Category Archives: Movie Reviews

High Sierra
Directed by Raoul Walsh
Written by John Huston and W.R. Burnett based on a novel by W.R. Burnett
1941/USA
Warner Bros.
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#154 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Roy Earle: Of all the 14 karat saps… starting out on a caper with a woman and a dog.[/box]

Humphrey Bogart, while still a gangster, was given an opportunity to show his true range and the rest is history.  For me, this is a genius portrayal in a pretty iffy story.

Roy Earle (Bogart) is given an early parole from prison and goes immediately to the side of an associate who wants him to organize a jewel heist.  He goes to the Sierra cabin of the men who have been chosen to help him, Red and Babe  (Arthur Kennedy and Alan Curtis) and Babe’s girlfriend Marie (Ida Lupino).  There’s also the dog Pard who has seen every person he has gotten close to die.  Somewhat unwillingly, Earle acquires Pard and Marie, who exhibits a kind of dog-like devotion.

In the meantime, Earle had first saved an impoverished family from a car accident and then on their improbable re-acquaintance helps them out financially.  “Pa” (Henry Travers) is deeply grateful and treats Earle like some kind of royalty.  He falls hopelessly in love with crippled granddaughter Velma (Joan Leslie), despite a warning that she is love with someone from back home, and stakes her to an operation to fix her club foot.

This being 1941, everything that possibly can go wrong for Earle does go wrong and he ends up holed up on a mountain ledge basically waiting for the cops to shoot him down.

The story has a definite noir flavor with its doomed anti-hero and femme fatale but has way too many coincidences for my taste.  This is not to sell short Bogart’s fine performance which gives the hardened convict he plays a kind of desperation and pathos that makes him deeply sympathetic.  This was the last time he would receive second billing (under Lupino).

Trailer

Sergeant York
Directed by Howard Hawks
Written by Abem Finkel, Harry Chandlee et al based on the diary of Alvin C. York
1941/USA
Warner Bros.
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#151 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Alvin: What we done in France, we had to do. And some as done it, didn’t come back, and that kind of thing ain’t for buying and selling.[/box]

The biography of the great World War  I hero manages to be individual and broadly patriotic at the same time.

Alvin C. York (Gary Cooper) was a hard-drinking hard-working troublemaker in the Tennessee hills until his religious conversion.  Even when liquored up, he is an expert sharpshooter.  Soon after his conversion, he is drafted.  Alvin believes that killing is against the Bible and applies for conscientious objector status with the help of his pastor (Walter Brennan).  His application is turned down because he does not belong to an organized religion with a traditional objection to war.  He obediently reports for basic training.  He is gradually convinced to go into combat and finally to kill numerous Germans in the Battle of the Argone forest and take many more prisoner almost single-handed.  With Margaret Wycherly as Mother York, Joan Leslie as the love of his life and George Tobias, Ward Bond, Noah Beery Jr., and Howard Da Silva in character parts.

This movie has some wonderful performances, most notably that of Gary Cooper, for which the part seems to have been written.  It plays on both Cooper’s shy boyish charm and tough masculinity.

The DVD I rented had an excellent commentary.  According to this, the film was a key target in the Senate investigation of whether Hollywood was producing films to involve the United States in World War II before the attack on Pearl Harbor.  Warner Bros. was strongly in favor of American involvement in the war and the film, in fact, was seen as a way to stir up support.  However, Warners could also honestly tell the subcommittee  that it was an absolutely true story of one man.  The film went on to become the highest grossing film of 1941 and one of the highest grossing films of all time in 1941 dollars.

Gary Cooper won the Oscar for Best Actor for this film and William Holmes won for Best Film Editing.   Sergeant York was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Walter Brennan), Best Supporting Actress (Margaret Wycherly), Best Original Screenplay, Best Black-and-White Cinematography (Sol Polito), Best Black-and-White Art Direction, Best Sound Recording; and Best Scoring of a Dramatic Picture (Max Steiner).  Incredibly, this was Hawkes’s only nomination for an Oscar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jkNDgel8C0

Re-release trailer

How Green Was My Valley
Directed by John Ford
Written by Philip Dunne based on the novel by Richard Llewellyn
1941/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#155 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Huw Morgan: [narrating] Men like my father cannot die. They are with me still, real in memory as they were in flesh, loving and beloved forever. How green was my valley then.[/box]

This is the film that famously trounced Citizen Kane at the 1942 Oscar ceremony.  There is no denying its beauty.

