kingrat

Thanks, Bogie. No limitations by year now.

Bogie, how do I change the title? I'll make it generic so that it can continue.

Robert Mitchum also shows an fine Irish accent in another 1960 film, The Night Fighters. This can be seen in retrospect as preparation for his work in Ryan's Daughter. Mitchum's character is an ordinary bloke, not a hero or a leader. He's 35, living at home, and still the "O'Neill boy." I wonder if this is why David Lean cast him as the schoolmaster in Ryan's Daughter. The Night Fighters is quite interesting, as it follows some of the same ground as I See a Dark Stranger. If the English are fighting the Germans, and the Irish want to be rid of the English, then shouldn't the Irish work with the Nazis? The Irish atmosphere seems quite authentic, and we get a real sense of what village life is like. Richard Harris is effective in a small role as a hothead who wants to fight the English. Anne Heywood is an appealing love interest for Mitchum; she's so good in this film and The Fox that it's a shame she didn't have a bigger career. Dan O'Herlihy, such a drip in Home Before Dark, is about a hundred times more interesting here. Cyril Cusack is wonderful in a small role as the village shoemaker. Playing a genuinely good man is difficult, but Cusack makes him completely believable and ultimately moving. Hollywood veteran Tay Garnett directs; this is certainly one of his better films.

Bogie, I can't think of a better criterion! For each of us, we know there are films we're supposed to be gaga about, but can't work up more than chilly admiration, and sometimes not even that.

Best Musical Moment: Lee Remick sings "The Garden" in Wild River as the raft drifts across the river. That is also my favorite scene from a year with many great ones. Having complained about the misogyny of Some Came Running, I want to praise two films from 1960 for two of the warmest, healthiest, most natural, and most appealing portrayals of female sexuality Hollywood ever put on screen: Lee Remick in Wild River and Deborah Kerr in The Sundowners. Lee Remick, so good as the twisted, manipulative, unable not to be seductive wife in Anatomy of a Murder, is every bit as good, if not better, as the gentle but passionate young widow in Wild River. In his memoirs Kazan says that Lee Remick had not been married long, her marriage was very happy at the time, and he was able to use those feelings in the film. Kazan believed that Montgomery Clift might have difficulty playing the sexual aggressor, and the scenes were developed so that Remick could take the initiative. One of the finest scenes in The Sundowners has Deborah Kerr telling her teenage son that he had better not ask her to choose between him and his father, because she will choose her husband. Deborah Kerr and Robert Mitchum have great chemistry, as they did in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, and we never doubt that the strong sexual bond they share is what makes her willing to stay with her despite the hardships of the life he insists on living. Two other great moments from The Sundowners: 1) Deborah Kerr's silent anger as she observes the beautifully dressed woman on the train. According to Zinnemann's memoirs, the scriptwriter Isobel Lennart had written ten pages of dialogue and was upset that Zinnemann cut the dialogue and let Kerr's face make all the emotions clear; 2) the scene where Robert Mitchum comes close to realizing what his gambling away the money for a house means to his wife. He doesn't quite grasp how devastated she is, but he can sense something of her emotions.

It's also intriguing to consider what another actress who played Honey on Broadway would have been like in the film version: Eileen Fulton, best known as Lisa on As the World Turns. At one time, while acting on her show and also playing the girl in The Fantasticks off-Broadway, Eileen Fulton was also playing a couple of matinees each week as Honey. I would guess that she definitely brought out Honey's manipulative side, though I've never read an account of her performance. Although I think Melinda Dillon is a better actress than Sandy Dennis, Dennis' somewhat unusual face registers more strongly on screen. However, Dennis' jitterings, twitterings, flutterings, and stutterings are more than I can take. Neither her best friend nor her worst enemy could ever accuse Sandy Dennis of having "a clean, non-showy technique." Barbara Harris is an interesting alternative, too.

