kingrat
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Posts posted by kingrat
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Strongly recommended for George Sanders day: Death of a Scoundrel. Excellent noir by a very obscure director. The added bonus is that Tom Conway, Sanders' brother, is also in the film. So is Zsa Zsa Gabor. Mr. Sanders, as usual, gives a first-rate performance.
I'm delighted that TCM gave this film the position of honor at the top of the evening schedule.
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I enjoyed Casque d'Or, a film I'd heard about but never seen. No wonder Simone Signoret became an international star. When she's on screen, you can't look at anyone else, except maybe the very cute Serge Reggiani. Like the other Jacques Becker film I've seen, Touchez pas au grisbi, Casque d'Or begins slowly, with much attention to setting, background, and the world of the characters. This doesn't seem like film noir, but just wait. The plot thickens and darkens.
Fortunately, I got to see the final scene of Term of Trial, with Signoret and Laurence Olivier in fine form. I had remembered this as the best scene in the film, and it's definitely a winner.
If Petulia suddenly morphed into Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, you'd get something like Police Python 357. Stefania Sandrelli plays Silvia, the Ms. Kooky Pants character, and Yves Montand plays the policeman who is her lover. One of them, anyway. Who is Silvia: an adorable kook, a nutcase, or something more dangerous? Francois Perrier is Montand's boss, and Signoret, as Perrier's disabled wife, performs several small scenes admirably. The one she has with Montand is especially fine. Alain Corneau directs capably. Etienne Becker's cinematography looks rather like some contemporary films, but with more style and taste. The opening scene under the credits is especially nice. The late 60s/70s was not a good era for crime films, in my opinion--the breakdown of belief in a carefully worked-out plot is damaging for thrillers--but Police Python 357 is better than average for the period.
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Does anyone know if Diane Cilento's last name should be anglicized to "Silento" or did she keep the Italian "Chilento"?
And does Paul Giamatti use the Italian pronunciation "Ja-mah-tee" or is it anglicized to "Jee-ah-mah-tee"?
In all fairness to Ben M and the late Mr. Osborne, some foreign names are difficult for English speakers.
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The L-Shaped Room does not appear often on TCM, so tonight would be a good time to watch or record it. Strong dramatic performance by Leslie Caron as a pregnant young woman living in a seedy boarding house. She won the British Academy Award, thus incurring the envy of her then husband, Peter Hall.
SPOILERISH: Tom Bell plays a young man who has a chance to win over Caron, a young woman who's really way out of his league, and wouldn't you know, he messes up his big chance. So did Mr. Bell in real life, who publicly insulted Prince Philip at an awards ceremony and thus damaged his own career. He's very good here, as are Avis Bunnage as the landlady and Cicely Courtneidge as a retired vaudeville star. So is Brock Peters, playing a West Indian jazz musician who has a crush on Bell. This is one of cinema's first openly gay black characters; there was an anonymous extra in the gay bar scene in Anatomy of a Murder. Writer-director Bryan Forbes is one of those straight men who always treated gay and lesbian characters sympathetically, in The L-Shaped Room and other works.
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Saturday, August 26
All right you dirty rat, it’s James Cagney day!
6 p.m. Shake Hands With the Devil (1959). This one became hard to find for a number of years for some reason. Nice to see it on the schedule. Don Murray gives a solid performance.
I agree wholeheartedly with Bogie's recommendation. Solid film noir set in Ireland, with the IRA as the bad guys. Dame Sybil Thorndike, not seen in too many movies, plays an aristocratic lady. Cagney gives a fine performance.
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Tuesday, August 22
Glenn Ford day. Save one of these for June 1st, Canada day next year! And throw in a Mounty movie if you really have to.
8 p.m. Experiment In Terror (1962). Lee Remick is good in this one.
I hope people got to watch or record this one. I'm not much of a Blake Edwards fan, but Experiment in Terror and Days of Wine and Roses, also released in 1962, are very good indeed. Perhaps Lee Remick was his true muse.
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I am surprised that anyone considered Broadcast News or The Royal Tenenbaums a comedy. Still, any list that puts Some Like It Hot, Duck Soup, Life of Brian, Airplane!, and This Is Spinal Tap in the top ten can't be all bad.