Huw Morgan (Roddy McDowall) looks back through the eyes of age at his childhood home in a Welsh coal-mining village and how a traditional way of life gradually fell apart. Gwyilm Morgan (Donald Crisp) and his wife (Sara Allgood) have a brood of six children – five boys and daughter Angharad (Maureen O’Hara).  Huw is much the youngest.  Gwylim and all the older boys work in the coal mine.  As the story begins, the eldest son weds Bronwyn (Anna Lee) and Huw becomes devoted to her.

Angharad loves the local preacher Mr. Gruffyd (Walter Pidgeon) from afar.  Her great beauty attracts the son of the local mine owner.  In desperation, she reveals her love to the minister, who obviously loves her too, but inexplicably he rejects her and she is doomed to a loveless marriage.

Meanwhile, the coal economy strains the family to the breaking point.  The sons become union men in defiance of their father and move out.  Then they are gradually forced to emigrate by diminishing wages and firings.  Huw eventually goes to work in the mine at a heartbreakingly young age.  Mine disasters plague the village.  But despite everything, humor and love ties everything and everyone together in the end.  With Barry Fitzgerald and Arthur Shields.

This is a spectacular looking film.  The landscapes and textures are brilliantly composed and shot.  Most of the acting is first-rate and Roddy McDowell gives one of the best performances ever by a child actor.  The thing that mars the movie for me is the discordant presence of the pedantic and boring Walter Pidgeon at its center.  His character is self-righteous in the extreme and rubs me the wrong way throughout.  It’s a shame because I know he is meant to be sympathetic.

How Green Was My Valley won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Donald Crisp), Best Black-and-White Cinematography (Arthur C. Miller), and Best Black-and-White Art Direction.  It was nominated for Best Supporting Actress (Sara Allgood), Best Screenplay, Best Sound Recording, Best Film Editing and Best Scoring of a Dramatic Picture (Alfred Newman).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yjfCUExOH0

Trailer

Citizen Kane
Directed by Orson Welles
Written by Orson Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz
1941/USA
RKO Radio Pictures
Repeat viewing/Warner Home Video Special Edition DVD
#150 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Leland: That’s all he ever wanted out of life… was love. That’s the tragedy of Charles Foster Kane. You see, he just didn’t have any to give.[/box]

What do you say about “The Greatest Movie Ever Made”?

If you are reading this you already know the plot.  Charles Foster Kane is sent away from his parents at a tender age to be raised in the lap of luxury and spends the rest of his life trying to find love.  His overbearing personality and neediness make this virtually impossible.  Although he becomes an opinion leader and Great Man, he is ultimately unsuccessful at attaining his goal through his media empire, political career, or two marriages.

The story is told through the device of sending an inquiring reporter out to interview people who knew Kane to find out the meaning of his last word “Rosebud”.  After a mock newsreel obituary summarizing Kane’s life, we see episodes as non-consecutive flashbacks through the eyes of various people being interviewed.   The film represented the screen debuts of many actors in Welles’s Mercury Theater company:  Welles himself; Joseph Cotten; Agnes Moorhead; Everett Sloane; and Ruth Warrick, among others.  Also with Dorothy Comingore as Welle’s second wife, George Coulouris as his banker guardian; and Ray Collins as his political rival.

Before I revisited the film,  I listened again to Roger Ebert’s fantastic commentary track and more personal one by Peter Bogdanovich, who was a friend of Welles’ before his death.  The Ebert commentary points out all the special effects tricks and innovations in cinematography involved in making the film.  For example, deep focus photography did not capture the above shot.  Two separate images were made and combined using an optical printer.

Citizen Kane had a comparatively low budget.  Many of the lavish scenes at Xanadu were basically put together using smoke and mirrors.  Rooms were decorated with a few pieces of furniture and lavish use of matte painting.  The above shot shows how a hallway was made with matte paintings and live actors.

Citizen Kane remains an ever-fresh and exuberant look at what happens when a boy genius is given free-reign over all the contents of a huge magic kit.  It is not my best-loved movie by far but I don’t have any problem with its status as “The Greatest Movie Ever Made”.

Welles and Mankiewicz won an Academy Award for their screenplay.  Citizen Kane was nominated in the following categories:  Best Picture; Best Director; Best Actor (Welles); Best Black-and-White Cinematography; Best Black-and-White Art Direction-Interior Decoration; Best Sound Recording; Best Film Editing; and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic Picture (Bernard Herrmann).  I think Gregg Toland was robbed.

Original Trailer