Tuesday: With some hesitation, I recommend Two Loves, which a lot of people, including the biographer of the director, Charles Walters, do not like. The film concerns the problems, romantic and professional, of a teacher in New Zealand who tries to make her teaching relevant to the lives of her Maori students. Warning #1: I like Laurence Harvey. Harvey is effectively cast as a tormented alcoholic. Warning #2: Shirley MacLaine is perfectly cast as a teacher with advanced, progressive, or just plain kooky views. The character she's playing, however, is also a Joanne Woodward virgin, which is not perfect casting for Shirley. I like this contradiction in her character. Warning #3: I like Juano Hernandez in just about anything. This time he's playing the leader of the local Maoris. Charles Walters stages some of the scenes quite effectively, and location shooting in New Zealand is a plus.

Great topic, Tom. I wanted to follow up on LawrenceA's musings about roles John Garfield might have played had he not died so young. Lawrence mentioned that Garfield would have been the right age to play Don Corleone in The Godfather. That's an intriguing possibility. I have always wished that Anthony Quinn had played Don Corleone instead of Marlon Brando, but Garfield would have been great, too. John Garfield would also have been fantastic in the Van Johnson role in The Caine Mutiny, which could use the intensity and anguish Garfield would have brought to the part. More than one reviewer of The Loved One wished that James Fox had been cast in the role played by Robert Morse, a fine comic actor but definitely not an Englishman. Maybe Robert Morse could have taken Fox's role in Thoroughly Modern Millie as compensation.

My sincere apologies if anything I wrote offended anyone. Tjat was absolutely not my intention. I want to thank Bogey for recommending The Passionate Thief. Having only seen Anna Magnani in heavily dramatic roles like Open City and The Rose Tattoo, I had no idea that she could play comedy just as well as [insert the name of one of your favorite 1930s screwball heroines]. Anna, in a blonde wig, is an extra at Cinecitta, and director Mario Monicelli pokes fun at the religious epics then being made in Rome. It's New Year's Eve, and she isn't sure which party she'll be able to attend. Ben Gazzara is a suave and sophisticated pickpocket, but he needs an accomplice, and has to settle for Anna's friend Toto. Anna has no idea of these schemes, and the plot twists back and forth as Anna unwittingly interrupts a couple of Gazzara's planned thefts. There's a clear sense of what it means to be rich or poor in Rome, without any of the stridency that could spoil the fun. An added bonus is that the black-and-white cinematography of Leonida Barbino is magnificent. Comedy and visual beauty don't seem to go together, but they do here. The only other Mario Monicelli films I've seen are Big Deal on Madonna Street and The Organizer, one of my favorite 1963 films. Monicelli is clearly a very gifted director, with a mastery of pacing and tone as well as a good sense of composition and movement. I saw this online, but the film has been removed from that location.

You may enjoy looking up the Canadian title of No Orchids for Miss Blandish.

Lawrence, your point is well taken. In real life, many politicians, preachers, etc. are indeed buffoons. If one were to play, say, a certain presidential candidate the way he presents himself in real life, one would probably be accused of overacting. It's valid to play Brady in that way, and given that premise, March carries it out faithfully to the best of his considerable ability, and it's not surprising that some of you have wanted to recognize that skill. The problem for me is that that approach doesn't make Brady a very interesting character. Stanley Kramer doesn't go in for subtlety. He can take a good idea, such as using the popular hymn "Give Me That Old Time Religion," and by using it relentlessly over and over again turn it into a bad idea. Brady would be much more interesting if he were shown as a character with many different aspects: as intelligent as his opponent, sincere in his religious beliefs, a natural orator, a man slightly corrupted by a long career in politics, and so on. William Jennings Bryan used his oratorical gifts to champion the working man; not much of this makes its way into Brady. A duel of equals (Bryan vs. Darrow) is always more interesting than the battle between one man obviously right (Tracy) and a buffoon who's obviously wrong (March). For my taste, the best acting in Inherit the Wind can be found in smaller roles, where two actors in particular bring considerable quiet dignity to a film much in need of that quality: Noah Beery, Jr. as the father of a young man who killed himself because of the harsh judgment of the local preacher, and Florence Eldridge as the woman who has loved both March and Tracy.

