Flickers in Time

Separate Tables
Directed by Delbert Mann
Written by Terence Rattigan and John Gay based on Rattigan’s play
1958/USA
Hill-Hecht-Lancaster Productions/Clifton Productions/Norlan Productions
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime

[box] Ann Shankland: I didn’t mean any harm.

John Malcolm: That’s when you do the most damage.[/box]

This ensemble-piece melodrama contains some excellent performances.  Unfortunately, some of the amateur psychology in the screenplay hasn’t aged very well.

No-nonsense Pat Cooper (Wendy Hiller) runs a hotel near the seaside.  The guests are largely long-term residents and one of the calling cards of the place is that guests are seated at separate tables.  Therefore, the hotel has attracted a lot of lonely people.  Pat is unofficially engaged to one of them – John Malcolm (Burt Lancaster), an alcoholic American writer with a troubled past.

The other guests include Major Angus Pollock (David Niven), a pompous veteran of seemingly every campaign in WWII, and shy spinster Sibyl Railton-Bell (Deborah Kerr) and her domineering mother (Gladys Cooper).

American socialite Ann Shankland (Rita Hayworth) drops in seeking a room for an unspecified period.  Really she is there to check up on ex-husband John Malcolm.  Ann is the cause of John’s drinking as well as a stint in prison.  Much heated conversation ensues.  At the same time, Major Pollock is caught “nudging” a woman in a darkened theater.  When this and several lies are revealed by the press, Sybil’s mother seeks to have him ostracized.  Sybil, who had been his special friend, is forced to take sides.

The acting honors were well deserved for this.  I especially admire Hiller’s performance which is beautifully subtle.  I’m not as fond of Kerr, whom I think is miscast, but then I’m not fond of her characterization by the writers either.  If you substitute homosexuality for “nudging” the plot would make more sense but then the Kerr-Nevin relationship wouldn’t work.  The Lancaster-Hayworth conflict seems too overblown to me as well.

David Niven won a Best Actor Oscar and Wendy Hiller won for Best Supporting Actress. Separate Tables was nominated in the categories of Best Picture; Best Actress (Kerr); Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium; Best Cinematography, Black-and-White; and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.

Trailer

Auntie Mame
Directed by Morton DaCosta
Written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green from the novel by Patrick Dennis
1958/USA
Warner Bros.
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Auntie Mame: Live! Life’s a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death![/box]

Rosalind Russell IS Auntie Mame and this is an entertaining film in the 50’s brash Technicolor mode.

Patrick Dennis’s father was writing a will and saw no other option but to leave the boy in the care of his eccentric sister Mame, his only living relative.  He also provides for a banker to supervise his son’s education.  No sooner is the ink dry on the will when the father drops dead.  Patrick is soon welcomed to New York by his larger-than-life aunt, who provides him with an upbringing that is one part bathtub gin, one part bohemian society, and one heaping helping of genuine love.

When the banker gets wind of the nudist school Patrick is attending, the boy is shipped off to a conservative boarding school.  He continues to enjoy weekends with his aunt.  She loses everything in the stock market crash but meets an oil man and proceeds to travel the world with him.  While she is gone, Patrick’s conservative education takes hold and she fears she has lost him for good.  With Peggy Cass as an unwed mother in Mame’s household and Forrest Tucker as the oil man.

The plot summary doesn’t sound as funny as the movie is.  You can’t help but fall in love with Russell’s character.  Her rapid-fire repartee is a bit remiscent of His Girl Friday and she looks wonderful in her Orry-Kelly wardrobe.

Auntie Mame was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Picture; Best Actress; Best Supporting Actress (Cass); Best Cinematography, Color; Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color; and Best Film Editing.  How it missed a nomination for its costumes is beyond me.

Trailer

The Colossus of New York
Directed by Eugene Lourie
Written by Thelma Schnee and William Goldbeck
1958/USA
Paramount Pictures
First viewing/Amazon Instant

“I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix.” ― Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone”

The cheese factor complements a story that’s a little different for its time and genre.

The Spensser’s are a talented family.  Father William (Otto Kruger) is a noted brain surgeon.  Son Henry is a pioneer in the field of automation.  The most gifted of all is the youngest boy, Jeremy (Ross Martin).  As the film begins, he has just won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on food production in the polar regions.

