I Just Watched...

[Cigarjoe cellph]

黒い河 - Black River aka Kuroi kawa (1957) Japanese Noir.  Wow! a nice surprise. (thanks to Isamu Inoue for putting me onto this)

Directed Masaki Kobayashi. Written by Zenzô Matsuyama and based on a Takeo Tomishima story. Cinematography by Yûharu Atsuta,  Music by Chûji Kinoshita
Stars Ineko Arima as Shizuko, Fumio Watanabe as Nishida, Tatsuya Nakadai as Joe.
A US navy jet fighter in the sky cuts across the false fronts of shanty town clustered around the entrance roadway that looks like something out of a Spaghetti Western. Naval Air Station Atsugi, Japan, with its symbiotic boomtown attached to the main entrance gate, circa 1956. The base was bombed and rebuilt at the end of WWII and taken over by the US Navy. The place is jumping. Its a Japanese Phenix City Story but about the lowlifes rather than the crusaders.  

https://noirsville.blogspot.com/2022/03/black-river-aka-kuroi-kawa-1957.html?m=1&zx=10f67b1f36801979

[Bethluvsfilms]

I just watched LIFE recently, a 1999 film starring Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence as two black men in 1930's Mississippi who find themselves at the wrong place at the wrong time and are convicted and imprisoned on a prison farm for....you guessed it, for life.

Murphy and Lawrence probably turn in their most sincere, if not their best, performances of both their careers. Problem is the filmmakers couldn't seem to make up their minds on whether the movie they were making is a comedy or a drama.

I mean with Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence, it has to be hilarious, right? But there's absolutely nothing funny about two African Americans being railroaded onto a chain gang for most of their lives for a crime they didn't commit. Still, the movie does have many worthwhile moments, both funny and depressing.

I will say the film for all its flaws is still worth watching but not one I would want to watch over and over again. 

I give the film a decent 7.

[Tikisoo]

24 minutes ago, Bethluvsfilms said:

a 1999 film starring Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence as two black men in 1930's Mississippi

😄 I imagine they portrayed two black men pretty well. (sorry to make a joke-I just read it that way)

[Swithin]

War and Peace (1965).  Directed by Sergei Bondarchuk.

I recorded this and haven't watched it yet. Scanned through it -- it looks like a great print. It's seven hours, so longer than originally indicated.

 

 

[LornaHansonForbes]

On 3/30/2022 at 8:20 PM, Eucalpytus P. Millstone said:

[ARMIE HAMMER IS A TERRIBLE ACTOR]. . . which made pairing him [in DEATH ON THE NILE 2022] with Gal Gadot (his equal, acting-wise) perfect casting.

Yes, GAL GADOT was bad, but I felt like it was in perfect homage to LOIS CHILES, who played the role in the 1978 film and who SUCKS ON TOAST AS AN ACTRESS.

I also was bemused by GAL'S "wilde undte crazy guys" accent which slipped out on occasion.

 

[LornaHansonForbes]

On 3/30/2022 at 8:20 PM, Eucalpytus P. Millstone said:

I thought Branagh's take on Christie's thriller [DEATH ON THE NILE] was just "Meh" and a disappointing follow-up to his Murder on the Orient Express. I'm not particularly an Agatha Christie fan* -- never read her fiction. So I don't know if Sir Kenneth's adaptation is faithful to its source. In Death, his second outing as Hercule Poirot, Branagh provides an explanation for his outlandish facial hair. I don't know if the backstory was Branagh's invention or he was hewing to Christie's description. Whichever, it is, to me, a ridiculous look.

 I was impressed by Russell Brand whom I initially did not recognize.

 

it's been many years, but i used to be quite a CHRISTIE fan, I think she's a far better and smarter writer than she is given credit for- she had a real knack for clever titles which alluded to classical lit and poetry and her characters are interesting.

she underwent a real renaissance in recent years- if you get the chance, I would recommend watching the version of THE MOVING FINGER that was done for british tv with GERALDINE mcEWAN in as MISS MARPLE- I enjoyed it quite a bit. it's highly stylized, but it's a HOOT, and KEN RUSSELL has a cameo as THE VICAR.

THE EXPLANATION FOR THE FACIAL HAIR WAS SO NOT NEEDED.

i was also grudgingly impressed by RUSSELL BRAND- who was quite handsome.

this version of DEATH ON THE NILE uses some elements from THE 1937 BOOK, which is very different from the 1978 film. DAVID SUCHET did a version for POIROT in the 2000s and it's interesting (and much more faithful to the novel.)

I think (but am not sure) that ALL THREE used the same boat.

[Eucalyptus P. Millstone]

5 hours ago, LornaHansonForbes said:

. . . if you get the chance, I would recommend watching the version of THE MOVING FINGER that was done for british tv with GERALDINE mcEWAN in as MISS MARPLE- I enjoyed it quite a bit. it's highly stylized, but it's a HOOT, and KEN RUSSELL has a cameo as THE VICAR . . .

 . . . and here it is!

 

[ClassicKissesPillows]

I just watched It Happened One Night, with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, directed by the great Frank Capra.  What a wonderful gem!

 

[Bethluvsfilms]

28 minutes ago, ClassicKissesPillows said:

I just watched It Happened One Night, with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, directed by the great Frank Capra.  What a wonderful gem!

 

This has always been one of my favorite romantic comedies. The thumbing scene is classic!

[Fading Fast]

 

Private Detective 62 from 1933 with William Powell, Margaret Lindsay and no soundtrack

 

 

William Powell and Margaret Lindsay in a pre-code international espionage movie sounds like a pretty good idea, and then it all went wrong. 

