I Just Watched...

[TomJH]

My parents took me to see How the West Was Won at the show when it first came out. It was regarded as a special movie blockbuster and you had to purchase tickets in advance before going to the theatre. Makes me feel more than a little ancient to reflect now that with all those actors that appeared in the film only two, to the best of my knowledge, are still alive.

[JamesJazGuitar]

I watched How the West was Won (off and on);    I wonder what others think about George Peppard's performance in this film.     Peppard doesn't get a lot of love at this forum based on what I have seen.     While he still lacks a degree of energy and charm in this film I feel he does a good job here.

My favorite  performance from him is in Home from the Hills.

 

[filmnoirguy]

13 minutes ago, TomJH said:

My parents took me to see How the West Was Won at the show when it first came out. It was regarded as a special movie blockbuster and you had to purchase tickets in advance before going to the theatre. Makes me feel more than a little ancient to reflect now that with all those actors that appeared in the film only two, to the best of my knowledge, are still alive.

I had the same experience seeing this movie with my parents.  Back in the day, we would go to the "show."  Remind me, who are the two actors still alive?

[TomJH]

9 minutes ago, filmnoirguy said:

I had the same experience seeing this movie with my parents.  Back in the day, we would go to the "show."  Remind me, who are the two actors still alive?

According to my calculations, Carroll Baker and (in a bit part) Russ Tamblyn. Can anyone think of any others? I was a big fan of Jimmy Stewart's mountain man performance when I first saw the film up on three big screens.

 

[JamesJazGuitar]

6 minutes ago, filmnoirguy said:

I had the same experience seeing this movie with my parents.  Back in the day, we would go to the "show."  Remind me, who are the two actors still alive?

Same here;    This was one of the few bonding moments I had with my father;    He took his 3 sons to see this film at one of those "special"  wide-screen theaters in Los Angeles.

We didn't do something like that until he took the entire family,  including my younger sister and mom to see M.A.S.H.      Mom went nuts (R rated  and all) and that was the last time the family ever went to see a film together!

    

[King Rat]

1 hour ago, JamesJazGuitar said:

I watched How the West was Won (off and on);    I wonder what others think about George Peppard's performance in this film.     Peppard doesn't get a lot of love at this forum based on what I have seen.     While he still lacks a degree of energy and charm in this film I feel he does a good job here.

My favorite  performance from him is in Home from the Hills.

 

Peppard is very good in Home from the Hills and also in The Strange One. In her interview with Robert Osborne, Patricia Neal says that she was initially pleased to be cast in Breakfast at Tiffany's opposite him because they had done a scene together at the Actors Studio. However, as the film was being made, she thought his early success had gone to his head, and she did not enjoy working with him.

[Fading Fast]

Kiss Me Deadly, released in 1955, is based on the Mickey Spillane novel of the same name. It stars Ralph Meeker, Maxine Cooper, Cloris Leachman, Paul Stewart, Marian Carr and a 1954 Corvette.

 

 

Plot summary: A lot of noir stuff happens because of something related to a woman who escapes from a mental hospital. 

 

Until just before the end of Kiss Me Deadly, you really don't know much more than that. The "something related to the woman" is a macguffin*, but even Hitchcock let you know what the macguffin was. Yet here, Spillane and director Robert Aldrich keep you in the dark until the picture is nearly over.

 

Sure, you can follow the plot a bit more than just implied, but this being my first time through this very complex noir movie, even when it was over, I didn't put all the pieces together. Yet that didn't prevent me from greatly enjoying all the cool stuff that happens along the way. 

 

Confusing Kiss Me Deadly works because Ralph Meeker, as Mike Hammer, takes you on an intense trip through noirland. The movie shifts into high gear right out of the shoot and rarely slows down. 

 

In the opening scene, a naked-under-her-trench-coat blonde, Cloris Leachman, the asylum escapee, is running along a highway when she aggressively flags down a driving-by Hammer before jumping in his very cool Jaguar. Soon after, the bad guys run them off the road; his car is destroyed; the blonde is killed, but an injured Hammer survives.

 

Weep not for the Jag, as waiting in the wings is an insanely cool 1954 Corvette in which Hammer speeds all over Los Angeles trying to figure out who was behind the highway hit job on him and the girl. But first, he has to remove the bomb in the Vette that was supposed to explode when he started it up. What is it all about?

 

Right after his highway "accident," his detective "friend" and the rest of the police ride Hammer hard for answers, but he doesn't give them any. One feels it's because he has a general dislike of the police and because he doesn't have the answers anyway.

 

Instead, after giving the police a Heisman, he and his assistant, Velda Wickman, played with sensual verve by Maxine Cooper, launch their own throwing-punches-in-the-dark investigation. 

 

Wickman is the kinda cute girl who becomes insanely attractive when you see how smart and loyal she is - she's the one you marry. Of course, her not subtle proposition to Hammer of just such an idea falls on deaf ears, but that doesn't stop him from **** her out (yes, literally) for information. Some men get better women than they deserve.

 

The rest of the movie is Hammer pushing on everyone as he tries to figure out who the blonde that jumped in his car was and why she got killed. 

