JarrodMcDonald

Now that I think about it, maybe WALL STREET was more reactionary liberalism...the product of Oliver Stone's hatred of Reaganomics. LOL

Definitely recommend it.

I really did enjoy it. I can see where Bosley Crowther and critics had problems with the last part. The tone is much different at the end. But the story in no way concludes when he dies 90 minutes into the film. We still see him in (new) flashbacks as mourners recall the last days of his life.

Excellent thread. I thought of PROSPERITY, the Depression era film in which Marie Dressler plays the president of a bank that goes under. It's a very thoughtful film, mixing pathos with humor. There are some good lines about how a community pools its financial resources and maintains faith in periods of economic crisis. For a totally reverse angle, one could mention the late 80s ode to greed, WALL STREET. It is certainly a product of the Reagan years.

I agree...that is a great moment in FAITHFUL, with Horton singing with the other two. Thanks for reminding me of that.

Yup, I think Steiger does have the best role in the film. All the characters are well-drawn and offer the cast some great possibilities. I'm sure Odets knew people exactly like the ones depicted in THE BIG KNIFE. Luise Rainer was his wife for awhile, and I wonder how much of her is in it. Something about it captures my imagination, especially the ending. Ida Lupino is sensational. The way the camera pulls back, telling us the movie is over. It's a film that has a film in it, in more ways than one.

Yes...he appeared in five of the A/R musicals.

Yes, it has plenty of cute moments. It was shown on TCM recently.

It would be perfect for Essentials Jr. So perfect! To add to Holly's comment...yes, it was in Woody Allen's film. It was also referenced in the Tom Hanks prison flick THE GREEN MILE.

You're welcome! Thanks for adding the info about awards. This is one of those films I would introduce to someone who has never seen a classic film before...you know, a young child or someone who has lived under a rock all their life. You can't go through life not seeing this marvelous film!

Thank you, Holly, for the great reminder. Also, in case it hasn't been mentioned yet, there is a new boxed set of Kurosawa's great films called *AK 100: 25 Films*. It was released on December 8 and is on sale through this website. Edited by: JarrodMcDonald on Mar 9, 2010 4:05 PM

On March 10, TCM will broadcast Mark Sandrich's beloved musical TOP HAT. It is part of the channel's salute to Ginger Rogers, the Star of the Month for March. Rogers and costar Fred Astaire made a series of hit musicals in the 1930s for RKO Radio Pictures (plus one more in 1949 for MGM). But TOP HAT is generally ranked as one of the duo's best. It became RKO's most profitable film of the 1930s and solidified the reputation of its stars. The film is essentially a mixture of screwball comedy and musical. It is about a dancer (Astaire) that goes to London and becomes smitten with a woman (Rogers). But she thinks that he is her best friend's husband. Rounding out the cast are character actor Edward Everett Horton and Lucille Ball in an early role as a flower shop girl. The songs were written by composer Irving Berlin. They include "Top Hat, White Tie and Tails" and "Cheek to Cheek." The Cheek to Cheek segment has been referenced in many contemporary films.

I forgot all about HOOP DREAMS. That was a darn good film.

What I like about Jack Palance's casting is that he and Ida Lupino have considerable chemistry. They are smoldering together. It makes sense that the wife would keep going back to him, because she's his biggest fan. He's also younger than she is, and that makes it a bit forbidden. It has Hollywood love affair written all over it. I also like how menacing Palance gets when he realizes Winters is about to get bumped off, and he doesn't want to be part of that. This is where Palance's screen persona comes in handy as the man who gets backed into a corner and can get dangerous. However, the only danger he really poses is to himself. In a way Steiger is throwing in a bunch of Freud. His mogul is a whiny mama's boy with latent homosexual tendencies. He is the campiest character of all, and it's legit that he should chew the scenery. Originally I had said the film was stage-bound. And it is to some extent. But when I watched it yesterday, I clocked the scenes. I wanted to compare Lupino's screen time with Palance's time. I also wanted to measure the amount of interior scenes with exterior scenes. Usually when stage plays are adapted for film, most of the action takes place indoors. But we did have a lengthy scene of Palance getting a massage outside; we had a scene of Lupino at a roadside pay phone; there was a beach sequence; there was a sequence inside a movie studio; there was a scene in a moving car; there was a scene at another house where Winters was attending a party; and there was a scene in front of the house where Lupino and Palance lived. It wasn't all limited to one interior set. I think they were careful to break it up and disperse some of the action.

