TopBilled
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Posts posted by TopBilled
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The copies available at lovingtheclassics are supposed to be 'B quality' though maybe that is being optimistic...?
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I agree...this is great news for fans of the series.
Now if Sony would release the entire set of Blondie films, then we'd really be cooking.
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She was very prolific during a five year period. She was definitely not a one-trick pony.
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Her other two feature films are Paramount releases (now controlled by Universal), so the likelihood of us seeing them either on DVD or cable is probably slim to none.
WHARF ANGEL was a remake of a European film, and SHOOT THE WORKS was adapted from Ben Hecht's stage play.
It seems as if both titles are for sale over at lovingtheclassics, probably copies of broadcasts on the old AMC.
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In some of her roles, she reminds me of Sophia Loren and Anna Magnani.
And she reminds me of Patricia Neal, too.
But she's not as volatile or intense as these other actresses. There is something light and effortless about Ruth Roman, yet solid.
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Since there is no Ruth Roman thread, I thought it might be good to start one.
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*MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS (1944)*
From Agee on November 25, 1944:
Most of its rather pretty new and old tunes are sung in an up-to-date chromium-and-glucose style which bitterly imposes on one's ability to believe that the year is 1903. And most of its sets and costumes and colors and characters are too perfectly waxen to belong to that or any other year.
I liked the general intention of the movie: to let its tunes and other musical-comedy aspects come as they may, and to concentrate rather on making the well-heeled middle-class life of some adolescent and little girls in St. Louis seem so beautiful that you can share their anguish when they are doomed to move to New York.
If the rest of the picture's autumn section, which is by far its best, had lived up to the best things about that shot, and if the rest of the show, for all its prettiness, had been scrapped, MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS would have been, of all things on earth it can never have intended to be, a great moving picture.
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I thought it was interesting to watch McCambridge and Roman in LIGHTNING STRIKES TWICE. Two very different actresses, with two very different approaches to the script. I would say Roman was the more natural of the two.
Incidentally, the scene where McCambridge has a crack-up and drives her car off a mountain road was an example of Warners using stock footage. The exterior of the car plunging off the road was used a decade earlier in the film IN THIS OUR LIFE. That time it was Bette Davis as the deranged female, careening to her death.
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*JENNY LAMOUR (1948)*
From Agee on April 24, 1948:
Jealousy, crime and consequences among small-time Parisian entertainers, well acted by Jouvet, Bernand Blier, and the succulent Suzy Delair. The director, Henri-Georges Clouzot, has an uncanny flair for occupational detail; a Germanic eye; French pace. Of its kind- intelligent trash- nearly perfect.
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I agree. She earned a studio contract and had the few top roles she did because of her skill...but she did not transition into a major star, probably because she lacked sex appeal and a real sense of glamour.
Now, if she had come on the scene in the 70s or later, there would've been more opportunities for her to exploit her oddball persona.
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McCambridge is possibly not the greatest actress ever.
Edited by: TopBilled on Nov 22, 2011 8:36 PM
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*ALL MY SONS (1948)*
From Agee on April 24, 1948:
The Arthur Miller prize-winner. A feast for the self-righteous; Ibsen for beginners; for the morally curious a sad bore. By the standards of the Screen Writers Guild this sort of thing is the white hope of Hollywood. Entirely well-intended and sincerely acted; but not an interesting play, and certainly not a movie.
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From Agee on July 24, 1948:
Brackett and Wilder again, this time in American Berlin. The story involves a visiting Congresswoman (Jean Arthur), an ex-girlfriend of a ranking Nazi (Marlene Dietrich), and an American soldier (John Lund).
There's some sharp, nasty, funny stuff at the expense of investigatory Americans. Then, the picture indorses everything it has been kidding, and worse. A good bit of it is in rotten taste, and the perfection of that is in Dietrich's song 'Black Market.'
*A FOREIGN AFFAIR (1948)*
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Yes, so this schedule isn't as awful as some people were thinking.
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I will have to agree about SHE DONE HIM WRONG. I was surprised to read it was Mae West's favorite of her own films. I think she is better in other selections (my guess is that the 66 minute running time we have now is a much-truncated version so that it could be re-released when the production code took affect). One thing that doesn't work for me is that Cary Grant is supposed to be the lead romantic guy in this picture, and he really doesn't have much to do until the last ten minutes. Their chemistry is put to greater use in I'M NO ANGEL where they share much more screen time.
Of the films I watched and really enjoyed I have to mention MALAYA (which seems like MGM copying from Warners) but that cast is simply magnificent. It is like getting a class in acting when Spencer Tracy, James Stewart and Sidney Greenstreet are all in the same scene! Gilbert Roland is also very good in this picture.
FMC played THE HUSTLER which I haven't watched yet, but I have a feeling I will enjoy it.
Someone else started a thread about ABANDON SHIP, a Columbia sea drama starring Tyrone Power. I agree that is a superb film, and no matter how many times I have viewed it, I get all caught up in it. And don't you just love cute Mai Zetterling!?
