kingrat
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Posts posted by kingrat
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I disagree with Godard on one thing.
I'd say funding could be raised to construct a working TIME MACHINE to go back and use methods to build the Parthenon so that it wouldn't crumble or erode if a fee had to be paid for each time people used the word "Whatever". Or ended an exclamatory sentence with "OK?"
SepiatoneBut you can buy a time machine on E-Bay. Kip did in Napoleon Dynamite.
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I have enjoyed a number of John Le Carre's novels, but The Russia House literally put me to sleep several nights in a row. I had higher hopes for the film, with location shooting and what turned out to be excellent performances by Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer. Alas, the screenplay followed the book so faithfully that The Russia House also proved to be soporific as a movie.
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If one wants to be a stickler and disqualify that choice as a TV movie, then I would have to pick The Tall Guy as the best film of the batch. A sweet, fast-paced romantic comedy from the UK, written by Richard Curtis of Love Actually fame, and directed by Mel Smith. Jeff Goldblum stars as a frustrated American actor living and working in London. His fortunes start to change when he falls in love with a no-nonsense nurse (Emma Thompson, great in her film debut), and he finally confronts his obnoxious boss (Rowan Atkinson). What other rom-com features a pair of tighty-whiteys singing a Madness song, or has a musical based on The Elephant Man?
Dude! The Elephant Man would make a great musical. Just imagine: Elephant! the Musical. Now if only it starred non-singing actors, like, you know, Peter O'Toole, Liv Ullmann, and Clint Eastwood. Not that anyone would ever cast them in a musical, right?
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I recall Valmont, though not the equal of Dangerous Liaisons, as still being well worth seeing.
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If I had to pick just one it would undoubtably be The Browning Version. Cry, the Beloved Country is a runner-up. The Browning Version is probably Michael Redgrave's finest screen performance which is saying something if you have also seen Dead of Night.
Totally agree. And Cry, the Beloved Country is a seriously good film. Shot in South Africa, at some risk to the filmmakers, with a solid, heartbreaking story that is very well acted. The final scene between the father of the killer and the father of the murder victim is very moving.
Early Summer might be the very best entry into Ozu. The 13th Letter is a remake of Le Corbeau, set in Quebec, not so good as the original, but still worth seeing. M is a remake that's almost as good as the original, with fabulous photography of downtown LA. The Prowler and He Ran All the Way are solid noirs. Miracle in Milan is a charming fantasy.
Laughter in Paradise is an Ealing comedy with a nifty premise: the decedent requires his relatives to perform various tasks before they can inherit under his will. Fay Compton, who is nasty to her maid, for instance, has to work as a maid.
The Model and the Marriage Broker gives Thelma Ritter her biggest role with the greatest emotional range, and of course she does a great job.
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"The Deadly Companions" (1961)--Sam Peckinpah's first film, starring Brian Keith, Maureen O'Hara, and Steve Cochran.
Keith plays a man who's almost scalped during the Civil War, and has spent five years tracking that person down. He finds him in Gila City, and accidentally shoots a boy who gets in the way.
O'Hara plays the boys' mother, who despises the "respectable" women in town, and drives the body to a nearby town to be buried next to his father. To complicate matters, Apaches are on the warpath.
Keith is fine as a man obsessed with vengeance, who tries to make amends for a dreadful mistake.
O'Hara is equally good as the boys grieving mother, who gradually comes to like Keith, in spite of everything.
Good, dark, atmospheric cinematography by William H. Clothier. The theme song is sung by O'Hara over the opening and closing credits.
Good, underrated western should be better known. 3.2/4.
Filmlover, I remember when this was shown on TCM two or three years ago, the night scene where one of the prisoners tries to attack Maureen O'Hara was so dark you could not see what was happening. Was this a problem with the print? Sounds like the print you saw was fine.
This film clearly shows that at this time Peckinpah's writing skills were ahead of his directing skills. Ride the High Country shows how quickly he learned.
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Where did you see that? Online?
Yes, on YouTube. There are lots of episodes of Peyton Place available.
Hey, Conan the Librarian would be my kind of movie.
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Jean Simmons is a great star to be obsessed with. Definitely one of my favorites.
