I Just Watched...

[CinemaInternational]

2 minutes ago, TikiSoo said:

Ugh. Wouldn't it be WONDERFUL if Netflix got caught in a time wormhole and reverted back to the "lending library" it originally was? Sure, Netflix puts Blockbuster out of business, then STOPS OFFERING the previously huge inventory of rare & classic films! 

I've been enjoying BBC's series GHOST. Mr Tiki is proud of me, he thinks I have poor commitment skills since I'm not a "series" person. But Ghost fits my personality perfectly since I live in a haunted house & am a restorationist. 

Netflix DVD is so much better than the streaming side that it hurts. They used to have an astonishing deep catalog....

[sewhite2000]

6 hours ago, CinemaInternational said:

I think, even in the original thread, the one that caused you so much grief, I attributed the cut to Disney rather than TCM, borne out by the inclusion of films with slurs like Blazing Saddles and Looking for Mr Goodbar still being on the schedule.

I think you did, too, actually. Sorry I didn't give you credit!

[LawrenceA]

6 hours ago, CinemaInternational said:

Power of the Dog was my first stop on the Netflix month. 

I see you enjoyed The Lost Daughter, too. Glad to see it.

[King Rat]

3 hours ago, LornaHansonForbes said:

OH WOW, YOU'RE RIGHT!!!

PS- did you know CARROT TOP is worth $70 million???????

And people say the American public doesn't have good taste. Hah!

[EricJ]

4 hours ago, LornaHansonForbes said:

also, the nominations are tomorrow, yes? I bet you FIVE IMAGINARY DOLLARS that DON'T LOOK UP scores some surprise big noms (Best Actor? Best Supporting for MERYL????)

If Netflix "movies" get Oscar noms in pandemic years, it's not a Surprise anymore...   😑

Hopefully, if they continue the industry shunning of the Golden Globes, we might see them wrap up next year with no nominations, and the Oscars would be forced to do their OWN homework for a change.  That would be one "Return to a normal life" we'd have after Covid.

4 hours ago, LornaHansonForbes said:

THE TOYS THAT MADE US.

There.

I thought of something.

That's on NETFLIX and it's fun.

Good...Now you can watch "The Movies That Made Us", and that'll be two, and then you can get around to that first season of "Cells at Work".

(Cells at Work--Yes, some Asian-import series on Netflix actually DO have a sense of humor.)

2 hours ago, CinemaInternational said:

Netflix DVD is so much better than the streaming side that it hurts. They used to have an astonishing deep catalog....

..."Is"?  It's still around?  Reed Hastings hasn't killed it yet, while bragging about Don't Look Up?

And even the early streaming side had a surprisingly deep catalog, until StarzPlay had a breakup with Netflix in '11, and took back almost a 1/3 of the entire catalog of REAL still-in-copyright movies, including current Disney movies and Western series from Starz's Cowboy Channel.

There I was, stuck in binge-watching Maverick and Have Gun Will Travel, when "Netflix-pocalypse" happened, and traumatized a lot of trendy adults who up until then had literally thought they could throw their old DVD collection away.  They all had to learn sometime.

[sewhite2000]

1/10 One Way Passage (Warner Bros., 1932)
Source: TCM

Full discolsure department: pretty sure One Way Passage was the third movie I ever watched on TCM. It was during 31 Days of Oscar, I believe in 2001, which may have been February or even January of that year. They run it later in the year now concurrent with the shifting month in which the Oscars air.  Now, I know that particular month has become quite a punching bag on the TCM Message Boards. At that time, I would say it was the most unpopular deicision TCM had ever made among message board members (today, I would say anything TCM does that's deemed to be inspired by "woke" culture exceeds it in unpopularity by a factor of about a billion). That was a time in my life when I seemed to have more disposable income than I do now (cost of living is a lot more 20 years later, while the amount I get paid has risen only incrementally), and I was on a super duper duper cable package that gave me all the movie channels and their spinoffs. So,  I had like three HBOs, three Cinemaxes, three Showtimes, three Starz channels and probably more I don't remember. I do very well on the late '90s/early-aughts films TopBilled asks about on his "Have You Seen These 10 Classic Films?" thread, because man, I saw ALL those movies on one of those channels back in those years. I had so many channels, in fact, I didn't even have an accurate idea of which channels I had. I had become intrigued by TCM at some point. They would run full page ads in Entertainment Weekly (which was really weekly then) in those days for 31 Days that would at least have a full primetime list of what they airing that month, if not every damn movie. And my eyes got big when I saw the list of titles, many of which I recognized, few of which I'd seen. I was very slowly developing my classic movie sensibilities in those days - I'd rented Gone With the Wind, Citizen Kane, King Kong, Casablanca and maybe one or two other biggies from Blockbuster over the previous year or two, but only the most famous of the famous. Anyway, I want to say it was 2000, and I just kind of nodded approvingly at the list but didn't actually watch anything. But when they posted a list again in 2001, I thought, "Oh, man, got to check it out this year," and I've been a TCM junkie ever since. The very first night I ever watched TCM (other than to glance at it for anywhere from 15 seconds to five minutes when doing a random channel flip), the primetime theme was the relatively scandalous "Pregnancies Outside of Wedlock", and I kind of though to myself, "Oh, THAT sounds interesting," and I watched a double feature of The Great Lie and The Sin of Madelon Claudet (possibly in reverse order. I don't remember). So, I tuned back in the next night. I don't know what the theme was then, but the first movie I watched was One Way Passage, which I'd never even heard of before and which isn't a movie that gets talked about much outside of our focused-interest community. Needless to say, I was blown away. It showed me the potential of what classic movies could be, and I've been a devotee ever since.

This was one of six movies William Powell and Kay Francis made together. I think two of them were at Paramount and four at Warner Bros. I've already reviewed Jewel Robbery, and hopefully (I move through my list painfully slowly) I'll get to For the Defense one of these days. Looks like this one was made immediately after Jewel Robbery, and according to IMDB, it was their most commercially successful film, the only ones whose grosses topped $1 million (not a slam on the other collaborations necessarily, when you consider adjusting for inflation, etc., etc.). It's adapted from a story by Robert Lord. 

So, probably everyone on here knows the plot to this one already, but here goes: suave Dan (Powell) and beautiful Joan (Francis) "meet cute" in a Hong Kong bar when she backs into him and makes him spill his drink. It's attraction at first sight, but complications quickly reveal themselves. Dan is a convicted muderer who has busted out of prison, and no sooner does he exit the bar than he's aprehended by police detective Steve (Warren Hymer), who's come halfway around the world to track him down. They board a steamer heading to San Francisco, where Steve plans to see execution (literally) of sentence carried out on Dan. Dan almost drowns Steve when they're handcuffed together just as they're about to board, but draws too much of a crowd and reluctantly ends up playing the role of rescuer. Turns out Joan is on the same ship, and Dan, while still trying to figure out a way to escape, decides at least the voyage won't be so bad. Then we learn Joan is terminally ill - the standard weak heart of the old movies - but she ignores the advice of her doctor (Frederick Burton) to take it easy, figuring this voyage with Dan might be her last shot to really live. So, they both appear to be doomed, but maybe he has a fighting chance of getting away, though as his attraction for Joan turns to love and genuine concern for her condition (as much as he can discern of it - they both keep mum about their likely fates), it becomes increasingly difficult for him to just take off. And that's about all that needs to be said really. It heads to a moving, transcendant ending that's not wholly unexpected but poetic nonetheless.

The storyline is highly original, at least from the perspective of my limited viewing experience, and I would say the film approaches being art rather than merely commerce - a lot of soft-focus cinematography and the score work together brilliantly to accentuate the romantic but tragic mood.

Powell is pretty much like you know him from every other movie - a touch more menace (looks like he really intended to kill Hymer early on), but an old softie when he falls in love. Francis is glamorous and classically tragic. This is not a movie like Mandalay that requires her to go from Fay Wray to Marlene Dietrich with every new plot twist. She gets to play one note here, and though I was a bit dismissive of her in my last review, this is my favorite performance. of hers. She effortlessly conveys a sense of poignancy.

There's some comic relief in the form of two cronies also along for the trip who scheme to help Powell escape. They're played by Frank McHugh and Aline MacMahon, two character actors I've come to know well in my 20 years of watching TCM. McHugh has his standard buddy role, with a touch of alcoholism, and he gets to say "Hah hah!" a lot, sort of a '30s precursor to The Simpsons' Nelson. He's a thief whom Hymer picks up on the way. There are a couple of funny scenes where McHugh has just escaped an angry mob on land and "Hah has" them as his boat leaves shore, only for him to look over and immediately recognize Hymer by his shoes before he looks up to see his face and confirm that he's been caught again. MacMahon is on board pretending to be a countess, but she and McHugh come from the same background and know each other. It's funny to see her slipping back and forth from one persona to another based largely on whether Hymer is present or not. There's a touching subplot where Hymer falls for the "Countess" like a ton of bricks, which she plans to use to her advantage to help Powell escape, but darn if she might not be falling for the big lug a bit herself. Hymer is sort of a combination of William Bendix and William Frawley. He agrees to more or less give Powell free reign once the ship is unmoored, but everyone's trying to play him for a sap. I do like the scene where he reloads his gun just in time and shows Powell he's not quite as stupid as Powell thinks.

