Category Archives: Movie Reviews

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
Directed by Mervyn LeRoy
Written by Dalton Trumbo based on the book by Ted W. Lawson and Robert Consodine
1944/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Lt. Ted Lawson: And out there is Japan. My mother had a Jap gardener once. He seemed like a nice little guy.

Lt. Bob Gray: You know I don’t hate Japs yet. It’s a funny thing. I don’t like them, but I don’t hate them.

Lt. Ted Lawson: I guess, I don’t either. You get kind of mixed up.[/box]

This story of the 1942 Doolittle Raid bombing over Tokyo made for appropriate Veteran’s Day viewing but is hardly distinguishable from other combat pictures of the war years.  It doesn’t help that Air Force (1943) covered the same ground.

The plot is drawn from the factual account of the mission by one of its pilots.  Lt. Col. James Doolittle (Spencer Tracy) advocates bombing the Japanese home islands early in 1942, long before an invasion could even be contemplated, in order to bolster U.S. morale and divert Japanese fighters back to Japan.  He calls for volunteers for the ultrasecret mission.  Among these is newlywed pilot Ted Lawson (Van Johnson).  His faithful, adoring wife Ellen (Phyllis Thaxter) is expecting their first baby.  The first part of the story details the rigorous training of the crews Stateside for the specialized flying required by the dodgy logistics for the raid.

We get some pretty spectacular but brief footage of the raid.  The story then continues in China where Lawson and his crew are severely injured when their bomber crashes on the coast en route to safe haven in the interior.  Kindly Chinese attempt to care for the men with the few resources at their disposal.  With Robert Walker as the bombardier on Lawson’s crew and Robert Mitchum in a small role as another flyer.

The scenario has become routine to me by now.  At least they didn’t kill off Walker shortly after he pulled out his sweetheart’s picture!  Thaxter’s acting talents are wasted in the vapid romance during the first half of the film.  I thought part in China was more interesting.  Don’t watch this just to see Tracy as he has a relatively small role.  The protagonist is definitely Johnson.

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo won the Oscar for Best Effects, Special Effects.  It was also nominated for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (Robert Surtees and Harold Rossen).

Trailer

Arsenic and Old Lace
Directed by Frank Capra
Written by Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein from the play by Joseph Kesselring
1944/USA
Warner Bros.
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Abby Brewster: Now, Mortimer, you know all about it and just forget about it. I do think that Aunt Martha and I have the right to our own little secrets.[/box]

I hate to say it but Cary Grant is way too frenetic for my tastes in this wacky comedy.  The supporting players are superb, however, and all in all its a good time.

Mortimer Brewster (Grant) is a drama critic and has also written a couple of books ranting against marriage.  So it’s slightly embarrassing when he falls in love with the girl (Priscilla Lane) who lives next door to the two maiden aunts who raised him, Martha (Jean Adair) and Abby (Josephine Hull).  His Uncle Teddy (John Alexander) lives with the sisters and believes himself to be Teddy Roosevelt, frequently charging up “San Juan Hill” (the stairs), trumpet in hand, yelling “Charge!”  It’s a kooky family, but harmless, except for the insane psychopath Jonathan who left home years before.  Martha and Abby are sweet old ladies, known for their good works, and the favorites of the cops who walk the beat in their neighborhood.

Mortimer gets married on Halloween and returns home for a brief celebration.  Then all hell breaks loose.  He discovers a body in the window seat and learns that his aunts have been providing a service to elderly lonely hearts, a sort of mercy killing without any premonitions of death to mar the proceedings.  While Mortimer is coping with this new information, brother Jonathan (Raymond Massey) suddenly reappears with a body of his own to dispose of.  He also plans to use the basement for some repair work by drunken plastic surgeon Dr. Einstein (Peter Lorre), who botched his previous effort at disguising Jonathan’s face by making him look quite a lot like Frankenstein’s monster.  It gets zanier and zanier after that.  With Jack Carson as a policeman who writes bad plays on the side and Edward Everett Horton as the owner of an asylum.

Many in the cast were veterans of the long-running Broadway play and have their parts down cold.  I particularly like Massey and Lorre.  Lorre should have done more comedy.  His timing is great.  Grant overdoes it quite a lot I think, to an almost hysterical level.  I wonder that Capra didn’t calm him down but maybe this was what the director was looking for.

The movie was actually shot in late 1941 and early 1942 before Capra started his work with the Signal Corps.  Warners was contractually obligated to withhold release until the Broadway plan ended its run.  The producers of the play also refused to release Boris Karloff, who played Jonathan on stage, to work on the film.  I would have given anything to see Karloff in the part.

Trailer

Lifeboat
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
By John Steinbeck, Screenplay by Jo Swerling
1944/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Gus Smith: A guy can’t help being a German if he’s born a German, can he?