Sadly, just after his family returns from Stockholm, Jeremy is hit by a truck and killed.  William demands that an ambulance be sent for and takes the body back to his laboratory.  William and Henry combine their skills to revive Jeremy’s brain in an automaton body.  Their work backfires spectacularly.

This is cheesy but very entertaining.  The scenes between the colossus and Jeremy’s little son are classic.  The film does suffer from an odd and obtrusive piano score.

Trailer

The Revenge of Frankenstein
Directed by Terence Fischer
Written by Jimmy Sangster and Hurford Janes
1958/UK
Columbia Pictures/Hammer Films
First viewing/Amazon Prime

[box] Doctor Victor Stein: It should have been perfect. I made it to be perfect. If the brain hadn’t been damaged, my work would have been hailed as the greatest scientific achievement of all time. Frankenstein would have been accepted as a genius of science. Instead, he was sent to the guillotine. I swore I would have my revenge. They will never be rid of me![/box]

Peter Cushing appears without Christopher Lee’s monster this time. Hammer nonetheless lavishes great care on an engaging variation of the Frankenstein tale.

As the film begins, Victor Frankenstein (Cushing) is facing the guillotine for the havoc wrought by the first edition of his reanimated creature.  We see the blade go down but it is no spoiler to reveal that the good doctor manages to substitute another victim.  Segue to a German village where Victor is practicing medicine under an alias.  He has not given up on his experiments.  Soon a young admirer volunteers to be his assistant.

Frankenstein believes that he has identified the defect in his first attempt.  This time he plans to put a living brain into his creature.  He even has a volunteer for the project.  This is Karl, a cripple who is looking forward to occupying a perfect body.  But things don’t go as planned ….

This is quite a gorgeous picture with an awesomel laboratory full of gory body parts.  The acting is of a high standard.  I was entertained throughout.  Recommended for fans of the genre.

Trailer

Missile to the Moon
Directed by Richard Cunah
Written by H.E. Barrie and Vincent Fotre
1958/USA
Layton Film Productions
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] The Lido: You have not even commented on my blindness.

Steve Dayton: I was very sorry to see it.[/box]

This only lacks a catchy title to reach the outrageous badness that was Cat Women of the Moon.

Steve Dayton and Dirk Green have been building a lunar rocket in their backyard.  The government is taking over the project and Dirk is let go.  He hides out in the rocket and finds a couple of teenage prison escapees already in residence.  Steve notes unusual activity in the space ship and goes with his comely fiancee to investigate.  Soon all on board are heading for the moon!

As all who have seen Cat Women already know, the moon is inhabited by an oxygen-breathing humanoid race of beauty queens.  Their air supply is rapidly dwindling and the rocket is their only hope of salvation.

This movie is a hoot!  The special effects include a cardboard rocket, a cave-spider puppet, and slow-moving rock people.

Trailer

The Big Country (1958)
Directed by William Wyler
Written by James R. Webb, Sy Bartlett, and Robert Wyler from a novel by Donald Hamilton
1958/USA
United Artists/Anthony Productions/Worldwide Productions
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Steve Leech: All I can say, McKay, is you take a helluva long time to say good-bye.[/box]

William Wyler directed in more genres than just about any director and was excellent in all of them.  Here is his Western.

Jim McCay (Gregory Peck) is the son of a wealthy New England shipping family.  He comes West to marry Julie Morgan (Carol Baker), the daughter of Maj. Henry Terrill (Charles Bickford), a wealthy cattleman.  His intent is to become foreman of the father’s ranch.

There are a lot of people who are not happy to see Jim arrive.  One of these is Steve Leech (Charleton Heston), the ranch’s current top hand, who is sweet on Julie.  Others are the wild and savage Hannassy brothers, sons of the ranch’s neighbor Rufus Hannassy (Burl Ives).  All the young men try to get a rise out of the newcomer, who refuses to fight – much to the shame of his fiancee.

Jim finds himself stuck in the middle of a long-standing feud between Rufus Hannassy and Henry Terrill.  This now looks to escalate into a range war.  With Jean Simmons as a schoolteacher who owns land that both ranches depend on for water and Chuck Connors as the meanest of the Hannassy sons.

This is a very solid Western, with good performances and beautiful cinematography.  I like that the issues are more complicated than good guy vs. bad guy.

Burl Ives won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.  The Big Country was nominated for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.