Directed by Tay Garnett, who would soon begin a long run at MGM, helming China Seas and Bataan, among others.

Total films seen this year: 18

 

[txfilmfan]

I had a friend that came over last week and he had a 30 day free Amazon Prime membership.  He logged into it on my TV to watch the Lucy movie last week and left his account details on my TV.  

I knew that Prime is just about the only place to see the two WB George Abbott/Richard Bissell movies: The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees.  So I pulled these up to see them again.  I have never "sponged" off someone else's account before, but I really wanted to see these again.

I've seen both of these before, but it's been a long time.   The last time I saw them was in the old analog TV era - in the 1980s on a local station.  While I probably thought these looked fine on my 20" tube back in the day (we had nothing better), on a modern HD set, they looked pretty bad.  The quality of the prints presented was lacking.   Both pictures were grainy, and had some color issues.   Both seemed to have a yellowish tint to them at times - flesh tones were off.  The Pajama Game's print also had some damage/image imperfections that are thankfully rare in restored films.  I've seen prints on YouTube that looked better. 

Both of these could use a restoration job, I think.  I doubt we'll see it anytime soon, since whoever owns the rights seem to have them locked up pretty tight.   I believe Amazon is the only place you can stream it; otherwise, you'd have to buy a physical copy.  I'd hate to pay for them if they are of similar quality.

[Vautrin]

Spare the Rod (1961)  Max Bygraves, Geoffrey Keen, Donald Pleasance.

Low-budget look at one part of  the English school system. Bygraves is  the naive  innocent new meat at the working class Worrell Street School 

for misfits, miscreants, morons, idiots,  and a few teenage slutettes. At first the class is uncooperative and  figuratively  knocks Max  around

like  a bloody soccer ball.  Slowly but surely, with  tales of  his WWII service and a stab  at Shakespeare, the students  start to come around.

The teacher's lounge includes the usual stock  characters--the  well-meaning  middle aged  spinster, the  cynical and sarcastic male teacher,

and a younger female teacher, possibly a love interest for Max. His  opponent is Keen, a sadist who enjoys caning everybody  in sight for the

slightest reason. Some of  the students  get the better of Keen  and lock  him in the men's outhouse  overnight. He emerges with  a disagreeable

odor and madder than ever. Donald Pleasance plays  the by the school's headmaster. Pleasance  spends most of the movie either smoking cigs  or

hacking  with a loud cough that seems  to  point to  a TB death, but he somehow survives. At the end  of  the film Bygraves isn't  sure  if  he

wants to  try another year at the school,  but it looks like he will be back  next  term for  more punishment. The gritty, dank  look of much  of

the movie and the depressing student  body make this flick enjoyable in a weird sort of  way. Even  by the  standards  of films  with a similar

setting and  plot this one is  pretty downbeat. If the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, the destruction of  the British

Empire was seeded on the asphalt of  the Worrell Street School.  

[rosebette]

I watched The Long Day Closes (1992) Saturday night.  I wasn't planning to watch it, but it was the movie following Four Weddings and a Funeral, which I always enjoy.  I was unexpectedly moved by the beautiful images and nostalgic songs in this portrait of a young boy's life in Liverpool in the 1950s.  As someone who was raised Catholic (yes, the bloody images of Christ and the rigid guilt-based theology, punitive parochial schools,  as well as the compelling rituals) but was also an outsider and bullied as a child, I really identified with this sensitive boy who found so much comfort and warmth in the circle of his family and in the darkness of movie theaters.  The music and the lovingly constructed set-pieces and scenes stayed with me the entire week-end.  It's a movie in which not much happens, but is evocative of a world of emotion and memory.  Thank you, TCM, for being my "church" on Saturday night.

[speedracer5]

17 hours ago, txfilmfan said:

I had a friend that came over last week and he had a 30 day free Amazon Prime membership.  He logged into it on my TV to watch the Lucy movie last week and left his account details on my TV.  

I knew that Prime is just about the only place to see the two WB George Abbott/Richard Bissell movies: The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees.  So I pulled these up to see them again.  I have never "sponged" off someone else's account before, but I really wanted to see these again.

I've seen both of these before, but it's been a long time.   The last time I saw them was in the old analog TV era - in the 1980s on a local station.  While I probably thought these looked fine on my 20" tube back in the day (we had nothing better), on a modern HD set, they looked pretty bad.  The quality of the prints presented was lacking.   Both pictures were grainy, and had some color issues.   Both seemed to have a yellowish tint to them at times - flesh tones were off.  The Pajama Game's print also had some damage/image imperfections that are thankfully rare in restored films.  I've seen prints on YouTube that looked better. 

Both of these could use a restoration job, I think.  I doubt we'll see it anytime soon, since whoever owns the rights seem to have them locked up pretty tight.   I believe Amazon is the only place you can stream it; otherwise, you'd have to buy a physical copy.  I'd hate to pay for them if they are of similar quality.

I think Warner Archive released Blu Rays of both of these films within the past year or two. I don’t own them, so I can’t attest to the quality, but I would assume that they look better than what you described seeing on Amazon. 

[JamesJazGuitar]

I just watched The Rifleman.   Interesting episode about an artist that is hire by the father of a beautiful gal so he can do a portrait.   The artist has a drinking problem and that leads to trouble with her boyfriend,  played by Ed Nelson  (that guy was in a lot of westerns typically as a cad).     

Anyhow the actress was Midge Ware and she reminds me in the photo to the left of Kay Francis.  She debuted on film in Bedtime for Bonzo (1951).

 

[sewhite2000]

1/11 The Philadelphia Story (MGM, 1940)
Source: TCM

TCM used Night Two of the month-long accents theme to haul out this old warhorse as an example of the "mid-Atlantic" accent. Personally, I don't know how many actors I heard attempting to affect accents. Certainly, the three leads showcased the distinctive voices they used for pretty much all their careers, though I guess Katharine Hepburn is the one who touts such an accent naturally. There have been a lot of threads recently, I suspect all started by the same person under multiple usernames, complaining of repeat airings, which I personally haven't noticed other than that one week of Christmas movies, in which a certain number of films aired twice over the course of the week. Oh, and every Noir Alley feature airs twice 12 hours apart. But other than that, not so much. Anyway, on one of these threads, the poster complained about too many airings of THIS movie, and while I don't know that it has had more than this one airing this entire year, as a longtime TCM viewer, I can empathize that it does air a LOT. I used to live by MCOH's database, though I kind of took stock of himself and asked why do I need to know if a film has aired on TCM and how many times? And so I haven't used the database in six or eight months and am trying to avoid the temptation to open it right now (I still use your schedules, MCOH, moreso than the ones TCM offers me!), but safe to say it must be one of the 10 most-aired movies in network history. 

So, I won't over-talk (hopefully) about a film with which everyone on here is probably very familiar. The Philadelphia Story was originally a Broadway play written by Phillip Barry, who modeled the lead character of Tracy Lord after a Main Line Philadelphia socialite named Helen Scott, whose family threw fabulous parties like the one depicted in the movie on their 800-acre estate in Radnor Township. I'm reading on IMDB the producers (one of whom was future Oscar-winning writer-director and Ben Mankiewicz great uncle Joseph Mankiewicz) actually wanted to shoot the party scenes on location at the estate but decided against it after seeing just how vast and spectacular the manor and the estate were and beliving no moviegoer would believe any American could be living like that so soon after the Depression. So, no mater how amazing the set looks in the movie, apparently it's just the MGM backlot and dosen't measure up to the real thing. Barry wrote the part with Hepburn in mind, hoping to woo her back to Broadway after she'd been savaged by the critics for her performance in a play called The Lake. It wasn't a fantastic time all around for Hepburn professionally. These were also the years she infamously got labeled "box office poison", and RKO, I don't know, either dropped her or didn't renew her contract, but MGM picked her up quickly enough. She starred in the original Broadway production with Joseph Cotten (in the Cary Grant role), Van Heflin (in the James Stewart role), Shirley Booth (in the Ruth Hussey role) and Anne Baxter (in the Virginia Wiedler role! Looks like Baxter was about 15 at the time, so I shouldn't be shocked). Hepburn very much wanted to be in the film adaptation, which she believed (correctly) could relaunch her career, and Howard Hughes - with whom I guess she had an affair, my knowledge about this coming mainly from the Martin Scorsese film The Aviator, bought those rights and gave them to Hepburn as a present. She brought the property with her to MGM, and looking over their male talent roster, envisioned at first Clark Gable as Dexter and Spencer Tracy as Mike. Tracy turned the role down because he wanted to make Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - so his first on-screen pairing with Hepburn and whatever private life they had together (at least one member on here has insisted Hepburn was a lesbian, and any romantic relationship she had with Tracy, however scandalous it might have been since he was married, was a cover story to hide that fact. I haven't read anything about Hepburn's private life, so I don't know) had to wait for a couple of years until Woman of the Year; Gable was likewise committed to another project. But MGM's roster of big-name stars was deep, and the second choices were hardly chopped liver. Tracy had worked with Grant twice before, both at RKO (Bringing Up Baby) and Columbia (Holiday), and Stewart was coming off a huge commercial success and an Oscar nomination for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, so she approved of both. Grant insisted on top billing, and Hepburn, with the state her career was in, was in no position to argue.