Sandy Dennis became a critics' darling on Broadway in the hit comedy Any Wednesday, playing the mistress of a businessman. That was Gene Hackman's role. Hackman found her difficult to work with. Hackman almost worked with Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate. He was cast as the father of Katharine Ross, but was replaced by Murray Hamilton. Sepiatone is right that the general public was initially more taken by Michael J. Pollard, whose career went bust very quickly. Pollard would have fared better in the old studio system, where he would likely have had the same kind of career as a character actor like John Qualen. Hackman, however, won one film critics' award as best supporting actor (National Society of Film Critics, I think), got an Oscar nomination, and got hired for a number of jobs. The French Connection even made him a leading man, which he really wasn't. When he stopped getting leading man roles, he quite naturally returned to being the outstanding character actor he always was. Hackman had a really wonderful career, though he must have had doubts back in the Howard Johnson doorman phase. Gene Hackman was the actor who impressed me most in Bonnie and Clyde when it first came out, not least because he looked, sounded, and acted convincingly Southern, which native Southerners know is not too common. I believe Hackman came from Missouri, parts of which are very much like the South. I remember going to The Gypsy Moths when it came out because I wanted to see Gene Hackman and Scott Wilson, both of whom I liked in the film, which is neither a must-see or must-avoid to me. However, slayton, I have my own list of "can't make myself watch them" movies, so I do sympathize.

If Two Women is a 1960 film, and if Bernadette Lafont (Les Bonnes Femmes) and Wendy Hiller (Sons and Lovers) have leading roles, then we have nine performances worthy of a Best Actress citation, by my calculation. I agree with Tom that 1961 will be much weaker, with little depth in the supporting categories, too. There were two Oscar Wilde films released in 1960, which naturally killed both of them at the box office. Best Actor for 1960: Anthony Perkins, PSYCHO**** Jack Lemmon, THE APARTMENT Richard Attenborough, THE ANGRY SILENCE Stanley Baker, THE CRIMINAL Robert Mitchum, THE SUNDOWNERS Marcello Mastroianni, LA DOLCE VITA Honorable mention: Ralph Bellamy, SUNRISE AT CAMPOBELLO; Jean-Paul Belmondo, BREATHLESS; Alain Delon, PURPLE NOON; Kirk Douglas, SPARTACUS; Albert Finney, SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING; Alec Guinness, TUNES OF GLORY; John Mills, TUNES OF GLORY; Laurence Olivier, THE ENTERTAINER; Laurence Olivier, SPARTACUS; Toto, THE PASSIONATE THIEF Best Actress for 1960: Lee Remick, WILD RIVER**** Deborah Kerr, THE SUNDOWNERS Anna Magnani, THE PASSIONATE THIEF Sophia Loren, TWO WOMEN Jean Simmons, SPARTACUS Jean Simmons, ELMER GANTRY Shirley MacLaine, THE APARTMENT Wendy Hiller, SONS AND LOVERS Bernadette Lafont, LES BONNES FEMMES Best Supporting Actor for 1960: Cyril Cusack, THE NIGHT FIGHTERS**** Peter Ustinov, SPARTACUS Lionel Jeffries, TRIALS OF OSCAR WILDE Trevor Howard, SONS AND LOVERS Ben Gazzara, THE PASSIONATE THIEF Honorable mention: Noah Beery, Jr., INHERIT THE WIND; John Fraser, TRIALS OF OSCAR WILDE; Bernard Lee, THE ANGRY SILENCE; Ralph Richardson, OSCAR WILDE Best Supporting Actress for 1960: Jo Van Fleet, WILD RIVER**** Lea Massari, L'AVVENTURA Rachel Roberts, SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING Esmeralda Ruspoli, L'AVVENTURA Shirley Jones, ELMER GANTRY Honorable mention: Anouk Aimee, LA DOLCE VITA; Florence Eldridge, INHERIT THE WIND; Janet Leigh, PSYCHO; Kay Walsh, TUNES OF GLORY Virginia Ham Award for Overacting: Fredric March, INHERIT THE WIND (I blame this on the director; a skillful execution of a bad directorial concept)