Trailer

The Magician (Ansiktet)
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
Written by Ingmar Bergman
1958/Sweden
Svensk Filmindustri
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Granny Vogler: I see what I see, and I know what I know. But nobody believes me.[/box]

It probably would take a lifetime to parse out all that’s going on in the story but Bergman’s images are immediately accessible and gorgeous.

It is somewhere in Sweden during the 19th Century.  Dr. Vogler (Max Von Sydow) is a magician and hypnotist who heads Vogler’s Magnetic Health Theater troupe.  Among it’s members are his grandmother, an ancient witch and potion seller, his young “ward” Mr Aman – actually his wife (Ingrid Thulin) – and his randy MC and promoter Tubal.  Vogler is supposedly mute and wears a false beard and wig.  Along the country road, the troupe picks up a sick and drunken actor who promptly expires.

The party is waylaid by police who take them to a country estate where they are forced to perform.  Minister of Health Dr. Vergerus (Gunnar Bjornstrand) and Consul Egerman (Erland Josephson) have a bet on whether the good Dr. Vogler in fact has supernatural powers or is a charlatan.  The many odd things that subsequently occur leave the issue still up for debate by the time the traveling theater hits the road again.  With Bibi Andersson as a bawdy servant girl.

Much of this beautiful film went over my head on this, my first, viewing.  I just sat back and enjoyed Gunnar Fischer’s stunning cinematography and the brilliant acting.  Some of my questions were cleared up by the film historian’s visual essay included on the Blu-Ray I rented.  This is evidently at least in part a response to Bergman’s critics who disliked what they could not understand.  It was one of those movies I feel I should see again sooner rather than later.  Recommended.

Clip – opening sequence

Attack of the Puppet People
Directed by Bert I. Gordon
Written by George Worthing Yates; story by Bert I. Gordon
1958/USA
Alta Vista Productions
First viewing/Amazon Prime

Mr. Franz: Oh that. What’s it look like to you?

This movie would have been even more fun if there had been puppet people that attacked.

Kindly Mr. Franz is a doll manufacturer.  Unfortunately he is also very lonely and insane.  For his own private collection he makes life-like dolls to play with.  A new secretary and her fiance (John Agar) find out the hard way how Mr. Franz does it.  Turns out it’s something to do with an overhead projector and a tuning fork.

Bert I. Gordon moves from giant creatures to tiny humans using his standard techniques.  The title promises a lot more than the film delivers in the way of thrills but it’s not a bad way to kill 75 minutes.

The Vikings
Directed by Richard Fleischer
Written by Calder Willingham; adapted by Dale Wasserman from a novel by Edison Marshall
1958/USA
Bavaria Film/Byrnapod S.A./CurtLeigh Productions
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Ragnar: Look how he glares at me… If he wasn’t fathered by the black ram in the full of the moon my name is not Ragnar.[/box]

First you have to get past the casting of Ernest Borgnine, Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis as Vikings …

The story is set at the time Vikings were marauding off the coasts of England.  Ragnar (Borgnine) is the king of the Vikings.  He and his lusty and vain son Einar (Douglas) – the only Viking not to wear a beard – are cut from the same barbaric mold.  One day Einar is out demonstrating his skills at falconry when the slave Eric (Curtis) bests him at the sport.  Before Einar can take revenge, Eric tells his bird to kill and the bird tears out Einar’s eye, putting him in a very bad humor.  He spares the slave’s life in order to prolong his intended misery.

The rivalry between Einar and Eric intensifies when both men fall for the kidnapped Princess Morgana (Janet Leigh), who is pledged in marriage to the evil English King Aella . Eric finally flees to England with Morgana, intending to force Aella to release her from her pledge.  Einar and Ragnar set out in pursuit.  They are foiled however when fog sets in.  Here, Eric has the edge thanks to a mysterious stone that always points North.

Eric rescues/kidnaps Ragnar when his ship founders and takes him to England.  Einar eventually catches up with Eric.  A lot of fighting, both between the English and Vikings and between Eric and Einar, ensues.  With James Donald as a traitor and Alexander Knox as a priest.

This did not seem like it would be my cup of tea before I even put the disc in the player.  It is basically a sword and sandal epic moved northward.  My readers may wonder why I bother but I am nothing if not a completist.  I also think that movies like this one give a feeling for the times.

The plot was too complicated to be predictable exactly but did not engage me. Nothing felt real to me.  The production values are outstanding, however, and this is spectacle on a grand scale.  The film also has a nice score.

Trailer