 

Private Detective 62 opens with an engaging setup as "diplomat" Powell is expelled from France for spying (which he seemed to be doing) and sent back to the United States.

 

But the United States, apparently to maintain good relations with France, implies Powell went rogue and declares him an unwanted alien (or something like that). Powell, a man now without a country, makes his way back to the US and sneaks in.

 

That's a good setup for a story as we assume Powell is either still deep undercover or he'll fight to clear his name, but instead, he seems to accept his fate and just looks for work. Without papers or an employment history (that he can show), he ends up pushing his way into a failing detective agency.

 

From here until the last one minute of the movie, you can forget all the international spy stuff that happened at the beginning as Private Detective 62 morphs into a not-well-done shady detective agency/mob movie.

 

The agency's bread and butter is finding (or making up) evidence against cheating spouses. Powell doesn't like the work, but he keeps honest by only finding genuine dirt. 

 

He's then assigned to find dirt on Margaret Lindsay; she's single, but the client wants dirt, "any dirt," on her. Not coincidentally, she's been winning a lot of money at a gambling parlor, as if that ever really happened in those rigged games.

 

Powell goes undercover to investigate Lindsay and they end up falling for each other, but their romance is undermined when a friend of Lindsay exposes Powell as a PI following her. Lindsay has other troubles as well because, as noted, she's won big at the gambling parlor, but can't collect. 

 

The story from here becomes crazy as the mob guy running the gambling parlor plots with Powell's boss (unbeknownst to Powell) to trick Lindsay into thinking she's killed the mobster so that he won't have to pay her. Hey, I didn't write the script. 

 

(Spoiler alert) Powell, of course, comes to the rescue by exposing the plot and saving Lindsay, who now sees Powell for the good guy he is. That puts their romance back on course at the same time that Powell, out of nowhere, is reinstated in the diplomatic service. I guess somebody wanted it to all work out in the end. 

 

Maybe the scriptwriter had a stroke or something since this movie started out as an international espionage story, but completely dropped that line and quickly became a poorly written detective-mobster story. The studios, back then, were churning out several movies a week, so once in a while, I guess, one would go off the rails like Private Detective 62.

 

 

[Tikisoo]

11 hours ago, Bethluvsfilms said:

This has always been one of my favorite romantic comedies. The thumbing scene is classic!

All the charactor actors make IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT sheer delight.

"Shapely's the name...and that's how I like 'em!" This picture says it all:

 Also enjoy Alan Hale's singing "Young people in love are never hungry".  

This is a sure fire movie to initiate newbies to the world of black & white classic film. It never fails to delight along with SOME LIKE IT HOT- well acted, well written & perfectly directed.

[SansFin]

The Pink Panther (1963)
 

The wife of a police inspector is part of a gang of jewel thieves who kidnap a dethroned Princess' beloved dog as part of a plan to steal a rare pink diamond she possesses.

I advise all men planning to watch this movie to first fit their bibs as they will undoubtedly drool over Capucine and Claudia Cardinale who play the wife and the Princess. There is a scene also of Fran Jeffries singing and dancing which they will find 'inspiring'.

This movie has all the good bones of a crime comedy caper with a gentleman jewel thief played by an actor very conversant with such roles. It would be wonderful to say that it lives up to that promise. I am very sorry to say that it does not.

Not to my taste are: rat corpses stewed in sewage water, fermented shark fried in rancid whale blubber and Peter Sellers. 

I am quite sure that I would watch this movie regularly if Peter Ustinov had played the inspector as originally planned. I am instead forced to wait until I reach the point that I believe "it can not be as bad as I remember" before watching it again. It was quite disheartening that I find it even worst than I remember.

2.4/48

It is available for viewing on: MovielandTV which is currently a free channel on: Roku.

[speedracer5]

17 hours ago, TikiSoo said:

All the charactor actors make IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT sheer delight.

"Shapely's the name...and that's how I like 'em!" This picture says it all:

 Also enjoy Alan Hale's singing "Young people in love are never hungry".  

This is a sure fire movie to initiate newbies to the world of black & white classic film. It never fails to delight along with SOME LIKE IT HOT- well acted, well written & perfectly directed.

I love the “young people in love” song too. 

I always laugh at Shapely when he goes: “well shut my big, nasty mouth!”

I also like when Colbert and Gable pretend to be the hysterical married couple while the police are there. 

“You was drunk!”

”You don’t have to lose your temper!”

“You don’t have to lose your temper!”

Quit bawlin! Quit bawlin! 

I also laugh at the whole piggybacking scene and the dialogue. 

[Bethluvsfilms]

I also crack up when Colbert's father flat out asks Gable if he loves Colbert....his response....

"YES! But don't hold that against me, I'm a bit screwy myself!"

That always cracks me up. Such a gem of a movie that never gets old for me.

[TomJH]

Shakedown (1950)

Solid film noir from Universal-International about the sleaziness of the news business, concentrating on an initially inexperienced eager beaver news photographer (played by Howard Duff) who gradually becomes so cold blooded and ruthless in his pursuit of a photo scoop that he becomes a villain.

This guy finds a car that crashed off a pier with its occupant screaming for help before he drowns and the only thing he does is instruct the man to stick his head and arms outside his car window so he can get a good picture of him before then taking off. When a woman is about to jump from the window of a burning building he shouts at her to hold it then, after he has his camera ready, tells her to jump as he snaps the action. Finally, so cocky is he that he ingratiates himself with a crime boss only to set him up for a fall with another gangster, whom he will then blackmail, as he then sets out to romance the crime boss's wife. Yes, it gets a little far fetched at times but not so much that you still can't suspend your sense of disbelief.

