kingrat
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Posts posted by kingrat
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Laffite, I'd love to see the earlier thread with the screen caps about coded references to sex. The log that blazes up in the fireplace...the fireworks display...the faithful viewer learns what these mean. The thread about the original version of MARTY, which morphed into a discussion of MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, has some additional posts about the coded Jewish references in MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT.
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I also liked IT ALL CAME TRUE. Bogey, ZaSu, a trained poodle, "Flatfoot Floogie," senior citizens doing the shimmy--you don't find those together in many films! Ann Sheridan was a delight.
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I was predicting that Elizabeth Taylor's 1960 win for BUTTERFIELD 8 would make your list. Taylor has always said that Shirley MacLaine should have won for THE APARTMENT, and you could also make a case for Deborah Kerr's quieter performance in THE SUNDOWNERS or perhaps Melina Mercouri in NEVER ON SUNDAY.
1940: Although Ginger Rogers does give an appealing performance in KITTY FOYLE and has to carry the whole film on her shoulders, would you vote for her over Bette Davis in THE LETTER, Katharine Hepburn in THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, and Joan Fontaine in REBECCA?
1941: Again, though Joan Fontaine is effective in SUSPICION, would you vote for her over Bette Davis in THE LITTLE FOXES and Barbara Stanwyck in BALL OF FIRE?
1950: Continuing with the "Some performances are iconic" theme, Bette Davis in ALL ABOUT EVE and Gloria Swanson in SUNSET BOULEVARD are exactly that. Judy Holliday is merely good, and maybe a bit overrehearsed, in BORN YESTERDAY.
1954: If the voting were today, Judy Garland's A STAR IS BORN wins by a landslide. Though I like Grace Kelly, especially in Hitchcock films, THE COUNTRY GIRL leaves me cold. Kelly is the Country Club Girl, not effectively cast as naive and provincial.
1959: Simone Signoret burns up the screen in ROOM AT THE TOP, but as you mentioned, it's arguably a supporting role. Audrey Hepburn in THE NUN'S STORY carries the whole film.
The whole question of lead role vs. supporting role could be an entirely separate thread.
I've never seen A TOUCH OF CLASS, either, but a lot of people thought Ali McGraw would win for LOVE STORY. Maybe it wasn't such a good year.
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Jonny, you mean like 1967 when it was hard to choose between Faye Dunaway in BONNIE AND CLYDE, Anne Bancroft in THE GRADUATE, Edith Evans in THE WHISPERERS, and Audrey Hepburn in WAIT UNTIL DARK, all memorable, so the voters got all mushy and sentimental and picked Katharine Hepburn for a routine performance (decent work, but no stretch and way less interesting than the competition) in GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER?
Another thought-provoking--and just provoking--topic. The claws are gonna come out!
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Well, there's A CHRISTMAS STORY and then there's everything else. Glad to see the love for Alastair Sim's Scrooge, too.
We watched part of ELF on Thanksgiving Day and found it surprisingly funny. Maybe it's the thought of what would happen if I answered the phone at work, "Buddy the Elf speaking. What's your favorite color?"
DONOVAN'S REEF has a funny Christmas sequence with Lee Marvin as a wise man.
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We all seem to agree that JOHNNY EAGER is a much better film than we expected, one that deserves a larger reputation. Like DODSWORTH, it's a great topic for a ramble. Did anyone else notice that when at the end Robert Taylor uses his friend Van Heflin's words about going away to the mountains, that connects back to the reference to CYRANO DE BERGERAC in the early scene where Lana Turner talks about homework with Taylor's niece? The script is that good.
Another note about "coded" references: The classic era Hollywood films had coded Jewish references as well as coded gay references. When as a youngster I saw WEST SIDE STORY it didn't occur to me that Doc, the kindly candy store owner, was Jewish. When I saw the film years later, oy, was Doc Jewish! Or take MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT: garment industry in NYC in 1950s, parents immigrated from Europe. To part of the audience, especially the New Yorkers, that automatically suggests the family is Jewish, even though Frederic March plays the father. The film gives mixed messages on the subject--something Hollywood does very well. Though we don't want to impose our knowledge onto the films of the past, neither should we forget that the filmmakers had experience in smuggling all kinds of taboo subjects past the censors and that the filmmakers understood--may even have preferred--that not everyone would get every reference or joke or implication. Officially, Hollywood was shocked, shocked that homosexuality existed, though all the writers and directors and actors knew that they worked with gay colleagues.
The movie version of REBECCA actually suggests much more strongly than the novel did than Mrs. Danvers is a lesbian. Of the films I've seen randomly in the last few days, no fewer than three--PLATINUM BLONDE, LOST HORIZON and SUSAN SLEPT HERE--all had some variety of prissy/sissy/swishy or "masculine guy doing something unmasculine" humor. Classic films are less innocent in that respect that you might think.