John Kovac: [referring to Willie] Neither can a snake help being a rattlesnake if he’s born a rattlesnake! That don’t make him a nightingale! Get him out of here![/box]

Hitchcock made other one-set movies but none as restrictive as this story of nine people floating at sea on a lifeboat.  No one could have done more to keep the action moving but this lacks enough scope to be counted among the Master’s greatest works.

After their freighter is torpedoed a motley cross-section of humanity is stranded on a lifeboat.  The people range from an industrial tycoon (Henry Hull) and a Connie, a ritzy journalist (Tallulah Bankhead) through several crew members (William Bendix, Hume Cronyn, Canada Lee, and John Hodiak) to a nurse and a young mother carrying a dead baby.  Into this volatile mix comes Willy (Walter Slezak), a German survivor of the sinking of the submarine that torpedoed the ship.  The German clearly has a more advanced knowledge of navigation and the others squabble over whether he can be trusted or should even be fed from their scant supplies.  Connie, already unpopular due to her snooty ways, is the only member of the Allied group that can communicate with Willy in his own language.  The situation goes from bad to worse as food and water begin to run out.

I like but don’t love Lifeboat.  The acting is the big plus.  Talullah Bankhead, despite her notorious picadillos on the set, is excellent.  I believe this is the only movie I have seen her in.  I like Slezak more and more each time I see him.  He makes a nasty but affable Nazi. The problem I have is that it’s impossible believe that Connie could have presented herself perfectly groomed and toting a well-stocked handbag and a typewriter into this situation.  Hitchcock had to resort to other lapses of logic to keep his story moving. There’s a bit more propaganda than might have been called for as well.

Lifeboat was nominated for Academy Awards in the following categories:  Best Director; Best Writing, Original Story; and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (Glen MacWilliams).  I’m surprised it didn’t get a nod for its special effects.

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

Clip – “The Lord is my Shepard”

Hail the Conquering Hero
Written and directed by Preston Sturges
1944/USA
Paramount Pictures
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith: I knew the Marines could do almost anything, but I never knew they could do anything like this.

Bugsy: You got no idea! [/box]

Eddie Bracken manages to salvage a shred of his dignity in another madcap wartime comedy from writer-director Sturges.

Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith (Bracken) comes from a long line of Marines including a father who died in battle shortly after he was born.  So Woodrow was devastated when he was discharged from the Marines after only one month for chronic hayfever.  He went to work in a shipyard to hide his shame from his mother.  Woodrow is drowning his sorrows in a bar when six marines drop in, having lost all their money gambling.  He treats them to a round of drinks and tells his sad story.   Sgt. Heppelfinger (William Demerest) gets a brilliant idea to call Woodrow’s mother and tell her he has been discharged for injuries suffered on Guadalcanal.

Woodrow reluctantly returns to his small town with the Marines in tow.  Nobody counted on a mother’s pride and Woodrow is appalled with his huge reception at the station.  All the big wigs have come out to make speeches, three different bands are playing, often at the same time, and Woodrow’s ex-girlfriend Libby (Ella Raines) is there to greet him with a kiss.  The Marines are delighted with this and keep building up Woody’s achievements, over his strenous objections, to the point where he is drafted as the reform candidate for mayor.

It was perhaps a mistake to watch this and The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek back-to-back. Hail the Conquering Hero is funny with some pointed satire of American politics but does not quite reach the heights of hilarity of the other film for me.  Maybe it is the comparative lack of slapstick or the very slightly more serious theme.  Bracken does quite well without a stutter and with a little more oomph than he had as Norval Jones.  (I just notice the man has no forehead or chin!)  I liked the orphan soldier who was so solicitous of Woodrow’s mother’s feelings.   Raines was quite OK but plays her character as a conventional ingenue.

Preston Sturges was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Screenplay for Hail the Conquering Hero, making two nominations in the same category for Sturges in 1944.  The other was for the screenplay of The Miracle on Morgan’s Creek.

Clip

The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek
Written and Directed by Preston Sturges
1944/USA
Paramount Pictures
Repeat viewing/Amazon Instant Video

[box] Norval Jones: Ignatz Ra-ra-ratzkywatzky. That – that fits alright.

Trudy Kockenlocker: Oh, phooey! [/box]

Preston Sturges, how do I love thee?  Let me count the ways …

Dippy teenager Trudy Kockenlocker (Betty Hutton) is the peppiest girl in town with a weakness for servicemen.  She lives with her widower father Edmund (William Demerest), the Town Constable, and younger sister Emmy (Diana Lynn), a practical sort who is handy with the wisecracks.  Norval Jones (Eddie Bracken) has been in love with Trudy since grade school.  His greatest regret is that he has been declared 4-F by every branch of the military for high blood pressure.  When Norval gets excited or nervous he sees “spots.”