Where I did gag a little, though, in an amused "Give me a break" way, is in an early scene of the film in which numerous women in the news room turn their heads and smile or comment approvingly as Duff walks by (none of them give him wolf whistles but that's the general idea). Duff was a good looking guy but hardly the type to get this much female attention. Errol Flynn he was not.

Joseph Pevney capably directed this reasonably hard boiled melodrama which starts off with Duff running from some gangsters and hiding his camera before they catch him and punch him up. After they're gone he retrieves his camera they so wanted. The film never achieves the same level of yellow journalism indictment that Billy Wilder's acid dripped Ace in the Hole would the following year, but it still remains interesting throughout. You're amazed by the photog's audacity and eagerly await to see him receive his comeuppance.

Duff is capable in the lead role, even with his emotionally stiff limitations as an actor. Peggy Dow, as a news photography editor he romances and Anne Vernon as the crime boss's wife are both effective in their roles. Bruce Bennett plays a news photo editor who reluctantly hires Duff, though he dislikes his methods. Brian Donlevy is solid as the crime boss who makes the mistake of trusting Duff and, even better, is a conniving, hard boiled Laurence Tierney as the gangster Duff blackmails. Tierney had been receiving lead or co-star billing just a couple of years before but in this film he gets billed fourth as his career was experiencing a gradual decline. Rock Hudson can be seen for a few seconds (with a line of dialogue) as a night club greeter.

After only being available for years on the internet in what appeared to be horrible looking TV broadcast images, Shakedown received a blu ray release last week in a nicely contrasty print from Kino Lorber. Finally there is an image of this good little film that does it justice.

3 out of 4

 

[Cigarjoe cellph]

56 minutes ago, TomJH said:

Shakedown (1950)

Solid film noir from Universal-International about the sleaziness of the news business, concentrating on an initially inexperienced eager beaver news photographer (played by Howard Duff) who gradually becomes so cold blooded and ruthless in his pursuit of a photo scoop that he becomes a villain.

This guy finds a car that crashed off a pier with its occupant screaming for help before he drowns and the only thing he does is instruct the man to stick his head and arms outside his car window so he can get a good picture of him before then taking off. When a woman is about to jump from the window of a burning building he shouts at her to hold it then, after he has his camera ready, tells her to jump as he snaps the action. Finally, so cocky is he that he ingratiates himself with a crime boss only to set him up for a fall with another gangster, whom he will then blackmail, as he then sets out to romance the crime boss's wife. Yes, it gets a little far fetched at times but not so much that you still can't suspend your sense of disbelief.

Where I did gag a little, though, in an amused "Give me a break" way is in an early scene of the film in which numerous women in the news room turn their heads and smile or comment approvingly as Duff walks by (none of them give him wolf whistles but that's the general idea). Duff was a good looking guy but hardly the type to get this much female attention. Errol Flynn he was not.

Joseph Pevney capably directed this reasonably hard boiled melodrama which starts off with Duff running from some gangsters and hiding his camera before they catch him and punch him up. After they're gone he retrieves his camera they so wanted. The film never achieves the same level of yellow journalism indictment that Billy Wilder's acid dripped Ace in the Hole would the following year, but it still remains interesting throughout. You're amazed by the photog's audacity and eagerly await to see him receive his comeuppance.

Duff is capable in the lead role, even with his emotionally stiff limitations as an actor. Peggy Dow, as a news photography editor he romances and Anne Vernon as the crime boss's wife are both effective in their roles. Bruce Bennett plays a news photo editor who reluctantly hires Duff, though he dislikes his methods. Brian Donlevy is solid as the crime boss who makes the mistake of trusting Duff and, even better, is a conniving, hard boiled Laurence Tierney as the gangster Duff blackmails. Tierney had been receiving lead or co-star billing just a couple of years before but in this film he gets billed fourth as his career was experiencing a gradual decline. Rock Hudson can be seen for a few seconds (with a line of dialogue) as a night club greeter.

After only being available for years on the internet in what appeared to be horrible looking TV broadcast images, Shakedown received a blu ray release last week in a nicely contrasty print from Kino Lorber. Finally there is an image of this good little film that does it justice.

3 out of 4

 

Thanks for the heads up, I' only seen the crappy YouTube print.

[Fading Fast]

 

Lusty Men from 1952 with Robert Mitchum, Susan Hayward and Arthur Kennedy 

 

 

On paper, the story here is one of an older, worn-out and retired rodeo veteran who helps a young married kid break into rodeo to make money fast so the kid and his wife can buy a farm to have something of their own. 

 

The wife is against it as she doesn't want her husband getting hurt, but her husband partners with the veteran in a mentor-mentee way and off the three go to the rodeo circuit. The kid quickly becomes a star and the money starts rolling in. 

 

His wife tries to save it as she wants her husband out of rodeo as soon as possible, while the veteran warns the kid not to let success go to his head. But the kid's now a "big man" who starts buying flashy clothes and eyeing the rodeo groupies, which sparks a bond between his pretty wife and the veteran. 

 

You know what happens next: The kid gets cockier and cockier and the hurt wife turns to the shoulder-to-cry-on old veteran. The young kid, then, gets angry and taunts the old guy about no longer being a man because he doesn't "rodeo." So Rocky like, the old guy returns to the arena to prove something to someone. 

 

It's an old tale, but a good one, which is why it keeps getting told. Unfortunately, Lusty Men never fully engages with its story. First, "young kid," Arthur Kennedy looks (and in real life is) older than the retired veteran, Mitchum, who does not look tired and beat up at all. This deeply undermines the personal dynamic and morality tale at the center of the story. 