I decided to choose on the basis of "most-loved." That didn't seem to make matters easier, especially when it came to Bette, Ida, or Audrey for best actress. Best Actor: Zbigniew Cybulski, Ashes and Diamonds Best Actress: Audrey Hepburn, The Nun's Story Best Supporting Actor: Burl Ives, Day of the Outlaw Best Supporting Actress: Jo Van Fleet, East of Eden Best Juvenile Performance: Brigitte Fossey, Forbidden Games

What an incredible year for foreign films. The English-language ones weren't too shabby, either. TOP TEN FILMS OF 1960: L'Avventura La Dolce Vita Purple Noon The Virgin Spring The Passionate Thief Les Bonnes Femmes Psycho Wild River The Sundowners The Criminal Alternates: Spartacus, Tunes of Glory

Love hearing about your mom, and it's been way too long since we've heard your reports on various less than stellar films. The Bramble Bush is available online, and I can vouch for the fact that when you make your list of Richard Burton's ten best performances, this film will NOT be mentioned. I mean, when you're casting the part of a guy who grew up as a doctor's son on Cape Cod, does Richard Burton come to mind? He's in mellifluous voice/phoned in/where's the paycheck? mode, and this is a few years before Liz. Come on, guy who grew up on Cape Cod and became a famous doctor. You know Hollywood, they probably tried to get Frank Sinatra or Louis Jourdan. Or maybe Tony Franciosa. The movie does get a few points for trying to deal with the subject of euthanasia. Tom Drake is dying of cancer, and he wants his best friend Burton to hasten the process and then wed his soon-to-be-widow (Barbara Rush). Oh, there's Angie Dickinson as a nurse red-hot for Richard. She worries if maybe she's a s_l_u_t, and the fact that she's sleeping with Jack Carson is not a point in her favor. The cinematography of The Bramble Bush is quite interesting. Today filters are all the rage, and each scene is a giant smear of one color. The color palette of The Bramble Bush is extremely muted, with many tones of the same muted color in each shot, like Barbara Rush in an off-white outfit getting into her white convertible. Sets and costumes are color-coordinated to be as muted as Burton's performance. It's great to see the whole gang back.

No, I haven't seen that, Bogye, but will seek it out on your recommendation.

Skkimpole, thank you for mentioning Harold Becker and The Onion Field. Not well known, but a fine film with some outstanding performances, especially that of James Woods. That reminds me of the need to mention a couple of other outstanding films from the same era: Ted Kotcheff - North Dallas Forty Colin Higgins - Foul Play

Stanley Kubrick - The Killing Robert Siodmak - Criss Cross Fred Zinnemann - The Nun's Story William Wyler - The Best Years of Our Lives Jack Conway - High Barbaree Edmund Goulding - Nightmare Alley Joseph L. Mankiewicz - The Ghost and Mrs. Muir John M. Stahl - Leave Her to Heaven Michael Powell - Black Narcissus Raoul Walsh - White Heat John Ford - The Searchers Mervyn LeRoy - Johnny Eager Max Ophuls - The Earrings of Madame de . . . Jean-Luc Godard - Contempt Alain Resnais - Mon oncle d'Amerique Louis Malle - The Fire Within (Le feu follet) Alain Jessua - The Killing Game (Jeu de massacre) Satyajit Ray - Pather Panchali Orson Welles - Citizen Kane Mitchell Leisen - Midnight Robert Z. Leonard - Ziegfeld Girl Leo McCarey - Duck Soup Sam Wood - Kings Row Irving Rapper - Now, Voyager

1960 was a great year for the Italians, wasn't it? My supporting actress nominees include a Lea and even an Esmeralda. Marcello's up there on my best actor list, too.

