JackFavell
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Posts posted by JackFavell
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Oh yes!
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He can be rather scary and cold, but I don't think he was a cold man at all. He always seems to come down on the side of warmth, even though his films/statements themselves are somewhat fractured and shot as if his actors were under a microscope in a clinic.
I like *Seconds*, but don't do what I did and watch it at 2 in the morning because of insomnia. It's far too scary! You'd never get back to sleep! Rock Hudson gives a great performance in it, though it's hard to adjust to him since for half the film he's played by someone else.
*Birdman of Alcatraz* is also Frankenheimer.
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Not to butt in, but my favorite moment of Garbo's in Ninotchka is at the beginning when she talks about her Polish soldier. I love the way she says that line. What is it? I don't quite remember....."I kissed him like that.... right before he died." the intimation being that she killed him.
Oh I love Leon's butler! I also love the three fellows, and the entire scene with the cigarette girls - where you get only the sounds coming from the room! The last being a loud roar of approval!
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Ha! One of the benefits of watching the movie is seeing Burt all athletic and stuff. :x
Nice picture. What were we talking about?
Oh yeah.
One of the things I like about this movie, and Frankenheimer's work in general, is the lack of talk. When there is talk, it's pretty important, but much of the film is just people doing stuff.......basic action with no yakkety yak. A man riding a bike, or that nice ticket taker checking the schedule, or men working hard to paint the top of the boxcars. I really admire a director who can be silent for long stretches of time.
Of course, I also like All About Eve, or any number of movies that have nothing but talk. But it still is impressive to me when a director just shines a spotlight on a man, preferably BURT, doing a job, or moving through the woods, or ripping a piece of track apart.
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Absolutely breathtaking!
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Oh rats! I haven't seen it. Isn't that one of the Gary films that Frank actually likes? Another reason to see it. I'm going to go look.
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I can't recall a single role where Helen Vinson was anything more than vile or gold digging. What a claim to fame! But she's deliciously malevolent.
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I agree, they really lay on her badness heavy! But for the time, I guess that's what they had to do, if they wanted Cary to be more sympathetic.
I actually find that lately I even like Kay in all her evil.... it's just too juicy a role for her and she plays it to the hilt. I kind of like the way they make her just a bit sympathetic at first, then show her for what she really is by the end.
I just enjoy watching Cary and Carole, and Kay and Maurice Moskovitch, and evil Helen Vinson.... now she's the one who really scares me!
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I did the same thing with *In Name Only*, Chris! Oh dear, it's just so hard to see them in a drama! But I am beginning to think it's better than it is given credit for. I do like it, and have watched it seriously the last few times it has been on. I guess you have to be in a tragic mood to enjoy it.
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Oh goodness, you make me blush!
After reading that bio, I've been pondering what I would have said had I written it . The author I am sure did a lot of research, but she didn't really capture anything about Walsh the man somehow. I've just been trying to figure out what it is about Walsh that moves me so.
I look forward, MissG to reading what you have to say about Walsh and the Roaring Twenties. I think you grasp the same things I do in Walsh's films, plus a whole lot more.
Edited by: JackFavell on Feb 21, 2012 12:58 PM
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Poor Grady! My first thought of him, with his slow drawl and puzzled look, is as Irene Bullock's haphazard boyfriend in *My Man Godfrey.* But he turns up in everything! Best of all are the W. C. Fields comedies. I am constantly amazed at how long a career he had. When he shows up on some TV show from the 1970's that I wasn't expecting him in, I could cheer. He's even in Rock and Roll High School!
Other favorite appearances are in *Alice Adams*, *Vivacious Lady,* and I think he's especially good in the 1954 *A Star is Born*.
Grady wanted to support the war effort in WWII, but had health problems, so he went to work at Lockheed.
Grady also starred in Hal Roach's *The Boyfriends* series, with Mickey Daniels, the Our Gang member. I personally find The Boyfriends to be one of the funnier of the less well known Roach studio shorts series, thanks to Grady.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnN-eg9n1nk
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*THE ROARING TWENTIES* SPOILERS
> It's those final 30 minutes that really bring the entire film together for me. To see how both Eddie and Panama finish up is beautiful. What a tragic couple. Love the sacrifice both make.