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I thought MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT was going to be shown in the next three months on TCM, but apparently not. Just as some of the classic era films have their coded gay moments, this film is "coded Jewish." The main character works in the garment industry in Manhattan and his parents were immigrants, which will suggest to some of the audience that his family is Jewish. However, his name is Kingsley and he's played by Frederic March.
In any event, the performances make MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT worth checking out. I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned Joan Copeland as March's married daughter. Despite the billing, she has one of the largest roles in the film, and she brings an authentic New York bite to her role. Delbert Mann treats Kim Novak not as a remote fantasy figure like Madeleine in VERTIGO, but as a working actress. She has a particularly good scene where she lashes out at her ex-husband when he tells her how beautiful she is.
Movieprofessor, thank you again for sharing your reminiscences and your insight with us.
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The list of favorite westerns keeps changing whenever TCM shows ones I've haven't seen, and Santa has promised a DVD of Warlock, much admired by some of you. Here are some current favorites:
1. The Searchers
2. The Naked Spur
3. Hombre
4. They Came to Cordura
5. The Hanging Tree
6. Vera Cruz
7. Man of the West
8. Ulzana's Raid
9. The Big Sky
10. The Left-Handed Gun
11. The Big Country
12. These Thousand Hills
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Not to mention Dick Powell's sailor outfit in the dream sequence. Enough spangles for an ice skating costume.
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My bank offers Wizard of Oz checks, with several different images from the film, and I love them.
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Is anyone familiar with the rare Capra films to be shown on Monday--FLIGHT, DIRIGIBLE, AMERICAN MADNESS, and THE YOUNGER GENERATION? A number of you have recommended THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN, so I'm looking forward to that one.
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Wow! If Santa brings me a DVR, I can sure tape a lot of Kurosawa movies. That's what interests me the most about March...except for three movies that some of us have asked for.
LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA - They must have worked out the rights problem. This movie isn't available otherwise. Have been wanting to see this ever since PBS ran the wonderful musical/opera version.
THE COLLECTOR - Considered by some to be William Wyler's late masterpiece.
LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN - TCM is doing a good job trying to show the Max Ophuls movies. I know that some of you are very fond of this film.
Thank you, TCM!
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It's the time of year when people make their 10 best movies lists. Why don't we change the game to the 10 (or 12) best films you've seen on TCM for the first time in 2009? If you haven't seen them before, they're new movies for you. Here are 12 of my new favorites, in no special order:
1. The Hill
2. Orpheus
3. The Earrings of Madame de...
4. Sherlock Jr.
5. Johnny Eager
6. The Passionate Friends
7. The Burmese Harp
8. Baby Face
9. Gilda
10. Man of the West
11. Murder, My Sweet
12. The Rains Came
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Laffite, so glad you started a ramble on JOHNNY EAGER, which blew me away. You raise so many interesting points. If you've only seen Lana Turner in PEYTON PLACE/IMITATION OF LIFE era films, or even THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE, it's amazing to see the young, fresh, luscious Lana of ZIEGFELD GIRL and JOHNNY EAGER. Both these films were directed by Mervyn LeRoy, Lana's mentor, and that's not in quotation marks. He believed in her star potential and helped her to very good performances.
****SPOILERS BELOW****
However many writers may have contributed to JOHNNY EAGER (one never knows), the final script is outstanding. We meet four different people who have made the handsome, charismatic but cruel Johnny (Robert Taylor) the center of their lives. There's Garnet (Patricia Dane), his current dame, who's tough enough she probably won't be too badly bruised once she realizes in Florida that she's been dumped. This is the comic, or least painful, version of involvement with Johnny. Mea (Glenda Farrell) is one of Garnet's many predecessors. In a moving scene toward the end of the film she tells Johnny about her current life, married to a cop. She says she's happy, but clearly she would leave her family and go back to Johnny in a flash if he asked. Acting, writing, and directing in this scene are just about ideal, with a perfect balance of what's said and what's left unsaid.
Not long after Lisbeth, a wealthy college student (Lana), meets Johnny, she speculates about whether he beats his women. The idea seems to excite her a little. She has no idea what she's getting into, and neither did I. Johnny's cruelty turns out to be greater than the audience ever anticipated. As laffite says, Johnny seems to develop a conscience as he begins to understand what he's done to her. He may not yet be able to love her, but he starts to grasp what it meant for her to love him.
Van Heflin won an Oscar, deservedly, for his performance as Jeff, who says he aspires to be the Boswell recording the life of Johnny. Many viewers and reviewers--laffite is not alone--see Jeff's feelings as implicitly homosexual. This approach to the role increases the stakes for the character. Jeff seems to be the closeted gay man of his era, drinking himself to death as he nurses a hopeless crush on a straight man who will never return his feelings and who, as Jeff perhaps comes to learn, is unworthy of his attention. Notice all the resentful verbal jabs Jeff takes at Johnny and Johnny's girlfriend. Laffite has already mentioned Jeff's longing gaze at Johnny through the car window, another excellent moment. If you turn down the sound and just look at the images in that scene and in the previous scene where Johnny ends up slugging Jeff, you may think that LeRoy has shot these scenes as if they were love scenes. Well, they probably are. And if you were expecting Johnny to die in Lisbeth's arms--which I was--look what happens instead.