I remember as a kid thinking that General Della Rovere must be about a woman general, like Della Street on Perry Mason. Nobody in my neighborhood had a last name like "Della Rovere." Lawrence, if you have Day of the Outlaw and The World of Apu taped, you're in great shape. I might add Our Man in Havana as one you'd probably like. Alec Guinness pretends to have secret information for the British so that he can pay for purchases of his extravagant teenage daughter. This leads to unintended consequences. Maureen O'Hara makes a lovely romantic interest for Guinness. A scene with Noel Coward in a men's room is full of howling double entendres. Another fine film directed by Carol Reed.

I'll adjust so that my nominations match yours. Hiller and Leigh are difficult cases. Two Women is a 1960 film, isn't it, which makes for a very tough best actress category. Sophia would have much less competition in 1961, her Oscar year. And The Passionate Thief (Risate di gioia) is a 1960 film, too, which gives us two great performances by Italian actresses. Would Ben Gazzara be supporting, with Anna Magnani and Toto as the leads? Many thanks for recommending this film.

Notes on some 1959 films: Middle of the Night is an older man/younger woman drama, but possibly more interesting for what it can't quite say. The characters in Paddy Chayefsky's Marty could be openly Italian, but the family in Middle of the Night can't quite say they are Jewish. (We had an extensive discussion about this a few years back.) Fredric March says he came to this country from Russia as a boy, and he works in the garment trade on Seventh Avenue. Those in the know will understand that this means he is Jewish. March, of course, seems WASP to the core--too bad Edward G. Robinson couldn't reprise his stage role--and his family seems mixed Jewish and gentile. The best performance, to my mind, comes from Joan Copeland as one of March's daughters. Copeland, who is Arthur Miller's sister, could have come from one of Woody Allen's films. She's smart, prickly, neurotic, but not bad-hearted, especially when her husband (Martin Balsam, in one of his good performances) forces her to confront herself. She brings a specific New York energy to a film that can really use it. Joan Copeland's career was more in the theater and on the daytime soaps, where she made an excellent villain or complicated heroine. I just love Kon Ichikawa's Odd Obsession (Kagi, which means "the key"), a champagne cocktail of a film. An aging man has trouble satisfying his younger wife (Machiko Kyo). Jealousy seems to arouse him, however, so he arranges for the boyfriend of his daughter to pay attention to his wife. What could possibly go wrong? My favorite scene has the older man, in full traditional kimono, watching TV where a sexy young woman in a leotard is leading an exercise class. This is probably not available on DVD; I saw it on VHS. The Journey is probably Anatole Litvak's most personal film. Born in Kiev, he worked in Germany, then France, then again escaping the Nazis he got to the United States. After making Decision Before Dawn in the ruins of Germany he moved back to Paris permanently. I had considered Litvak as a capable, if not outstanding, director of vehicles for star actresses: Bette Davis in All This and Heaven Too. Barbara Stanwyck in Sorry, Wrong Number, Ingrid Bergman in Anastasia and Goodbye Again, etc. However, The Snake Pit, The Long Night, Decision Before Dawn, and The Journey suggest a still better director. The Journey is set in Hungary in 1956, as the Soviets have moved in to put down the anti-Communist rebellion. A group of tourists wants to get out of the country, but the airport is closed down. They are bused toward the Austrian border, but a Soviet officer (Yul Brynner) has the power to decide their fate. Deborah Kerr plays a married English aristocrat who is desperate to get her lover (Jason Robards, Jr.) out of the country. Although he has forged papers, he's really a Hungarian revolutionary wanted by the Soviets. He's been wounded, which makes matters even more difficult. To complicate matters further, Brynner falls for Kerr in a big way. They have just as good romantic chemistry here as in The King and I. E.G. Marshall and Anne Jackson add a great deal of spice as an American couple; she's pregnant and close to term. Ronny Howard plays their young son. Anouk Aimee is a Hungarian revolutionary; Robert Morley, not camping it up for once, is an English journalist. Most of the film was shot in Austria, and actors speak their own languages. I'm not sure why The Journey has been so overlooked; a couple of posters recommended it to me, and I liked it as much as they did.