 

Whatever the reason, it's clear some mob or underworld group is involved as they keep trying to  bump off Hammer (remember the bomb in Vette), or pay him off, or rough him up, or throw an attractive woman at him as a distraction (naturally, that last one is the only strategy that almost works).

 

Along the way, Hammer takes us through the seedy noir sights of LA - boxing gyms, dive bars, tenements and parking garages. But this dark phantasmagoria of the City of Angels also reveals a few of the high-end spots - a fancy nightclub, a private estate and an exclusive athletic club (a stark contrast to the down-market boxing gym). 

 

Most of the good guys populate the grittier places where Hammer has his friends and connections (one wonderfully portrayed by the outstanding actor Juano Hernandez). The bad guys, conversely, live and move in the fancy places that Hammer has to push his way into, only to be thrown out of later. 

 

It's all classic noir as Hammer beats up a few people and gets beat up himself, is held hostage where he's injected with sodium pentothal (a surprisingly common thing in 1940s/1950s noirland), beds a few women (not shown, the Motion Picture Production Code and all, but we get it) and angers the police more than once.

 

After leaving us in the dark for almost ninety percent of the movie, Kiss Me Deadly races to a conclusion (spoiler alert) revealing the macguffin to be a box containing a radioactive isotope stolen from the Manhattan Project. 

 

Exactly how it all ties together isn't fully explained (at least I didn't get it on this first viewing), but we understand the motivation for all the chasing and fighting and killing and subterfuge is to get this isotope to then, one assumes, sell it to an enemy government.

 

The conclusion is pretty dramatic, but you'll want to see it without any advanced knowledge. I have to leave it to the Spillane/Hammer fans to comment on the movie's adherence to the novel and its famous private investigator, but as a standalone picture, even though it's confusing as heck, Kiss Me Deadly is an intensely enjoyable noir romp through mid-century Los Angeles.

 

 

*In fiction, a "macguffin" is an object, device, or event that is necessary to the plot and the motivation of the characters, but insignificant, unimportant, or irrelevant in itself. The term was originated by Angus MacPhail for film, adopted by Alfred Hitchcock, and later extended to a similar device in other fiction. [From Wikipedia]

[EricJ]

7 hours ago, TomJH said:

 

Just apropos of little except curvy widescreens, after years of waiting, and diving into the obscure, monk-like world of film restoration for news, just found out that the long awaited Cinerama restoration of Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962) had turned up a Blu-ray date on Warner Archive, in both widescreen and Smilebox, for 3/29/22:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09R6VTNNV/

I recently dug my late-80's VHS out of the closet, to give one of my last faithful remaining commercial VHS titles a respectful sendoff, only to discover that the black tape reels inside had now turned an unnatural gray 😱--I knew I was terrified of playing it one more time for years now, but was this a layer of dust on the inside, or had the specter of moldy VHS Rot finally come for my last beloved tape?

[sewhite2000]

1/16 The Barefoot Contessa (United Artists, 1954)
Source; TCM

Not quite a Rashomon-telling of the rise and fall of a Spanish peasant girl and nightclub dancer (Ava Gardner) who's recruited to become a movie star, reluctantly, by an American writer-director (Humphrey Bogart) at the insistance of an obsessive movie mogul (Warren Stevens) and his oily press agent (Edmond O'Brien, who picked up the Best Supporting Actor after the vote was no doubt largely split up between the three nominees in that category that year for On the Waterfront). Everyone is gathered in Italy for the funeral of Maria Vargas, and various characters recount their associations with her over the last handful of years of her brief in voiceover narrative, and we get a more or less chronological narrative of that time, with at least one scene told from two different character's perspectives (though the events they relate are exactly the same, unlike Rashomon).

The script seems to make certain everyone watching knows that the Bogart character is a WRITER-director, which probably makes sense, because the film is the work of an actual writer-director, Joseph Mankiewicz, great-uncle of TCM's Ben Mankiewicz, and Ben always seems to take particular delight in introducing the films worked on by his ancestors. Previously, I think at MGM, Mankiewicz had been a producer and writer of films he didn't direct, and then at Fox, he was a writer and director of films he didn't produce. But Barefoot Contessa was his first effort as a triple threat, made independently and released through United Artists. You can clearly tell watching this movie that he's one the side of the writer-directors (or the writers and the directors), and you can see what he thinks of producers and press agents. There was enough similarity between the Stevens character of Kirk Edwards and Howard Hughes that Hughes threatened to sue. It was too late to change the way the character looked, but there were some hasty edits to the things he said only days before the movie's world premiere in New York City. Gardner had a relationship with Hughes, which made the situation extra dicey. I think Ben described Contessa as a behind-the-scenes expose of moviemaking the way Mankiewicz' All about Eve was the same for Broadway plays. But that's not all it is. It's also a lavishly filmed, beautiful to look at character study that maybe moves a little too slowly and lingers a little too long in self-indulgent dialogue.

