Category Archives: Movie Reviews

All My Sons
Directed by Irving Reis
Written by Chester Erskine based on the play by Arthur Miller
1948/USA
Universal International Pictures
First viewing/YouTube

[box] “I know you’re no worse than most men but I thought you were better. I never saw you as a man. I saw you as my father.”
― Arthur Miller, All My Sons[/box]

Even in its sub-par YouTube version and in parts, this was a powerful and wonderfully acted drama.

During the war, Joe Keller (Edward G. Robinson) made a fortune churning out airplane parts for the government.  Later, both he and his partner were tried for delivering defective parts that resulted in the deaths of 27 men when their planes crashed.  The jury believed Joe’s testimony that he was home sick when his partner made the decision to ship the parts.  His partner and next door neighbor, Herbert Deever, was convicted and is now serving a long stretch in prison.

Joe and his family live in a storybook neighborhood in small town America.  Their son Larry, a pilot, was listed as missing in action three years ago.  His mother, Kate (Mady Christians), refuses to believe he is dead.  She suffers from insomnia and assorted nervous ailments and Joe treats her with kid gloves.  Their other son Chris (Burt Lancaster) lives at home and is being groomed to take over the factory.

Chris has just announced he intends to ask Ann Deever, Joe’s partner’s daughter and his brother’s ex-fiancee to marry him.  His mother is adamantly opposed to this since approving of the marriage would mean acknowledging that her other son is not coming home. In addition, there is resistance against having any member of the partner’s family around although this point is not pressed.  Ann and her brother have not visited the father in years out of shame.

Although Joe enjoys a cordial poker-playing relationship with his neighbors, it is privately believed by many that Joe knew all about the parts shipment.  After all, everybody at the plant always says “Ask Joe” if you have a question about anything at all.  Joe confronts it all with bluster and defiance.  Chris believes in his father.  Then Ann’s brother George (Howard Duff) arrives demanding to take her away.  He has finally visited his father and now believes  his father’s version of the events.  There is a massive confrontation and it looks like the engagement is off.

Heartbroken, Chris goes to visit Deever in jail.  Now he’s not so sure about his father any more.  Meanwhile, still in love with Chris, Ann shows up with a piece of information for his mother that will turn the Keller household upside down.  With Arlene Francis and Harry Morgan as neighbors.

Edward G. Robinson is genius in this movie.  His character must be ruthless, courageous, and kind all at once and this is definitely the actor to pull that mixture off spectacularly.  He must convey the tragedy of a man both betrayed by and betraying the American dream and has all the gravitas necessary for the part.  While it is totally incredible that Burt Lancaster could be his offspring, the younger actor’s power matches him well.  I also thought Mady Christians was superb.  I had never seen the play or the movie before and I thought the writing was up there with Miller’s Death of a Salesman.  Recommended.

Trailer

Clip

The Portrait (Shozo)
Directed by Keisuke Kinoshita
Written by Akira Kurosawa
1948/Japan
Shôchiku Company
First viewing/Hulu Plus

This is one of the best films by Kinoshita that I have seen.  The script by Akira Kurosawa probably helped.

The story takes place just after the end of World War II.  None of the character names, except for the female lead’s, is available to me.

Two middle-aged real estate brokers are able to buy a house very cheap because it is occupied by a family that no one has been able to evict thus far.  One of the men decides to move into the upper room with his much younger mistress, Midori, in hopes that they will crowd the family out.

The family cheerfully accepts anything that is thrown its way.  In fact, everyone in the family seems to get a tremendous kick out of the simplest things.  The father is a painter and offers to paint Midori’s portrait in lieu of paying the rent.  It is clear that no one could have the heart to throw these people out.

So Midori begins sitting for her portrait wearing an old kimono that her mother gave her.  The family has been allowed to believe that she is the boyfriend’s daughter.  As she sits for her portrait and observes the happy family life around her, Midori becomes more and more miserable.  Finally she is so unhappy that the portrait seems to be accusing her of living a lie and she is tempted to destroy it.

I really thought there was a lot of psychological truth behind this film.  The young woman’s struggle with her conscience and her way of life first makes her hard and drunken.  She has a friend that seems to be stuck in this mode.  But there is something in Midori, which the painter has caught, that is fundamentally honest and good.  The film moves right along, unlike many of Kinoshita’s lesser works, and there are many beautiful moments.  Recommended.

There are many films by this director available on Hulu Plus.  I have not bothered to review most of them here.  I keep on plowing through them, though, because about one in three proves to be a gem.

Clip – Dancing in the Moonlight (subtitles unnecessary)

They Live by Night
Directed by Nicholas Ray
Written by Charles Schnee and Nicholas Ray from the novel “Thieves Like Us” by Edward Anderson
1948/USA
RKO Radio Pictures
Repeat viewing/Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 4

Mr. Hawkins, Wedding Chapel Proprietor: I believe in helping people get what they want as long as they pay for it. I marry people ‘cos there’s a little hope they’ll be happy. But I can’t take this money of yours. No sir. In a way I’m a thief just the same as you are, but I won’t sell you hope when there ain’t any. 

There are plenty of films about lovers on the lam.  This one is more poignant than most and strikingly shot by Nicholas Ray.

Bowie (Farley Granger) has just escaped from prison, where he was serving a sentence for a murder that took place during a robbery he was involved in.  The luckless boy was the only one the police could catch.  Now he finds himself hiding out in a gas station with his much older felllow escapees, the alcoholic Chickamaw (Howard da Silva) and redneck T-Dub.

