Author: Snugglecub

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Place in the Sun – 1951

A Place in the sun was a wonderful movie that really has had me thinking about it, even after the film was over.  It was drama done the way one should be done.  The characters were complex and real, the plot was very believable, and the tragic ending was sad, horrifying, and appropriate, all at the same time.  In fact, I think that it was a better movie than An American in Paris, the film that won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1951.

The film starred Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, and Shelly Winters.  Clift took the lead, playing the part of George Eastman, a poor, working-class man.  He is a good man, at heart, though his morals are questionable.  He is a liar, but not a very good one.  He makes one bad decision after another, and the main question I was left with at the end of the movie was: Should he have been convicted of murder?

You see, I still think he was a good man.  He just wasn’t a very smart one.  He is poor, but gets a good job working for his wealthy uncle’s factory.  The only rule he is given is that he refrain from fraternizing with any of the female employees.  But he can’t do that.  He meets co-worker Alice Tripp, played by Shelly Winters, and starts dating her.  Before long, he gets her pregnant.  Then he starts getting promoted as his uncle takes him under his wing and into his home.  While there, he meets Angela Vickers, played by the beautiful Elizabeth Taylor.  And here is where I have to suspend my disbelief for a brief moment.  They fall madly in love with each other at first sight.  Because that’s how love works.

Either way, they are hopelessly in love, which becomes a problem for George as he has to start leading a double life: one with Alice and the other with Angela.  His terrible solution is to murder Alice.  So he takes her to a lake, knowing that she cannot swim.  But he can’t do it.  He is obviously troubled, but cannot bring himself to kill her.

Unfortunately, she accidentally causes the boat to capsize and drowns.  But his bad decisions continue.  He flees the scene and tries to hide her death.  He tries to run from the law.  This guy is a very inept criminal.  He has left an incriminating trail of evidence behind him, and when he is caught and tried for murder, the guilty verdict is inevitable.

Taylor was just 17 years old when filming took place, but she was a real stand-out.  She was beautiful and her acting had a subtle softness to it that was quite charming.  Her emotions were real, but not over-stated.  I really felt for her character, as she was an innocent victim of the whole situation.

And while I am on the subject of Taylor, I have to mention the gorgeous gowns she was given to wear.  Costume designer Edith Head was already a big name in the film industry, but I think she really out-did herself.  The glamorous dresses that Taylor wore were exquisite and she wore them well.

Clift’s performance was also noteworthy.  He seemed to really understand the character.  The way he reacted to the consequences of his poor decisions were believable and heart-wrenching.  And then, in the end, when he was convicted of murder, his disbelief had just the right touch of confusion and despair to make him a truly tragic figure.  His mind was no longer in contact with reality, and he started to question his own innocence.

And lest I forget, Shelly Winter’s portrayal of Alice was also well done.  She was just the right mixture of innocence, fear, confusion, and self-pity, with a healthy amount of pathetic neediness.  I didn’t want her to die, but she was annoying enough that I wanted her to go away.  In other words, she played the character well.

So I am left with a big question.  Was he a murderer in his heart, or was he completely innocent in the eyes of God?  I don’t know.  It seems to be a moral question with an answer that is unclear, making me question the rightness of his fate.  Did he deserve to be punished with a death sentence?  Watch the film and decide for yourself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Decision Before Dawn – 1951

Once again, we are treated to a WWII war film.  This one is directed by Anatole Litvak.  It boasted no big names, though it was well cast, and adequately acted.  It had a unique perspective on a little known aspect of the war, and because of that, it held my interest.  But though it was enjoyable enough, it was nothing to write home about.

Oskar Werner played the leading role of Karl Maurer, codenamed “Happy.”  He was a German POW near the end of the war.  At that time, POWs were apparently recruited by the Americans as spies against their own people.  Those who accepted were, of course, reviled by their own countrymen who remained loyal to the Reich, and labeled as traitors.

But Karl was an idealist who believed that his treasonous acts would ultimately bring a swifter end to the war, a war he never really believed in to begin with.  He is sent back into Germany and charged with learning the location of the 11^th Panzer Corps, and then returning that information to the Allied forces.  If successful, he would save the lives of many Americans.