There's another thread on these boards about the parts actors/actresses could have played or almost got the chance to play but didn't for one reason or another, and every time I write a review on this thread, I think I should go over to that one and reiterate what I say here. Makniewicz initially wanted an unknown in the title role, just as the character begins the films as an unknown. He looked at England's Joan Collins and the Libya-born Italian film star Rossana Podesta, then decided he needed a big name in the role after all.  Linda Darnell was Mankiewicz' lover at the time, and he'd apparently made some vague, noncommital promises to her, and it was apparently a great disapointment to her that she didn't get the part. They split up soon after. Elizabeth Taylor was considered (she probably was considered for pretty much everything in those days). Aspects of Maria's life are based on real-life experiences of Rita Hayworth and Ava Gardner both. The part was offered to Hayworth, divorced from Aly Khan by this time, but she turned it down. Gardner was under contract to MGM, where Mankiewicz had just made Julius Caesar, during which there many conflicts between him and studio head Nicholas Schenck (Louis B. Mayer resigned in 1951), and grudges were held. When Mankiewicz requested Gardner be loaned out for this film, Schenck charged him $200,000 - twice what Bogart was making - and 10 per cent of the gross. The film did so well that Mankiewicz ended up having to pay Gardner $1 million,  while MGM only paid her weekly salary, which amounted to $60,000. Gardner had never danced before but rehearsed her big number for three weeks. It had been a while since I'd seen the film. There's a scene early on where the Americans come to watch Maria do her routine in the nightclub, and there are no shots of her dancing, just of the reaction among the crowd and the employees. And I thought to myself, not being able to remember, "Did they film it this way because Ava Gardner couldn't dance?", but she does dance with the gypsies later in the movie.

As far as the male roles go, Mankiewicz pursued several actors he'd just worked with on Julius Caesar, but he only got one of them. He offered the part of writer-director Harry Dawes (like Elizabeth Taylor, Brando was probably getting more offers than he could handle in those years), but Brando, in a quote that's perhaps apocryphal but still made me smile, told Mankiewicz "I'm not making pictures about movie stars this year. I'm not even into being a movie star myself." I don't know what Bogart thought about being second choice behind Brando, but he took the role. Bogart a few years earlier had been delighted to be something of a suprise winner over Brando for the 1951 Best Actor Oscar (for The African Queen, while Brando did the "Hey, Stella!" bit in A Streetcar Named Desire). Bogart seemed to have been prickly off camera with a number of his leading ladies not named Lauren Bacall. He didn't particularly care for Audrey Hepburn's acting talents (or lack of same, in his opinion) in Sabrina, made the same year, and he wasn't impressed with Gardner either, later telling intimates that she gave him nothing to work with. I see some comments on IMDB that Bogart was good friends with Frank Sinatra, whom Gardner had recently divorced, and that didn't make especially make him warm up to her. Gardner, for her part,  wrote in her autobiography that Bogart wasn't easy to work with because he complained about everything. It certainly didn't ease tensions when the original movie poster came out without Bogart's image on it, a violation of his contract. Bogart arranged for a large line drawing of his face to be added. Mankiewicz wanted James Mason, Brutus in his Julius Caesar, to play Favrini, the Italian nobleman who marries Maria. Mason and Gardner had worked together before on Pandora and the Flying Dutchman. But Mason was also under contract to MGM, and Schenck, who'd already price gouged Mankiewicz for Gardner's services, refused to loan out Mason also. Mankiewicz had to settle for Rossano Brazzi, which didn't please him. He later wrote Brazzi "couldn't act, couldn't be sensual, could barely speak English". Although one happy circumstance came out of this for Mankiewicz: Rosemary Matthews, who was hired to help Brazzi with his English dialogue, became the next Mrs. Mankiewicz.   The one Julius Caesar alumn Mankiewicz was able to get was O'Brien, who'd played Brutus' co-conspirator Casca. O'Brien frequently clowned around on the Caesar set between takes, and Mankiewicz thought he saw the perfect foundation for the character of Muldoon, the press agent. O'Brien was at a stage in his career when he was getting leading roles and was reluctant to take a supporting part, but Bogart told him he and the part were "a perfect match". As unctuous as the character is, I'm not sure that was a compliment, but O'Brien did get an Oscar. He was the only nominee that year in the category from a film that wasn't also nominated for Best Picture.(like I said, there were three nominees for On the Waterfront; the other nominee was Tom Tully for The Caine Mutiny, who, as I recall, gets to share one scene with Bogart in that picture). Stevens, who plays the producer Edwards, came to the film from Broadway. He went on to make many appearances in film and on television over the remainder of his lengthy career.