I completely agree! I'm so impressed you made it to the end. It's a long movie, and all those musical numbers! But Walsh is actually quite a genius by intercutting the action of the movie into those numbers to keep the pace up. No one paces a film like Walsh, when he's on his game. I LOVE HIM.
I think Cagney is genius in this movie - look at how dark he gets. He really commits in pushing Eddie to the bottom of the barrel. I totally believe him as a bum who couldn't care less what happens to himself, a man who has lost the will to live because his emotions are so deeply felt that he can never recover his footing. I think Walsh and Cagney were brilliant at bringing out the best in each other, the same with Bogart. When Walsh had actors who would go to the gaping mouth of hell for him (and that includes graceful Flynn for a time), his movies are superb.
This one combines two of Walsh's favorite motifs - The nostalgic period piece, and the lost soul who hasn't really discovered that he is an anachronism yet. They fit together perfectly here, hand in glove.
Eddie, like most of Walsh's really great anti-heroes, is a man out of time. Walsh's heroes are men who are too big for their britches, and have to be taken down a peg by life, but end up sliding further than we would want them to. They end up paying for the crime of foolishly believing in themselves. It's actually the process of aging that we see on the screen. I love that Walsh shows us that process in his men and also in his settings. As the country ages so does the man. And there is no place in a mature country for Eddie Bartlett, or for Roy Earle, or even for George Armstrong Custer. They don't belong once they've lost their joie de vivre,or maybe because of it. And they slowly, very slowly come to realize it. And we grieve for these lost men, and their innocence and their grace and their joyous bluster. I think Walsh grieved for an innocent, raucous America that was slowly sliding away from him, leaving a cynical, business oriented place in it's stead. This is what is timeless in his films.
Gladys George matches Cagney for intensity, she's perfect for him, if only he could see beyond Jean. Panama, too is out of time, but women are somehow stronger than men. They survive, even when all hope is lost. They are the ones who keep slogging through. In some ways, Panama is more representative of the Depression than Eddie. "Remember my Forgotten Man...."
> It was wonderfully done. George (Bogie) completely underestimated Eddie. Since he suckered him before, he felt he'd always be able to do so.
I love that George underestimates Eddie. I always like a good revenge, and because we know what George doesn't about Eddie, it makes the suspense even more satisfying, waiting to see what Eddie will do. It's one of my favorite of all scenes in movies, and one of the first for Bogart to showcase his enormous talent, outside of The Petrified Forest. Once Eddie realizes he has nothing left, he is supremely dangerous. If I have to go, I'm gonna take you and your whole show with me. It's great and heartbreaking at the same time, because when Eddie pulls the trigger, he's really pulling it on himself. Gulp! I'm gonna cry now, thinking of it! Oh man!
> The ending makes me cry for an hour! This one would have been at the top of my list a few years ago, and made me a lifelong Raoul Walsh and Cagney fan. It ain't often that a director can make two so perfect pictures of the same basic story. Though I guess all three giants did it.
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> *He actually made it three times with *Colorado Territory*, which isn't a bad film, it just isn't on the level of *High Sierra* and *The Roaring Twenties*.*
I like Colorado Territory. But I agree it isn't on the level of the others. With Walsh, you can see him working through his demons and ghosts in each of his pictures, and why he revisited the story so often. I think people are more forgiving of Walsh somehow. With Ford or Hawks, at first glance it's easy to discredit or discount their reworking of older stories. I wonder why?
> They must have just hacked the end to death, I think, and superimposed one of those MGM moralistic endings on it. I guess we should be glad they didn't kill them.
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> *I thought the ending was the ending it had to be. Once you believe, you give yourself up. There's no more resistance..*
I do see that, yes, it's the only ending possible, but I wish they had done it more delicately. It's just trite and sort of feels like a sledgehammer came down on the whole thing, which had been set up so beautifully.