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I saw La veuve Couderc (The Widow Couderc) (1971, Pierre Granier-Deferre), an adaptation of a Simenon novel starring Simone Signoret and Alain Delon. If the sweetness of John Ford's pastoral scenes puts you perilously close to a diabetic coma, this film is the antidote. Alain Delon is an escaped prisoner who takes shelter with Simone Signoret, a widow who lives on a small farm in the countryside out from Dijon. To say that the locals are small-minded gives them too much credit. She and her in-laws passionately hate each other. That's partly because she was a servant girl who was raped by both father and son, got pregnant by the son, married him, but lost the baby.
Both widow and prisoner repress most of their emotions, not that that matters when Signoret and Delon are on screen. They become lovers, not that that stops Delon for being interested in the young woman who keeps throwing herself at him.
The rolling hills of the French countryside have rarely looked better on screen.This provides a welcome contrast to the pettiness of the locals and the fear that the police will find Delon. Alas, there are a few period touches in the direction (zoom-ins, iris in and out, some unnecessary quick panning shots, references to a certain Arthur Penn movie), but apart from that the film is well directed. I liked it a lot, and loved the work of the stars. You get to see Delon with and without a little mustache, and shirtless several times.
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There's a difference between leasing a film to be shown at a festival and leasing the rights to show a film on television. The television rights are usually more difficult. There may be an archival 35mm print which can be shown at a festival, but not on TV. These days films usually have to be digitized to be shown on television. If the films are not already digitized, that is an additional expense for someone to pay.
Most films which are shown at the TCM Festival are shown on TCM within a year or so, but not all. Whistle Down the Wind was shown at the festival in 2011, but never on TCM.
James is absolutely right about the Paramount films, many of which are now owned by Universal.
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The Long Memory is a Brit noir which TCM showed several years ago. It's directed by Robert Hamer (It Always Rains on Sunday, Kind Hearts and Coronets). John Mills is framed for a crime he did not commit and sent to prison. As one of the framers says, "It's only twelve years." Once out, Mills is set on revenge, especially against the woman involved. What's become of her in the interim is one of the interesting features of the story.
Apparently, British audiences of the time didn't want to see that nice John Mills as a revenger. Some of us will think he does a fine job, however.
Location shooting in the marshes of Kent makes this even better. There are scenes with Mills and a half-witted local which might just remind you of Beckett.
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TOP TEN (and a fifth) FILMS OF 1952:
Singin' in the Rain
Forbidden Games
Umberto D.
The Bad and the Beautiful
Ikiru
High Noon
Viva Zapata!
The Long Memory
Moulin Rouge
The Big Sky
"The Last Leaf" from O. Henry's Full House
Note to Lawrence: The Narrow Margin and Five Fingers were very close.
B&W Cinematography: Robert Surtees (The Bad and the Beautiful) by a narrow margin over Joe MacDonald (Viva Zapata!)
Color Cinematography: Oswald Morris (Moulin Rouge)
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The Journey is being shown late Wed. night/early Thurs. morning. Strongly recommended, and a must for Yul Brynner fans.
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Lawrence is correct about the reason Shane is specifically mentioned. It's a shout out to the people who were watching TCM at the time of the earlier Western series when they couldn't get the rights to Shane. I wasn't watching back then, but I've heard numerous people talk about it.
George Stevens' films became more--shall we say "monumental"?--as he got older. Even the resolutions of The More the Merrier and The Talk of the Town are dragged out beyond my liking. WWII was an overwhelming influence on Stevens; he was actually there filming when one of the concentration camps was liberated. (See Mark Harris' book Five Came Back.) Stevens turned to more serious subjects. In general, his post-war films became more serious, longer, and slower. A Place in the Sun and Shane are probably his best-liked films, but not everyone can accept the deliberate pacing.
Max von Sydow has talked about working for Stevens on The Greatest Story Ever Told. Stevens would set up a very wide shot. After he got the take he wanted, he would move the camera in slightly for the same shot, and get a take from that angle. Move the camera closer, get another take. And so on.
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Thanks for some excellent write-ups, Tom. Although Dick Powell gives good performances in Murder, My Sweet and Cornered, I believe that he's even better in Cry Danger. This time his acting doesn't have to be so overt; he doesn't have to prove he isn't that guy in the 1930s musicals. He seems wearier and even more authentic. The location photography is great, too.
I'm also a fan of The Tall Target, based on a historical attempt to assassinate Lincoln before he could take office. Dick Powell and Adolphe Menjou give strong performances, and so does Ruby Dee, who brings dignity and intelligence to her small part.