When her father refuses to let her go to a dance for servicemen about to go overseas, Trudy cons Norval into “taking her to the movies”.  She asks him to wait and then departs in his car to the dance.  She doesn’t return until 8 a.m.  By then she has had a few too many “lemonades”.  When Norval takes her home, her father assumes the worst.

Trudy has only hazy memories of her evening.  Gradually, she dimly remembers getting married to someone with a funny name, something like “Radzkiwadzki”.  She used a false name at the ceremony and has no proof of anything.  Later, a positive pregnancy test gives her all the proof she needs.

Norval may be the answer to her prayers.  But, after he proposes, she can’t go through with it and develops a true affection for him.  Despite everything, Norman is true blue and the two cook up a ridiculous scheme to get a marriage certificate in the names of Trudy Kockenlocker and Ignatz Radzkiwadzki so they can divorce and remarry under their right names.  Needless to say, the course of true love never did run smooth.  Sturges ties the whole thing up with a happy ending that must be seen to be believed.   With Brian Donlevy and Akim Tamiroff reprising their roles as The Governor and The Boss from The Great McGintey in the framing sequences and a host of Sturges regulars.

This movie is one gag after another.  If you didn’t like the last pratfall, wait 10 seconds and you will get a brilliant one-liner.  The performances are superb.  I especially like Eddie Bracken and I’m not big on comic stutterers.  Diana Lynn is a calm of deadpan humor in the hurricane of hysteria that surrounds her.  Sturges might have made better pictures but he never made a funnier one.  Highly recommended.

Preston Sturges was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Screenplay.

Trailer

Hollywood continued to operate under war-time restrictions but movie attendance was never higher.  Film noir became well and truly entrenched in 1944, although nobody thought it was anything special at the time.    The so-called “Havilland decision,” ruled that that Warner Bros. had to release actress Olivia de Havilland after her seven-year contract term expired and could not add time to the term for periods the actress was on suspension.  The ruling proved to be of great benefit to the many actors who took a break from their film work to serve in the Armed Forces.  Barry Fitzgerald became the first – and only – actor to receive two Academy Award nominations, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, for the same role in the same year – as St. Dominic’s stubborn, yet loveable old priest Father Fitzgibbon in Going My Way (1944). Swimmer Esther Williams starred in her first Technicolor aqua-musical in the MGM production of Bathing Beauty (1944).

The war dominated U.S. news in 1944 while the home fires burned.  The people decided not to change horses in the middle of the stream and Franklin D. Roosevelt was reelected to a fourth term in November.  On December 18, 1944, the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously declared that loyal citizens of the United States, regardless of cultural descent, could not be detained without cause, paving the way for the release of all internees in January 1945. Tennessee Williams’ play The Glass Menagerie debuted.  Bing Crosby’s “Swinging on a Star” was the number one hit single of the year and went on to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song.  The novel that won the Pulitzer Prize was Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin.  Smokey the Bear started advising Americans that “Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires.”

Hard fighting lay ahead but the news from the front was mostly good. The Allies invaded France on D-Day, June 6, 1944, in the largest amphibious operation in history, and had liberated Paris by August 25.  General Douglas McArthur made good his promise to return to the Philippines when he waded ashore at Leyte on October 20.

 My working list of films for possible viewing can be found here.  I reviewed several of the 1944 films noir as part of Noir Months 2013 and 2014. They were:  ; ; ; ; and .

Montage of stills from films that won Academy Awards

Montage of stills from all films nominated for Academy Awards

I like to save some of the best for last..  Here again are the Academy Award Nominees for Best Short Feature, Cartoon, for 1943.  Enjoy!

Yankee Doodle Mouse – The winner!
Director: Joseph Barbera and William Hanna
Metro-Goldwyn Mayer

Tom and Jerry do battle with ordinary household items like lightbulbs, eggs, a cheese grater, … and dynamite!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU5A8-aUFvA

The Dizzy Acrobat 
Walter Lantz Productions

Woody Woodpecker creates havoc at a circus.

Can be seen here (dubbed into Portuguese but give it a try, it’s mostly sight gags):

The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins
Directed by George Pal
Paramount Pictures

The Dr. Seuss story told with Puppetoons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvT27WKBhQk

Greetings Bait
Directed by Friz Freleng
Warner Bros.

This looks like it would be pretty good but I can’t find a full-lenghth version.  I don’t get the connection with a draft notice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJKhSxr3dNk

Clip

Imagination
Directed by Bob Wickersham
Columbia Pictures Corporation/Screen Gems

A little girl’s ragdolls defeat a roly-poly masher in her imagination.

Reason and Emotion
Walt Disney Studios

Disney explains that, in war time, we all need to get our emotions under control.  An example is made of Nazi Germany where Hitler played on the people’s emotions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvp3zAPraF4

Cartoon follows introduction by Leonard Maltin