Robert Taylor deserves some good words not only for his performance, but for his willingness to keep Johnny mostly unsympathetic. You can't imagine Clark Gable doing this, or his audience standing for it. Gable as the basically good guy gangster in MANHATTAN MELODRAMA is about 180 degrees from JOHNNY EAGER. There's much, much more to say about this film--I've neglected the comedy to talk about the emotional structure--so we're waiting for movieman, lzcutter, and anyone else who wants to jump in.
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Holly, thanks so much for posting this interesting and provocative article. I'm particularly struck by it because Meryl Streep and Matt Damon are by far my favorite contemporary actors. Much to think about, though Thomson pushes the political analogies too hard.
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STREET SCENE was also the obvious inspiration for Sidney Kingsley's play DEAD END and the Wyler film, also recently shown. Sylvia Sidney is so good in both.
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Films not yet mentioned include MANHATTAN MELODRAMA and the brilliant JOHNNY EAGER, which isn't so much a gangster film as a film whose main character is a gangster.
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Skimpole, thanks for this continuing post. The history of official taste is a most interesting subject. By all means see The Nun's Story, a terrific film. A number of people now consider this Fred Zinnemann's best.
1950: Sunset Boulevard vs. All About Eve is tough, but that's also the year of The Asphalt Jungle; though made in 1949, The Third Man wasn't eligible for the Oscars until the next year; and this is also the year of In a Lonely Place and The Furies. Wow!
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Some thoughts about why Margaret Lindsay never became a big star:
She would have been a natural to play the pre-Code kind of woman, but things had changed. According to William Mann's BEHIND THE SCREEN, she was fairly open about her interest in other women, which showed, above everything else, that she wasn't playing the game the way her bosses would have liked.
Setting that aside, she didn't find the kind of role that says, "Ah, this is how the public wants to see her," or the actor who was an ideal partner for her, unlike Myrna Loy in THE THIN MAN. Jean Arthur found a director, Frank Capra, who figured out how best to present her; Lindsay did not. She may have been at the wrong studio, too. Couldn't she have handled Carole Lombard/Rosalind Russell roles in screwball comedy? It would appear that WB knew how to use actresses like Joan Blondell and Ann Sheridan who suggested working class or lower middle class, but not Lindsay who suggests a more privileged background.
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Having recently watched THE DEPARTED--taped from AMC, to avoid the worst of the gore--I remembered that the film had frustrated a good friend who insists that he can't tell the difference between Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, and Leonardo DiCaprio. He couldn't tell 1) which of the two actors he was seeing in a particular scene and 2) if Brad Pitt was one of those actors or not.
Now if Brad Pitt had played the Mark Wahlberg role, my friend really would have had problems.
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Dougie, the few minutes of MARCO POLO I saw were so campy and over the top--with Coop badly miscast--that I really must check out the whole flick sometime.
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Also loved her scene in DEAD END, and she's a classy femme fatale in MURDER, MY SWEET.
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I had no idea so many of you would respond to this post, and I'm thrilled because Vaughan Williams is one of my favorite composers. Laffite, I share your enthusiasm. The influence of the pastoral side of VW can be heard in most movie/TV scenes involving the English countryside, and composers of SF (or SyFy) movies have borrowed lavishly from his Sixth Symphony. For anyone unfamiliar with his work, some good points of entry are:
The Lark Ascending (violin & orchestra)
Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis - (music which suggests English cathedrals, again often copied)
Serenade to Music - setting of lines from The Merchant of Venice which deal with music - soloists, chorus, orchestra
Symphony No. 2 (A London Symphony)
There are also settings of old English folksongs; VW collected these as a young man.
VW's symphonies show remarkable range, from gentle pastoral music (the Third) to aggressively modern works like the Fourth.
Moira, thanks for bringing up John Mills. I don't know most of these films, but would enjoy discovering them. Sounds like a great idea for TCM's programmers.
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The 1949 LITTLE WOMEN, though not the equal of the George Cukor/Katharine Hepburn version, is still pretty good. June Allyson makes a stronger Jo than you might expect, and Peter Lawford is perfectly cast as Laurie. Janet Leigh, Elizabeth Taylor and Margaret O'Brien make a starry trio of sisters, although Taylor's Amy is by no means as much fun as Joan Bennett in the Cukor film.
Reading New Bio: "Hellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of ...."
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CK, I'd love to see Burton as Star of the Month, especially if they can get his earlier films. You know that in addition to his finest efforts, lots of people would love to watch SEA WIFE with Joan Collins as a nun.