The 1951 best actor category has so many different styles of acting as well as so many admirable performances. Brando as Stanley Kowalski is the most famous of all Method performances. Alec Guinness and Alastair Sim exemplify the Ealing comedy style. Michael Redgrave adapts the style of English dramatic acting to the screen. John Garfield gives one of the ultimate noir guy on the run performances. Gene Kelly shows us a more athletic dance style. Oskar Werner's performance is almost all reaction shots; the whole movie is about what he sees in the ruined Germany and how he feels about it. And that's just skimming the surface.
Although he didn't make my final fifteen, Spencer Tracy as an alcoholic lawyer in The People Against O'Hara would ordinarily make the top five; it's one of my favorite Tracy performances. That film also has cinematography by John Alton, so it's well worth seeing.
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Bogie, is The Pawnbroker also 1964? I believe that it and The Train were shown at film festivals in Europe in 1964, but released elsewhere in 1965.
With Scofield and Ustinov gone, I'm done to six candidates for best supporting actor in 1964, even with the addition of two from The Pawnbroker.
If we're looking ahead to 1965: I consider Olivier, Finlay, and Maggie Smith all leads for Othello.
Claire Bloom a lead for The Spy Who Came In From the Cold.
Orson Welles and Keith Baxter both leads for Chimes at Midnight.
Dirk Bogarde is a lead in Darling. He won the BAFTA for Best Actor. Laurence Harvey, though top-billed, is supporting.
Who are the leads in Ship of Fools? Werner, Signoret, and Leigh?
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Teresa is not one of Fred Zinnemann's better-known films, but I think it's worth getting to know. I like to consider The Seventh Cross, The Search, Act of Violence, The Men, and Teresa as a thematically related quintet of films about WWII and its aftermath. (Zinnemann learned after the war that his parents had died in a concentration camp.)
Teresa is particularly noteworthy for the great young actress it introduces: Pier Angeli, who's like a young Italian Ingrid Bergman. The problem is that Pier Angeli never seems like a great actress in any other film. Now Zinnemann is an outstanding director of actors, but I think the real reason is like that eerie scene in A Star Is Born where the studio makeup and costume people take away Judy Garland's individuality and turn her into just another Hollywood starlet. Angeli is competent, and very pretty, in Somebody Up There Likes Me, but she no longer has that special quality.
John Ericson has a particularly thankless role in Teresa: he has to play a mama's boy who turns out to be a coward under fire, and who may actually be responsible in part for the death of some of his fellow soldiers. Ordinarily we would expect the movie to have a follow-up scene where Ericson redeems himself as a soldier (The Red Badge of Courage sets the template for this). However, there is no such scene, and to me that's one of the other interesting things about Teresa. Ericson fails as a soldier, meets and marries a beautiful Italian girl, and then the two of them have to adjust to life with his family.
This second part of the film presents a common 1950s film family. This is the decade of "Momism," where a domineering mother, well-played by Patricia Collinge, has defeated her husband and is attempting to control her son as well. The son has to prove that he can stand up to his mother and be a man for his wife, as in the 1930s drama The Silver Cord.
If the description of the family sounds a bit similar to Rebel Without a Cause, that's probably because Stewart Stern wrote both screenplays. Remember that weird and unconvincing moment in Rebel where Sal Mineo says he thinks of James Dean and Natalie Wood as his parents? There's a similar moment in Teresa where Ericson says he regards his commanding officer (Ralph Meeker) as a father. Older brother, sure, but father? Stern always denied he intended Sal Mineo's character in Rebel to be homosexual. Mineo and Nicholas Ray obviously had other ideas. There's a curious moment early in Teresa where another soldier offers Ericson some bread. One imdb reviewer suggests that he's making a sexual approach to Ericson, and I agree; the moment doesn't make much sense otherwise. I'd say that Stern was putting his own fears about masculinity into both screenplays, and that's all to the good.
Teresa, like The Search, was partly filmed in the rubble of Europe after the war. Zinnemann also directs some fine documentary-like or neo-realistic scenes that show Ericson as only one soldier who needs psychological help after the war, only one of many soldiers whose Italian brides arrive in New York to be reunited with their husbands.
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Lawrence, you've been seeing a movie about my relatives?
This morning I watched, for the first time ever, an episode from the TV serial Peyton Place. It featured a young Ryan O'Neal as Rodney Harrington, a role that suited him well. He seems like a promising young actor, and this makes it easier to understand his rise to fame.