So, after all that behind the scenes stuff, I'll be brief on the plot summary. The film opens in Italy at the funeral of the Countess Toriato-Favrini, better known as Maria Vargas (Gardner), attended by the people who knew her best during her final handful of years in which she enjoyed fame and wealth as a movie star, jet-setting celebrity and bride of some of the world's richest men but also experienced unhappiness in her personal life. We watch these years of Maria's life, as they're relayed to us essentially in chapters, each one narrated in voiceover by one of the male leads. Writer-director Harry Dawes (Bogart) remembers discovering Maria as a nightclub dancer in her native Spain (the whole movie was shot in Italy - Spain at the height of the Franco regime wasn't a welcoming locale for American film crews) accompanied by producer Kirk Edwards (Stevens), press agent Oscar Muldoon (O'Brien); he's charmed with her refusal to be impressed by fame or power. She's more interested in character - Harry is the only one of the three men she'll talk to. She also tends to not wear shoes - hence the film's title. Feeling the grass on her bare feet literally keeps her grounded, reminding her of the poverty from which she came, when shoes were an undreamed-of luxury, but also reminding her to stay connected to life's simple pleasures. Harry convinces Maria to take a chance on acting, and her first film is a huge hit. Though they're the two leads, and Bogart and Gardner do exude on-screen chemistry, this isn't a traditional Hollywood romance. Harry actually becomes more of a protective father figure to Maria. He's got a wife back in Hollywood (Elizabeth Sellars) and, surprise, surprise, he remains faithful to her throghout the course of the picture to the point where infidelity isn't even suggested to be a choice for Harry. Maybe I just expected it at some point because of what I'm conditioned to in standard Hollywood fare. Meanwhile, until she falls in love with Brazzi's count, Maria has romances with the wealthy and powerful but reserves her passion for men who remain offscreen, whom she refers to as her "cousins", but who draw her away on occasion with flamenco guitar playing, I guess reminding her of her roots. This scenes are a little heavy-handed.

There are more flashbacks - Muldoon remembers the sensational case shortly after Maria attains international stardom when her henpecked father back in Spain apparently has enough of her overbearing mother (an early scene has Maria responding to the Americans' suggestion that once she makes enough money she could send for her mother to live with her in California by saying, "I would not like for my mother to live with me") and kills her. Maria's testimony at his trial is so moving, he's acquitted. I don't know if was on Mankiewicz' mind, but the subplot reminded me of real-life sensationalist Hollywood Babylon-type scandals of the '50s involving Lana Turner and others. Muldoon also remembers Maria falling in love and running away with Alberto Bravano, the richest man in South America (Powell and Pressburger regular Maurius Goring). One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when Bravano calmly and confidently torments Edwards at a party with the fact that he's taking Maria away from him. The flashback continues as the relationship goes sour, and Brazzi's Count Torlato-Favrini defends Maria's honor at another party.  This segues into the final flashback/voiceover from Brazzi, recounting the course of their ultimately rocky marriage, sending the film to its final act.

Almost needless to say, The Barefoot Contessa looks great visually. There's beautiful cinematography, rich in autumnal colors and splendid costumes and settings, befitting all the fabulously wealthy characters. And speaking of those characters, I feel like the film could have been a propaganda piece for Communist sympathizers at this time, the height of the McCarthy Era. The decadent capitalism Maria gets to enjoy only leaves her with ennui and depression, and the men in her life are all louts, Harry being the only decent one.

It's a relatively low-key role for Bogart, whose Harry mostly serves to react to whatever's going on in Maria's life at any given moment. The essential intelligence and decency of the character shine through, but I always like a little edge or cynicism or desperation or something in my Bogie performances (or comedy, which he was suprisingly good at in The African Queen), but bottom line, it's Bogart, and I love everything he does. Gardner has to deliver a lot of her dialogue in very stilted language, and for all this talk about herself and her feelings, I think her Maria is largely supposed to be an enigma to us, and in that regard, I guess she's successful. I like her dancing and her elegance. O'Brien for most of the film plays an idiot blowhard, and he's all right, I guess. Unsure if it was Oscar-worthy, but the circumstances were in his favor with all those Waterfront nominees, and he had a long and varied career: I wouldn't mind him being SOTM some day or at least getting a SUTS day (it's probably happenef before, but I'm too lazy to do the research), Stevens seems to be going for pure evil most of the time. He has a nice intensity to an otherwise rather one-note performance. Goring is delightful in pretty much everything I've ever seen him in, so chameleonic, I don't always recognize him. He gets to play a pretty wide range in his limited screen time - first the smug thief-of-hearts, then the hateful end-of-the-affair partner. And Brazzi is European and charming but doesn't bring a lot of depth.

Mankiewicz deserves his place in the pantheon of the great directors. All about Eve is one of my all-time favorite films (and there's a visual gag here that indicates this movie takes place in a "shared universe" with that one, something we didn't see a lot of in those days). He was on a really great run for a few years there, and I'm hesitant to say The Barefoot Contessa is where it stopped, but it could have been more than it was.

Total films seen this year: 27

 

[King Rat]

Although I wouldn't put To Catch a Thief or Dial M for Murder among Hitchcock's greatest films, if I turn on TV and they are on, I will watch them to the end. Again. Enjoying them thoroughly. Today it was Dial M for Murder, so obviously an adaptation of a stage play. Hitchcock has the camera pan as characters move so that it doesn't become too static. The costumes and lighting have a great deal of blue. In one scene, all four of the main characters are wearing blue. The men wear stylish suits. All four actors are blue-eyed, and Grace Kelly has large, especially beautiful eyes. Kelly is always at her best in Hitchcock's films; Ray Milland makes a suave villain; Robert Cummings doesn't let the side down, giving perhaps his best film performance; and John Williams as Inspector Hubbard simply walks off with all the scenes he's in. By the way, in one of the later scenes, Cummings refers to him as "Inspector Williams," not Inspector Hubbard.

