Category Archives: Movie Reviews

The Man in the White Suit
Directed by Alexander Mackendrick
Written by Roger MacDougall, John Dighton, and Alexander Mackendrick from MacDougall’s play
1951/UK
Ealing Studios
Repeat viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Sir John Kierlaw: Now. Some fool has invented an indestructible cloth. Where is he? How much does he want?[/box]

This biting satire might be my favorite of the Ealing comedies.

Sidney Stratton (Alec Guinness) is an Oxford graduate in chemistry and a bit of an eccentric genius.  He works in a textile mill laboratory where he spends most of his time working on his own experiments and racking up expenses.  After he is fired, he goes to another mill as a laborer and sneaks into the lab during off hours.  By chance he meets  Daphne (Joan Greenwood), the mill owner’s daughter, and explains his experiments to her.  The canny lass sees their value immediately and talks her father into giving Sidney free reign in the lab.

After several missteps, Sidney is able to announce his invention of a textile that will never wear out or get dirty.  The mill owner calls a press conference to announce this triumph. Before it can take place, ancient and ruthless industry titan Sir John Kierlaw (Ernest Thesinger) finds out and realizes that the fabric absolutely must be suppressed.  Labor is up in arms over the potential loss of jobs.  Since Sidney cannot be bought off, he is locked up.  After he escapes, the chase is on.

Once you know that Alec Guinness, Joan Greenwood and Ernest Thesinger are all appearing together, it is almost a given that I will love a film.  And this one is so clever!  The rapaciousness of industry is absolutely delicious.  I also love the woman labor leader who has a soft spot for Sidney.  Recommended.

The Man in the White Suit was nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Best Writing, Screenplay.

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

Trailer

In 1951:

Legendary film critic and theorist Andre Bazin established the French film journal “Cahiers du Cinéma”. Its ideas and writing gave rise to the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague) and brought respectability to the idea of film as a legitimate field of study.

The Motion Pictures Production Code specifically prohibited films dealing with abortion or narcotics.  Marking the decline of the old Hollywood studio system, this was the first year in which the Best Picture Oscar was given to the film’s producers rather than to the studio that released the film.  Motion picture mogul-executive Louis B. Mayer was forced to resign in 1951 after 27 years as the head of MGM Studios that he had founded. Mayer’s resignation followed continued disagreements with his eventual successor Dore Schary over cost-cutting and the issue of creating socially-relevant pictures.

In U.S. news, the Twenty-second Amendment Constitution was ratified, limiting Presidents to two terms.

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage for passing atom bomb secrets to the Soviet Union. On April 5 they are sentenced to receive the death penalty.  The couple was executed in 1953.

U.S. President Harry S. Truman relieved General Douglas MacArthur of his Far Eastern commands for insubordination.   MacArthur made his last official appearance in a farewell address to the U.S. Congress. During his speech, he famously said: “I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty.”

Remington Rand delivered the first UNIVAC I computer to the United States Census Bureau. The first thermonuclear weapon was tested on Enewetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Direct dial coast-to-coast telephone service began. The world’s first (experimental) nuclear power plant opened. The United States became malaria-free,

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger was published.   Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats recorded “Rocket 88”, currently observed by most as the first rock and roll song ever made.  The Town by Conrad Richter won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature.  No drama prize was awarded.  “Too Young” by Nat King Cole was number 1 on the Billboard Charts.

The Treaty of Paris (1951) was adopted, establishing the European Coal and Steel Community.  This was the first step toward the establishment of the European Union.

In early 1951, the territory around Seoul and central Korea changed hands several times as the UN and Communist forces advanced and retreated.  By July 1951, the conflict had reached a stalemate, with the two sides fighting limited engagements, but with neither side in a position to force the other’s surrender. Both the United States and China had, at this point, achieved the short-term goal of maintaining the demarcation line at the 38th parallel, while the North and South Koreans had failed in the larger goal of uniting the country under their preferred political systems. Representatives of all the parties began to discuss peace.  For the next two years, small-scale skirmishes continued to break out, while the various representatives argued over the peace terms.

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The list of films I will select from is here.  I have already reviewed the following 1951 films on this site.  ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; and .

Montage of stills from the Academy Award winners

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0mhgyTgxtw

Bonus – “Rocket 88” – that’s Ike Turner’s backup band.

Three Little Words
Directed by Richard Thorpe
Written by George Wells
1950/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box]Bert Kalmar: I could tell you what I think of you in just three little words. You’re a dope![/box]

This is a pleasant musical biopic with some nice dancing from Fred Astaire and Vera Ellen.

It is 1920 and Bert Kalmer (Fred Astaire) and Jesse Brown (Vera Ellen) have a popular song and dance act in vaudeville.  He is crazy about magic and also writes the music for their act.  He wants her to marry him but she thinks he is too driven to settle down.  He asks her to tell him when she is ready to say yes.  Bert breaks his kneecap and will be laid up for several months.  She now accepts his proposal.  Now he refuses because he fears he will be unable to support her.  Hurt, she leaves the act.

Harry Ruby (Red Skelton) is a failed song writer who is currently plugging a tune set to some lyrics about “Araby”.  A promoter is not buying and orders the errand boy to assist with Bert’s new magic act.  This involves shuffling numerous rabbits, doves, and one vicious goose and Harry is a disaster, turning Burt’s class act into an uproarious comedy routine.

