misswonderly3
-
Posts
12,768 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
36
Posts posted by misswonderly3
-
-
On 7/30/2018 at 2:27 PM, misswonderly3 said:
Eeek! How could I get these two Marjories mixed up ? ! Yes, of course I was thinking of Marjorie Reynolds !!!
Well, I just gave myself my own laugh of the day.
Hey, what's so funny about me in a Carole Lombard-like gown?
Are you saying I couldn't pull it off? I'll get you for that!
Just realized...nobody would want Marjorie Main to pull off her gown.
-
16 hours ago, sewhite2000 said:
It was on General Discussions. It was gone for a while. I complained about it, and soon after, it was magically restored. As I say in the post above, I have no idea if I actually had some power in making that happened or if it was just happenstance.
This was my question:
"But sewhite, maybe I'm missing something here ( I admit, that happens more often than I care to say), but as far as I can tell you don't say what thread this post you're referring to was on. Can you enlighten me, please?"
But, sorry, I still do not know which thread your post was on, and I'm interested to see it. See,"General Discussions" is the forum. It doesn't tell me what particular thread your post was on. There can be many threads in any one forum. Or maybe you started a new thread, and began it with the quote you initially thought they deleted. In which case, what was your thread called? I feel as though I'm harrassing you about this, and I don't mean to. But it's an easy thing to remember which exact particular thread IN "General Discussions" your post was on. I'm just curious.
-
On 7/28/2018 at 10:18 PM, sewhite2000 said:
Maybe it's on page 10 already, but I can't find it anywhere. I made a post last night quoting a line from the song "Secondhand Rose" in Funny Girl, just to see if anyone would get the reference. It was definitely movie related so did not deserve to be deleted. That's pretty sorry, TCM Admin. I guess you weren't knowledgeable enough to know what I was doing, which makes me sad.
But sewhite, maybe I'm missing something here ( I admit, that happens more often than I care to say), but as far as I can tell you don't say what thread this post you're referring to was on. Can you enlighten me, please?
-
Oh, no, the spam has started. It's so dreary...and seems to be an everyday occurance now. It spoils our fun a bit, when we're all on this thread at the same time, doesn't it?
-
2
-
-
4 minutes ago, CaveGirl said:
I think you are talking about Marjorie Reynolds?
Eeek! How could I get these two Marjories mixed up ? ! Yes, of course I was thinking of Marjorie Reynolds !!!
Well, I just gave myself my own laugh of the day.
Hey, what's so funny about me in a Carole Lombard-like gown?
Are you saying I couldn't pull it off? I'll get you for that!
-
3
-
-
5 minutes ago, LornaHansonForbes said:
I'm honestly not sure if it hais shown on NOIR ALLEY or not, but it has shown on TCM and was featured as a FATHOM events big screen showing.
Lorna, I'm sorry, I misread your earlier post. If you go back to that post you quoted, you'll see I edited it.
-
1 hour ago, CaveGirl said:
Oh, it's fabulous. You really need to see it, Hibi.
Suf that would be like taking a dress worn by Carole Lombard and putting it on Marjorie Main, and expecting it to look the same.
Bad idea!Ok, who doesn't love Carole Lombard? I wish they'd show more of Carole...of course, since she died so tragically and so much before her time, there simply aren't as many Carole Lombard films as we'd all like. And yes, Carole always looks gorgeous.
But let's have a little love for Marjorie Main. I know she was in some thankless roles ( the wife of Vincent Price in His Kind of Woman comes to mind...), but she was also in some good films. I'm thinking in particular of Ministry of Fear, a delightful, very entertaining, kind of noirish British film directed by one of my faves, Fritz Lang. There are lots of good things to say about this movie, but the one I want to focus on is the casting of Marjorie Main as Ray Milland's romantic interest. Marjorie is so pretty in this. plus, she handles a German accent fairly well (or is it Austrian? probably German, for reasons the story uncovers quite early on.)
Here she is looking like she means business:
I think she could carry off a Lombard-like gown quite well.
-
1
-
-
4 hours ago, LornaHansonForbes said:
i am nearly positive in stating without looking it up that NOIR ALLEY has not yet shown SORRY, WRONG NUMBER....in fact, I am struggling to recall if they have ever shown any of STANWYCK'S several noirs...
i recall Eddie once mentioning that he thought STANWYCK was the Best Actress of the era, and I have to say that i agree.
Shirley they must have shown Double Indemnity a few times. In fact, I'm guessing many times. It's considered one of the ultimate noirs.