The General seems like an action drama with some comic moments, but again, I'm thrilled that Buster Keaton made the top ten.
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Tom, many thanks for the great review of The Breaking Point. I couldn't agree more.
I'm also delighted that so many of you enjoyed The Private Affairs of Bel Ami, which I had seen only on VHS. All I can add to the excellent comments is that Ann Dvorak also deserves some special attention. Dvorak is said to have collected first editions in real life, so she probably had quite a bit in common with the character she played here. The film is particularly interesting in that Sanders, a tragic cad, if there is such a thing, could have either a sweet and loving wife (Angela Lansbury) or an intellectual equal (Ann Dvorak), and he can't bring himself to accept either kind of relationship.
Albert Lewin is rather obviously an auteur. The set design in Bel Ami is also worthy of note.
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Those of you like Bogie who are not numbered about Elvis' greatest fans may appreciate this comment by my college Shakespeare professor. While babysitting, he watched some of FUN IN ACAPULCO and declared that when Elvis was on screen, the screen was actually emptier.
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It's great to hear to so many of my movie buddies liked All I Desire as much as I do. Directing, cinematography, Stanwyck, all terrific. In retrospect, she should have won an Oscar or at least an Oscar nomination.
I'll say this for Maggie McNamara: The Moon Is Blue was a big hit on Broadway, but it is hard to put oneself in the position of the 1950s playgoers who liked it so much. The script has not worn well, and although almost all the Preminger films I've seen from the 40s and 50s are well directed, this one isn't. It's more or less a filmed play, and not filmed very imaginatively. She's cute, she has acting ability, and she's not getting much help from the material. That's not to call it one of the top performances of the year, agreed. Still, if you've never appreciated Maggie McNamara's work in Three Coins in the Fountain, wait till you see Pamela Tiffin playing the same role in The Pleasure Seekers.
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Elizabeth Threatt in The Big Sky.
Teresa Brewer in Those Redheads from Seattle.
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There was an inferior remake entitled Jim and Tammy Faye, but audiences were repulsed.
It should have won an Oscar for makeup, however, as in most used.
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I recommend All I Desire, one of my favorite Douglas Sirk films. Beautifully directed, with one of Stanwyck's best performances. By this time in her career Stanwyck often played women who were hard-boiled (see Crime of Passion, for instance), but she brings all the needed tenderness to the role of the woman who returns to the family she abandoned to go on the stage. Such a charming performance by Richard Long, too, as the daughter's boyfriend. Maureen O'Sullivan also makes the most of her role as the high school drama teacher in love with Stanwyck's ex-husband.
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Lorna, speaking of actresses who might belong on RuPaul's show, I saw part of Marnie during the Hitchcock festival, and thought Louise Latham as Marnie's mother occasionally looked alarmingly like Paul Lynde in drag. Didn't play the role much more subtly, either.
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How about Something of Value? Is that a hit, a miss, or an "eh"?
Lawrence, I liked it better than Bogie did. Excellent story, first-rate performance by Sidney Poitier. Rock Hudson is obviously not the perfect choice to play an Englishman who has grown up in Kenya. If you're a Poitier fan, it's worth trying.
But a truly great movie on Poitier day is Cry, the Beloved Country, which I liked even better the second time around. Superb script, equally good direction by Zoltan Korda, strong acting all around. Poitier is fine in a secondary role, but Canada Lee, who died much too young, has the central role.
Incidentally, for Redgrave day, I consider The Sea Gull surprisingly meh, given the first-rate cast. "Pedestrian" might be a kind description for Lumet's direction. Lumet is the most maddeningly inconsistent director I know.
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No love for "Batman Begins," either?
Well, I can't speak for Lorna, but I hated BATMAN BEGINS so much that I swore never to watch another comic book movie.
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Watched BORN TO KILL last nite, I have seen it before but I had forgotten a lot of it.
Good movie, but I was kind of struck by how passive a presence Lawrence Tierney is in it (all the action seems to take place around him, but he doesn't have that much to do with it), & how relatively minimal his screen time is compared to everyone else in it (maybe he's better in other films, but he wasn't much of an actor in this and I couldn't help but wonder if Robert Wise had some of the scenes rewritten to try and bypass featuring him as much.)