 

Second, it all takes too long for anything to happen. Most movies speed things up to get to the action; Lusty Men slows down on the obvious build up and then rushes through the climax.

 

Third, with a title Lusty Men and the entire subtext being about men, sex and a love triangle, there needs to be some actual lusting, loving and triangling. For most of the movie, though, Kennedy and his wife, Susan Hayward, are content, while Mitchum is just the good-guy mentor, yawn.

 

(Minor spoiler alert) When some crisis and conflict finally arrives - when Kennedy's swollen head has him flirting with rodeo cuties - Haworth and Mitchum do nothing more than exchange one public kiss. After that, a few macho punches are thrown and everyone goes back to his or her proper place, yawn again. Even the big return of Mitchum to the rodeo feels snapped on and anticlimactic. 

 

It's not a terrible movie at all; it's just too slow, too safe and takes too long for too little payoff. A much better quasi-version of Lusty Men would be made nine years later, as Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Eli Wallach and Montgomery Clift, in The Misfits, show how aging cowboys, with some lust left in their hearts, can break themselves trying to reach for past glory and love.  

 

[King Rat]

I checked to see what was on TCM, and The Southerner had just begun. To my surprise, my husband got very interested in the film and liked it better than I did. It's a good opportunity to see Zachary Scott play a sympathetic character. Although he's not ideal for the role of a poor Southern farmer, he does his best to make the part convincing. Betty Field as his wife also does a good job, although in the great Hollywood tradition she remains carefully coiffed during the series of disasters that ensues. My spouse thought Beulah Bondi was as old as Granny, the character she plays, so that's a compliment to her as well as the makeup man. J. Carrol Naish is the villainous next door neighbor and Norman Lloyd is his mentally challenged son. I can't help wondering what my grandparents would have thought of the film, as they were farmers only a step or two above the family in this film.

Betty Field would be an interesting subject for SUTS, with the major roles she played early in her Hollywood career in films like Of Mice and Men, Kings Row, and The Southerner; her return role to Hollywood in The Great Gatsby, where her lack of glamor makes her a less than ideal Daisy; supporting roles in films like Bus Stop and Picnic; and over-the-top performances in films like Butterfield 8 and 7 Women (John Ford lets her go way, way over the top).

[LornaHansonForbes]

22 hours ago, King Rat said:

I checked to see what was on TCM, and The Southerner had just begun. To my surprise, my husband got very interested in the film and liked it better than I did. It's a good opportunity to see Zachary Scott play a sympathetic character. Although he's not ideal for the role of a poor Southern farmer, he does his best to make the part convincing. Betty Field as his wife also does a good job, although in the great Hollywood tradition she remains carefully coiffed during the series of disasters that ensues. My spouse thought Beulah Bondi was as old as Granny, the character she plays, so that's a compliment to her as well as the makeup man. J. Carrol Naish is the villainous next door neighbor and Norman Lloyd is his mentally challenged son. I can't help wondering what my grandparents would have thought of the film, as they were farmers only a step or two above the family in this film.

Betty Field would be an interesting subject for SUTS, with the major roles she played early in her Hollywood career in films like Of Mice and Men, Kings Row, and The Southerner; her return role to Hollywood in The Great Gatsby, where her lack of glamor makes her a less than ideal Daisy; supporting roles in films like Bus Stop and Picnic; and over-the-top performances in films like Butterfield 8 and 7 Women (John Ford lets her go way, way over the top).

It was wild this morning, I had just finished reading PAULINE KAEL'S review of THE SOUTHERNER on the can and then I came across your review.

in re: JEAN RENOIR- i do not for the life of me "get" either RULES OF THE GAME or LE GRANDE ILLUSION but I love THE SOUTHERNER- and being from NORTH CAROLINA, I am astounded at how accurately- and lovingly- the southern people are portrayed, AND WITHOUT AN OUNCE OF CONDESCENSION!

 

[Capuchin]

On 4/2/2022 at 8:30 PM, SansFin said:

Not to my taste are: rat corpses stewed in sewage water, fermented shark fried in rancid whale blubber and Peter Sellers. 

 

Not going to give us a real clue about how you feel about him, are you?

[Dargo]

On 4/2/2022 at 6:30 PM, SansFin said:

Not to my taste are: rat corpses stewed in sewage water, fermented shark fried in rancid whale blubber and Peter Sellers. 

 

26 minutes ago, Capuchin said:

Not going to give us a real clue about how you feel about him, are you?

 

Well Cappy, gotta say I at least got the impression that Sans likes little fuzzies a heck of lot more than she ever liked Peter Sellers, anyway.

(...but I'd guess you'd probably know best about this sort'a thing, now wouldn't you) 

[sewhite2000]

1/19 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Columbia, 1939)
Source: TCM

This was on a night of Capra movies, but I've seen it again when it aired during 31 Days. Heck, I've watched it more than a dozen times. I first saw it when I made my very first deep dive into classic film before there even was a TCM, or at least before I was aware of its existence. In the space of about a month, I rented this film, Gone With the Wind, Casablanca, King Kong, All about Eve, Citizen Kane and probably a couple of others from Blockbuster around 1991 or so and have been watching classic movies ever since.