We open with a wordless sequence that appears to be the final moments of the marriage of wealthy socialite Tracy Lord (Hepburn) and CK "Dexter" Haven (Grant) who's a member of the same social class. In this famous bit of movie business, she breaks one of his golf clubs over her knee; he ponders "socking" her momentarily but settles on putting the palm of his hand in her face and pushing her until she lands on her rear end (all in her nightgown) before storming off. Later we learn that Dexter didn't live up to her exacting standards. He was an alcoholic, and her lack of faith in him only made him drink more. I'm guessing this scene is in the movie only. We jump ahead a certain amount of time, and Tracy is about to marry a "new money" businessman who came up working class named George Kittredge (John Howard). The publisher of a gossip magazine called Spy (Henry Daniell) wants an exclusive on the wedding and convinces two of his staff members - writer Macauley "Mike" O'Connor (Stewart - you can't imagine how badly I wanted to type "Macauley Culkin"!) and photographer Liz Imbrie (Hussey) - to pass themselves off as friends of Tracy's brother, who's some sort of South American ambassador and unable to attend (it's amazing how many times the name of this character who never appears gets mentioned - it's like Waiting for Godot). The whole thing has apparently been arranged by Dexter - apparently he used to work for the Daniell character, though if he's so rich I don't know why; the dialogue comes so fast and furious, I still haven't picked up on all the plot specifics after 15 or 20 viewings - who's actually acting out of noble motives. Tracy isn't fooled by these newshounds for a moment - she in fact arranges a charade where she and her kid sister Dinah (Wiedler) come across as so pretentious as to terrify the newcomers - but Dexter informs her that if she doesn't play along, Spy will run an expose on the affair Tracy's father Seth (John Halliday), separated from her mother Margaret (Mary Nash), is having with an "exotic dancer". Tracy isn't concerned about protecting him - she's hardened against him considerably for walking out on the family - but she does want to protect the family's reputation and reluctantly agrees to let the reporters stay. Another ruse she's set up  - where she tries to pass off her Uncle Willie (Roland Young) as her father so he won't seem to be absent from the wedding, then when her father actually does show up to say he's Uncle Willie (there are no pictures of the Lord patriarch? This never gets explained) - gets abandoned fairly early on, but not before houndog Willie takes a keen interest in Liz.

Margaret and  Dinah are exceedingly fond of Dexter and welcome him with open arms, much to Tracy's annoyance. Meanwhile, Mike - who longs to be a serious writer and has one published book - is unhappy about the whole set-up. Tracy reads some of Mike's book, which is apparently overflowing with sensitivity in contrast to his hard-a** manner, and begins to see him in a different light. They start falling for each other, and all these men in her life - Dexter, Mike, George - get Tracy confused. The flirtation between Tracy and Mike doesn't sit well with Liz - she and Mike have apparently been "going together" as Tracy puts it - but Liz deals with massive insecurity once Mike puts Tracy on a pedestal (in fact, most men seem to put Tracy on a pedestal, but we'll get to that in a minute). The motives of Dexter, meanwhile, remain largely inscrutable, though he seems to be hatching a master plan.

All this begins to culminate at the aforementioned party the night before the wedding, when Tracy gets drunk for only the second time in her life - Dexter makes several references to the first time resulting in nudity from happier days between them - and amps up her flirtation with Mike. They take a swim together, and as far as we know, he chivalrously puts her to bed, but when she wakes up in the morning with amnesia - "drawing a blank" as Dexter puts it, like she also did the time she got naked - Mike's watch on her bedside table and Dinah hinting she watched them go into Tracy's bedroom together, Tracy becomes terrified she has been a woman of "easy virtue".  All the principals gather together for the final scenes, and there are revelations and recriminations, and I won't say who ends up with whom, though it's probably easy to guess.

I will insert this very short paragraph to say the MGM production looks beautiful. There are grand sets and outfits and makeup and hairstyles. Robert Osborne often liked to refer to MGM as "the Tiffany of studios"(which he had a lot of occasion to do, as he must have introduced about 10,000 MGM films), and that's probably never more evident than it was in this movie.

Hepburn's performance is tricky. I'm not sure it's ever entirely clear what Tracy's sexual experience status is, even though she's a divorcee. Dexter refers to her as a " chaste, virgin goddess" - I always chuckle when she tells him "Stop using those foul words", but certainly she's not supposed to be an actual virgin on the eve of her second wedding? She asks George if he can go ahead with marrying her even though Dexter was once "my lord and master", and he replies, "I don't think he ever was, not really. I don't think anyone was", and he goes on to make it clear that he doesn't intend to be, either. I mentioned earlier that men have a habit of putting Tracy on a pedestal, and she's variously compared to a statue, a goddess and a princess. Dexter thinks this is because she hasn't experienced enough of life - he makes it clear he prefers the girl who got drunk and threw off her clothes, which maybe makes him most suitable for her. There's a weird, creepy bit where Tracy has it out with her father, wanting to tear into him for his indiscretions, but he lays the blame on her for noth performing her "daughterly duties", that a man can somehow still feel young if his grown daughter can show him the ... proper appreciation. What the hell? Anyway, the script seems to imply he's right, and Tracy is chastened. It's all heavy Freudian stuff disguised as breezy comedy. I think Hepburn plays this very complicated material the best she could, and she has to master a lot of range - drunk scenes, nervous scenes, angry scenes, romantic scenes, etc.

I recall one reviewer saying, "If you had to nominate one man from this film for an Oscar, how can that man not be Cary Grant?" But Stewart got the nomination and the win. The story has it he sat at home on Oscar night, figuring he had no chance, when he got an anonymous call saying it would behoove him to be at the ceremony. Apparently, he lived pretty close to the action, so he threw on a dinner jacket and a bow tie and arrived just in time to receive his prize. Also, urban legend has it, that the Academy was beaten down after a year of hearing it about giving the previous Best Actor award to Robert Donat for Goodbye, Mr. Chips instead of Stewart for Mr. Smith (I think they're both great performances) and once Stewart was nominated again the following year, they sought to rectify their mistake. To be fair, I like Stewart a lot in this film - starting out all hard-nosed and then heart melting into lovestruck fool. I like how proud Mike is at figuring out things - the once extended scene he shares with Grant, confronting him about his real feelings is very good. Maybe Grant didn't get nominated because we never knkow his character's real feelings  until the final scene. He's a great stoneface, seemingly angry at Hepburn all the time. But in that way Grant dominates every movie he's in, we get the sense that Dexter is calling the shots the whole time without trying to draw attention, and taken from that perspective, maybe Grant is appropriately subtle. Hussey gets in several great one-liners - "Too rough?" "A little, but I'm used to it" - "I'd scratch her eyes out, if she wasn't marrying someone else tomorrow" - and I like the one scene she and Grant share, which could almost have me "shipping" for their characters to end up together. Among the supporting cast, Young is a standout - sometimes he's a nervous Nellie reminiscent of Topper, but mostly he's a h*rny bast*rd (I'm putting in double asterisks to make sure that gets in). Wiedler gets to show more range than her early angelic child, Margaret O'Brien-type roles, more of a snotty teenager, though hopelessly devoted to Dexter (played up to creepy extremes when Bing Crosby sang a love song to the Wiedler stand-in in the remake).

Hepburn I believe upon arriving at MGM insisted on working with George Cukor, and he was these banter-heavy movies (screenwriter Donald Ogden Stewart claimed it was the easiest job he ever had, mostly transcribing Barry's original dialogue).  In his very long career, Cukor of course also gave us My Fair Lady, Gaslight and many others.

Total movies seen this year: 19

 

[Fading Fast]

 

The Turning Point 1952 with Edmond O'Brien, William Holden, Alexis Smith and Tom Tully

 

 

The 1950 Estes Kefauver United States Senate Committee looking into organized crime has been the gift that just keeps giving to Hollywood. It even inspired the famous scene in The Godfather: Part II where attorney Tom Hagen gets to scream out "This committee owes [my client] an apology."