Werner did a fine job, but sometimes he seemed to lack energy.  His performance was pretty low-key, which isn’t always a bad thing.  I just think he could have raised the intensity level a little every so often.  Fortunately, he had one thing that was absolutely essential for the character.  He had a look of innocence about him that was undeniable.  It went a long way to cementing the motives of the character.

Other notable actors in the film were Hans Christian Blech as Sergeant Barth, codenamed “Tiger.”  He was another POW turned spy, though his reasons were completely different than Maurer’s.  He was a man who would fight for whichever side was winning.  I thought he actually played his part with a little more depth and strength than his fellow spy.

On the Allied side, Gary Merrill played the part of Colonel Devlin.  When I first saw him on the screen, I though he had just walked in off the set of the 1949 nominee, Twelve O’clock High.  But he didn’t really have much screen time.  Instead, Richard Baseheart played the part of Lieutenant Dick Rennick.  He was the American officer on assignment along with the two German spies.  And finally, we have two ladies rounding out the cast.  Dominique Blanchar as Monique, a French woman who had the task of training the spies before they went out on assignment, and Hildegard Knef as Hilde, a broken and depressed German woman who Maurer encounters.

But the actor that really stood out to me as just a bit better than the rest was Wilfred Seyferth.  He played the part of a German courier who helps Maurer until he suspects him of being a spy.  Then he does what he can to get him captured.  He was loyal to the Reich and though he did his job with a smile, you could tell that he was angry and bitter about the fact that Germany was about to lose the war.  His volatile explosion during a calm conversation hinted at the dangerous personality that lurked beneath the happy-go-lucky surface.

The film really delved into Maurer’s motives and his reflections on the attitudes of the German people he encountered.  He ran into both civilians and military personnel, both people he know and people who knew him.  And Litvak really got us into his head.  Whenever Maurer had a moment alone to reflect, the dialogue of the people he had met that day could be heard as telling phrases rolled through his mind.  It really painted a clear picture of how different people felt about the war from the German perspective.

We sometimes tend to forget that it was the Nazis who waged the war, not necessarily the Germans.  By that, I mean that all Nazis were German, but not all Germans were Nazis.  Either way, civilian and military, alike, were all affected by the terrible conflict.  They all suffered and unfortunately, they were all blamed.  But I suppose that might have been one of the points that the film was trying to make.  There were some good German men who had no choice but to take part in the war.  Maurer was one of them, and his noble yet tragic fate was proof.

The end of the film was poignant and meaningful.  Not only does Maurer refuse to betray his new Allied allegiances, he makes the ultimate sacrifice to keep them.  He gives his life so that the mission would be accomplished.  He is captured and executed by his countrymen as a deserter.

Over all, I liked the film, but I just think that there could have been more suspense and more intensity.  It certainly had drama and even a bit of action, but for this nominee, I don’t think that was enough.  I would have liked to see more personal conflict or turmoil within Maurer.  Maybe a little guilt at being a traitor to his native country would have given him a deeper dramatic arc.  But the film concentrated on his reactions to others, not on his reactions to himself and his own actions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunset Boulevard – 1950

This was an excellent film.  The story was simple on the surface and complex beneath.  The casting was perfect, the sets were amazing and realistic, the acting was top notch, and the costumes were amazing.  It was everything that a good film should be.  I think it even hold up well by today’s standards, which is saying something for a movie that is 65 years old.

This is another wonderful example of a film noir, written and directed by Billy Wilder, one of the biggest names in Hollywood in the 30s, 40s, and 50s.  He had a hand in either writing or directing other such great films as Ninotchka, Hold Back the Dawn, The Bishop’s Wife, Double Indemnity, The Seven Year Itch, AND Some Like It Hot, just to name a few.

The two leads are William Holden, playing Joe Gillis, a penniless writer in Tinsel-Town and Gloria Swanson playing Norma Desmond, a Hollywood has-been, living in seclusion.  Filling out the supporting cast is Erich von Stroheim, playing the part of Norma’s obsessively devoted servant, Max, and Betty Schaefer, played by Nancy Olson, a hopeful writer who falls in love with Joe.

You see, the film starts out showing us Joe’s dead body floating in a swimming pool.  After that all the movie’s narration is told, in true film-noir style, by the murder victim.  Also in film-noir style, the scene then back up to tell us the story of how he ended up dead in a pool.