Mr. Smith  is the story of Jefferson Smith (James Stewart) an idealistic young community organizer, head of some Boy Scouts-type organization called "The Boy Rangers" who's quite the hero to the young males of his home state - never named, but I always presumed it was supposed to be Montana or Idaho or Wyoming orsomewhere  in Yellowstone country. who, through a contrived chain of circumstances, becomes one of his state's two US senators (I'm reading that in the book the movie is adapted from, the state is clearly said to be Montana). A protracted opening sequence sets up the whole scenario prior to introducing us to Stewart. One of the state's senators dies. A political boss (Edward Arnold) who seems to have every elected official in the state under his thumb, including the other senator (Claude Rains) and the easily befuddled governor (Guy Kibbee) intends to have one of his stooges appointed to fill out the remainder of the unexpired term, but the citizens of the state are too wary to permit this to happen, seemingly aware of though powerless to prevent the graft from existing more generally. The flustered governor wants to advance his own candidate "of the people", but the boss and his cronies order him not to. Meanwhile, the governor's large brood of children harangue him during the family dinner to appoint the Boy Ranger wunderkind, whom the governor has never heard of, to the position. The kids are generally shown to be good-hearted, if easily fed up with their father's obtuseness. In a memorable scene, the governor decides to leave it up to the toss of a coin between the two most sensible appointees, closing his eyes and turning to the side as the throws the coin to the air - but when he looks again, the coin is standing straight up, propped up by a newspaper containing an article about Jeff Smith. "Good enough for me" the governor says, and while the Arnold character, James Taylor (whom I see is called "Jim" on IMDB probably to avoid confusion with the "Fire and Rain" guy, though you hear "James Taylor" quite a bit in the movie) is initially furious his intended candidate wasn't appointed, the Rains character, Senator Joesph Paine, thinks an idealistic partriot will pacify the public while being too wide-eyed to see what they have in mind. And they have a plan to mollify more graft by building a dam right in the middle of "Willet Crick" an unspoiled area of nature.

And so it's probably 25 minutes into the movie before we're finally introduced to Smith/Stewart, who initially does seem to be too much of a "golly gee whiz gawrsh" type to be true. He sincerely buys the mythology of the Founders in a schoolboy manner (in modern times, he probably wouldn't have much use for critical race theory - though he is also shown to idolize Lincon in a sort of suggestion that slavery was just sort of this thing that happened since the time of George Washington) and is an idealist to the extreme. We learn his late father was a crusading, self-publishing small-time newspaper man who finally got shot in the back in his office afer raising oppoisition to a mining syndicate. We also learn that Paine was a fellow young idealistic crusader alongside Smith's father and that Smith idolizes him, unaware of how compromised he's become. He arrives in Washington DC, so intent on sightseeing he ducks out on Taylor's handlers (among them, Eugene Pallettte and William Demarest - a lot of great character actors in this movie) but not before releasing his homing pigeons to see if they can make record time back to his home state and giving money to a milk fund being collected by Paine's attractive daughter Susan (Astrid Allwyn), who just by smiling at Smith reduces him to a shy, bumbling mess, constantly dropping his hat, knocking over furniture and seemingly incapable of completing a sentence - Capra handles a lovestruck Gary Cooper in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town very similarly. It's implied that Paine is a widower - at least one character suggests that Susan would become First Lady if Paine goes on to be elected president, something Taylor hopes for.

I can't help but wonder knowing a little of how Pallette felt about black people in real life felt about filming a scene in which his character is played for a sucker by a crew of railroad porters. This is certainly not the most progressive presentation of black characters on screen - the Pullman guys are depicted as lazy, tiptoeing off in comically exaggerated fashion to leave Pallette with the responsibility of lugging around Smith's belongings -  but Capra does give us another scene where a dignified black man possibly old enough to remember slavery firsthand beams with respect at the Lincoln Memorial, one of Smith's many stopping points.

Now we're introduced to Smith's opposite number, and this movie adheres to the maxim "Opposites attract". Clarissa Saunders (Jean Arthur) has been a gal Friday for Senator Paine who's been reassigned to serve as Smith's secretary. There's a funny scene where she relates to Paine that when she first arrived in DC, "my eyes were little blue question marks - now, they're big green dollar signs". She's become a hardbitten cynic in the world of politics, and at first she can barely bring herself to take Smith, whom she frequently refers to as "Daniel Boone", seriously. She's chummy with a reporter who's good natured if lazy and prone to drink named Diz, one of the many memorable portrayals of Thomas Mitchell from "Hollywood's greatest year" of 1939 (I mentioned the amazing character actors already. Look also for Jack Carson in a smaller role as a reporter). Diz has repeatedly asked her to marry him, and as a man who's been rejected by more women than I can count, it pains me to see her reluctance: "I don't know, Diz, maybe if I saw you with your hair combed once or something ... no, I still don't think that would do it." But Mitchell is playing what I call the "Wendell Corey" role, something I invented after seeing Holiday Affair for the 20th time: the thoroughly nice guy who has no flaws but has to sadly smile and step aside by the end of the movie when the girl walks off into the sunset with the bigger star. 

Smith is initially played for as a fool by the press corp, the publicity causing his fellow senators to nearly nix his appointment, though the senate majority leader (thoeretically, this could also be the US Vice President, though this is never stated in the movie) played in an Oscar-nominated supporting role by Hary Carey (Rains was also nominated in the category) overrules this effort and Smith gets in. Only then does he learn about how he's been portrayed in the papers, and 70 years before Will Smith, Capra thought it was hilarious to have Jeff Smith respond by decking every reporter who wrote a story about him. This also echoes a scene from Mr. Deeds in which Deeds responds to a group of snobby literary types who make fun of him by punching them into unconsciouness one at a time.  This ploy also seems to be working well for Smith, until the press corp, headed up in screen time by Mitchell and Carson, set him wise - what has he been thus far but a "paper tiger" who smiles and nods when told to vote a certain way? Their derision weighs heavily on Smith, and Paine tries to cheer him up by encouraging him to get one dream project passed during his time in office, little knowing the reprecussions his suggestion will have.