 

The Turning Point is one of Hollywood's early bites at the Kefauver apple. Attorney Edmond O'Brien returns to his hometown of Los Angeles to head up a government commission looking into organized crime in the city. With his pretty fiancee, Alexis Smith, at his side, he's the white knight coming home to clean up Dodge City. 

 

He immediately meets his childhood friend, cynical newspaper reporter William Holden, who doesn't believe much will come from O'Brien's effort. The first hint of trouble for O'Brien appears when O'Brien's father, veteran policeman Tom Tully, is hesitant to take a position working for his son's committee. 

 

Sitting on the other side of O'Brien is the local mob boss Ed Begley who has a tight grip on the city's criminal activity. He has enough people on his payroll, in the right places and on both sides of the law to protect his interests. With that setup, The Turning Point is a solid crime drama **** soap opera that packs a lot of punch into its eighty-five minutes. 

 

(Spoiler alert - it happens early, but it's the key to the entire story). Reporter Holden confirms his suspicion that O'Brien's father, Tully, is a cop on mob boss Begley's payroll. Unaware of this, O'Brien keeps failing to find anything to stick on Begley.

 

At about the same time that Holden is outing Tully, he and Alexis Smith, after a little flirt fighting, begin an affair, shockingly for this period, based on not much more than they like each other and want to hop in the sack. Remember, Smith's fiance O'Brien and Holden were childhood friends.

 

(Spoiler alert) Holden, trying to help the friend he's (effectively) cuckolding, realizes that the only way O'Brien's committee can be successful is if O'Brien is told his now-dead father - the mob killed dad because he was too much of a liability - was on the take. Almost at the same time Holden tells O'Brien about his dad, Smith confirms to O'Brien his suspicions about her affair with Holden.  

 

Talk about a bad day. Umm, your policeman father, who was a paragon of virtue to you, was on the take and your childhood friend is snaking your fiancee, but good news, you might have a new angle on how to bring down the mob.

 

O'Brien, oddly, does kind of take it all in stride and uses this new information to go after Begley and (spoiler alert) takes him down with Holden's help, but it costs Holden his life. These sacrifices aren't done or taken lightly as reflected in the tight and realistic dialogue of screenwriter Warren Duff.

 

Duff has his characters discussing the meaning of justice and honor and what citizens, politicians and the police should be willing to sacrifice for the good of society in a reasonably honest, natural and impactful manner. If only modern screenwriters would learn to pen dialogue and not speeches, so many modern movies wouldn't sound so preachy.

 

The Turning Point is tough stuff for 1952. In addition to one of the heros getting killed, the rackets are shown to be a well-organized syndicate running large illegal activities - numbers, bookmaking, loansharking, drugs, etc. - in part, by buying protection from the officers and politicians who are supposed to be protecting the people. 

 

Yes, in this movie, the good guys win overall, but you don't really take a happy message away from The Turning Point. As with several other 1950s noirish crime dramas, what America saw in The Turning Point was a mob that had become more professional (versus the mob of the 1930s shoot-'em-up movies) and more corrupting of its police and politicians. 

 

The Turning Point's biggest strength is its interpersonal relationships where deep betrayals seem, dispiritingly, to be part of the fabric of the times. But it also does a darn good job of connecting the dots to show how organized crime uses its ill-gotten gains to buy muscle and influence to protect itself. Some movies are good because they are different; others, like The Turning Point, are good because they do all the expected things of their subgenre very well.

 

 

N.B. For time travel, The Turning Point is a heck of a trip to early 1950s Los Angeles, including the incredibly cinematic Angels Flight funicular, seedy apartment houses, government buildings done in inspiring classical architecture, dive bars and the period-perfect Grand Olympic Auditorium hosting a period-perfect boxing match.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

[CinemaInternational]

Well, surprise, surprise. I found a great looking print online of a legendary fiasco from the 1970s and its good! The film is 1975's At Long Last Love, Peter Bogdanovich's blending of Fre and Ginger musicals blended with the bittersweet ending of Lubitsch's Smiling Lieutenant. While its true that star Burt Reynolds tends to talk-sing like Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady, he is charming in the part and Cybill Shepherd and Madeline Kahn are in great form vocally, and deliver wonderful performances. Good support as well from Eileen Brennan and John Hillerman, and comes with wonderful period detail and a delightful script that often had me smiling throughout. It's well worth another look.

 

[EricJ]

55 minutes ago, CinemaInternational said:

Well, surprise, surprise. I found a great looking print online of a legendary fiasco from the 1970s and its good! The film is 1975's At Long Last Love, Peter Bogdanovich's blending of Fre and Ginger musicals blended with the bittersweet ending of Lubitsch's Smiling Lieutenant. While its true that star Burt Reynolds tends to talk-sing like Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady, he is charming in the part and Cybill Shepherd and Madeline Kahn are in great form vocally, and deliver wonderful performances. Good support as well from Eileen Brennan and John Hillerman, and comes with wonderful period detail and a delightful script that often had me smiling throughout. It's well worth another look.

It's...okay, and I understand what Peter Bogdanovich was going for in trying to do live-singing Like They Did In The 30's--

But the "quaint" mid-70's love-hate view of old RKO musicals, and cutesy attempt to homage it, still comes off like my favorite critic pan of the movie:  Ie., that hearing Burt Reynolds and Madeline Kahn sing Cole Porter was "Like hearing a tourist in a French restaurant loudly read out the menu in his own Texas accent, pausing occasionally to chuckle at his own cleverness".  😂

[sewhite2000]

1/11 Some Like It Hot (United Artists, 1959)
Source: TCM

Night Two of the accents them continued with this spotlight primarily on Tony Curtis, who uses no fewer than three "voices" in this movie, his normal accent, his accent when his character pretends to be a woman named Josephine and a Cary Grant homage when he pretends to be the Shell Oil heir and yachtsman. I thought it was a little odd that Curtis would be so spotlighted, as I'd long been under the impression that his voice as Josephine had been overdubbed by an actual woman, though in several recent viewings, I'd convinced myself that it was fairly authentically Curtis-sounding. I'm reading on IMDB that Curtis told Leonard Maltin that the voice we hear is an audio modulation blending his own voice with that of another man, an actor nemed Paul Frees. I love reading stories about how people collaborate on movie sets - the use of the Grant-voice was apparently Curtis' idea, but co-writer/director Billy Wilder had the final say, of course: he liked it, and they went with it. I don't know that so much was made on TCM of Jack Lemmon's voice - Daphne sounds pretty much like Lemmon just trying to hit a higher pitch.

Wilder and co-writer IAL "Izzy" Diamond based Some Like It Hot off the short story "Fanfare of Love" by Michael Logan. The story had also been made into a 1951 German movie Fanfaren der Liebe, so the Wilder film is sometimes said to be a remake of that movie, though it's probably more accurate to say both movies were adaptations of the story. The title refers to jazz music and I'm sure only came about after the writers decided to set their version of the story during the "Jazz Age" of the 1920s Wilder was apparently having difficulty with making it believable that poverty would be the sole motivation to cross-dress in contemporary times (worked okay in Tootsie) and thought moving the action closer to the Great Depression would be better. That also enabled him and Diamond to add elements of Prohibition-era crime to a point where the movie seems at times to be a parody of the Warner Bros. gangster films of the '30s., complete with the casting of Pat O'Brien and George Raft in supporting roles (Wilder no doubt would have tried to get Bogart if he was alive). Rumor has it Wilder wanted Edward G. Robinson for the role of Johnny Paradise (Robinson would later make a similar cameo in Robin and the Seven Hoods), but Robinson had a personal beef with Raft and wouldn't work with him - so, Wilder got Edward G. Robinson, Jr. The film occasionally makes a knowing nod from the point of view of 1959. I love the bit early on when Curtis harangues Lemmon with a litany of "what ifs?" that all ultimately happen - "What if the stock market crashes? What if the Dodgers leave Brooklyn? What if Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford split up?"
 

