end of WWII and explores the sad lot of displaced people in Europe at the time of production. It is a moving story and I liked it very much.

The first half of the film is devoted to a general overview of  the lot of refugee children who have been separated from their parents. Mrs. Murray (Aline MacMahon) is the head the child division of a UN Relief and Rehabilitation Center somewhere in Germany. She narrates the stories of many of her charges including that of Karel Malik (Ivan Jandl), a Czech child who after being separated from his mother survived internment at Auschwitz. He wandered far and wide in search of his mother. When he is finally gathered up by the UNRRA, he is so traumatized he refuses to speak. The authorities don’t know his nationality much less his name. He is being sent to a special center where he can receive treatment. The journey by trucks and ambulances throws the children into a panic and Karel escapes. His fellow escapee is drowned but Karel continues his travels.

In the second half of the movie, GI Ralph “Steve” Stevenson (Montgomery Clift) spots the starving child hiding in the rubble of Berlin. He more or less adopts him and starts teaching him English. In the meantime, his mother has been scouring all the camps of Europe looking for her son.

The film has an uplifting ending and, while sad, is more gentle than many Holocaust films (there are no graphic scenes from the camps). This was the first film starring Montgomery Clift to be released and he earned a well-deserved Oscar nomination for it. Ivan Jandl, who won the Juvenile Oscar for 1948, has to be one of the most natural and appealing child actors in cinema history. The film was also nominated for Best Director and Best Writing, Screenplay. Highly recommended.

The Sea Wolf
Directed by Michael Curtiz
Written by Robert Rosson from a novel by Jack London
1941/US
Warner Bros.
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental

“I turned to the circle of brutal and malignant faces peering at me through the semi-darkness. A sudden and deep sympathy welled up in me. I remembered the Cockney’s way of putting it. How God must have hated them that they should be tortured so!”
― Jack London, The Sea-Wolf).

Curtiz made several iconic movies about life at sea. This is one.

This is an adaptation of the Jack London novel. The story begins in San Francisco. George Leach (John Garfield) and Ruth Brewster (Ida Lupino) are fugitives from justice. Humphrey van Weyden (Alexander Knox) is a writer and philosopher with a more mysterious reason to wander. These people wind up booking passage on a sealer “The Ghost” which is captained by the iron-willed and cruel “Wolf” Larson (Edward G. Robertson) . Leach and Brewter fall in love almost immediately.

The wanted trio try desperately to get off the ship but Wolf insists they will remain on board and the ship will not put into port until it returns to San Francisco. With Barry Fitzgerald as the ship’s cook and Gene Lockhart as its pathetic drunken doctor.

This is a solidly mounted production with a beautiful score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold and atmospheric cinematography by Sol Polito. And what a cast! This was supposed to be some sort of Hitler analogy but I didn’t pick up on that.

Interiors
Directed by Woody Allen
Written by Woody Allen
1978/US
IMDb page
Repeat viewing?/Amazon Prime rental

Pearl: You only live once, and once is enough if you play your cards right.

After the massive success of “Annie Hall” (1977), Woody Allen was given free reign by his producers. He used it to make this super grim homage to Ingmar Bergman.

Eve (Geraldine Page) is an interior decorator aged about 60. Her aesthetic embraces the subtle, the pale, and the exquisite. She is negative and critical. She has reared three daughters, all adults and two married. The daughters could not be more different. Joey (Mary Beth Hurt) is in advertising and is married to Mike (Sam Waterson). She is the most lively and positive of the sisters. Renata (Diane Keaton) is a poet who is married to Fredrick (Richard Jordan). She sees an analyst and is introspective, self-critical, and feels her own poetry is not good enough. Flyn (Kristin Griffith) is an actress and is the closest of the three to their mother.

As the movie begins, Arthur (E.G. Marshall) the girls’ father, asks Eve for a separation. Eve is distraught and is sent to a mental hospital for a short time. She returns home and simply refuses to believe the separation is anything but temporary.

When Arthur returns from a long vacation in Greece, he has Pearl (Maureen Stapleton) by his side. Pearl is the polar opposite of Eve. She is warm, easy-going, and fun-loving. Arthur announces their engagement. This does not go over well with any of his female relatives as can be imagined. It forces even more introspection in this crowd

I like Woody Allen and I love Ingmar Bergman. I think “Interiors” fails as homage and fails as a film. Allen might have done a fabulous job parodying Bergman but this story is deadly serious. He takes the homage to the limit though almost to the point where it might be funny if half the characters weren’t suicidal. He is also superficial where Bergman would be complex.  I was not a fan.

Saturday’s Children
Directed by Vincent Sherman
Written by Julias J. and Philip G. Epstein from a play by Maxwell Anderson
1940/US
Warner Bros.
IMDb page
First viewing/Criterion Channel

Monday’s child is fair of face, Tuesday’s child is full of grace, Wednesday’s child is full of woe, Thursday’s child has far to go, Friday’s child is loving and giving, Saturday’s child works hard for his living, And the child that is born on the Sabbath day Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay. — old Scottish verse

Next up in the John Garfield retrospective on the Criterion Channel was another story of a couple navigating through the Great Depression.

Rims Rosson (Garfield) is a working man with big dreams. He has a thousand inventions in his head. The one that sounds most promising is to turn hemp into silk. He has a job offer to go to the Philippines to test his theory out.

He is also sweethearts with Bobby Halevy (Anne Shirley). She dreads the departure of Rims. Her aunt advises her on the way to catch a husband through various “tricks”. The tricks work and Rims marries Bobby.

They make do on very little money. Finally, Rims receives a letter renewing his job offer in the Philippines but telling him they cannot raise the salary so he can afford to take his wife. Bobby intercepts the letter and destroys it. The truth comes out about a number of things. Can this marriage survive? With Claude Rains as Garfield’s father-in-law, the same relationship the actors had in “Four Daughters” and “Daughters Courageous”.

Garfield is always good. Claude Rains was not cut out to play avuncular father figures. That’s about all I can say for the movie. It’s watchable but formulaic. I was surprised to find out that the writers were the Epstein Brothers who did such an iconic job on Casablanca (1943).