There's some good early banter between Smith and Saunders where she tries to wise him up to the world of compromise, but his idealism blinds him to the things she's sayng, and she begins in spite of herself to develp a motherly sense of protection for him, especially when he reveals to her the grand scheme he hopes to attain during his limited time filling out the term: the establishment of a boys camp in his home state open to youth all over the country to be financed by their own contributions, no one boy being allowed to give more than a dime. Unfortunately, Smith in all innocence wants to open his camp at Willet Crick, which Taylor and Paine plan to plow over for their dam.

So, the conflict is set up. Paine arranges for Susan to distract Smith by asking him out to an embassy ball - something she has to get Saunders to agree to in advance because it will mean Smith missing time on the Senate floor. During that time, a bill introducing the construction of the dam is pushed through before Smith can introduce his boys camp idea. Saunders feels increasingly rotten about her contribution to the affair - not to mention jealous of Susan in a shcoolgirl way I didn't necessarily find becoming to the character - and after getting drunk lets Smith know exactly what's what. After confronting Paine about the matter, Smith foolishly states aloud his intentions to quash the dam construction. Paine begs him to step aside and not get crushed by the graft machine, but Smith doesn't listen. And so, one second before he's about to reveal everything on the Senate floor, Paine asks if he'll yield his time, and in all naivetee, he does so. Now commanding the floor, Paine launches a falsified charge that Smith owns the land in question and that they boys camp is merely a ruse to line his own pockets. The full weight of the judgment of the other sentaors come crashing down on Smith (more great character actors - Porter Hall, Grant Mitchell and HB Warner among others play senators), and he stands in danger of being expunged from the body.

I think the term "Capra-corn" was kind of unfairly invented to poke fun at his particular brand of faith in insitutions that people rolled their eyes at even in the '30s. To his defense, I'll say a lot of his movies have stretches of heavy cynicism and plunge his characters into very dark places before redemption and fantastic triumph win out. Here, Smith/Stewart definitely experiences a dark night of the soul, and for a time the movie shifts from screwball romantic comedy to heavy drama. I've read there was an effort in the day to prevent the movie's release for having the audacity to suggest there was any corruption in federal institutions at all, even though it's easy to see in hindsight the movie is mostly intended to be  uplifting. Saunders helps pull Smith out of the wreckage, guiding him on a path of action to employ the filibuster - still controversial to this day! - to restore his good name. This leads to a lot of Stewart monologues that no doubt helped garner Oscar attention (he lost to Robert Donat for Goodbye, Mr. Chips - they're both great performances - though the consenus in retrospect is the Academy made it up to him the follwing a year by giving him the Oscar for The Philadelphia Story, a movie in which he was definitely the second banana behind Cary Grant). These scenes are compelling. I was less thrilled when the action opened up back to Smith's home state in which a PR war breaks out between publications favored by (and in one case published by) the boys of the state and those under the control of the Taylor graft machine. We see characters who seem to have wandered over from Warner Bros. gangster movies terrorizing and casing physical injury to cherub-faced little boys repeatedly, all too heavy-handed, though it goes by pretty quickly.

This movie is pretty much all about its script, its ideas and its cast, so I dont know that I have much to say about the technical aspects. I wasn't a fan of the cinematography. All the tracking Smith's conitually misplaced hat when the stutters nervously around Susan and all the soft-focus stuff when feelings get squishy between Smith and Saunders, I found distracting. The set of the Senate floor appears to be a pretty extraordinary recreation of the actual Senate, maybe slightly smaller in scale.

Stewart plays the standard wide-eyed idealist he was in many of his early roles, though he gets considerable gravitas as Smith is driven through the muck. Arthur is the perfect foil, the cynic who's heart is ultimately melted, a role she played for Capra before in Deeds and that Barbra Stanwyck would play for the director in Meet John Doe. Rains has the most nuanced part outside of the two leads - his Paine isn't necessarily evil but so immersed in the game of compromise, he's forgotten what it means to have ideals. Arnold, who played Stewart's father just the year before in Capra's You Can't Take It with You, is a pretty one-dimesnional smug, smirking, supremely confident villain. I don't know that there's anything that distinguishes him from his similar role as a kingmaker in John Doe. But he conveys his menace effectively. I already mentioned the large, recognizable (to TCM fans, anyway) supporting cast. It as a heck of a year for in particular for Mitchell, who won an Oscar for Stagecoach and was also in Gone with the Wind, Only Angels Have Wings, this film and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Total films seen this year: 34 (I think? I can't leave this page to double check because all this text may disappear, as it often does when I'm ready to send it)

 

 

 

[Dargo]

26 minutes ago, sewhite2000 said:

1/19 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Columbia, 1939)
Source: TCM

This was on a night of Capra movies, but I've seen it again when it aired during 31 Days. Heck, I've watched it more than a dozen times. I first saw it when I made my very first deep dive into classic film before there even was a TCM, or at least before I was aware of its existence. In the space of about a month, I rented this film, Gone With the Wind, Casablanca, King Kong, All about Eve, Citizen Kane and probably a couple of others from Blockbuster around 1991 or so and have been watching classic movies ever since.