*Harpo Speaks* is as good an autobiography as there is. I think it's the very best - so entertaining, so funny, and the people he knew! Goodness gracious, he knew everybody! And yet, he's never condescending or anything but gracious about his good fortune in life. What a WONDERFUL human being Harpo was. If you want to laugh for weeks, read *Harpo Speaks*. And beautifully written by a man who never graduated from second grade!
>I'm curious to see if I'll like a Garbo silent.
Garbo in silents is a different creature entirely. Still great, but different. I think you'll like her both ways. I'm very curious to read what you think of her, in *Ninotchka* first and then in silents. I wish you would elaborate on your feelings about *Ninotchka*. I have just started appreciating it again, after a hiatus, it's such an entry level classic film for me, like *The Roaring Twenties*.
>As for *Summertime* I thought you might like the personal journey of Jane Hudson. I find it really a beautiful film.
>I completely understand her and her fears and doubts, her idea of what's right and wrong for her. This is a film where I associate with the woman much more so than the man.
I was pretty sure you were going to fall hook line and sinker for Jane Hudson. It's such a personal film, full of the foibles of human nature and especially of the shy and sensitive. It's so perfect a description of what it feels like, deeply. I think it was never done better, though companion pieces for me are Now Voyager and Alice Adams. The three together are simply the best depictions of what it is to want to come out of yourself but to be too afraid.
>It definitely features a great cast, but for some reason, I was only drawn to Marilyn and Bill. Marilyn is absolutely adorable.
I LOVE Marilyn in HTMAM. The scene where she comes to the apartment and is trying to read the numbers on the doors, then excuses herself to a coat rack never fails to make me giggle. I guess I have to agree about Marilyn and William Powell, they are absolutely why I watch the movie. I also like seeing Alexander D"Arcy. Next favorite would be Lauren Bacall's story, then Betty Grable's. But I do like the scene where Fred Clark gets caught out for all to see on the bridge. Another revenge.
Oh, and I love David Wayne!
I knew you would hate *In Name Only*. It seems on first glance to have no redeeming qualities, it's a soap first and foremost. I never liked it much till the last couple of years. Now it's climbing up my list. I find I like the performances better and better. There's a place in the world for melodrama....in small doses.
Edited by: JackFavell on Feb 21, 2012 12:04 PM
Edited by: JackFavell on Feb 21, 2012 12:16 PM
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Sorry! I had to get Alice to bed.
> {quote:title=MissGoddess wrote:}{quote}
> > {quote:title=JackFavell wrote:}{quote}Burt has nice hands.
> >
> > sigh
> > you can say that again!
Burt has nice hands.
It bears repeating. :x
> I thought his character was going to be more sympathetic in the beginning, but I was fooled even as that museum curator was, who thought his fine art appreciation meant he had a spark of human feeling. It's interesting how he does talk in an extreme way how many in that art world really think, they do believe they are special and above the very people they claim all that art was being preserved for. but they're never the ones who actually paint the paintings! I kept thinking, if I'd been one of those artists and knew what had happened over my paintings, when I had the chance I would find those paintings and destroy every single one of them. It would just apall me that even one life could be lost over anything I made. And I consider myself an artist and an art lover.
They do set him up at the beginning as if he were going to be one of those noble types who transcend political sides because he cares deeply about art. It's kind of funny. I guess that's what they call a "trope" of the movies and literature - that the artistic guy is always the one who cares most about life, he's a hero, a sensitive. I find it hilarious that Frankenheimer turns it all around, the manual laborer is the more sensitive about humanity than the art lover. He also makes the big dumb train conductor the one who decides to save all the art! It's not even the main character and he's certainly not the brightest one of the bunch, this conductor who takes it into his head to save "France's art heritage".
Nothing in this movie follows the standard plot contrivances. In fact, Burt is reluctant to do anything at all to save the artwork for quite a long time. Are collectors perfect Nazis, who think they are better than everyone because they've got a little knowledge? Maybe they do deserve to live outside of the rules, because they can appreciate? I think we see that sometimes in classic movie buffs..... I've probably said something along these lines myself at some point or another.
