King Rat

"Metallic-sounding" and "flat in a lot of places" describes much of today's music. The new soundtrack probably uses AutoTune, which often has a deadening and unreal and metallic effect. Here is Ansel Elgort singing "Maria." He has a pleasant voice, but a problem with sibilance. Each "s" comes out too strongly. This might not be noticeable in the theater, but on a recording, this could be annoying with repeated hearings: And I was surprised to learn that Rachel Zegler is Colombian. So she's no more Puerto Rican than Natalie Wood?

It's been a long time since I read the James Leo Herlihy novel, and I can't remember if the name is ever explained. In any event 1) the name Berry-Berry drives most viewers Berry-Berry crazy and 2) the William Inge screenplay insists on using the name over and over again. I believe we're supposed to think of the disease beriberi, for the Warren Beatty character brings sorrow to all those around him. When he tells his kid brother he hates life, he isn't joking. The 1950s/early 60s was the era when people worried about ineffectual or absent fathers/domineering mothers, reflected in movies like Teresa, Rebel Without a Cause, David and Lisa, and All Fall Down. Sometimes this is a cue for concerns about mothers turning their sons homosexual, obviously not the case with Warren Beatty (I won't use his character's name again). Instead, he simply treats women badly, including physical violence. The novel includes a scene with younger son Clinton having sex with a woman in Key West, so apparently Mom didn't turn him gay, either. The novel is no more explicit about Echo's sexuality than the film. The fact that she's gorgeous, unmarried, thirty, and a virgin might lead us to think in a certain direction. The boy she says she loved--who didn't want her sexually and killed himself--was, one gathers, gay. Unfortunately, All Fall Down doesn't give us nearly enough Eva Marie Saint or Warren Beatty and too much Angela Lansbury, who is believable, but we got the point six scenes ago. Whatever the imbalance of the screenplay, the acting and directing are first-rate. Brandon de Wilde is flat-out wonderful as the kid brother, another role that could be tiresome without such believable acting.

Both Constance Ford and Madam Spivey in All Fall Down.

These are my favorite Marilyn Monroe performances.

1947 (forget most of the Oscar noms; this year has depth) and 1962 would have my votes. The 1940s is certainly my favorite decade for Hollywood films.

Randolph Scott, definitely.

Good one!

Thanks for the background information. My lawyer friends used to hoot at the opening scene in many of the shows where all the lawyers would sit around the conference table and talk about the one case they were working on. As if!

Tonight TCM is showing three films in a row which have a strong claim to being the best English language film of that year: The Great Escape (1963), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), and King Rat (1965).

Actress and singer Joan Copeland, sister of Arthur Miller, has passed away at the age of 99. Her career included Broadway, soap operas, television, and movies. The attached obituary from the Hollywood Reporter generously covers all of these aspects of her career. According to me, she deserved a Best Supporting Actress nomination for Middle of the Night. If you wanted someone who would convey New York smarts, energy, and edge, just cast Joan Copeland. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/arts/joan-copeland-dead-broadway-arthur-miller-sister-1235069679/

This style has run rampant in TV drama. If it's drama, then it ought to be dark, according to the new practice. The Dynasty reboot, of all things, uses sepia backgrounds for most of its scenes. This version is much campier than the original, but the lighting and filtering are much darker. It doesn't make sense. If you compare the later seasons of Suits to the earlier, the bright colors and window views of the offices have given way to the new sludge. Once Mike went to prison, everything went dark. The Americans may have been one of the first TV shows to adopt the New Darkness. Even some comedies have been affected. The Ted Danson comedy Mr. Mayor (not very good, IMO) is darker in looks than most comedies have been.

If you have wondered, as I have, what happened to all the color spectrum in recent movies (and television) and why the sludge instead, here is an outstanding article by Emily VanDerWerff which does a good job of answering those very questions: https://www.vox.com/culture/22840526/colors-movies-tv-gray-digital-color-sludge