[txfilmfan]

4 minutes ago, King Rat said:

Although I wouldn't put To Catch a Thief or Dial M for Murder among Hitchcock's greatest films, if I turn on TV and they are on, I will watch them to the end. Again. Enjoying them thoroughly. Today it was Dial M for Murder, so obviously an adaptation of a stage play. Hitchcock has the camera pan as characters move so that it doesn't become too static. The costumes and lighting have a great deal of blue. In one scene, all four of the main characters are wearing blue. The men wear stylish suits. All four actors are blue-eyed, and Grace Kelly has large, especially beautiful eyes. Kelly is always at her best in Hitchcock's films; Ray Milland makes a suave villain; Robert Cummings doesn't let the side down, giving perhaps his best film performance; and John Williams as Inspector Hubbard simply walks off with all the scenes he's in. By the way, in one of the later scenes, Cummings refers to him as "Inspector Williams," not Inspector Hubbard.

One reason for the camera placement and movement in Dial M is that it was shot in 3-D.  I've seen it once in 3-D.  There's not a lot of typical 3-D schtick (things flying towards the camera, etc) but the camera placement is such to take advantage of the illusion of depth in most scenes.

[speedracer5]

18 hours ago, mkahn22 said:

Kiss Me Deadly, released in 1955, is based on the Mickey Spillane novel of the same name. It stars Ralph Meeker, Maxine Cooper, Cloris Leachman, Paul Stewart, Marian Carr and a 1954 Corvette.

I just watched this the other day too! I'd seen it a few times prior, I even own the Criterion.  I showed the film to my husband who is currently reading (well listening to them on Audible) classic detective novels.  He read The Big Sleep, was almost finished with The Maltese Falcon, and was about to move onto The Thin Man. I asked him if he was going to read any of the Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer stories, specifically Kiss Me Deadly. I learned that he hadn't seen this film.  

This movie has a very convoluted plot, it definitely needs more than one watch.  Some of the characters I'm not entirely sure how they affect the plot, e.g. the nymphomaniac "Friday" who is ready to jump Mike Hammer's bones as soon as he steps out of his car.  But the film is definitely entertaining, especially when we see less of Velda and more of Mike's investigation of the box. I thought Ralph Meeker was fantastic.  I love how brutal he can be, when he needs information--such as when he smashes the coroner's hand in the drawer when the man won't give up the key found in Cloris Leachman's stomach during the autopsy.  I also love how he drinks everyone's drinks when he busts in on them at home.

Do we ever learn the relevance of Cloris' "Remember Me" ? Did she have knowledge about "the box" and Albert Dekker wanted her eliminated? 

[Vautrin]

I had never seen HTWWW before, just knew it  was  a long  sprawling epic on the subject of  the title. This  flick would make an excellent

AV aid for conservative private schools. Killing Indians, stealing their land, rinse  and repeat. Nope  it  was brave folks  with grit and

determination  that won the west, not slaughter and  theft. And all done with numerous thanks to the good Lord throughout. A true

early   1960s time  capsule.  It does have some good parts and some  of  the  set pieces are visually excellent. Then there are  the

unintentionally  comic parts-Jimmy Stewart and  Carroll Baker as lovers? Yeech.  John  Wayne  as  Sherman towering over Harry

Morgan  as Grant. And  the problem  on TV of recognizing some of the supporting players. All in all fairly entertaining, though

perhaps it should have been titled The Unsinkable Lilith  Prescott. 

[Hibi]

On 2/23/2022 at 11:08 AM, TomJH said:

My parents took me to see How the West Was Won at the show when it first came out. It was regarded as a special movie blockbuster and you had to purchase tickets in advance before going to the theatre. Makes me feel more than a little ancient to reflect now that with all those actors that appeared in the film only two, to the best of my knowledge, are still alive.

Caroll Baker and who else?

Oh, I see you already answered that.

[Fading Fast]

Play Girl from 1941 with Kay Francis, Nigel Bruce, Mildred Coles and Margaret Hamilton

 

 

MGM studios signed Kay Francis up for a seven-year contract just when her batting average was about to plunge, uh, people stopped going to see her movies. It happens - ask any baseball team, ever. 

 

In response, MGM, hoping she'd quit, put her in lousy pictures or loaned her out to other studios to be in lousy pictures. It didn't work; Francis showed up for her lousy pictures and collected her paycheck. Good for her. 

 

Play Girl is better than a lousy picture, but only somewhat. Francis plays a gold digger whose modus operandi is to get engaged to wealthy men and then, when they discover who she really is, have them or their father's pay her off to go away. After a couple decades of this, she's aging out of her profession, but has no savings.

 

So she finds a young, pretty protegee, Mildred Coles, to train to do the same thing. Coles goes along half-heartedly because she really just wants to find a good guy to marry. 

 

For her first assignment, Coles succeeds in bilking some money out of wealthy, older and silly Nigel Bruce. He writes out a big check when Francis tells him Coles is going to sue him for breach of contract as she believes Bruce implied he would marry her. 