Mr. Smith  is the story of Jefferson Smith (James Stewart) an idealistic young community organizer, head of some Boy Scouts-type organization called "The Boy Rangers" who's quite the hero to the young males of his home state - never named, but I always presumed it was supposed to be Montana or Idaho or Wyoming orsomewhere  in Yellowstone country. who, through a contrived chain of circumstances, becomes one of his state's two US senators (I'm reading that in the book the movie is adapted from, the state is clearly said to be Montana). A protracted opening sequence sets up the whole scenario prior to introducing us to Stewart. One of the state's senators dies. A political boss (Edward Arnold) who seems to have every elected official in the state under his thumb, including the other senator (Claude Rains) and the easily befuddled governor (Guy Kibbee) intends to have one of his stooges appointed to fill out the remainder of the unexpired term, but the citizens of the state are too wary to permit this to happen, seemingly aware of though powerless to prevent the graft from existing more generally. The flustered governor wants to advance his own candidate "of the people", but the boss and his cronies order him not to. Meanwhile, the governor's large brood of children harangue him during the family dinner to appoint the Boy Ranger wunderkind, whom the governor has never heard of, to the position. The kids are generally shown to be good-hearted, if easily fed up with their father's obtuseness. In a memorable scene, the governor decides to leave it up to the toss of a coin between the two most sensible appointees, closing his eyes and turning to the side as the throws the coin to the air - but when he looks agin, the going is standing straight up, propped up by a newspaper containing an article about Jeff Smith. "Good enough for me" the governor says, and while the Arnold character, James Taylor (whom I see is called "Jim" on IMDB probably to avoid confusion with the "Fire and Rain" guy, though you hear "James Taylor" quite a bit in the movie) is initially furious his intended candidate wasn't appointed, the Rains character, Senator Joesph Paine, thinks an idealistic partriot will pacify the public while being too wide-eyed to see what they have in mind. And they have a plan to mollify more graft by building a dam right in the middle of "Willet Crick" an unspoiled area of nature.

And so it's probably 25 minutes into the movie before we're finally introduced to Smith/Stewart, who initially does seem to be too much of a "golly gee whiz gawrsh" type to be true. He sincerely buys the mythology of the Founders in a schoolboy manner (in modern times, he probably wouldn't have much use for critical race theory - though he is also shown to idolize Lincon in a sort of suggestion that slavery was just sort of this thing that happened since the time of George Washington) and is an idealist to the extreme. We learn his late father was a crusading, self-publishing small-time newspaper man who finally got shot in the back in his office afer raising oppoisition to a mining syndicate. We also learn that Paine was a fellow young idealistic crusader alongside Smith's father and that Smith idolizes him, unaware of how compromised he's become. He arrives in Washington DC, so intent on sightseeing he ducks out on Taylor's handlers (among them, Eugene Pallettte and William Demarest - a lot of great character actors in this movie) but not before releasing his homing pigeons to see if they can make record time back to his home state and giving money to a milk fund being collected by Paine's attractive daughter Susan (Astrid Allwyn), who just by smiling at Smith reduces him to a shy, bumbling mess, constantly dropping his hat, knocking over furniture and seemingly incapable of completing a sentence - Capra handles a lovestruck Gary Cooper in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town very similarly. It's implied that Paine is a widower - at least one character suggests that Susan would become First Lady if Paine goes on to be elected president, something Taylor hopes for.

I can't help but wonder knowing a little of how Pallette felt about black people in real life felt about filming a scene in which his character is played for a sucker by a crew of railroad porters. This is certainly not the most progressive presentation of black characters on screen - the Pullman guys are depicted as lazy, tiptoeing off in comically exaggerated fashion to leave Pallette with the responsibility of lugging around Smith's belongings -  but Capra does give us another scene where a dignified black man possibly old enough to remember slavery firsthand beams with respect at the Lincoln Memorial, one of Smith's many stopping points.

Now we're introduced to Smith's opposite number, and this movie adheres to the maxim "Opposites attract". Clarissa Saunders (Jean Arthur) has been a gal Friday for Senator Paine who's been reassigned to serve as Smith's secretary. There's a funny scene where she relates to Paine that when she first arrived in DC, "my eyes were little blue question marks - now, they're big green dollar signs". She's become a hardbitten cynic in the world of politics, and at first she can barely bring herself to take Smith, whom she frequently refers to as "Daniel Boone", seriously. She's chummy with a reporter who's good natured if lazy and prone to drink named Diz, one of the many memorable portrayals of Thomas Mitchell from "Hollywood's greatest year" of 1939 (I mentioned the amazing character actors already. Look also for Jack Carson in a smaller role as a reporter). Diz has repeatedly asked her to marry him, and as a man who's been rejected by more women than I can count, it pains me to see her reluctance: "I don't know, Diz, maybe if I saw you with your hair combed once or something ... no, I still don't think that would do it." But Mitchell is playing what I call the "Wendell Corey" role, something I invented after seeing Holiday Affair for the 20th time: the thoroughly nice guy who has no flaws but has to sadly smile and step aside by the end of the movie when the girl walks off into the sunset with the bigger star. 

Smith is initially played for as a fool by the press corp, the publicity causing his fellow senators to nearly nix his appointment, though the senate majority leader (thoeretically, this could also be the US Vice President, though this is never stated in the movie) played in an Oscar-nominated supporting role by Hary Carey (Rains was also nominated in the category) overrules this effort and Smith gets in. Only then does he learn about how he's been portrayed in the papers, and 70 years before Will Smith, Capra thought it was hilariious to have Jeff Smith respond by decking every reporter who wrote a story about him. This also echoes a scene froMr. Deeds in which Deeds responds to a group of snobby literary types who make fun of him by punching them into unconsciouness one at a time.  This ploy also seems to be working well for Smith, until the press corp, headed up in screen time by Mitchell and Carson, set him wise - what has he been thus far but a "paper tiger" who smiles and nods when told to vote a certain way? Their derision weighs heavily on Smith, and Paine tries to cheer him up by encouraging him to get one dream project passed during his time in office, little knowing the reprecussions his suggestion will have.