Sometime later and Bert is trying his hand as a songwriter.  He is better at lyrics than composing.  When a music promoter introduces him to Harry, Bert can’t place him.  Harry tries out a tune and this becomes “My Sunny Tennessee” with Harry’s lyrics.  By the time Bert recognizes Harry, the song is a hit and all is forgiven.  The pair go on to one success after another.  Harry brings Jessie and Burt back together and they go on to marry.  The three are fast friends.

Jessie and Bert break up a couple of Harry’s ill-advised romances by sending the baseball fanatic off to spring training.  Then Harry returns the favor by wrecking the financing on a bad play Bert has written.  When Burt finds out he is furious and the partnership seems to be over.  Can Jesse and Harry’s new wife patch things up?  Of course they can. With Keenan Wynn as Bert’s manager and Arlene Dahl as Harry’s wife.

I enjoyed this one.  The script is good and we get a number of standards the team wrote including: “Who’s Sorry Now”; “Nevertheless”; “I Wanna Be Loved By You” and the title tune.  It’s not too silly and even a bit sweet.  Everything I’m looking for in a musical really.

Debbie Reynolds’ screen debut was in this film.  André Previn was nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture.

Clip – she’s lip synching to the voice of Helen Kane, the original Betty Boop

Young Man with a Horn
Directed by Michael Curtiz
Written by Carl Foreman and Edmund H. North based on a novel by Dorothy Baker
1950/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Amy: You can call me Amy.

Rick Martin: I bet I could.[/box]

I think I was expecting something along the lines of Champion with a trumpet taking the place of boxing.  I got something completely different and I loved it.

The story is bookended with voice over narration by Ricks’s pianist friend Willie ‘Smoke’ Willoughby (Hoagy Carmichael).

Rick Martin is a lonely little orphan boy who is being raised, more or less as a chore, by his older sister.  His life changes when he happens on a Salvation Army church service where drunks are singing hymns.  He sticks around and starts fooling around on the piano and teaches himself to play.  He eventually is asked to get out of there but decides he will be a musician.  A piano is completely out of reach so he works to save enough money to buy a used trumpet.  While he is setting pins at a bowling alley, he hears jazz music pouring out of the adjoining bar.  Trumpeter Art Hazzard (Juano Hernandez) takes the boy under his wing, buys him the trumpet, and teaches him to play.  It turns out he is a prodigy.

Rick grows up to be Kirk Douglas.  He gets a job playing in a dance band. There he meets singer Jo Jordan (Doris Day).  Jo takes a shine to Rick but realizes that Rick is basically married to his horn.  Playing note for note arrangements to dance by is really not his thing.  He argues with the bandleader and gets fired.  He eventually goes to play with Art’s band, is discovered by another bandleader, and becomes a featured soloist.

Jo introduces Rick to her friend Amy (Lauren Bacall), who is studying to be a psychiatrist.  Although Amy warns Rick from the get go that she is bad news and doesn’t respect herself, they quickly fall in love and marry.  But Amy can’t settle down to anything.  She makes Rick miserable.  Rick spurns his friend Art.  Guilt over this and the breakdown of his marriage quickly sends Rick to the gutter.  Fortunately, he discovers he has made some real friends in spite of himself.

The acting in this film is outstanding.  Douglas is good playing a basically sensitive lonely guy rather than his usual heel.  Bacall said she was too young to know she was supposed to be playing a lesbian.  I’m much older than she was and didn’t get it either.  Regardless, it’s one of her meatier roles.  Day plays a real pro singer to perfection.  Juano Hernandez is excellent, as always.

In the last analysis though, it is Day’s singing and Harry James’s dubbing of the trumpet solos that made the movie for me.  It’s one glorious standard after another.  Pure joy.

Trailer

Cinderella
Directed by Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson et al
Written by Bill Peet et al from the original classic by Charles Perrault
1950/USA
Walt Disney Studios
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Cinderelly, Cinderelly/ Night and day it’s Cinderelly/ Make the fire, fix the breakfast/Wash the dishes, do the mopping/ And the sweeping and the dusting/ They always keep her hopping / She goes around in circles/Till she’s very, very dizzy/ Still they holler/ Keep a-busy Cinderelly![/box]

What little girls’ dreams are made of.

I don’t really have to summarize the fairy tale do I?  In this version, Cinderella is befriended by all the mice and birds in her garrett.  She and her friends also have to deal with a malevolent (and very funny) cat named Lucifer.

Back before the days of home video, Disney rereleased its classic cartoons every five years or so.  It was a much anticipated event.  I was at exactly the right age for this movie to be part of my childhood.  I think I might even have had the soundtrack record.  So it can’t really be reviewed, just enjoyed in a nostalgic glow.

I do think the songs are better than average.  “Bibbidi-Bobbi-Boo” was the hit but “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes” is also classic.  My favorite was the above quoted Cinderella song, sang by the animals in voices reminiscent of Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Cinderella was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of: Best Music, Original Song (“Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo”); Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture; and Best Sound, Recording.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87aVWdrYWuA

Clip