Curtis and Lemmon play friends and jazz muscians Joe and Jerry, who play tenor saxophone and bass respectively. They're playing with a combo in a speakeasy when they recognize Police Detective Mulligan (O'Brien) sitting in the front row and manage to slip out just before a raid begins. Mulligan's target is Spats Colombo (Raft), a spats-wearing bootlegger (I was born in the '60s. I still don't know what spats are, exactly. Something to do with shoes). Mulligan's going to take Spats downtown, but Spats is completly confident - and correct - that the charges won't stick. Joe and Jerry are constantly broke, mostly because Joe is a dreamer and a womanizer and willing to throw their salaries away on the next sure thing, usually a dog at the track with a name or long odds that he likes, while Jerry is more of a passive sad sack who complains a lot but doesn't have the fortitude to stop Joe from throwing away their money. At this particular time and place - the dead of winter in the Windy City - having no money is especially a problem. Roaming the office building where the talent scouts gather, they learn of a band about to travel to sunny Florida needing the very instruments they play. Much to their disappointment, they quickly learn the band in question is an all-girl band. Jerry is not adamantly opposed to the idea of passing as female, but Joe is. That is, until they take their borrowed car for a fiil-up in a parking garage (was that actually a thing? I've never heard of being able to do that in my own time) and stumble across the St. Valentine's Day Massacre or the slightly fictionalized cinematic equivalent, anyway. Spats takes out his vengeance on Toothpick Charlie (George E. Stone), the informant who ratted him out to Mulligan and has no qualms about eliminating all the eyewitnesses he was playing poker with in the garage as well. Joe and Jerry are also eyewitnesses and barely escape with their lives, though Spats' gang commit their features to memory. Now desperately needing to get out of town, Joe and Jerry suddenly become Josephine and ... not Geraldine, as Joe suggests for Jerry, but Daphne. And off they go by train for a three-week stint at an exotic resort lounge in Miami with the band  conducted by one Sweet Sue (Joan Shawlee) and managed by a man with the name of Bienstock ( Dave Barry, not the humor columnist, apparently). The band also has a knockout singer, "Sugar Kane" Kowalski, played by no less than Marilyn Monroe. She's beautiful but a mess - essentially a barely functioning alcoholic whose brash exterior masks a lonely little girl seeking a man to take care of her and up to this point in her life always pursuing the wrong man. Joe and Jerry both get the hots for her, and there are some scenes of rivalry between them, but Jerry soon encounters problems of his own (more on that in a bit), seemingly leaving the field clear for Joe, although he feels he can only pursue her by pretending to be a type she finds desirable - a millionaire (and an impotent one at that, manipulating her into arousing him under the guise that he's unsure he can be aroused).  In addition to maintaining their ruse, "Josephine" and "Daphne" encounter two immediate problems at the resort: it's also hosting a convention attended by the very gangsters seeking to kill them under the guise of being legitimate union employees. Also, the resort is populated with wealthy elderly millionaires seeking younger female companionship, one of whom (Joe E. Brown, another Warner Bros. star of the '30s recruited by Wilder) becomes obsessively fixated on Daphne.

Another film that really nails it on the production values - the cinematography and the jazz score in particular are superb.

Curtis is a star we typically don't get to see a lot of on TCM (and when we do, it's the same handful of movies), having spent so much of his career at Universal. I like him in all his guises in this film, but he's especially great pretending to be Grant, an actor whom he hero worshipped, as you know if you've ever seen the promotional piece he narrates on TCM. His very next film after this one was Operation Petticoat, in which he fnally got to work with his idol, Grant. I think he got a bad rap as a rather generic leading man saddled with a heavy Noo Yawk accent ("Yondah lies da castle of my faddah"), but he definitely had a gift for comedy, and he's very nimble here as he moves from one crazy situation to another. Monroe was reportedly very difficult to work with - Wilder in particular during the remainder of his long life (she was dead only three years after this film) was quite unkind to her, and even his compliments are backhanded at best. I don't have the benefit when I'm watching of knowing which scenes she had to do 130 takes for to get one line of dialogue correct - maybe it's more of a testament to Wilder and the editor, but what is used in the film is very good, her stereotypical sex bomb burdened with more than a tinge of sadness, drawn to Curtis partially because the money she believes he has but also because of the helpless child persona he affects. One reviewer I read describes Lemmon's performance as "his usual emasculated whiner taken to its logical extreme", which is funny but a bit harsh. I'm not crazy about his scenes competing with Curtis for Monroe's attention, but later when Brown treats him like a princess, the joy he expresses is supposed to be hilarious but also more than a little subversive ("Jerry, there are laws ... there are conventions!"). It could certainly be interpreted with a modern eye (and maybe even then) as a movie about a man discovering and embracing his homosexuality, and of course the film ends with one of the most famous punch lines in movie history, but I can't help but wonder where do Jerry and Osgood go from here? The sequel that could not be made in 1959. The veteran actors in the supporting roles are all nice touches - O'Brien has more zip in his performance than Raft, who at least in hindsight has been labeled a wooden actor even in his younger performances. But it's nice to see him. Wilder and his casting director, if the film had one (not sure if that was a thing in those days) smartly knew how to push the nostalgia buttons in their viewers. And an older Brown has perfect comic timing and absolutely relishes the career opportunity. The scene where and Lemmon dance together and at one point exchange the rose being held in the teeth is genius.

Having said all that, I'm a bit bewildered at its frequent "Greatest Comedy of All Time" status, as I find it overly long and some scenes not that funny. My favorite Wilder films are the noirs - Double Indemnity and Sunset Blvd. Even among his comedies, I prefer The Apartment. Still, while I won't overboard with my praise, iI will say it's a movie I genuinely like, though probably not love.

Total films seen this year: 20

 

 

 

 

[txfilmfan]

59 minutes ago, sewhite2000 said:

 The title refers to jazz music and I'm sure only came about after the writers decided to set their version of the story during the "Jazz Age" of the 1920s Wilder was apparently having difficulty with making it believable that poverty would be the sole motivation to cross-dress in contemporary times (worked okay in Tootsie) and thought moving the action closer to the Great Depression would be better.

Poverty (or, more precisely, lack of work) was also the motivation for Julie Andrews' character to cross-dress in Victor Victoria, too.

[sewhite2000]

1/12 The Great Escape (United Artists, 1963)
Source: TCM

Primetime January 12 was a double feature of World War II POW movies, one set in the European front, one in the Pacific. Both The Great Escape and The Bridge on the River Kwai are epic-length, each one running about two hours and 45 minutes. No way I was going to stay up for both of them, and The Great Escape aired first, so that's what I watched. Kwai is probably the more critically celebrated movie, but I've seen both of them multiple times and anticipate I'll get a chance to watch Kwai again later in the year.

The Great Escape is adapted from the nonfiction memoirs of Paul Brickhill, an RAF pilot whose Spitfire was shot down over Tunisia in March, 1943. He was taken to the POW camp Stalag Luft III in Zagan, Poland (in the movie, the stalag is in Germany), where he assisted in preparations for an escape attempt, in which 76 soldiers successfully got away. The screenplay was co-written by James Clavell, who was in  a Japanese POW camp during World WAr II and who would go on to write the screenplays for King Rat and To Sir with Love and the novel Shogun.The escape took place on March 24, 1944, which was Steve McQueen's 14th birthday. The movie goes off in its own direction but adapts many incidents from the book, for example the scene in which the guy crashes through the bunk beds from which too many wooden boards have been removed. As stated in a title card at the beginning of the movie, most of the events depicted the film are true, though they didn't necessarily happen in the same order nor involve the same people. While all the characters in the movie are fictional, a number of them are based on real people. The Richard Attenborough character Roger Bartlett is based on a real man in the book named Roger Bushell. The James Donald character of Group Captain Ramsey is also based on a real person, a British officer named Herbert Massey. Both Massey in real life and Ramsey in the movie were pilots who were injured when their planes were shot down, and both walked with a pronounced limp and were therefore deemed to much of a risk to participate in the escape. Other characters are based on real people, or in the case of Hilts, played by Steve McQueen, an amalgamation of several people. Even some of the Germans are modeled on real people.  Brickhill was claustrophobic in real life, and this trait was given to Danny, the character played by Charles Bronson (Bronson, a former coal mner, developed claustrophobia on that job and didn't have to act very hard to show it onscreen).The digging of three tunnels named Tom, Dick and Harry was also taken from actual events (years later, it was revealed there was a fourth tunnel called George). The real-life British POWs built an actual still to celebrate Christmas on 1943. In the movie, there are a coule of American POWs in the camp, played by McQueen and James Garner, and they build the still to celebrate the Fourth of July. In real life, Americans and Brits were initially imprisioned together in Stalag Luft III and worked together digging the tunnels, but all the Americans were transferred to another camp before the escape. 

Exteriors were shot entriely on location in Europe. A complete camp modeled after Stalag Luft III was built near Munich (distressing at least one casual passerby until he was reassured it was a movie set). The post-escape scenes not involving McQueen were shot in the Rhine country and in areas near the North Sea, while McQueen's motorcycle scenes were shot in the Alps and in the town of Fussen on the Austrian border. All shots of McQueen on the motorcycle are actually him except for the jump over the five-foot fence, which was handled by Bud Elkin, McQueen's friend and the manager of a Los Angeles-area motorcycle shop. It was the beginning of a new career for Elkin, who was also McQueen's stunt double in Bulitt and later did motorcylce stunts on CHiPS. For the gearheads like Dargo (who probably know this already), the motorcycle in the movie is a Triumph TR6, refitted to appear it was constructed a good 20 years earlier than it actually was. Interiors were shot in Bavaria Studio in Munich.