Acting honors have to go to Esther Howard as Mrs. Kraft though, every single second she is screen is an utter delight, really and truly it's a performance that could and should have gotten a supporting nomination.
Man Phil Terry sucked as an actor tho.
The final scene between the two sisters is wonderful, where quite frankly you see that "the good one" is every bit as nasty as "the bad one" once the mask gets ripped off...
Lorna, I'm also a huge fan of Esther Howard's performance. Love the film, so wonderfully sleazy, love Claire Trevor, Walter Slezak, and Elisha Cook, Jr., and, of course, Esther.
Did you notice that if Lawrence Tierney and Elisha Cook, Jr. are sharing a room, there only seems to be one bed in the room?
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Lots of good stuff on this month.
What I most want to see:
Le Cercle Rouge
Madame Satan
Sissi trilogy
Really clever idea: the "Red October" tribute
What a good idea: Jacques Tourneur tribute; Anthony Perkins as SOTM
Three lesser-known movies I recommend highly:
Day of the Outlaw - Burl Ives as a complex, intelligent villain, a great performance; wonderful direction by Andre De Toth; Robert Ryan and lots of snow
Hotel Berlin - Imagine Grand Hotel in the last days of Nazi Germany (by the same author, Vicki Baum); Raymond Massey is perhaps the only well-known actor in the cast, but story, acting, and direction are all first-rate
M (1951) - The cinematography and Joseph Losey's direction are great. Location photography of downtown L.A. I actually like this remake as much as the original.
If you need to see a Bad Movie We Love:
Two Weeks in Another Town - Vincente Minnelli hated what the studio did to his film, but frankly, what's on screen is 1) pretty bad and 2) sometimes downright funny. Claire Trevor, for instance, often a favorite of mine (as in Raw Deal, a must-see this month), OVERACTS and then OVERACTS SOME MORE. And she's far from being the only offender. Someone wrote all that dialogue, too.
A Lion Is in the Streets - The poor (make that "pore") backwoods cousin of All the King's Men, also based on the career of Huey Long. Jimmy Cagney calling everyone "folkses" is fun, but Lawd, honey, you ain't lived till you see swamp gal Flamingo (Anne Francis) try to feed Barbara Hale to the alligators.
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I'm so sorry to hear this news. I just watched her a few weeks ago in an early film with Jean Gabin and Lino Ventura on the big screen at TIFF. Touchez pas au Grisbi (1954). A very beautiful lady.
Bogie, you were a lucky man to see this film on the big screen. Magnificent still shot, too.
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Slayton & Co. have summed up the Random Harvest conundrum really well: as a self-respecting intellectual and movie maven I can't possibly be sobbing that the world is going to, like, end if Greer and Ronald don't get back together . . . but they're such a perfect couple . . . .
And Greer really does have great legs and is so much fun when she sings her song, and Ronald is such a perfect man . . . .
So much for being a self-respecting intellectual.
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Although I've seen very few films from this year, Chris Cooper's performance in Breach is truly outstanding and would be one of the best in any year. The film itself is quite good, though audiences did not line up to see it.
Tilda Swinton does give a strong performance in the rather dismal Michael Clayton, a film which is more enjoyable if, like its writer-director, you know absolutely nothing about lawyers, law firms, and litigation.
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Another obscure Perkins movie from the 1960s is The Fool Killer. It sounds somewhat like The Night of the Hunter and was filmed on location in the South. That one probably has not been digitized, so TCM could not show it.
Goodbye Again at one time showed up regularly on TCM. Perkins is a great choice for SOTM.
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Maybe they should have worn helmets with their names on them.
I'm glad to know I'm not the only viewer who couldn't tell them apart. Really poor work by the casting department, unless this is the "type" that Christopher Nolan likes.
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Ustinov's fine performance in Spartacus gets a boost from the all-around excellence of that film, whereas Sal Mineo is stuck in Exodus, which moves at the pace of an elephant on tranquilizers.
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Brilliant Double Features!
in General Discussions
Posted
Note to Richard Kimble: Please treat Joshua Logan's Fanny with the respect it deserves.
In the "It sounded like they would be the perfect double feature" category:
Weekend
Palm Springs Weekend
Beach Blanket Bingo
On the Beach