What if there were a 1950s film that showed women working successfully in administration, medicine, teaching, and even as Resistance fighters against the Nazis? The catch, of course, is that all of these women are nuns, for I'm talking about The Nun's Story. If you want to study the problems that a CEO faces, take a good look at Edith Evans' scenes. What a cast: nine of the actors had been or would be nominated for Oscars--Audrey Hepburn, Peter Finch, Dean Jagger, Edith Evans, Peggy Ashcroft, Mildred Dunnock, Beatrice Straight, Patricia Collinge, and Barbara O'Neil. For good measure let's add Colleen Dewhurst, Ruth White, and Rosalie Crutchley. Audrey Hepburn, probably the greatest fashion plate in movie history, has to wear a nun's habit, and this wonderfully charming actress can't use any of her charm. For many of her admirers, this is her greatest achievement, the one that forces her to dig deeply within herself. Robert Anderson (a friend of our movie buddy Swithin) made the outstanding adaptation from Kathryn Hulme's novel. Fred Zinnemann drew on his roots in documentary in the opening section, which shows the process by which a young woman at that time became a nun. Non-Catholics may find this part of the film horrifying. The Nun's Story gains immeasurably from being shot on location; from now on, all of Zinnemann's films would be made in countries other than the United States. By now Zinnemann is being to receive his due as a director. Martin Scorsese has written warmly about his admiration for The Nun's Story. What seems clear to me on re-watchings is that with Zinnemann's characteristic objectivity, each small piece of the picture is in perfect relationship with every other piece of the mosaic. Nothing is scanted or overemphasized. This pays enormous dividends in the romantic tension between Sister Luke and Dr. Fortunati; these feelings are acknowledged, at least silently, but we're a long way from the melodrama of The Sins of Rachel Cade. The complex shot where the doctor first encounters Sister Luke on his way to something more important is perfection, and so is the editing of the last scene between the two, as Sister Luke leaves on the train. The final scene of the film, which has been copied by other directors, is justly famous.

Maybe this is a good time for a note about Career. I'll bet some people would look at Anthony Franciosa receiving the Golden Globe and say, "Wait a minute. Isn't that the guy who wasn't so hot in Film X (say, The Naked Maja)?" When Jean Simmons has to choose between him and Paul Douglas in This Could Be the Night, I want to holler out, "Monty, I'll trade both of them for whatever's behind Door #3." And yet Franciosa's award for Career isn't unreasonable, though he wouldn't have been my top choice. This film, based on a Broadway play by James Lee, is almost unknown, but is available online. Franciosa plays an aspiring actor who leaves his sweet wife behind in the Midwest to go to New York. He meets with little success, but does get cast in an off-Broadway play directed by Dean Martin, a go-getter both personally and professionally. Martin is interested in a lovely but kooky gal with a drinking problem (Shirley MacLaine), mainly because her father is a top Broadway producer. Franciosa finds a sympathetic friend in his agent (Carolyn Jones), formerly an unsuccessful actress. All four stars give memorable performances. Nobody plays kooky gals like Shirley MacLaine. Carolyn Jones is enough like her in type to make me wonder if she would have played some of MacLaine's roles had Shirley decided on another career. Carolyn Jones has the larger role in this film, and she makes every glance, every intonation count. Though he probably didn't know it at the time, Dean Martin is at the height of his movie career--he's really good in Some Came Running, Rio Bravo, and Career. Martin is so good as a villain in Career that it's unfortunate he didn't get the opportunity to play more of them. Career actually mentions blacklisting. When Franciosa almost gets his big break, it's taken away because he has been linked with Communists. Dean Martin admits that he joined the party, purely because he thought it would help his career. As for Franciosa, when he's playing a talented actor who can't quite make it to the top, how can he not think he's playing his own life? He's passionate and believable, and not over the top. This is as solid as his work in A Hatful of Rain.