But I am going to say that my favorite film this week was FIVE FINGERS, broadcast on Fox Movie Channel. James Mason does a brilliant job playing a ruthless spy. This film had me glued to the screen from start to finish. It also didn't hurt that sexy Michael Rennie was in it, too!
Honorable mention goes to Encore Western Channel's showing of WHISPERING SMITH, a Paramount release starring Alan Ladd, Robert Preston and Brenda Marshall. We don't get too many Paramount pictures on Encore Westerns. The lush Technicolor has been beautifully preserved and the story moves along nicely.
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There were a few more surprises in there. AN AFFAIR IN TRINIDAD is a great Hayworth-Ford picture from Columbia. THE KANSAN is one I haven't seen yet (I would love to see Jane Wyatt get her own SUTS tribute).
There were some early sound classics like WHITE SHADOWS IN THE SOUTH SEAS. And I am particularly excited about STATE FAIR (1933) with Janet Gaynor.
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From Agee on November 8, 1947:
NIGHTMARE ALLEY is the story of a cold young criminal (Tyrone Power) who starts as a carnival mentalist, moves on to a Chicago night club, and is on the verge of the big time when two of the women he has used gum up his act.
The picture goes careful just short of all that might have made it very interesting. Even so, two or three sharply comic and cynical scenes make it worth seeing, most especially Power's wrangle over God with his wonderfully stupid but not-that-stupid wife (Coleen Gray).
The rest of the show is scarcely better than average. Lee Garmes' camera work is lush but vigorous.
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Yes, Graham Greene is another one...
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Classic post, Fred! One of your finest!!
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From Agee on February 14, 1944:
THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK is a little like taking a nun on a roller coaster. Its ordinarily enough subject-- the difficulties of a small-town girl, pregnant, without a husband-- is treated with the giddiness to be expected from Writer-Director Preston Sturges. The overall result is one of the most violently funny comedies, one of the most original, vigorous and cheerfully outrageous moving pictures that ever came out of Hollywood.
Morgan's Creek is the hometown of Trudy Kockenlocker (Betty Hutton), a daftly endearing innocent who gradually remembers one morning that she married a transient soldier the night before. His name was something, she recalls, like Private Ratzywatzky. Presently she also realizes she is pregnant.
There is only one thing that Trudy can do: she must marry Norval (Eddie Bracken), her unwanted steady. He is a stammering loon of a 4-F whose stupidity is excelled only by his utterly selfless devotion.
Sturges understands the liberating power of blending comedy and realism, wild farce with cool intellect. But the best part of this domestic and anarchic satire reaches its perfection in William Demarest, whose performance as Trudy's Poppa is one of the few solid-gold pieces of screen acting in recent years.
But chief credit for THE MIRACLE must go to Sturges, who has given the slick, growing genteelism of U.S. cinema the roughest and healthiest shaking up it has had since the disease became serious.
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Thanks calvin...great job. I am heading to work. When I get home this evening, I will look more closely at what you have posted.
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*MESHES IN THE AFTERNOON (1946)*
From Agee on March 2, 1946:
Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid have made three short films on their own. These are getting no kind of formal distribution, but they were shown recently in New York.
Of the three films, one is called MESHES IN THE AFTERNOON. It can roughly be classified as a dream film. The quality seems to me to be impaired by Miss Deren's performance in the central role. I cannot feel that there is anything really original.
I don't at all agree with Miss Deren that reality in its conventional camera sense, cannot be turned into a work of art without being turned also into a fantasia of the unconscious. But if you have to believe that in order to try to do it, which I doubt, then I am glad that she does.
For I certainly believe that it is worth doing. And I know of nobody else, just now, who is paying any more attention to that great universe of movie possibility than to make safely conducted little tours of the border villages.
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NOTHING SACRED-- movie or projected image on screen?
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From Agee on November 4, 1944:
SAN DIEGO I LOVE YOU is an easygoing little farce about an inventor (Edward Everett Horton), his daughter (Louise Albritton), a girl-shy financier (Jon Hall) and some pleasant comics (notably Buster Keaton). I can't exactly recommend it, but if you see it by accident it will cause no particular pain
Natalie Wood's PENELOPE not on DVD
in General Discussions
Posted
There are 13 user reviews for this film on the TCM database, and all of them gush with enthusiasm. I agree that is surprising to see it's not on DVD yet.
In addition to glamorous Natalie Wood in the title role, the film boasts a great supporting cast (including Dick Shawn, Jonathan Winters, Peter Falk and Jerome Cowan in his 100th film).
I think it's interesting to see how MGM has evolved the musical by the mid-60s. Long-time studio musical producer Joe Pasternak is in charge, and while it's a black comedy, he does manage to squeeze in a sultry nightclub number with Natalie.
I sort of wonder how this film would've fared if Marilyn Monroe had been alive to do it. The story would have definitely capitalized on the diamonds-are-a-girl's-best-friend image she projected. And it's the right blend of farce and fantasy that probably would've kept her film career hot. It would definitely be on DVD today, if Marilyn had starred in it.