Director John Sturges was attached to the movie early on but ended up shopping it around unsuccessfully for eight years until United Artists stepped in. Walter Mirisch, whose movies were frequently released through UA, became a producer. I'm reading on IMDB that in 1963 he and his two brothers obtained principal ownership of United Artists. Not sure if that was before after the release of this movie. I think before, based on some other things I'm reading. Only after the big commercial success of Sturges' The Magnificent Seven did UA show interest in The Great Escape. Mirisch initially envisioned the two Americans as being played by frequent onscreen partners Burt Lancaster (as Hendley) and Kirk Douglas (as Hilts). Richard Harris initially signed on to play Roger, but was stuck doing reshoots on This Sporting Life, during which time the script was rewritten to give Hilts more screen time (especially once Steve McQueen was hired), largely at Roger's expense, and Harris dropped out.

The movie follows, in almost excruciating detail, the execution of the master escape plan from a prison the Nazis have specifically designed to be escape-proof. The plan is overseen by Roger, who deduces upon arrival the Nazis have made an error by bringing all the most capable soldiers into a single location, accidentally assembling an Avengers of potential escapees. Even before Roger arrives at the camp, about 20 minutes into the movie, we see the lightning-fast minds of the prisoners at work. Hilts attempts an escape immediately upon being brought in. Danny and Sedgewick (James Coburn) try to sneak out aboard a lumber truck, and Hendley (Garner) is already busy eying and appropriating the tools that will best serve him. Roger wants to do something big and send the Nazis a message in the process, a grand scheme to get 250 prisoners out through tunnels in one night. Once the master plan is in action, there aren't many moments in the movie that aren't devoted to its execution, which takes about exactly a year to reach completion. A more modern film probably would have paused for more chracter bits - and while this movie, does have some nice ones - Hendley's friendship with The Forger (Donald Pleasance) and with a less-than-zealous Nazi guard (Robert Graf) - but even these scenes are mostly employed to continue to drive the plot forward, albeit ever so slowly. Don't get me wrong - I do appreciate the attention to detail, and I feel like I actually learned some of the finer points for planning a successful POW camp escape, but the plot is pretty relentlessly single-minded, so be prepared for that. 

Meanwhile, McQueen's Hilts (I believe his first name is revealed to be Virgil, but he tells Roger and Ramsey "Just make it Hilts", while inexplicably making a "hey, kid, come over here" gesture with his hands, which I find baffling, but like most McQueen mannerisms, I love nevertheless) seems to be starring in his own movie outside of the main action, making several so-stupid-they're-brilliant escape attempts with his devoted Scottish colleague Ives (Angus Lennie) and ending up in "The Cooler" for long stretches after each one. The Brits are most worried about being able to get to a train station and get the hell out of Germany after escaping, and when Hilts is about to launch his best solo escape attempt yet, they talk him into memorizing critical details of the land surrounding the prison then letting himself get captured so he can share what he's learned with everyone else. Predictably, he has zero interest in getting re-captured once he gets out, but after a tragedy occurs, he agrees. During McQueen's various stints in The Cooler and his temporary stint as a free man, the movie focuses again on the Brits. There's one stretch of at least 30 minutes in the middle of the film where McQueen doesn't appear at all. By all accounts, he was unhappy with this and demanded script changes. By Garner's perceptive recollections, McQueen wanted Hilts to be the unquestioned hero of the movie while never actually doing anything explicity heroic that would contradict the cool detachment and sardonic attitude Hilts has toward the mass escape attempt.  McQueen was also unhappy with his character's calm acquiesence to being locked up in The Cooler all the time and especially didn't like the bits were he bounced a baseball off the wall to pass the time, though these moments have gone on to become inextricably linked to the McQueen image of cool Sturges got fed up with McQueen and was perfectly willing to release him from the movie altogether, but United Artists informed him McQueen was deemed essential for the movie's chances of financial success, and the uncredited Ivan Moffitt was brought in for re-writes that made McQueen happy (but apparently also led to Harris' departure - see above).

Long as the setup is, almost a third of the running time is devoted to what happens to the principal characters once they do escape, and these scenes, at least momentarily have a bit of a giddy thrill to them, like "Oh, my God! We actually escaped!", though things don't end well for many of the characters. It's more of a downer than I was expecting, although I was delighted to see the action open up a bit after the confines of the prison camp for so much of the movie. Also, new themes are introduced to Elmer Bernstein's score post escape, and that was refreshing as well. Although, needless to say the main theme of the score is iconic (I've been humming it in my head while typing this review), and the cinematography is beautiful.

McQueen isn't really my favorite actor, and I find his various quirks a distraction - he strikes me as too much playing a guy from 1963 to be believable in this film. But he has charisma out the wazoo (that's a technical term). My favorite actor in the movie is actually Attenborough, whose character is much like a good film director - he has the absolute authority, but is willing to collaborate with and accept the ideas of those working under him. He's tough when necessary and soft when necessary, and I really like his final scenes when he confesses wonderment at how well things actually went off, just before ... well, I won't say. Future movie tough-guy Bronson shows a suprising vulnerability here as the claustrophobic Danny. His monotone delivery can occasionally grate ("Shower! ... I need a wash!"). Coburn brings that little grit, that extra sauce that characterized much of his career. Garner is sly and manipulative, as benefits his scrounger specialty, but he also gets the most human moments, takng pity on the poor Forger, played with gentle dignity and also a bit of sadness by Pleasance.

Another triumph for Sturges, who in addition to this film and The Magnificent Seven also directed Bad Day at Black Rock and Gunfight at the OK Corral.

Total films seen this  year: 21

 

 

 

[sewhite2000]

1/13 The Boston Strangler (20th Century Fox, 1968)
Source: TCM

The second movie in the '60s to feature the big-wattage pairing of Tony Curtis and Henry Fonda, but Sex and the Single Girl was a lighter-than-air and maybe slightly braindead romantic comedy, while the subject matter here, as you can guess from the title, is much grimmer. This is right around the time the longtime Production Code was being replaced by a ratings system, and Strangler steps with some reservations into the waters of more "adult" content. The letter sytem wasn't firmly in place yet, but the movie came with a "suggested for mature audiences" warning. Promotional material for the film touts the fact that Albert DeSalvo was never convicted for any of the Strangler murders, but the movie provides a fairly compelling, if fictitious, reason for this, which I'll get into momentarily. 

Between 1962 and 1964, 13 women in Boston and the surrounding area were sexually assaulted and murdered, either by strangulation or stabbing. There were enough similarities between each incident that the police and the public came to believe they were the work of one individual, dubbed "The Boston Strangler" in the press. Eventually, police arrested a 33-year-old construction maintenance worker named Albert DeSalvo, who was married to a German immigrant and had a son and a daughter. DeSalvo confessed to the murders, revealing both while under hypnosis and not details of some of the crimes that only someone present would be able to know. He got legal representation from famous criminal attorney F. Lee Bailey and ultimately was sentenced to life in prison for a series of sexual assaults unconnected to the Boston Strangler killings. The movie's promotional material points out that DeSalvo was neither indicted nor convicted for any of the Boston Strangler murders, yet the movie seems to have no problem with declaring him guilty. In real life, his innocence or guilt was the matter of intense debate for decades; many of his defenders say his confession was coerced, and given what we know now about how the police work in this country, who knows? (The movie occasionally shows the police using what I would describe as excessive force, although it's generally presented as necessary and heroic). DeSalvo was murdered by an unidentified inmate in the prison infiirmary in 1973. Forty years later, in 2013, DeSalvo's **** was confirmed as having been present in Mary Sullivan, the final Boston Strangler victim.

Spoiler alert restricted to this paragraph only - jump ahead if you don't want to know: There was a more fictionalized film version of the story called The Strangler with Victor Buono in 1964, and journalist Gerold Frank wrote a nonfiction account of the case called The Boston Strangler, which was published in 1966. This movie is said to be an adaptation of that book, though its plot differs from the factual accounts in many ways. The movie portrays DeSalvo (Curtis) as suffering from what was then called multiple personality disorder (now dissociative identity disorder), a popular plot device in movies since 1957's The Three Faces of Eve with Joanne Woodward. The movie's DeSalvo doesn't remember committing the murders, only experiencing brief flashes of them occasionally disguised by his brain to be something less sinister (he was wrapping a busted pipe with duct tape, not binding the arms and legs of the woman he was about to r*pe and murder). The lawyer John Bottomley (Fonda), a real-life personality, agrees to not prosecute DeSalvo for the crimes if he's successful in getting DeSalvo to be aware of what he's done. He's warned by the head of the mental institution where DeSalvo is being held that if DeSalvo has to consciously face such a horrifying revelation about his true nature, his brain is very likely to more or lss shut down as a defense mechanism, leaving him in a catatonic state. It's a risk Bottomley is willing to take - DeSalvo would then have to remain in the institution, and the city would be rid of the Strangler. And so the final act sort of grimly plods toward this ending I found very depressing, as Bottomley continues to prod DeSalvo for his whereabouts during each of the crimes, and DeSalvo, wanting to know the truth about himself, cooperates and begins to remember more and more. It's pretty dramatically intense but different from the confession DeSalvo - clearly mentally ill but not in the way the movie suggests - made in real life.