Bowie serves as getaway driver for a heist and is hurt in a crash.  When a policeman comes to investigate the accident, Chickamaw shoots him.  Keechie (Cathy O’Donnell), the station owner’s daughter, grudgingly nurses Bowie and the two fall in love. But now Bowie has been tagged for the murder and the two flee together with the robbery proceeds.

On a sudden impulse, the two get off the bus and marry at a truck-stop chapel.  The justice-of-the-peace speaks suggestively of his contacts in Mexico but the two press on.  Keechie falls pregnant and then everything goes to hell.

Although it is firmly in the noir style, They Live by Night is actually more a tragic love story than a crime film.  O’Donnell gets a crack at a more complex character than usual for her, being hardbitten before she is tamed by love.  I thought she was very good.  Farley Granger is always Farley Granger to me.  I don’t find him too convincing.  The most notable aspect of the film are the awesome compositions and beautiful cinematography.  Ray pioneered the use of a helicopter to film an action sequence in the opening.

This was Ray’s first feature.  As was his wont, Howard Hughes put it on the shelf for two years before releasing it.

Clip – opening

In 1948 movie news, a Supreme Court decision forced studios to divest themselves of their theater chains. Block booking, the system by which an exhibitor was forced to buy a whole line of films (both popular films and B films) from a studio was also deemed illegal. This marked the beginning of the end of the studio system, and was partially responsible for a major slump in business for all the studios in the late 1940s.

Maverick film producer, aviator, and eccentric industrialist Howard Hughes purchased RKO Studios. He led RKO during a long period of decline until the mid-1950s.  Bela Lugosi (as Count Dracula) and Lon Chaney, Jr. (as The Wolf Man) portrayed their iconic horror characters for the last time in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.  Hamlet was the first non-American film to win the Best Picture Oscar and the only film adapted from one of William Shakespeare’s plays to receive the award.

In U.S. news, Harry S. Truman defeated Thomas E. Dewey, the Republican nominee, in the biggest presidential election upset in the country’s history.  Earlier in the year Truman ended racial segregation in the U.S. armed forces by executive order.  The Supreme Court outlawed religious instruction in public schools.  Alger Hiss was indicted for treason.  The first monkey astronaut was launched into space.  Tales of the South Pacific by James Michener won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature and Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire won for Drama.  “Buttons and Bows” as sung by Dinah Shore topped the Billboard charts for 10 weeks.  The song would go on to win the Oscar for Best Original Song.

On January 12, 1948, Mahatma Gandhi began a fast in an effort to stop communal violence in the Partition of India.  He would be assassinated on January 30 by a militant Hindu nationalist.  War raged between the State of Israel and a military coalition of Arab states and Palestinian Arab forces.  Daniel François Malan was elected President of South Africa ushering in the era of apartheid.  The Berlin Blockade began.  The Olympics were held in London after an eight year haitus due to World War II.

***********************************************

I have previously reviewed the following 1948 releases on this site:  ; ; ; ; ; ; ; and .

The list of films that I will select from can be found here and here.  Based on my current ratings of this very strong year, I would guess my top ten favorites to be, in no particular order:  The Red Shoes; Oliver Twist; Hamlet; Red River; The Treasure of the Sierra Madre; Raw Deal; Bicycle Thieves; The Fallen Idol; Drunken Angel; and Force of Evil.  I’m looking forward to seeing how these stand up to re-watches and against the “new” films available for the year.

Montage of stills of 1948 Oscar Winners

The Paradine Case
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Written by David O. Selznick and Alma Reville from a novel by Robert Hichens
1947/USA
Vanguard Films and The Selznick Studio
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

Gay Keane: Well, nice people don’t go murdering other nice people.

This was David O. Selzncik’s last opportunity to interfere with Hitchcock’s movie-making and he went all out, even writing the screenplay. It’s not a terrible movie but it’s not classic Hitchcock. I also have a problem with attempting to sympathize with lawyers who commit malpractice right and left.

Barrister Anthony Keane (Gregory Peck) and his wife Gay (Anne Todd) are very happily married as the film begins.  Then he gets a referral from solicitor Simon Flaquer (Charles Coburn) to defend the young and beautiful Mrs. Paradine (Alida Valli) who has been accused of poisoning her husband and stands to be sentenced to death.  Unfortunately for all concerned, Keane is bewitched by his frosty client on first sight.  At this point, good judgement goes completely out the window.

Although his marriage is in grave jeopardy, Keane is determined to acquit Mrs. Paradine at all costs.  Against her explicit wishes, he begins to investigate the role of Mr. Paradine’s valet Andre LaTour (Louis Jourdan) in the crime.  The rest of the story is mostly a courtroom drama and I will not reveal it any further.  I will say that Keane makes several bone-headed mistakes including violating a  key maxim of all good trial attorneys:  “Never ask a witness a question if you do not know the answer.”  With Charles Laughton as the judge, Ethel Barrymore as the judge’s wife, and Leo G. Carroll as the prosecutor.

This is an OK courtroom drama but not particularly Hitchcockian.  Its defects can probably all be laid at the feet of Selznick starting with the casting which resulted in a hodgepodge of accents in its Hollywood London.  It also moves at a sluggish pace, again due to Selznick’s omnipresence in the editing room.

Ethel Barrymore was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her three minutes of screen time in The Paradine Case.  Her part was originally bigger but several scenes were lost in Selznick’s extensive cutting of the film.

Trailer