One thing that does fit the usual type - Colonel Von Waldheim is an equal opportunity megalomaniac - he doesn't care what side you belong to, he'll kill the French or eventually his own men in order to get that train into Germany. And I don't think it was for the Reich either.... somewhere along the way it became HIS train, HIS artwork, HIS ego... I thought by the end he was going to try and take the train for himself alone.
> He seemed to have gone mad. I don't know how much was an obsession with the art or with being able to tell his superiors he'd succeeded in such a daring mission. His words with the officer from whom he needed the go ahead were that he'd learned from him that "going through channels" was not for men like him. He was kind of a rogue leader yet he expected total and blind obedience from not just his own men, but even that battalion of wounded that were being moved out. I like when their officer came running up and basically sent him to heck if he thought they were going to leave any of his wounded on the road for a bunch of paintings.
I liked that part too! It goes to show that nothing stands in the way of a madman, except maybe finally his own incompetence. The common sense of those who are sane affects the madman very little. He'll continue to dream bigger and bigger, forcing others to do his bidding. But the madman affects the sane man around him eventually. I am drawing a parallel between Von Waldheim and the war itself. Nothing stands in the way of war when it gets going, because it is madness, and it has it's own laws and reason - there is no sense to it. But it does peter out at some point when the people are good and sick of it, they see it clearly for the idiocy it is and they revile it.
Would the third reich have gotten much further than it did without the German people balking, even the military balking, the crazier the orders became? When you are in the employ of a madman, what does it take to suddenly make you see that he is mad? When does the masquerade (of sanity) fall apart?
Isn't it interesting that the movie itself did not lend itself to stereotypes - Some of the Germans did seem like good people and some of the French were not terribly nice, even Burt.... he was kind of like Rick in Casablanca.... "I stick my neck out for nobody".
In some ways this battle, which he did not choose, which he was too sane for, actually made him a "hero", do things he would not have done. But was he a "better" man at the end of the film? Did he do it for country, or to avenge his friends who thought they should die for their country's heritage? Were they right to make the sacrifice? Part of me says yes, but part of me says nothing is worth it.
I am tired, so I hope at least a bit of this makes sense. Sheesh. I know I'm going to read this tomorrow and wonder what I thought was so profound... or maybe I'll just wonder what the heck I meant.
Edited by: JackFavell on Feb 20, 2012 9:49 PM
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Burt has nice hands.
sigh
I liked that guy too, the second in command, I think at the end he was the one who told Scofield to just give it up. He was infinitely more human and sensible. Scofield was so driven, beyond any common sense.
I like this movie for Scofield's performance, since I think this is one of his few baddies. He's usually very sympathetic to me, if a little cerebral, as you cleverly pointed out, so I enjoyed hating him in The Train.
There does seem to be a statement being made in this movie about those who DO and those who can only order others to do. Scofield always seems to be one step behind everyone, even those he looks down on. I think he actually has an inferiority complex, and that's why he feels he has to beat them, especially Lancaster. Well, who wouldn't have an inferiority complex next to Burt?
Anyway, Scofield is always relying on his underlings to take care of those ambushes and sometimes, one gets a glint of how much the underlings despise and maybe even pity him.Edited by: JackFavell on Feb 20, 2012 7:22 PM
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Oh yay! I don't know why I like that movie so much!
MissG - there's a scene where Frankenheimer just shows Burt's hands, working on one of the parts, and it is a very long take, without seeing his face at all. Then the camera pans back to show that it has been Burt all along? It always impresses me that he not only did his own stunts, he also welded and worked as a grease monkey! I'm thinking that was the scene you were talking about?
Chris, the movie has that questioning feeling that a lot of sixties and seventies movies had, and it doesn't give any answers. I can only say what I think, which is that that adorable engineer, the Bull I think his name was.... he somehow understood the reason why it was important to save those paintings. I don't know if it was worth it, but I am guessing that many wars have been fought over who owns art, since it is a thing of value, sometimes beyond gold or riches. But my emotion goes with the Bull, He started everything rolling, and I can't think he was so very wrong. I wouldn't want him to have died for nothing.