20th Century Fox hired Terence Rattigan (Separate Tables, The Prince and the Showgirl) to write the script, but he envisioned a dark comedy in the style of Dr. Strangelove, which the studio found unacceptable. Rattigan's version had a super-computer reveal the murderer to be Daryl Zanuck, which Fox clearly wasn't interested in. Rattigan was replaced by Edward Anhalt (Jeremiah Johnson, Beckett). There were different ideas about who to cast in the leads. Robert Redford, Warren Beatty and Horst Buchholtz were all considered for DeSalvo. Ben Mankiewicz related the anecdote during a previous TCM airing that Curtis, whose career was in decline at the time, lobbied Richard Zanuck, by now Fox' studio head, for the part, but conventional wisdom was that Curits was too old (although he was only six years older than DeSalvo); also perhaps Curtis had been too successful at screwball comedies - the younger Zanuck simply couldn't envision him in such a dark, serious role. Curtis hired a makeup artist and a photographer and mailed Zanuck a set of "mug shots" in which he posed as DeSalvo. Zanuck confessed to Curtis he didn't recognize him at all - and Curtis got the job.  I don't know that there was much debate over hiring Fonda as Bottomly, but Robert Shaw was initially sought to play one of the two detectives who work with Bottomly - the role that ended up going to George Kennedy. Kennedy also gets above-the-title billing with Curtis and Fonda, I susepct of the result of his Oscar win for the previous year's Cool Hand Luke.

Okay, two big things that need to be mentioned about this movie. First of all, Curtis gets top billing, but he doesn't appear until slightly more than an hour of running time has elapsed, and 11 of the 13 murders have already occurred. The first half of the movie is all about the police investigation and is dominated by Fonda - one reviewer on IMDB actually says it's not so much dominated by Fonda as it is by the investigation itself. We see in detail all the minutaie of police procedure and the various false leads and shot-in-the-dark efforts that go along with them. There's unusual dignity given for the time to an early suspect who is also gay, who tells Fonda with some weariness that a gay man (Hurd Hatfield) is always the first suspect when a crime of "sexual deviancy" occurs. Heck, even though you could fill a movie with innuendo by then - check out The Best Man, also with Fonda, from a few years earlier - it was extremely rare to even hear the world "gay" in a mainstream movie. I like the little "zing" that is placed at the end of the conversation between Fonda and Hatfield, when Hatfield acknowledges having been in a heterosexual relationship but with a twist that Fonda can't guess.  There are a couple of other guys with "deviant" tendencies - a serial seducer, in pretty much the only lightly humorous scene in the movie (George Furth), who makes the mistake of trying to ensnare an undercover female officer (Jeanne Cooper) and when caught confesses the large number of women he's  gotten into bed, to the stunned amazement of Kennedy and his fellow officer played by Murray Hamilton. There's also a wife beater (unsure who the actor was) whom Fonda ends up slugging (casual police brutality! No wonder coercion was suspected) and a guy into sadism and **** (a young William Hickey). Bottomly even recruits a psychic (George Voscovek), whom the movie takes pretty seriously, this being the hippie era and all. Anyway, once Curtis finally appears, he dominates the movie from that point out. I've never seen him so dour and troubled, but I totally buy him as a potential serial killer - he was right to lobby for the role. Fonda conveys the quiet dignity he brought to a lot of his roles and also effectively communicates the pressure his character is under.

The second thing that has to be mentioned is the extensive use of split-screens and multiple screens.  Think The Thomas Crown Affair or the credits sequence of Bulitt times a hundred, with big, important action occasionally taking place in small windows, like picture-in-picture completely out of control. It was a fad of the era - Charly, from the same year, also employed some split-screens, I think, and certainly those auto-racing movies like Grand Prix and LeMans also made use of them. It's a technique I find distracting and dated, and I'm glad it was pretty much abandoned as cinema moved into the '70s.

Overall, a fairly gripping film, if too much of a downer for me to want to watch more than once every five years or so (this was my second viewing). The poster below asks an obvious question: why did 13 women open their doors to this guy (or guys?), and sadly, we don't get much perspective from the victims, other than Sally Kellerman is the rare woman who survived. Most of them only appear on camera as corpses (some of the graphic moments of this no doubt contributed to "mature viewers" warning) or just for a few seconds before being attacked.

Directed by Richard Fleischer (Solyent Green, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea).

 Total films seen this year: 22

 

[EricJ]

Raya & the Last Dragon (2021) - 👎

I've missed a LOT of Disney...Pixar and Marvel, too.  Back when the lockdown first started, I was planning a vacation, and every time I plan a Disney cruise, I go on a Disney "embargo", where I avoid seeing any new D/P movie at the cineplexes, so that I'll have something to watch at sea in the onboard theaters.  Unfortunately, delays due to Florida goofiness became longer and longer, and when I finally changed plans, that meant I could finally get a couple months of Disney+ and catch up on my two-year backlog.  The last time, I managed to save Moana and Rogue One for vacation viewing, and...I tend to worry that I have bad luck with Disney movies I first watch on home video.  From the first of the three (not to mention Pixar's underwhelming Soul), I STILL believe that.  🤦‍♂️

I tend to annoy other Disney fans by going into long criticisms of how Moana seemed to have no discernible plot known to man and--as I observed watching WW84--the new growing heroine-driven tendency to have no villains, either, just misunderstood characters who were really just acting out their misdirected insecurities and needed to get in touch with their feelings all along.  Ever since the Frozen director got rewarded by being given the entire studio (after the last two successful studio directors were MeToo'ed), I've begun suspecting that the new management isn't that big on story, but wants to give us revisionist Girl's Role Models as heroines--they don't sit around and sing about princes like THAT one!--even if we don't have the foggiest A-B central-plot clue what they're out to do by the last reel.  "Raya" sets out to swing for the fences with that goal, giving us a heroine who seems like a cross between Moana and Lara Croft, trying to find the shattered pieces of a dragon gem to reunite her Last Airbender-like generically-Asian kingdom.  The five territories are now warring in the usual "Think somebody's been watching Game of Thrones?" style (the villain-I-think's ruthless mother even has Daenerys hair), and Raya, with help from comedy-relief dragon Sisu (whose shaggy hair-fur makes voice Awkwafina's delivery uncannily suggest a tween Phyllis Diller at times) has been so traumatically burned by past political betrayals, she needs to learn to trust in people to get along.

Which unfortunately brings us to the big, big, BIG problems of female-targeted Disney movies, which, for lack of a better term, we may call the "Anna & Elsa problem":  In Frozen, Elsa was the traumatized cynic who had to learn not to shut herself off from the world, and learn to open her heart to other people again, but didn't she look so cool and independent singing "Let It Go"?--While Anna was the optimist who believed in the goodness of others, which made her the goofy, babbling, impulsive comedy-relief character whose naive nuttiness led her to so many wacky misadventures.  And to even suggest that Elsa was the one who had to learn the moral lesson at the end would suggest that she was, gasp, imperfect as a Role Model.  Here, substitute Raya's Lara-Croft kung-fu for Elsa, and Sisu's cute dragon-out-of-water babbling for Anna (she's ultimately right, but still Funny), and you have a problematic double standard:  The cool empowered heroine does eventually, in the climax, give into Sisu's advice to appeal to the better angels of others, but the opinions of this dragon do not necessarily represent those of the filmmakers.   🙄

TL;DR version:  I could just save a few paragraphs and call Raya "the Captain Marvel of Disney princesses", but the usual arguments would start again.  😛

[King Rat]

My husband and I both enjoyed watching Mister Roberts again. To watch four of the great actors of the studio era--Henry Fonda, James Cagney, William Powell, and Jack Lemmon--each at a different stage of his career, each with a meaty role for which he is perfectly cast--is a great pleasure. The material is strong and was well-crafted in three different forms: book of related short stories, Broadway play, Hollywood film. This time I William Powell most of all. It's easy to understand why Jack Lemmon took home an Oscar: in addition to all the funny scenes, he gets the big scene with the letter about Mister Roberts and gets to dispose of the new palm tree.

[TomJH]

2 hours ago, King Rat said:

My husband and I both enjoyed watching Mister Roberts again. To watch four of the great actors of the studio era--Henry Fonda, James Cagney, William Powell, and Jack Lemmon--each at a different stage of his career, each with a meaty role for which he is perfectly cast--is a great pleasure. The material is strong and was well-crafted in three different forms: book of related short stories, Broadway play, Hollywood film. This time I William Powell most of all. It's easy to understand why Jack Lemmon took home an Oscar: in addition to all the funny scenes, he gets the big scene with the letter about Mister Roberts and gets to dispose of the new palm tree.