EDIT: Sorry, wrong program ( ! ) (couldn't resist)
So clearly I did not read your post carefully, Lorna. You never suggested that Double Indemnity had never been aired on TCM; you said you didn't think it had ever been aired on "Noir Alley". And I think you're right .
-
Did you know this guy is still alive? He's 103 years old ! He may have died a few deaths in the movies, but maybe that was good for his health in real life.
-
1
-
-
I don't take kindly to that, Mr. Vautrin. Nyuck Nycuk.
-
The main thing I noticed about Scene of the Crime was the character of Lili - played, as several here have noted, by cute and perky Gloria DeHaven, who handles the role quite well.
I've seen attractive, deceptive, "trashy" women in noirs ( and for that matter, tons of other movies) before, loads of times. But, whether it was the screenplay, or DeHaven's performance, I was truly surprised when she turned out to be such a fake. She seemed so genuinely touched and flattered and grateful when Van Johnson's character started paying attention to her. I do think it might have made her character even more interesting if she'd somehow manifested some kind of regret, or at least a certain degree of sadness, or inner conflict, when she reveals to Mike Conovon that she's been playing him all along ( as indeed, he was playing her...) And for some reason I find it a bit hard to believe that she truly cared about Turk.
But what surprised and , I must admit, kind of bothered me the most, is the penultimate scene where Turk is dying ( of course these guys always get a few minutes before they kick off to make some kind of speech or confession or last words ). When Mike asks him if he'd like to see Lili, he says no. And not just "no": he finds the energy to rail against her, saying something about "her type", what a tramp she is, how worthless and undeserving she is. No touching death bed farewell for those two ! Poor Lili, I found myself feeling just a little sorry for her, how she'd done all this business, going along with Conovon for Turk's sake, and she gets nothing, not one good word, from him when he dies.
-
4
-
-
3 hours ago, TheCid said:
It is curious (if possible) that even in SUTS month, there won't be some Noir. After all, many "stars" made Noir movies. Maybe they just decided not to do Noir Alley as such. Then there is always TCM on Demand.
.
I'm curious why you made the assumption that there'd be no noir movies during August, "Summer Under the Stars" month. Thanks to cmovieviewer who did a little research and posted a list of all the noir(ish) films scheduled for August.
-
1 hour ago, scsu1975 said:
Trust me, when she's blown up, she looks pretty good.
Did they have inflatable dollies back then?
-
And sometimes ( often, actually), the criminal who has not been caught, or who has been caught and is found innocent, even though we the audience know they're guilty, dies in some other way - not through the justice system ( as in , execution), nor by suicide, but by, as I said earlier, someone else, maybe another criminal who is their foe, killing them before the police get to them.
And then there are car accidents, as in - SPOILERS ! - the aforementioned Angel Face, Dead Reckoning, The File on Thelma Jordon (ok, she kind of admits on her deathbed that she caused the car accident to happen, on purpose, so I guess a kind of suicide), and of course, The Postman Always Rings Twice. Lots more, if I wanted to take the time to think of them...
-
1
-
1
-
-
On 7/23/2018 at 9:01 AM, lavenderblue19 said:
Something that I find very interesting about Dark Passage, is that justice thru the courts is never served. We know Vincent is innocent but he's never proven innocent in the courts yet he and Lauren do get to go off into the sunset together, Madge has committed murder, yet she either dies accidentally or by suicide, so she's not punished by the court and the petty hoodlum Baker who threatens to extort money and will probably go on haunting Vincent and Irene forever. ( I guess that's suppose to justify his death, he also knows of Vincent's plan to get to Benton,Arizona and that could catch up with Vincent, so Baker had to be be disposed) Baker dies when he falls while he and Bogart are fighting. Justice is served in Dark Passage, but not by the courts.
We are lead to believe that Irene's father was innocent but he dies in prison convicted of a murder he didn't commit and Vincent being falsely accused of murder, it seems that Dark Passage makes a negative statement about the judicial system. Wonder how Breen felt about that.
As far as Madge's death is concerned, Breen was a strict Catholic and I think that's the reason suicide would not be permitted to be shown as the reason for Madge's death.
It's a good point; Even more than most noirs, Dark Passage seems to be saying that if people get what they deserve based upon their guilt or innocence, it's not because of the police and the American justice system. It just happens that way. (Although there's one exception here; Vince's friend George appeared to be a good person and a good friend. He did not deserve to lose his life, but the evil Madge murdered him ...)
Or, as you put it quite well: "Justice is served in Dark Passage, but not by the courts."