While on the run from men who are trying to repossess his car, Joe hides in a seemingly abandoned Hollywood dream-palace on Sunset Boulevard.  He is greeted by Max, a funny little butler with a foreign accent.  He is taken to see the lady of the house, Norma Desmond.  She is a larger than life character.  She is vain and haughty, in command of every conversation, witty, powerful, and altogether bonkers.

Swanson was incredible as the aging actress.  She was somewhat sane on the surface, but the delusional craziness that lurked beneath came out easily and often.  Swanson was actually an actress who had been in films in the silent era of Hollywood, so she had the over-exaggerated facial expressions, the grand movements, and the intense eyes that were necessary traits for actors in that by-gone era.

Edith Head designed the costumes beautifully, mixing older styles with modern fashions of the 50s, and adding just a touch of flamboyant madness to sweeten the pot.

Norma hires Joe to work on a film script that is supposed to usher in a new era in her life, her comeback to the silver screen.  She still lives with the idea that she is one of the biggest stars in the business.  Joe, however, knows that she has been away from the public eye for too long.  She has been all but forgotten.  He wonders how she can maintain her delusion, only to find out that Max, once her director, then her husband, and now her willing slave, fabricates fan mail and phone messages, letting her think that her star has never faded.

But things get complicated when Norma falls in love with Joe.  Like everything else in her life, her love is grand and obsessive.  But Joe finds love with Betty, a girl wanting to turn one of his stories into a script.  Norma finds out about Joe’s wanderings and rather than allowing him to leave her, she murders him.

What follows is one of the best scenes in the movie.  The police arrive to take her away but her mind is gone.  She is no longer in touch with reality.  She sits at her dressing table, putting on her make-up.  The only one who can get her to come down the grand staircase is Max.  He tells her that the cameras have arrived.  Of course, the only cameras present are the news cameras, photographing the murderess.  When Max shouts, “Action!”  Norma makes her dramatic entrance, and we get to hear her say that famous line, “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.”

The film certain has it cringe-worthy moments of creepy, not in the sense of horror movie creepy, but in the sense of a woman walking a tightrope between obsessive love for a man half her age, and homicidal madness.  Add to that the narration by a deceased man and the gothic dream-palace which is always shown in an advanced state of decay, and you have enough creepy to catch our interest and imaginations.

And lest I forget, I have to mention that Holden did a fine job as well, though if truth be told, he was fairly unmemorable, simply because he was constantly being upstaged by Swanson.  But then, that was the point of her character, wasn’t it.  She desperately desired to be the complete center of attention.  “You used to be in silent pictures.  You used to be big.”  “I am big!  It’s the pictures that got small.”  Indeed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

King Solomon’s Mines – 1950

I’ll start off by saying something I hate hearing when I discuss movies with anyone: The book was better.  Well, of course it was.  The book is always better.  But I have a reason for my opinion.  First of all, the book by H. R. Haggard was a very good book.  It was well written and had some great characters in it, like the evil Watusi witch, Gagool.  But Hollywood has messed it up again.

In fact, there have been at least 6 movie adaptations and not one of them has followed the book.  They all ignore the fact that the book was popular for a reason.  They all seem to want a female lead and a romance to spice up the plot.  In this 1950 version, the main protagonist, Allan Quatermain, played by Stewart Grainger, is set opposite Mrs. Elizabeth Curtis, played by Deborah Kerr.  There was no Mrs. Curtis in the book.

But I’ll step down off my soap-box.  The main plot follows Quatermain, the quintessential great, white hunter of Southern Africa.  He is tired of the hardships of his profession, and is ready to call it quits.  But then, in steps Mrs. Curtis and her brother John Goode, played by Richard Carlson.  Her money does her talking for her and she hires Quatermain to become her guide on an expedition to find her missing husband who had been searching for the legendary mines of King Solomon.

At this point, the movie takes a little break from the story to become a safari travelogue of the dangers of the African wilderness.  Of course, Mrs. Curtis, a rich woman who has never even been camping, has a harder time than the men who are obviously tougher than her.  Not to be outdone by the insufferable men, Mrs. Curtis quickly learns how to handle the harsh conditions of the African wilderness.