 

If you're wondering how all this got by the Motion Picture Production Code, the answer is it's all handled in an almost screwball comedy way in which no one seems to really be taking any of it seriously. 

 

That's also why the movie doesn't work: what's the point of a team of con-artist women if they are really nice girls who don't truly do bad things except to very wealthy and silly men who don't seem to really mind being taken advantage of.  

 

(Spoiler alert, I guess) It all ends happily, but you're not particularly vested in the characters by then. The only really good thing in Play Girl is Margaret Hamilton, The Wicked Witch of the West, as Francis' maid and confidant. She brings her wonderful brand of dismissive sarcasm to an otherwise too-fluffy effort. 

 

I like that Kay Francis, essentially, stared down Louis B Mayer and collected her paycheck, but that's no endorsement of this frivolous movie.

 

 

N.B. Hollywood, not surprisingly, in its pre-code Era, put out a much better movie under the same title, but with a completely different story and starring young, lithe and talented Loretta Young (comments on 1932's Play Girl here: https://www.thefedoralounge.com/threads/what-was-the-last-movie-you-watched.20830/post-2725973)

 

    

[Tikisoo]

When Poitier died I requested one of my favorites, TO SIR WITH LOVE since MrTiki had never seen it. 

I love this movie because as a teacher I see the truth in the story. It's very quickly & succinctly told, the acting is great, the London setting is fun too. But the clothing & hairstyles of the 60's RULE this movie, instantly putting me back in time.

Poitier is an engineer who can't get a job so he takes a position teaching inner City London troubled students. Completely out of his element, he sees most of the kids' problems stem from never being taught basic social manners. By taking the class off curriculum, he teaches them by example & wins their respect, causing them to think outside of themselves & make better decisions. (I adopted this tactic-works even with 3rd graders)

Sadly, the incredibly effective tactics Mr Thackery uses would never be allowed today. He actually used the words "brat" and "sluut" to describe the girl's behaviour and he physically boxed when challenged by a student. This directly illustrates what is wrong with our present school system: the students are allowed to rule the administration, everyone gets a "star" and no student is responsible for their actions, making this truly a period piece for more than just the clothing.

PS look at that screen capture of Poitier. I so much prefer his real, natural face to the airbrushed-to-perfection faces in media  today.

[Fading Fast]

9 minutes ago, TikiSoo said:

When Poitier died I requested one of my favorites, TO SIR WITH LOVE since MrTiki had never seen it. 

I love this movie because as a teacher I see the truth in the story. It's very quickly & succinctly told, the acting is great, the London setting is fun too. But the clothing & hairstyles of the 60's RULE this movie, instantly putting me back in time.

Poitier is an engineer who can't get a job so he takes a position teaching inner City London troubled students. Completely out of his element, he sees most of the kids' problems stem from never being taught basic social manners. By taking the class off curriculum, he teaches them by example & wins their respect, causing them to think outside of themselves & make better decisions. (I adopted this tactic-works even with 3rd graders)

Sadly, the incredibly effective tactics Mr Thackery uses would never be allowed today. He actually used the words "tramp" and "sluut" to describe the girl's behaviour and he physically boxed when challenged by a student. This directly illustrates what is wrong with our present school system: the students are allowed to rule the administration, everyone gets a "star" and no student is responsible for their actions, making this truly a period piece for more than just the clothing.

PS look at that screen capture of Poitier. I so much prefer his real, natural face to the airbrushed-to-perfection faces in media  today.

↑Those are great comments. I love this one and have seen it more times than I care to admit, but yes, I watched it last week when it was on. He made so many good movies around this time it's insane. 

[LornaHansonForbes]

On 2/24/2022 at 12:39 PM, speedracer5 said:

 I showed the film [KISS ME DEADLY] to my husband who is currently reading (well listening to them on Audible) classic detective novels.  He read The Big Sleep, was almost finished with The Maltese Falcon, and was about to move onto The Thin Man. I asked him if he was going to read any of the Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer stories, specifically Kiss Me Deadly. I learned that he hadn't seen this film. 

KISS ME DEADLY is one of the best films of the 1950's, but I have NEVER been able to make it past 15 pages of anything SPILLANE wrote.

He is just not a good writer.

Tell your husband to check out RED HARVEST by DASHIELL HAMMETT if he hasn't already, it's really good (I've even read it twice, and I don't generally do that)

[LornaHansonForbes]

i'm not a fan of ALAN RUDOLPH'S films.

I REALLY didn't like that thing with ANTHONY PERKINS and GERALDINE CHAPMAN that showed on UNDERGROUND a few months back; I hated AFTERGLOW, I hated MRS PARKER AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE and I hated one other film he did that I can't think of right now.

So, imagine my surprise when I saw that TROUBLE IN MIND (1985)- directed by RUDOLPH- was on amazon prime for free and I checked it out (I have always been curious about it ever since I saw the photo of KEITH CARRADINE looking like a PUNK COUNT CHOCULA in THE PSYCHOTRONIC FILM AND VIDEO GUIDE)

AND YOU KNOW WHAT? maybe I'm getting more patient in my old age, BUT I really LIKED IT.