I'm a big James Cagney fan but I've always been disappointed by his broad, cartoony portrayal of the Captain in this film. I'm not saying he can't be still enjoyed but he was an actor capable of subtle shadings and there weren't any of them in this film to bring the characterization a little more depth.

Still, Cagney did bring the film this moment . . .

"Whoooo did it?"

In the final analysis, Cagney's Captain is a mean, miserable, petty little man. Perhaps that's the way Joshua Logan wrote the character, I don't know but Cagney was an actor capable of so much more.

[Fading Fast]

Marty from 1955 with Ernest Borgnine, Betsy Blair and Esther Minciotti

 

Marty is what most romcoms try to be: romantic stories that blend pathos and humor to reflect something like real life. Romcoms are too often formulaic and forced, but Marty is a believable tale of two romantically lost souls finding each other amidst the pressures and expectations of their Bronx, blue-collar, ethnic mid-twentieth-century world.

Thirty-four-year-old butcher Marty, Ernest Borgnine, lives at home with his immigrant Italian mother (she cooks big meals, goes to Mass each day and cleans her house all the time) as, even though he's the oldest child, he's the only one not married. 

His Friday and Saturday nights are spent with his bachelor friends going to bars, dance halls or "hanging out" on popular street corners mainly in an attempt to meet "tomatoes," girls.

The boys all want to "score," while Borgnine’s mom wants him to meet a nice girl, but we quickly see that chubby, average-looking Borgnine is struggling to do either and beginning to get frustrated by both his own failure and all the "advice" he's getting. 

One night at a dance hall, he meets what is supposed to be an unattractive woman, Betsy Blair, who was, effectively, abandoned by her blind date. While everyone refers to Blair as unattractive, in one of the movie’s few false notes, Ms. Blair is an attractive woman, but Hollywood’s gonna Hollywood. 

Borgnine and Blair have an immediate connection and spend the evening walking and talking for hours sharing many of their secrets, emotions, hopes and dreams. She even briefly meets his mother and his best friend as happens in these ethnic enclaves. It’s a magical evening for both after years and years of romantic disappointment. 

When they part, Borgnine agrees to call her the next day. Yet, when he gets home, his mother is down on her because mom recently realized, when Borgnine gets married, she’ll be alone. Additionally, Borgnine's friends are down on her both because of her looks, “she’s a dog,” and because they don't think he should give up his “freedom.”

Meanwhile, Blair has excitedly told her parents about Marty. You can feel the parents’ relief and trepidation as they want this to be good, but are worried about how their daughter would face another letdown.

With his mother and friends discouraging him, plus some other pressures related to a relative coming to live with them and the possibility of buying the butcher shop he works in, Borgnine doesn't call Blair the next day. That evening, we see Blair silently crying as she watches TV with her parents. This is heartbreaking stuff.

(Spoiler alert) Just when you think this meant-for-each-other couple will miss their chance, Borgnine has a personal epiphany moment, pushes all the negative advice aside and, in the closing scene, calls Blair. You then know it will all work out. 

Marty is a romcom with grit. You might not have grown up in a Bronx Italian neighborhood in the 1950s, but you know shy and insecure-around-the-opposite-sex men and women like Borgnine and Blair who spend a lot of tough and disappointing years not finding love as they get pushed and pulled by others advice. But when they do finally find somebody, the moment is romcom and real-life magic. Kudos to Marty for sensitively capturing all of that. 

 

[sewhite2000]

1/14 Violent Playground (Dist. in the US by Rank Film Distributors of America, 1959)
Source: TCM

January 14 primetime was devoted to Stanley Baker. Violent Playground was the first British film I watched this year. I'm certainly no expert on the history of UK films, and tend to be pretty provincial in my viewing selections, as anyone who's followed my posts to date can probably tell. I do have to say, though, that while I usually roll my eyes when I see a night of Brit films is coming on TCM, when I do commit to watching, I almost always end up enjoying them. Studio-era Hollywood is all about the genres - the musicals, the Westerns, the "women's pics", the familyh films. Most of the British films I've seen from the '40s to the '60s, while they occasionally are costume dramas with courtly romance and intrigues, are commonly set in conetmporary times and focus on the everyday lives of everyday people. Sometimes, these films introduce extraordinary circumstances, and these everyday people, if they do government or law enforcement work, can end up being in a suspense thriller. That sort of happens in this movie. But generally you get a sense that the events depicted are more realistic in the British films than in their US counterparts.

The script was inspired by an actual experiment by the Liverpool Police Department in 1949, which created a small number of specialized officers to deal specifically with youth crime. There was a focus on the dangers of juvenile delinqency in the US as well in a lot of '50s films that TCM occasionally spotlights that often ramp up the hysteria. This movie takes a more subtle approach. 

A series of arson attacks are taking place across Liverpool, with a metal laundry bag being found at each scene. Detective Sergeant Jack Truman (Baker) is anxious to catch those responsible, but is frustrated when he's appointed the department's new juvenile liaison officer, for which he takes much ribbing from his colleagues. However, his new assignment ultimately leads him back to the same investigation. He picks up the two youngest Murphy children (played by real-life siblings Brona and Fergal Boland) after the boy, Patrick, is caught shoplifting. He brings them home where he meets the oldest sibling Catherine, or "Cathie" (Anne Heywood), who's been tasked at too young an age with raising her siblings, I think after their mother has left town with another man, and I don't remember what happened to the father, either dead or incarcerated, probably - I've forgotten some plot specifics in the intervening month. Cathie is overwhelmed but tough as nails: she lets the sergeant now who exactly was responsible for the shoplifting when she terrorizes the young girl Mary into coughing up her own stolen booty.  (If there's a British equivalent of CPS, they don't seem to exist in this movie). Truman begins hanging around their flat more often. He's clearly getting sweet on Cathie as well as taking pity on the whole lot. But things get complicated with the introduction of middle brother Johnnie, played by future Man from UNCLE co-star David McCallum (darn if he wasn't also "Dispersal" in The Great Escape, which I just watched). Johnnie is a movie-stereotypical "troubled youth" who heads a gang of toughs but who's also liked by the headmaster and his track coach at the school he attends. He's also treated sympathetically by the local Anglican priest, played by Peter Cushing. Not sure how big a star he was at the time - is this a heightned celebrity cameo? He would have been making his first Hammer movies right around the same time.  Johnnie and Truman don't become outright antagonists right away - in fact, there are moments when Truman takes a bit of a big brother advisory role with him, so it's all handled with more subtlety than I was anticipating. But darn if Truman's investigative sense doesn't alert him to some uncanny similarities between Johnnie and the "Firefly", the appellation given the mysterious arsonist from earlier in the film by the police. There's a connection between the laundry bags found at all the crime scenes and a young Chinese laundry truck driver (Michael Chow) and his sister (Tsai Chin), both of whom Johnnie and his gang frequently terrorize. They're not reduced to one-dimensional stereotypes, but their fearful impotence to defend themselves against the punk white kids is a little frustrating, though maybe reflective of the actual times.

Things begin spiraling in a certain direction. Even Cathie is glumly resigned to the fact that Johnnie is probably The Firefly, but she's not about to rat out her own brother and becomes angrier at Truman every step he gets closer to nailing Johnnie. It all moves toward a showdown with a class of schoolchildren taken hostage and gunpoint, and all this kitchen sink stuff turns into crime thriller for the final half hour. I won't reveal the ending, except to say that the plot steers away from either the tragedy or mega-happy ending, one of which Hollywood probably would have chosen.

I have read many English commentators on IMDB mocking the film because no one speaks in a genuine Liverpudlian accent, despite its setting. But who am I to be able to discern that accent, other than by listening to the Beatles talk? I give Violent Playground props, because all of its production elements work together to make you feel as if you are genuinely in the middle of this troubled city, an eyewitness to pretty much all the aspects of life there.

Directed by Basil Dearden, a director with whom I'm not terribly familiar. His biggest budget film was probably Khartoum with Charlton Heston and Laurence Olivier, and he directed The Assassination Bureau with Oliver Reed and Diana Rigg.

Total films seen this year: 23

[Swithin]

4 hours ago, sewhite2000 said:

Directed by Basil Dearden, a director with whom I'm not terribly familiar. His biggest budget film was probably Khartoum with Charlton Heston and Laurence Olivier, and he directed The Assassination Bureau with Oliver Reed and Diana Rigg.

Although I'm not familiar with Violent Playground, I am familiar with director Dearden's work, particularly two rather courageous films, Victim and Sapphire. He also directed a couple of episodes in Dead of Night, and was uncredited for his work on the absolutely brilliant and hilarious The Green Man.