Posted May 12, 2019 I had never heard of Somewhere in the Night--one of the best noir titles ever--and if I had seen this film knowing nothing about it, I would never have guessed the director, a name well known to most of the people who post here. This is the second film of Joseph L. Mankiewicz; his first was Dragonwyck. The cinematography by Norbert Brodeen is superb. Foster Hirsch, introducing the film, suggested that Somewhere in the Night is the most visually interesting of Mankiewicz's films, and that makes sense to me. The opening of the film is great. The camera moves around, occasionally going out of focus, as we discover that we are in a medical tent with several patients and medical officers, and eventually the camera emphasizes a patient with a bandaged face (and, incredibly, a perfectly trimmed pencil mustache). This is John Hodiak, the star of the film. Hodiak is 1) a WWII veteran 2) with amnesia 3) and a new face. Yes, there's no doubt that this is noir. His name may be George Taylor and he has reason to believe that a man named Larry Cravat knows something about him. The more he learns about Larry Cravat, the shadier the man seems to be. A lot of other people want to find Larry Cravat, too, and most of them have no problem playing rough. A large sum of money has gone missing, and all of these people want it. The plot is as complicated and convoluted as The Big Sleep, and like Dark Passage there might be a plot hole or three, but as with those two films, if you can just shelve those thoughts and roll with the movie, there's much to enjoy. One more reservation: The leading lady is Nancy Guild ("Rhymes with wild!" the Fox publicists wrote). Zanuck saw her picture on a magazine cover, thought she looked like Gene Tierney, and signed her to a movie contract. She's not really bad, but it's understandable why Gene Tierney and Lauren Bacall had bigger careers. That being said, here are some of the many good things. Jeff Corey has a bit part as a bank teller! Harry Morgan has a small part as an attendant at a Turkish bath! If you want examples of Chekhov's "There are no small parts, only small actors," those guys provide them. The nightclub owner who's sweet on Nancy Guild is played by Richard Conte. An aging lady right out of a Tennessee Williams play is played with appropriate delicacy by Josephine Hutchinson (Oil for the Lamps of China, The Story of Louis Pasteur). An actor named Fritz Kortner does his best to walk off with the film playing a character known as Dr. Oracle. Kortner is great, but he can't entirely walk off with the film, though, because Lloyd Nolan plays the police detective trying to make sense of this chaos, and if you love Lloyd Nolan, you'll want to see this film. He brings some welcome comic moments while always seeming real, and as Foster Hirsch pointed out in his intro, Nolan has a long speech midway through the film where he explains much of the backstory. Nolan makes this necessary and complicated exposition sound like ordinary conversation. It would be a perfect scene to show to an acting class. One more fun fact about the film, courtesy of Foster Hirsch: the producer of the film is Anderson Lawler. Mankiewicz chose him because he knew Lawler wouldn't interfere with what Mankiewicz wanted to do. Lawler was best known as a "walker," the guy studio bosses would let escort their wives to parties because they knew the women were perfectly safe with him. Lawler is also well known for having a well-documented affair with Gary Cooper back before Cooper was a star.

The print I saw several years ago on TCM was dreadful. I'm glad to hear there's a better one available on YouTube. I saw Somewhere in the Night at the Palm Springs Film Noir Festival a few years ago, and the audience seemed to enjoy it quite a bit. I'd like to see this one again.

Though I was not a big fan of L.A. Law, I thought it was foolish to kill off such a good character played by such a fine actress.

Tony Curtis is equally miscast as a Southerner in The Defiant Ones. South Bronx, maybe.

This weekend I was chatting on Zoom with some friends who had seen Being the Ricardos. They all seemed to have similar views: --They thought Nicole Kidman's face looked weird. (Lorna, you are not the only one!) They were not that impressed by her performance. --They liked Javier Bardem. One of them really liked J.K. Simmons as William Frawley. (That sounds like wacko casting to me.) --They did not like Aaron Sorkin's script, especially the concentration on one day. --All in all, they were not very fond of the movie.

IIRC, after the success of Call Northside 777, everyone in Hollywood "knew" that having numbers in the title was good for a crime film. Thus 99 River Street, 711 Ocean Drive, etc. I'm with you. Now it doesn't seem like a very exciting title.

It kind of does. The British, including our star Leslie Howard, are shown to be incompetent spies. Kay Francis seems about the least likely of all Hollywood stars to be praising Lenin, which gives the movie a certain charm.

Very interesting if only because this is one of the most pro-Communist films ever made in Hollywood. Kay Francis' character, who works for Lenin, speaks of Lenin with the hushed reverence usually found only in films about Jesus.

Joan Cusack does a great job in one of those horrid roles: the girlfriend the hero is going to dump. We can't root for the couple because they are going to be separated by the plot. If she is too awful, however, we'll automatically downgrade the hero for becoming involved with her in the first place. Cusack walks the tightrope as well as or better than anyone else could, given the circumstances. Kevin Kline, as usual, brings smarts, humor, and energy to the film. Thank you for pointing out the painfully stereotypical ways the audience, and the Kevin Kline character himself, come to realize that he is gay. Of course all gay men love Barbra Streisand and disco dancing! Very low marks to Paul Rudnick for this aspect of the script. I'm glad, however, that one of my favorite soap opera actors, John Cunningham, got to do the voiceover for the he-man video.

I also remember Saint Jack as being pretty good, with an excellent role for Ben Gazzara.

I knew far too many people who would bring congealed salads, next to which tuna casserole would be a blessing from on high.

I also especially enjoyed the Palm Springs and LA settings, James, and the visit to Boulder Dam in the climactic section. 711 Ocean Drive is a good example of docu-noir. We also have a plotline that will make plenty of viewers today think of The Sting. Edmond O'Brien is quite good, and Sammy White as his friend Chippie is a delight. A noir story without the usual noir visual style.

Pia Zadora could have been, or perhaps was, the Zsa Zsa Gabor of her generation. Instant cultural reference, as in Hairspray (where she's also fun) and Naked Gun 33 1/3.