It does seem to be a major theme in this movie.
-
1
-
-
1 hour ago, jamesjazzguitar said:
The Asphalt Jungle: With the confession, Hardy arrests Emmerich, persuading Angela to tell the truth. Emmerich is permitted to leave the room for a minute and commits suicide.
Since there are many other examples, I still have the POV that those enforcing the Code were mostly concerned about a suicide being shown on screen.
Yeah, I know...and there are probably loads more examples, especially in crime movies and noir. Well, all I can say is, I do remember Eddie saying that, about how the Code did not like murderers to commit suicide before the police could catch them because they (the Code censors) wanted them to be brought to justice, not just end their lives before their guilt could be proven in court.
Maybe it wasn't a rule, more a policy the censors had? I dunno. And certainly, there are many examples of criminals dying, even if not by their own hand, in noir and gangster movies. Usually shot, either by the police pursuing them or by an enemy of some kind.
-
Noir Alley friends, I'm surprised none of you seem to remember what Eddie Muller said regarding Madge's death. I can't quote him word for word, and I might be mistaken about this, since I'm just going from memory, but I'm pretty sure he said something like this:
"Madge's character would not have been allowed to commit suicide because the Code did not allow criminals to escape the justice system that way. So technically, Madge would have had to die by accident..." The Code did not want wrongdoers to avoid the formal indictment of a criminal in court, even if they in a way received the justice /punishment they deserved by taking their own life.
That would explain, as many here have noted, why her actually falling out the window is shielded from the viewers by the curtain; we just will never know for sure if she fell or jumped, and I'm sure that Delmore Daves wanted the Code people to think it was an accident, but also wanted the more discerning audience to figure out she'd broken the window and jumped. On purpose.
Now having said that, I'm predicting a lot of you will come up with movie examples of people who committed a crime and then offed themselves before the police and the courts could get to them. (Like "Confidential Agent", the example Swithin gives.)
-
4 hours ago, Arteesto said:
Wow..Bogart thinking that these two mugs are altruistic
And they were !
-
Quote
...The droning blather after the movie(and before) that Muller "treats" us to. Now, it's ONE thing for a LITERARY CRITIC to pronounce a book as a "must read". But, for the AUTHOR of the book to do so is, in my estimate, the EPITOME of hubris and pomposity.
Sepiatone
It wasn't Eddie's book .He wasn't promoting his own book It was a biography of the writer of the novel "Dark Passage" is based on, "Goodis: A Life in Black and White", by someone called Phillippe Garnier (NOT "Eddie Muller.")
Sepiatone, you always talk about "droning blather".People always seem to be "droning" and "blathering" to you. I must be fortunate in that I rarely experience either droning or blather in my personal life or when watching TCM.
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
-
1 hour ago, Looney said:
...And to address what LornaHansonForbes was saying about "trust" in the film. ... But Lorna DEFINITELY has a point that there is a whole lot of "trust" going on all over this movie.
....
Um, actually that was me (misswonderly) who made that point about trust. Not to be all attention-hoggish or anything, but, just, much as I love Lorna's posts, that observation was mine. (But I know it's easy to get it mixed up sometimes when reading these threads, just who said what...)
-
1
-
-
Random thoughts on Dark Passage:
I've seen this one a few times. The more often you view a movie, the more little things you notice about it.
The plastic surgery scene is one of the most interesting and noirish in the whole film. I love that back alley where the defrocked doc has his office, the almost surreal atmosphere and the whole bizarre idea of having your face changed at the recommendation of a complete stranger, altered by another complete stranger, in the middle of the night. The nightmarish scene where Vince is under aenesthetic and we see all these frightening images whirling around. I love that kind of stuff.
I think Vince's friend, George, is gay. He gives off a gay vibe, plus, he tells Vince that Vince is "the only friend I've ever had. No one else ever liked me.",which may well have been the case for a closeted gay man back in the 1940s. And "all he ever wanted to do was play the trumpet and go to South America with Vince.", as though he has feelings beyond friendship for Vince.
Agnes Moorehead is a hoot as the conniving malevolent Madge. I think Agnes really enjoyed this role as a true harpy from hell.
Something I've always noticed about this film is the way everyone asks questions, tons of questions. Everyone, the guy who picks Vince up at the film's beginning, the taxi driver, George, the hash-slinging cook in the all night diner ...all of them are incredibly nosy and ask far more questions than people do in real life. Sometimes this helps our hero, sometimes it's disastrous.