During this segment of the film, the cinematographer really earned his pay.  It was like watching a nature documentary with lions, elephants, porcupines, monkeys, snakes, rhinos, giraffes, hyena, crocodiles, hippos and cheetahs.  Fortunately, there was a bit of an action sequence where the party somehow survives being killed in a stampede by hiding behind a convenient fallen tree branch.  Never-mind that there was no tree around from which it might have fallen.  There, we saw a great many gazelles and zebras trampling the plains.

Finally, we make it back to the plot and the romance between Quatermain and Mrs. Curtis.  Along the way, the pick up a character who is pretty important in the book, but who is portrayed in the film as almost incidental.  Umbopa, played by an actor named Siriaque, is an unusually tall and mysterious native who offers his services as a pack carrier.  He is more committed than anyone to reaching the fabled land of the Watusi people, where King Solomon’s mines are rumored to be located.

In the book, they cross the desert sands, heading toward two snow-capped mountain peaks which were called Sheba’s Breasts.  The movie changed them to the White Twins.  When they cross the mountains and reach the land of the Watusi, they are treated like gods because the natives have never seen a white man before, or more specifically, their deadly weapons.  There, they are taken to the diamond mines, sealed in by a treacherous Watusi guide.  They find Mr. Curtis’s dead body, thus allowing for the romance between the widow and Quatermain to be acceptable to the Hayes code, escape the mines through an underground river, and return to the Watusi tribe just in time to see Umbopa kill the evil king.  He becomes king and the white people are allowed to leave in peace.  The end.

As for the acting in the film, it was generally overdone, so nothing special there.  The costumes were adequate, but the makeup was not that good.  I refer mostly to Quatermain and his darkened skin that made him look like he had at least a full two inches of caked-on makeup covering his face.

And I have to mention the big climax of the film.  It should have been the fight between Umbopa and Twala, the usurper King of the Watusis, played by real Watusi actor, Baziga.  Instead, that short sequence was overshadowed by the dance of the Watusis.  And lest I forget, the Watusi people were supposed to be a secluded tribe of African natives that had only ever seen one or two white men.  But their clothes were all made of the finest textiles from around the world.  It is hard to believe that people still living in grass huts had the means to craft such fine, bright patterns into their clothing.

But all that being said, it was still a fun enough film to watch.  And though I try not to let the ham-fisted fingers of Hollywood get in the way of my enjoyment of the film, the differences from the original book, which I enjoyed very much, were disheartening.  The book had no female lead, and no romance.  Actually, that’s not entirely true.  It had an interracial romance between Captain Good and a Watusi woman named Foulata.  Interracial romance in a book written in 1885?  Now that would have made the movie racier!  But don’t worry you white audiences of 1950.  Foulata gets killed off before the end of the book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Father of the Bride – 1950

I’ll be honest.  Father of the Bride was a bit of a disappointing movie.  It wasn’t bad, but I was somehow expecting something more, and the problem is that I can’t exactly put my finger on what it was.  Maybe my expectations were too high.  I thought that since it had spawned a remake in 1991 starring Steve Martin, it was going to be something special.  Unfortunately, it was an average film with nothing that stood out to me as extraordinary.

The film starred Spencer Tracy as Stanley Banks, a middle aged lawyer, and his loving wife Ellie, played by Joan Bennett.  Their daughter Kay, played by Elizabeth Taylor, is, of course, getting married.  The film is about exactly what the title implies.  In fact, Stanley starts off the film by delivering his dialogue directly to the viewers, as if he is just chatting with them.  The entire film is also punctuated with voice-over narration from Stanley.

The wedding, which was supposed to be a simple event, quickly gains momentum until it is an extravagant celebration with hundreds of guests in attendance.  Then we find that there are two main conflicts.  First is the financial burden which is placed on Stanley, giving the movie its comedy, and though Stanley never seems strapped for cash, he is always upset by having to spend it.  After that is the conflict within Stanley, himself, as his only daughter is growing up and leaving the nest, which gives the movie its emotional content.

Unfortunately, by today’s standards, the movie just wasn’t very funny.  It was cute enough but nothing that caused more than a slight chuckle.  Instead, I found myself focusing on things like the differences in prices for the things purchased in 1950 as compared to today, or the fact that Ellie keeps insisting that more and more money be spent on a big wedding because she’d never gotten one herself.  (Never-mind that Kay said, several times, that she just wanted a small wedding.)