It's kind of aimless and plotless for a good spell, but the actors are so alluring (I have to admit, I have not got much familiarity with KRIS KRISTOFFERSON'S work, but he's not bad at all as an actor and he has FILM NOIR FACE, and GENEVIEVE BUJOLD could read the phone book and fascinate me, although her hair is TERRIBLE in this film, bless her heart) and it's good-looking and not sluggish and there';s something very "MOVIE MOVIE" about it, it's conscious of its cinema-ness and movie-plot origins, a lot like MARTHA IVERS or DEAD RECKONING.

this film is definitely a film noir and would be great for NOIR ALLEY.

ONCE THE PLOT is finally sprung- it's a brilliant conceit- a desperate woman (played by LORI SINGER, who I've always thought of as the DISCOUNT BRAND DARYL HANNAH and this movie did nothing to change that opinion) enlists an ex con/ex cop to help save her wayward husband's life from a local gangster, and in doing so, the ex cop/ex con makes her promise she will leave her husband and go with him.

I mean, that is FILM NOIR to the BONE right there.

DIVINE is in this. he's not wearing make up and he seems unsteady at moments in his performance- but somehow the whole rest of the film catches a case of camp from him at the end, and the damn thing borders on JON WATERS TERRITORY and the results are not un-amusing. 

A guy who is not CHRIS FARLEY but who looks SO MUCH like CHRIS FARLEY it is UNCANNY is also in this

KOOKY MOVIE, but a lot of fun, with a very CLASSIC FILM sensibility to it.

 

[Swithin]

On 2/24/2022 at 12:39 PM, speedracer5 said:

I just watched this the other day too! I'd seen it a few times prior, I even own the Criterion.  I showed the film to my husband who is currently reading (well listening to them on Audible) classic detective novels.  He read The Big Sleep, was almost finished with The Maltese Falcon, and was about to move onto The Thin Man. I asked him if he was going to read any of the Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer stories, specifically Kiss Me Deadly. I learned that he hadn't seen this film.  

This movie has a very convoluted plot, it definitely needs more than one watch.  Some of the characters I'm not entirely sure how they affect the plot, e.g. the nymphomaniac "Friday" who is ready to jump Mike Hammer's bones as soon as he steps out of his car.  But the film is definitely entertaining, especially when we see less of Velda and more of Mike's investigation of the box. I thought Ralph Meeker was fantastic.  I love how brutal he can be, when he needs information--such as when he smashes the coroner's hand in the drawer when the man won't give up the key found in Cloris Leachman's stomach during the autopsy.  I also love how he drinks everyone's drinks when he busts in on them at home.

Do we ever learn the relevance of Cloris' "Remember Me" ? Did she have knowledge about "the box" and Albert Dekker wanted her eliminated? 

My grandmother took me to the movies a lot when I was a little kid. I was very young -- like five or six -- and the films were sometimes a bit complicated for me. One scene from a film crept into my dreams once in a while: a woman opens a box from which fire emerges that envelopes everything. I could never remember what that film was until decades later, when I saw Kiss Me Deadly again. It's a terrifying scene and always impresses anyone I show it to.

[EricJ]

3 hours ago, LornaHansonForbes said:

i'm not a fan of ALAN RUDOLPH'S films.

I REALLY didn't like that thing with ANTHONY PERKINS and GERALDINE CHAPMAN that showed on UNDERGROUND a few months back; I hated AFTERGLOW, I hated MRS PARKER AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE and I hated one other film he did that I can't think of right now.

Only one I've been able to stand was Timothy Hutton and Kelly McGillis in Made in Heaven (1987), as that was his most studio-mainstream, and even that one keeps turning too "quirky" for its own darned good.

[King Rat]

4 hours ago, LornaHansonForbes said:

i'm not a fan of ALAN RUDOLPH'S films.

I REALLY didn't like that thing with ANTHONY PERKINS and GERALDINE CHAPMAN that showed on UNDERGROUND a few months back; I hated AFTERGLOW, I hated MRS PARKER AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE and I hated one other film he did that I can't think of right now.

So, imagine my surprise when I saw that TROUBLE IN MIND (1985)- directed by RUDOLPH- was on amazon prime for free and I checked it out (I have always been curious about it ever since I saw the photo of KEITH CARRADINE looking like a PUNK COUNT CHOCULA in THE PSYCHOTRONIC FILM AND VIDEO GUIDE)

AND YOU KNOW WHAT? maybe I'm getting more patient in my old age, BUT I really LIKED IT.

It's kind of aimless and plotless for a good spell, but the actors are so alluring (I have to admit, I have not got much familiarity with KRIS KRISTOFFERSON'S work, but he's not bad at all as an actor and he has FILM NOIR FACE, and GENEVIEVE BUJOLD could read the phone book and fascinate me, although her hair is TERRIBLE in this film, bless her heart) and it's good-looking and not sluggish and there';s something very "MOVIE MOVIE" about it, it's conscious of its cinema-ness and movie-plot origins, a lot like MARTHA IVERS or DEAD RECKONING.

this film is definitely a film noir and would be great for NOIR ALLEY.