One more thing I noticed this time around watching Dark Passage: the degree of trust some of the characters show, especially Lauren Bacall's. She believes everything Vince says. We know he's telling the truth, but how come she's so sure? But even though it stretches the limits of plausibility that she believes him, it somehow works. And Vince, in turn, has to trust her. There's also the enormous trust he has to put in the taxi driver and the disbarred plastic surgeon. I like the way they both emphatically tell him when the surgery's over that they'll never see him again, tacitly letting him know that they have no intention of blackmailing him.
I think the scene where Irene removes Vince's bandages and initially looks appalled is a bit of an in-joke. Bogart's wife is looking at his face and is repelled at what she sees ! (Still, of course that's only for the first few minutes...)
By the way, if this seems disjointed and randomly written, it's because I'm writing it while watching the film as it airs. I don't usually do this- it's kind of distracting, I keep having to look from the screen to my laptop. Don't know how some of you manage to do this on a regular basis !
Anyway, one other thing I wanted to mention about Dark Passage is the wonderful noirish setting, the San Francisco locations, full of steep winding stairways and dark streets and rain. Oh, and the fabulous apartment of Irene's ! Love that building, I hear it still exists.
-
6
-
-
2 hours ago, rosebette said:
This was a miniseries, not a movie, so not intended to be watched in a single sitting.
This series was fantastic, one of the best television mini-series I've ever seen. Of course, part of its success can be attributed to Dickens. But I suspect the movie (I think someone said from 1987??) version is nowhere near as good.
The 2008 mini series starring Claire Foy ( she of "The Crown" fame) and Matthew Macfadyen was absolutely addictive. I must admit, I was tempted to binge watch it. I own the DVD and have watched the whole series at least twice. This is the way a Charles Dickens story should be done, if we're talking about putting the novel to film. Take its time, make sure all the characters and incidents are included. Do the tale justice.
By the way, I also loved Andy Serkis' performance as the evil, ominous (well, I guess if you're "evil" then of course you're "ominous" ) Rigaud. A true psycho killer, 19th century style.
I really recommend this series to everyone. Just don't watch it back to back if you don't like a really long screen watching experience.
Oh, also, rosebette, I must admit, part of the appeal of "Little Dorrit" for me was Macfadyen as Arthur Clennam. I thought he was extremely attractive !
-
7 hours ago, hamradio said:
Anyone tried to watch the "Lord of The Rings" trilogy back to back?
The Fellowship of the Ring, 178 minutes theatrical, 208 minutes extended (228 with additional credits) The Two Towers, 179 minutes theatrical, 223 minutes extended (235 with additional credits) The Return of the King, 200 minutes theatrical, 251 minutes (263 with additional credits)
Who's gonna watch all three of the " Lord of the Rings" trilogy back to back? Remember, these three films were made as three separate movies, yes, all one related narrative, but not intended to be watched "back to back". So it's not reasonable or fair to suggest the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy is one of those ponderous over-long epic films; each movie in the trilogy was meant to be watched separately, not all in a row.
Of course, if one chooses to do that, they must be pretty dedicated Lord of the Rings fans. And therefore unlikely to complain about the combined length of the three films.
-
9 hours ago, TheCid said:
...It is a question of the producer, director and screen writers being too enamored with their "product" to see how much better it would be if reduced to about two hours.
Incidentally, this also applies to many books. Much over 300 pages and it becomes all about the author's ability to sling words rather than tell a story.
Hmm, not so sure about books. Reading a book is, obviously, an entirely different experience from watching a film. For one thing, films are intended to be viewed in one session, whether that session is 90 minutes or 240 minutes (yikes ! a 4 hour-long movie ! But they do exist...).
Books, on the other hand - and I'm talking mainly about fiction here, specifically novels - are not necessarily intended to be read all in one sitting. I don't mind reading a very long book if it's good. It's a whole different storytelling form from movies.
....
I Just Watched...
in General Discussions
Posted
Thanks for the detailed and interesting write -up on Straw Dogs, Lorna.
Speaking of that director, have you seen The Wild Bunch ? This was the first Sam Peckinpah film I ever saw; it was featured in a film class I was taking. I remember at the time I really disliked it, but it's funny how we can change over the years. I've seen The Wild Bunch two or three times since then, and now think it's an exceptionally good movie. Now, in true Sam Peckinpah fashion, it's not a pleasant movie, it's not fun to watch. Not something you'd want to watch with your mother, maybe. But it's got some great scenes, and it's rewarding to see those icons of classic Hollywood cinema, Robert Ryan and William Holden, in their sunset years.