No, the real heart of the film was Stanley’s struggle to come to terms with the fact that his little girl was no longer a little girl.  In this, there were small moments of real emotion which Spencer Tracey did a fine job of portraying.  Tracey always has a fatherly gentleness about him in just about every character I have seen him play.  He was perfectly cast.

It is interesting to note that Tracey, who had a history of working with Katherine Hepburn, wanted her to play his wife, but the producers felt that they were too romantic a team to present the image of a common middle-aged couple.

Of course, there is the unsurprising scene in which Kay and her fiancée Buckley Dunstan, played by Don Taylor, have a fight over nothing.  Kay comes home in tears and tells her father that she is calling the wedding off.  But I was neither surprised, nor fooled.  Within moments, Buckley is banging on the door, spouting apologies.  They kiss and make up, and the wedding is back on.  I had to roll my eyes at the predictability of the scene.

Elizabeth Taylor’s performance was good but not great.  I’ve seen her do better, like in 1958’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, but I think that had more to do with the dry script than her skills as an actress.  The character of Kay was shallow and one-note, but Taylor was able to cry on cue and she always had a youthful sparkle in her eye.  And, of course, she was pretty attractive in those days, so she was at least nice to look at.

As I think about it, I guess the film’s biggest disappointment was its predictability.  There were no surprises, no plot twists, and really, no conflict serious enough to make me care too much about the characters.  It was an overly-wholesome, family-oriented film, so much so that it just came across as a little dull.  Maybe it resonated more with fathers who had been through the experience of paying for a daughter’s wedding.

Still, I can see why it appealed to so many people.  It was a snapshot of upper-class white society as they played out every young girl’s fantasy: a perfect white wedding with all the trimmings.  It was, in the 1950s, the idealized version of what the perfect wedding was supposed to be like.  I just don’t think it translates well to a modern audience.  I wonder how the Steve Martin re-make modernized the story to make it more palatable.

And finally, I have to mention a little bit of interesting trivia which revolved around the personal life of Miss Taylor.  The actress was going into the first of her eight marriages.  In fact, her wedding was only two days before the film’s premiere.  The costume designer that designed the wedding dress for the movie also designed Taylor’s dress for her real-life marriage to Nicky Hilton.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Born Yesterday – 1950

If she only had a brain…  Who knew – she did.  That was what this movie was really about.  It stars Judy Holliday, Broderick Crawford, and William Holden.  The story is simple, and while it was an alright film with an interesting premise, I felt like the performances were a little one-note.  I also have a few suggestions about how the drama of the plot might be enhanced.

But I’ll start with the performances of the three leads.  Broderick Crawford played corrupt business owner, Harry Brock.  He is uncouth, bossy, manipulative, violent, and altogether narcissistic.  His was the flattest character of the bunch.   Now, I can’t put too much blame on the actor as it was mostly the lack of any character development written into the script. He was the bad guy who didn’t have a single redeeming quality.  They tried to give him a little back-story, but it told us nothing except that he had been the bad guy since he was a little boy.

His woman was Billy Dawn, played by Holliday.  She was an airhead through and through.  She didn’t have an original thought in her head.  That in itself would be alright since it was a plot point.  Throughout the film, she is tutored, and gains a small amount of intelligence.  My problem with her character is that they didn’t take her education far enough.  The ending would have been far more believable if Albert Mannheimer, the screenwriter, had known the difference between learning and comprehending.  And she never once used her intelligence to rebel against Brock, only the independence that it fostered.

The man hired to educate Billy was Paul Verral, played by Holden.  He was probably the second most complex character in the film.  He had several angles that he was working.  First he was a reporter that wanted to investigate Brock.  Second, he was very intelligent.  Third, he slowly fell in love with Billy.

And finally, I’ll mention a supporting character who I actually think was more complex than the rest of them.  Jim Devery played Brock’s lawyer, Howard St. John.  He knew Brock was a crook, and he knew that he was an accomplice to a crook.  He felt a certain amount of guilt and self-pity for his association with the man.  But that was about it.  So little time was devoted to his character development, or anyone else’s for that matter.