ONCE THE PLOT is finally sprung- it's a brilliant conceit- a desperate woman (played by LORI SINGER, who I've always thought of as the DISCOUNT BRAND DARYL HANNAH and this movie did nothing to change that opinion) enlists an ex con/ex cop to help save her wayward husband's life from a local gangster, and in doing so, the ex cop/ex con makes her promise she will leave her husband and go with him.

I mean, that is FILM NOIR to the BONE right there.

DIVINE is in this. he's not wearing make up and he seems unsteady at moments in his performance- but somehow the whole rest of the film catches a case of camp from him at the end, and the damn thing borders on JON WATERS TERRITORY and the results are not un-amusing. 

A guy who is not CHRIS FARLEY but who looks SO MUCH like CHRIS FARLEY it is UNCANNY is also in this

KOOKY MOVIE, but a lot of fun, with a very CLASSIC FILM sensibility to it.

 

Maybe you should try Choose Me next, which I think is even better than Trouble in Mind, and great news: it also has Genevieve Bujold in a great role. BTW, I'd have given Bujold the Oscar for Trouble in Mind, and I'm no more impressed by Lori Singer than you are, though she does have a lot of hair. Unlike EricJ, I don't care for Made in Heaven, which is very disjointed, but Rudolph's films are often polarizing. I love Welcome to L.A., which some people of discerning judgment can't stand. A good friend loves The Moderns, which I don't, and Linda Fiorentino is pretty bad in the main female role. Rudolph, I think, is talented and original, with the pluses and minuses of being quirky and eccentric, but sometimes he can't put all the pieces together and make the film work. None of his films ever made it big, which made financing difficult. At some point I gave up on following his career.

[Tikisoo]

1 hour ago, King Rat said:

I think, is talented and original, with the pluses and minuses of being quirky and eccentric, but sometimes he can't put all the pieces together and make the film work.

I can think of several creators/directors this applies to: Preston Sturges and David Lynch are two that immediately come to mind. Kubrick & Hal Ashby are two that come to mind that made movies that work for me, but completely confound others. I give big props to those who try pushing the boundaries, and recognize their talent & unique voice, even if I'm not a fan. 

[Grumpytoad]

I'll get this out of the way first. Dianne Foster-just WOW. 😍

Drive A Crooked Road starring Mickey Rooney.
I really enjoyed it. It's a little different from other noirs I've seen. Not quite as intense or violent, but still serious.

First time I saw Mickey Rooney was in a 1981 tv movie called Bill. I thought he was amazing in it. Had no idea he was famous. Later I saw one of the Andy Hardy movies.  Not my cup of tea to say the least. So I decided he wasn't that great after all. Other than a couple of his appearances as a young child, I never watched him again. Till now. My gosh he WAS talented!

He plays a sad and lonely but good guy in this noir. Meets a gorgeous lady who is secretly manipulating him for the benefit of two crooks and herself. The crime plot written into the movie was clever and refreshing. 

Foster was convincing as the bad lady. Unlike most female noir leads, the character here actually ended up not being purely evil after all.

There were two other main performers:

Kevin McCarthy, who starred in my favorite horror movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers(1956). His acting is way better in Drive than it was in Invasion. I was impressed.

Jack Kelly is familiar to me from my favorite science fiction movie, Forbidden Planet(1956). In it, he played a guy who had the hots for Anne Francis(who wouldn't have the hots for Anne Francis?). He was good in Forbidden, but didn't have much to work with in Drive. 
 

So watch Drive A Crooked Road already.

 

 

[Fading Fast]

5 hours ago, Grumpytoad said:

I'll get this out of the way first. Dianne Foster-just WOW. 😍

Drive A Crooked Road starring Mickey Rooney.
I really enjoyed it. It's a little different from other noirs I've seen. Not quite as intense or violent, but still serious.

First time I saw Mickey Rooney was in a 1981 tv movie called Bill. I thought he was amazing in it. Had no idea he was famous. Later I saw one of the Andy Hardy movies.  Not my cup of tea to say the least. So I decided he wasn't that great after all. Other than a couple of his appearances as a young child, I never watched him again. Till now. My gosh he WAS talented!

He plays a sad and lonely but good guy in this noir. Meets a gorgeous lady who is secretly manipulating him for the benefit of two crooks and herself. The crime plot written into the movie was clever and refreshing. 

Foster was convincing as the bad lady. Unlike most female noir leads, the character here actually ended up not being purely evil after all.

There were two other main performers:

Kevin McCarthy, who starred in my favorite horror movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers(1956). His acting is way better in Drive than it was in Invasion. I was impressed.

Jack Kelly is familiar to me from my favorite science fiction movie, Forbidden Planet(1956). In it, he played a guy who had the hots for Anne Francis(who wouldn't have the hots for Anne Francis?). He was good in Forbidden, but didn't have much to work with in Drive. 
 

So watch Drive A Crooked Road already.

 

 

I couldn't agree more. It's an excellent movie with complex and nuanced characters and Mickey Rooney does an outstanding job.