There's some good early banter between Smith and Saunders where she tries to wise him up to the world of compromise, but his idealism blinds him to the things she's sayng, and she begins in spite of herself to develp a motherly sense of protection for him, especially when he reveals to her the grand scheme he hopes to attain during his limited time filling out the term: the establishment of a boys camp in his home state open to youth all over the country to be financed by their own contributions, no one boy being allowed to give more than a dime. Unfortunately, Smith in all innocence wants to open his camp at Willet Crick, which Taylor and Paine plan to plow over for their dam.

So, the conflict is set up. Paine arranges for Susan to distract Smith by asking him out to an embassy ball - something she has to get Saunders to agree to in advance because it will mean Smith missing time on the Senate floor. During that time, a bill introducing the construction of the dam is pushed through before Smith can introduce his boys camp idea. Saunders feels increasingly rotten about her contribution to the affair - not to mention jealous of Susan in a shcoolgirl way I didn't necessarily find becoming to the character - and after getting drunk lets Smith know exactly what's what. After confronting Paine about the matter, Smith foolishly states aloud his intentions to quash the dam construction. Paine begs him to step aside and not get crushed by the graft machine, but Smith doesn't listen. And so, one second before he's about to reveal everything on the Senate floor, Paine asks if he'll yield his time, and in all naivetee, he does so. Now commanding the floor, Paine launches a falsified charge that Smith owns the land in question and that they boys camp is merely a ruse to line his own pockets. The full weight of the judgment of the other sentaors come crashing down on Smith (more great character actors - Porter Hall, Grant Mitchell and HB Warner among others play senators), and he stands in danger of being expunged from the body.

I think the term "Capra-corn" was kind of unfairly invented to poke fun at his particular brand of faith in insitutions that people rolled their eyes at even in the '30s. To his defense, I'll say a lot of his movies have stretches of heavy cynicism and plunge his characters into very dark places before redemption and fantastic triumph win out. Here, Smith/Stewart definitely experiences a dark night of the soul, and for a time the movie shifts from screwball romantic comedy to heavy drama. I've read there was an effort in the day to prevent the movie's release for having the audacity to suggest there was any corruption in federal institutions at all, even though it's easy to see in hindsight the movie is mostly intended to be  uplifting. Saunders helps pull Smith out of the wreckage, guiding him on a path of action to employ the filibuster - still controversial to this day! - to restore his good name. This leads to a lot of Stewart monologues that no doubt helped garner Oscar attention (he lost to Robert Donat for Goodbye, Mr. Chips - they're both great performances - though the consenus in retrospect is the Academy made it up to him the follwing a year by giving him the Oscar for The Philadelphia Story, a movie in which he was definitely the second banana behind Cary Grant). These scenes are compelling. I was less thrilled when the action opened up back to Smith's home state in which a PR war breaks out between publications favored by (and in one case published by) the boys of the state and those under the control of the Taylor graft machine. We see characters who seem to have wandered over from Warner Bros. gangster movies terrorizing and casing physical injury to cherub-faced little boys repeatedly, all too heavy-handed, though it goes by pretty quickly.

This movie is pretty much all about its script, its ideas and its cast, so I dont know that I have much to say about the technical aspects. I wasn't a fan of the cinematography. All the tracking Smith's conitually misplaced hat when the stutters nervously around Susan and all the soft-focus stuff when feelings get squishy between Smith and Saunders, I found distracting. The set of the Senate floor appears to be a pretty extraordinary recreation of the actual Senate, maybe slightly smaller in scale.

Stewart plays the standard wide-eyed idealist he was in many of his early roles, though he gets considerable gravitas as Smith is driven through the muck. Arthur is the perfect foil, the cynic who's heart is ultimately melted, a role she played for Capra before in Deeds and that Barbra Stanwyck would play for the director in Meet John Doe. Rains has the most nuanced part outside of the two leads - his Paine isn't necessarily evil but so immersed in the game of compromise, he's forgotten what it means to have ideals. Arnold, who played Stewart's father just the year before in Capra's You Can't Take It with You, is a pretty one-dimesnional smug, smirking, supremely confident villain. I don't know that there's anything that distinguishes him from his similar role as a kingmaker in John Doe. But he conveys his menace effectively. I already mentioned the large, recognizable (to TCM fans, anyway) supporting cast. It as a heck of a year for in particular for Mitchell, who won an Oscar for Stagecoach and was also in Gone with the Wind, Only Angels Have Wings, this film and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Total films seen this year: 34 (I think? I can't leave this page to double check because all this text may disappear, as it often does when I'm ready to send it)

 

 

 

Really liked your very detailed review of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington here, sewhite,

(...although for a second there, I thought I had somehow wandered into slayton's War and Peace thread instead)   

[Oneeyeopen]

I just watched, "Good-bye Mr. Chips," which I enjoyed but, yes but....

I don't see how Mr. Donat's two-dimensional performance beat out Clark Gables, multi-dimensional performance as Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind.  Clark Gable portrayed multiple emotions, he was smooth, a gentleman, a hero, an anti-hero, a lover, showed vulnerability, sadness, hurt, drunkenness, anger, arrogance, and warmth. He showed everything his counterpart Vivien Leigh showed in that film. In my opinion, he deserved to win for Gone with the Wind.

 

[SansFin]

8 hours ago, Dargo said:

Well Cappy, gotta say I at least got the impression that Sans likes little fuzzies a heck of lot more than she ever liked Peter Sellers, anyway.

(...but I'd guess you'd probably know best about this sort'a thing, now wouldn't you) 

You might say that I am more inured to little fuzzies and more tolerant. Please keep in mind that the tolerance is sorely tested when it fails to stay away from my computer.