But I would have done things a little differently.  I would have given Brock something significant in his childhood which drove him to become a crook.  And he would have been a little smarter than he was written to be.  They also hinted at the fact that he was crazy about Billy, except he didn’t seem emotionally affected when she left him.  I would have wanted to see more evidence of that.

I would have made Billy’s character change from an airhead to someone who was actually on the same intellectual level as Brock, or possibly even Paul.  During the film’s climax, when Billy learns enough to want independence from Brock, she is still spouting off little quotes from books, without fully understanding what some of them mean.  I wanted to see her become significantly intelligent, with original and creative thoughts, and I wanted to see her use that intelligence to get back at Brock in a more aggressive manner.  Oh well.  At least the film ended implying that she had the potential to grow even further.

In the case of Paul, I would have liked him to be more devious and less flippant when dealing with Brock.  Sure, he arranged Brock’s downfall, if that is what it was, but the fact that Brock was never punished for his crimes, was not lost on me.  I mean he was actually shown slapping Billy across the face a few times.  I wanted him punished for that, if nothing else.  But Billy and Paul left, saying that they wouldn’t send him to jail, if he would only let them leave in peace.  They even made arrangements to eventually return all of his money to him, making the film’s end, in my opinion, a bit weak.

And of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the film’s patriotic angle.  The film came out in 1950, and the world was still coping with the aftermath of WWII.  One of the main focal points of Billy’s education was visiting the capitol building and the Jefferson Memorial in Washington D.C.  She was especially inspired by the quote engraved into the memorial’s marble walls which says, “…I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”  You can’t tell me that wasn’t a reference to the virtue of a world free from the tyranny of Nazi Germany.

So what am I saying about Born Yesterday?  I’m saying that it was a pretty average movie.  It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either.  The actors did the best they could with the under-developed script.  In other words, I’m glad it didn’t win the Best Picture Oscar.  But it was up against All About Eve, an infinitely better written, and better acted film, so I don’t think it was a stiff competition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Twelve O’clock High – 1949

Here we have another war movie, this one starring Gregory Peck as a WWII bomber pilot.  The film was good, but it had the potential to be great.  Sadly, it fell a bit short of the mark.  Don’t get me wrong – I enjoyed it, but I could have enjoyed it more.

The film was focused around a central issue.  It was a real issue that existed in the war and the film really went out of its way to explore it from a number of different perspectives.  It was battle fatigue, both psychological and physical.  How far could men be pushed to continue putting their lives on the line, day after day?  How long could they endure the constant mental anguish of seeing their friends being killed?  How much death could they take and give before their minds began to shut down?  How much could a man endure?

In the film, they called it “maximum effort,” and they spent a good amount of time trying to define it.  The men of the 918^th Air Division is known as a “Hard-luck” group.  They have low morale because of their frequent losses. Their commander, Colonel Keith Davenport, played by Gary Merrill, is like a father to his men.  He knows them all personally, grieves when any one of them is killed, and goes to bat for them when they are ordered into dangerous missions, saying that they need a rest from the constant flying.

But the Air Force is trying to perfect precision daytime bombing.  Unfortunately, Colonel Davenport is the wrong man for the job of leadership because of his over-familiarity with the men serving under him.  In comes Brigadier General Frank Savage, played by Peck.  He is as tough as nails, and through strict and rigorous discipline and training, he molds them into the best bomber squadron in the Air Force.

The drama of the film comes in when his hard and emotionless style of command meets resistance at every turn.  Nearly every pilot asks to be transferred out from under his command.  They resent him, but eventually come to respect him because their mission success rate increases dramatically, just as their mortality rate decreases.  Like him or not, he was just what their low morale needed.

But it was the end of the film that surprised me.  Here they have Hollywood superstar, Gregory Peck, playing the hero, the man who has all the answers, the man who always gets the job done.  And then, from out of nowhere, he learns, first-hand, exactly what “maximum effort” really means.  He is getting ready to go on the most important bombing run, and his psyche finally cracks.  His limbs stop responding and his conscious mind shuts down.  He becomes catatonic, unable to move.