It feels like *The Great Escape*, another movie I like, with great attention to the details of an operation. But this one has a kind of subversive message, like *Cool Hand Luke.* Fighting the ruling paradigm and then wondering if you won or lost, or if the winning was actually the losing.
There's a war within a war in this picture, the outer part is about WWII, and then the inner war between Scofield and Lancaster. I always like a battle of wits, with a lot of twisty things happening. It seems kind of like a heist movie to me, but in reverse.
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That's a fair statement, fred! I was just teasing, cause I really like that one a lot. It really blew my mind when I got to the end the first time I saw it, mainly because Scott wasn't this hero, he was deluded and bitter and never gets over it. Scott's acting is very good, especially in the final 15 minutes as you realize he has been wrong the whole time.
When compared to the others though I can see what you mean. Everyone has their own experiences with movies, and mine with that one is very good, having stumbled across it without really knowing anything about it. It was my first Scott-Boetticher western and I will always like it more than most other people who came upon it after the others.
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If Decision at Sundown is the weakest, then they are some pretty great movies!
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I should not have looked at those links! Now I'm hungry!
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Um.. this is the silent movie forum.
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I can see it! That was unfortunately the best picture I could find to show off her sweet heart shaped face.
I prefer horse. I think she did too.
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>He's definitely worse, as the by-standing instigator always is. George is perfect for such a role, he manages to make it seem these characters were created specifically for him.
I really is like James Stewart's "Rupert" from Rope. The kind who spout ideas and then are shocked when they see the results of their 'students' following through on them. I obviously have to watch Rope again, I didn't remember Jimmy Stewart being the cause of the problem with his lectures or book or whatever. I think Jimmy is so naturally friendly-seeming that I never noticed the darker plot implications of his espoused ideas, I just noticed the obvious stuff like the way they hid the body.
I do know that some people don't think that he was right for the part, that a James Mason might have been better. -
Oh yummy! That sounds great. Muffuletta is good too, I love olives.
RAMBLES Part II
in Films and Filmmakers
Posted
> {quote:title=CineMaven wrote:}{quote}*Of course, I also like All About Eve, or any number of movies that have nothing but talk.*
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> Whew!!! Mi hermana.
> Ripping a piece of track apart? With his bare teeth?
Ha! no but Kirk might be able to do that!
At one point Burt has to sabotage the train without destroying it, since all the great art treasures of France are on board and en route to Germany. If they make it into German territory, the art will be lost to France. Burt is on foot, so he races ahead of the slow moving train and demolishes track by unfastening a series of bolts in a long row, then knocking out the underpinnings of the track itself in a swath big enough to derail the engine. It then takes the German soldiers on board the train an hour or so to re-set the track.
> What's the difference between Burt and Kirk for you? Both physical, athletic. (Give me a little more than just "I...HATE...KIRK"). Or did you explain this to me before? Am I not remembering? Am I not listening? Am I not reading? Am I too old for this message board?
> Hey...do not answer that last question.
Dang! You denied me answering in my preferred way! (I HATE KIRK.)
I DON'T KNOW. There. Is that OK?
I really am not sure what the difference is. Maybe it's that I see an internal being in Burt, but not in Kirk. I think that may be it. I will have to think about it more.
> (*BTW*...enjoyed your critique of *"The Roaring Twenties"* one of my favorite movies...and loved your description of Helen Vinson ("deliciously malevolent"). May I steal borrow that?
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> Wasn't she in "Torrid Zone"?
Feel free to --steal-- borrow that description... I am pretty sure I am not the first to describe her that way! I do think she was in Torrid Zone, facing off over Jimmy... she had no chance of course against Annie and Jimmy's mustache.
Gosh . I love The Roaring Twenties and you do too! Yay! More common ground!
Edited by: JackFavell on Feb 21, 2012 9:53 PM