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Yes, the journalist and his wife are definitely the weakest element of The Shoes of the Fisherman. I believe Martin Scorsese is rather a fan of Michael Anderson. Shake Hands with the Devil is quite good, and Chase a Crooked Shadow is a solid film noir, too. (I'm not sure how much of the noir styling is due to the cinematographer, Erwin Hillier.) The Wreck of the Mary Deare is recommendable, too.
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The Blue Veil is probably available only online. Jane Wyman delivers another strong performance, this time as a woman who becomes a nanny after her own child dies. It's a story of mother love directed to other women's children, and is far less sentimental than one might fear.
Joan Blondell, like Wyman Oscar-nominated, plays a Broadway star who must choose between devoting time to her career and to her daughter. Although Blondell as usual delivers a good performance, I'm more interested in the characters played by Vivian Vance and Agnes Moorehead, each of whom forecloses an opportunity for Wyman's personal happiness.
These scenes will be especially interesting to those who understand the code of the lady followed by many of our mothers, aunts, grandmothers, and their contemporaries. Voices are not raised. No one is overtly bitchy or unkind. Vivian Vance, who plays the assistant to widower Charles Laughton, owner of a girdle factory, nonetheless knows how to dispose of someone she sees as a rival.
Vivian, however, is crudeness itself next to the refined procedures of the upper-class Agnes Moorehead. Moorehead has only two scenes, yet to me it's one of her most memorable performances. Not only does she use the iron fist in the velvet glove, the glove is made of the finest, most expensive velvet available. As Moorehead protects her own comfort without regard to the human needs of her nanny, she seems to embody her social class and the way it defends its prerogatives.
The screenplay must be praised for the subtlety of these well-written scenes. Curtis Bernhardt directs capably; the scene where Jane Wyman learns of her child's death is especially well done, powerful without being sentimental.
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It's weeks in the future, but I'm going to suggest that all the actors in Advise and Consent are supporting.
I agree with you. Henry Fonda starts out as the leading character, but then disappears.
Did we ever decide if Robert Ryan and Paul Douglas are leads in Clash by Night?
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The Shoes of the Fisherman is far from being the best film of 1968, and few today would rank it one of the top 10 or 20. However, some will definitely enjoy the pageantry, the cinematography, and the famous actors.
It does reflect some of the concerns of Catholics at the time, especially the question of whether Teilhard de Chardin's philosophy is heretical. (Oskar Werner's character is obviously based on Teilhard.) It also reflects both the optimism created by the ecumenical spirit of Pope John XXIII, and the reaction against it. Morris West, who wrote the novel, obviously hoped that this broadening ecumenical spirit would continue.
Contemporary fears about China and its possible use of nuclear power are also shown in the film. Another cinematic representation of this fear is the Max von Sydow character in Winter Light. Nixon's visit to China changed some of this perception. (Incidentally, Chinese villains are generally verboten now in American action movies, because China is such a huge market for action films.)
Having fairly low expectations when I saw The Shoes of the Fisherman a couple of years ago, I liked it better than I'd imagined. It's a finer film than, say, Preminger's The Cardinal, also very nice to look at, but despite its glancing asides at serious issues like Nazism, the K K K, and abortion, pretty much a campy romp.
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Tom, thank you for the excellent write-up of Chicago Calling. I agree with everything you say. Unfortunately, the director has a little trouble with pacing, and to me the movie seemed a bit longer than its short running length. Dan Duryea is really outstanding, however, and his fans will enjoy seeing it for that reason, as well as for the outstanding location photography.
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Prince of the City was hyped when it first came out. Probable best picture nominee, probable nomination for Treat Williams. However, some of the reviews were lukewarm, and it was too much of a downer to be a box-office success. Unlike Serpico (one good cop against the system), there's not really anyone to root for. The lower than expected box office returns probably ended Treat Williams' shot at stardom.
All of which has nothing to do with the quality of the movie. It's a solid, well-made film in the slow-moving 1970s style, and Treat Williams does a fine job. Unfortunately, it did not catch the public fancy, and Williams didn't get a second chance at a big role in a major film.
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Your Favourite Performances from 1929 to present are...
in Your Favorites
Posted
Best Juvenile Performance of All Time: Brigitte Fossey, FORBIDDEN GAMES
I couldn't agree more strongly with Swithin that Dame Edith Evans is perfect as Lady Bracknell in THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ERNEST. I'm considering this a supporting performance, but of course it seems like a lead when Dame Edith plays it.
The Harvard Lampoon made a notable award this year:
Most Embarrassing Infatuation with One's Own Folksiness--Barry Fitzgerald and Edmund Gwenn in THE QUIET MAN