Apparently, extreme stress can actually do that to a man, if he is pushed (or pushes himself) far enough.  I was surprised that his character showed human frailty.  In Hollywood films, the lead actor is usually portrayed as a perfect male specimen.  He is brave, honest, and true.  He is fearless and tough.  He always knows the right thing to say, and never fails in his mission.  But here, Peck broke.  He shows weakness in an almost sad way.  I both respected and admired him for taking the role.

Another actor who I thought did a good job was Dean Jagger, playing the part of Lieutenant Colonel Harvey Stovall.  The film actually starts out with Stovall returning to the abandoned air field after the war’s end, and so the main body of the movie is really his flashback.  Then the end of the movie returns to Stovall as he finishes his recollections and leaves the empty field.  Stovall was General Savage’s right hand man, too old to fly any bombing missions, but willing to do whatever he could out of his belief in the rightness of opposing the Germans.  Jagger won the award for Best Supporting Actor for the role.

He also had one of the best lines in the film, which seemed to sum-up one of the horrors of the war, saying, “That is not why I am drunk tonight. I got drunk because I am confused. I was thinking, which is a thing a man should not do, and all at once I couldn’t remember what any of them looked like. I, I couldn’t see their faces, Bishop, Cobb, Wilson, Zimmy, all of them. All of you. They all looked alike, just one face. And it was very young. It confused me. I think I shall stay drunk until I’m not confused anymore.”

But overall, I would have like to see a little more aerial combat, showing the horrors that the men faced every day.  And the scenes that did, needed to who more than just Peck in his pilot’s seat.  They needed to show the harsh, bloody dangers that the crew faced to get me to more fully understand “maximum effort.”  I think things like that may have pushed the film from good to great.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Letter to Three Wives – 1949

This movie was a good, and well written drama, but there seemed to be a subtle element to the plot may have touched the supernatural, just a little bit.  I know, that is a strange thing to say about an Academy Award nominated film from the 1949, but to me, it is undeniable.  I’ll explain.

The film was about three women, their husbands, and one mysterious woman who’s face is never shown on the screen.  The film starts out with a woman doing a voice-over as we watch the plot being set up.  She speaks in narration, introducing the three wives as they prepare to go on a trip together to volunteer at a picnic for underprivileged children.  She talks in a first-person, omniscient dialogue, implying that she know them each personally and intimately.

Right there, my suspicion was aroused.  The only time you ever hear that particular kind of narration is when it is a dead character talking about the events that led to their death.

The three wives were Deborah, Rita, and Lora Mae, played by Jeanne Crane, Ann Sothern, and Linda Darnell, respectively.  Their husbands, Brad, George, and Porter were played by Jeffrey Lynn, Kirk Douglas, and Paul Douglas, again, respectively.  As the women are going to the picnic, they each discuss, with bitterness, a woman named Addie Ross.  She seems to be more beautiful, smarter, more thoughtful, and more familiar with the three husbands than the wives are comfortable with.

Before boarding the boat, they are handed a letter that is addressed to all three of them.  It is from Addie, saying that she has run away with one of their husbands.  The three women do their best to ignore the letter and dismiss it as a joke in poor taste.  The film that follows is made up of the flashbacks of the three women as they reflect on their marriages, each afraid that she is the unlucky woman.

It actually is a very cleverly written script for which Vera Caspary and Joseph Menkiewicz won the Academy Award for Best Writing, Screenplay.  In each of the three flash-back sequences, we learn that each husband obviously knew and, on some level, loved Addie, letting the audience know that it could be any one of them.  It also established that each marriage had its problems, just to keep the audience guessing even more.

The one-day picnic trip ends and the three women nervously return to their homes in the early afternoon.  Rita is first and finds George waiting for her.  She seems to fall in love with him all over again.  Lora Mae, who seems to have the rockiest marriage, finds Porter at home, but in a sour mood.  Their relationship does not seem to change.  Finally, Deborah arrives at home and is given a telegram from Brad, saying that he will not be home that night.  Her heart breaks.

But in the end, they pulled the old switcheroo.  Later that evening, the three women and the two remaining husbands go to a party, and wouldn’t you know it?  It turns out that it was Lora Mae’s husband, Porter, who had run away with Addie Ross.  But he loved his wife too much to go through with it, despite their marital problems.  If we were paying close enough attention in the beginning of the film, we would remember that Brad had told his wife that he might not be home that evening, even going so far as to explain why.  Apparently he was telling the truth.