I'm glad you said that...I had been meaning to mention rodeo-themed movies. I haven't seen JUNIOR BONNER yet, and TCM shows it fairly often.

Cool...sounds like a good day ahead.

Okay...thanks.

An evening of Rocky films on TCM would be fun. Maybe there will be such a marathon on Sylvester Stallone's 80th birthday. LOL

Sometimes their billing is the result of clauses in their costars' contracts. When Frank Sinatra made his first musical HIGHER AND HIGHER, he received third billing, and he actually had the most screen time. This is because Jack Haley had it in his contract that he was to receive higher billing. Of course, it would not take long for Sinatra to have considerable power in Hollywood, and Haley's film career would soon pale by comparison.

See now, I had the opposite experience. When I recorded it recently and re-watched it, I developed an even greater respect for Odets and an even greater appreciation for THE BIG KNIFE on film. I felt that Robert Osborne's concluding remarks after the broadcast, which I did listen to, were wrong. He says the film failed with audiences in the mid-50s because people didn't think Jack Palance was representative of a leading actor. I disagree. There were plenty of successful B-actors like Dane Clark or Roy Rogers that did not have Cary Grant-type looks but were big stars and household names. They would've had contractual issues and relationships with studio bosses, agents, starlets, etc. I also think Osborne was incorrect in saying that people could not sympathize with a star who 'had it all' but was complaining about his situation. The story was more about a man whose unrest stemmed from a deeply concealed scandal. The other characters in Odets' story functioned as counterpoints and catalysts in his growing awakening that his actions had caused an accidental death and could now lead to murder. On that note alone, the story is very powerful. But I think the success of the story and its filming as a motion picture ultimately rests on the wife character, played by Ida Lupino. She is stunning in the last five minutes of THE BIG KNIFE. We have to feel that she is the most helpless victim in all of this. She was forced to sacrifice the man she loved so that the American movie public would not lose their idea or view of a their much-loved screen star. As for Steiger, I watched the other actors' reactions to him in his scenes. They seem to like his portrayal and feed off it. I think that was a highly esteemed 'method' of acting at the time. And the character is based on Columbia head honcho Harry Cohn. Maybe Cohn was a lot like that, with the fits, the phony tears, the melodramatic manipulations of those in his employ. Steiger is supposed to keep that character somewhat artificial and at the surface, because he is almost not human. He is also the personification of kitsch and that is how he projects himself, probably just as much his own creation as the personal lives of the actors he grooms and sells to the public. I don't think this production could've been performed better by any of the cast. I'd like to see a modern group of actors attempt it but I doubt that they'd be more successful. The only thing I would change is that I would show the Shelley Winters character getting sloshed at the bar, intercut with the discussion of her impending murder, back at the house. Then, I would show her leave the bar extremely tipsy and I would show her trying to cross the street with a bus coming. There would be some studio guy following her and I would make it ambiguous as to whether he pushed her in front of the bus or she accidentally slipped and ironically caused her own demise.

John Sayles is probably my favorite independent filmmaker. I haven't seen PASSION FISH in over ten years. I am going to have to find a copy of it again. Harry Belafonte's early career in film is worth exploring, too.

A group of NOEL COWARD has been added. (I did not request it, but he certainly had an interesting and varied career.) There is also now a group for fans from the midwestern U.S.

Yes the reduced budget gave the production an ironically more realistic look. My favorite movie in the series is probably the fifth one where they lose all their money and they are back in the old neighborhood. Adrian is again working at a pet store and Rocky is now training a young, new guy named Tommy Gunn. It didn't do too well at the box office but I think it used the old history of the characters more than the intervening sequels did.

There were some really good films in the late 90s by AA filmmakers that I thought were extraordinary. They seemed a bit 'ahead of their time.' And I urge people to (re)discover them. The first one was DOWN IN THE DELTA, a little independent film starring Alfre Woodard. It was directed by Maya Angelou. It contains a lot of thoughtful dialogue and the story is very interesting. You may want to watch it with John Sayles' PASSION FISH, which takes place in the same region and also features Ms. Woodard. The second one is Kasi Lemmons' much-lauded work, EVE'S BAYOU. This is such a great film. Samuel L. Jackson and Diahann Carroll star in it. Roger Ebert called it the best film of 1997.

Good point. And by the time we get to the last films in the franchise, it does have a more low-budget feel to it again.