I also learned that there were some significant differences from the original novel, Letter to Five Wives, aside from two women being cut.  Wikipedia summed it up pretty well, so paraphrase their article.  “All the major characters differ substantially between the novel and film. In the novel, Lora Mae is less a gold digger, and more a woman who has always been dominated by her wealthy husband; Rita is trying to succeed in a second marriage with a man she has never felt passionate about; and Deborah is a plain and quiet ex-spinster whose “catch” of a husband has been disappointed in her lack of success in society. As for the other two wives, Martha and her husband locked horns over child-rearing issues, while Geraldine was devoting excessive time and money to her singing career with few results.”  Interesting…

And finally, I have to return to the film’s parting kicker, which cemented, in my mind, that for whatever reason, Addie Ross was dead.  As the friends, whose marriages have all been strengthened by the events of the day, leave the table, a champagne glass mysteriously tips over and breaks.  Addie’s first-person voice-over returns, and she cryptically says, “Hi-ho.  Goodnight Everybody.”  So, was the tipping champagne glass proof that she was a ghost, or was it just a red herring?  Watch the film, and decide for yourself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Heiress – 1949

This was a movie with a simple plot, but good character development.  I know it was effective with me.  Olivia de Havilland played the lead, Catherine Sloper, the only daughter of wealthy doctor, Austin, wonderfully played by Ralph Richardson.

Catherine is painfully plain and shy and her father makes no secret of his extreme disappointment in her.  Enter Morris Townsend, played by Montgomery Clift.  He is a young man who lavishes attention on her, but is apparently only interested in her inheritance.  They plan to marry, but when he learns that her father will disinherit her if she marries him, Morris disappears, proving to her that he never loved her.  Catherine turns bitter and is mean to everybody.  She ends up happy at her father’s death, and though she still loves Morris, she spurns him and resigns herself to being an old maid.

Of course, it is much more subtle and complex than that, but those are the bare bones.  There are a few little sub-plots that crop up along the way, but nothing terribly interesting.  Now, all that being said, I actually liked the film.  There were some excellent performances and the costumes and sets were wonderful.  And I must also say that William Wyler’s directing was spot-on.

One scene, in particular, caught my attention as being well done.  It was the scene in which Catherine is waiting for Morris to arrive and take her away.  In the middle of the night, she comes to the parlor with her bags packed and her cloak on.  Her Aunt, Lavinia, played by Miriam Hopkins, wakes and is dismayed when she learns that Catherine told Morris that she would not accept her inheritance.  Aunt Lavinia knows that he will not return for her, and so she waits up with Catherine.

The scene was well done because de Havilland portrayed the nervous excitement of the character so well.  And the let-down, when the hour of his arrival comes and goes without a sign of him, her break-down into tears was heart-breaking to watch.  She finally realizes that her father had been right.  He only wanted her money.  And then, after that, her sad, sad walk of shame back to her room really pulled at my heart-strings.

After that, her character did a quick about-face.  I mean, in the beginning, she was young and innocent and looked at the world through rose-tinted lenses.  But after the betrayal, she became mean to her father for never loving her for who she was, and mean to Morris for breaking her heart.  But she was also mean to her Aunt for seeing was happening and not doing anything to stop it, and mean to her housemaid because… well, because by that time she was just a mean and bitter woman.

Now, I would be remiss if I did not spend some time on Ralph Richardson’s fantastic performance.  Apparently, he originated the role in the London production of the stage play.  It was clear that he understood the character.  He loved his daughter, but he loved her dead mother even more.  He idealized his wife so much that Catherine could never hope to measure up.  And when it came down to it, he seemed to care about what would happen to his fortune than his daughter’s happiness.  The character could have so easily been very two-dimensional, but Richardson brought a passion to the role that gave it subtlety and direction.

Another honorable mention has to go to Miriam Hopkins.  As the widowed Aunt, and a woman living in the early 1800’s, her desire to have Catherine marry was understandable, but she seemed to think that having a husband, any husband at all would be preferable to being alone, even if it was a loveless marriage.  And it also came out that she didn’t really think Catherine capable of catching any man without her inheritance.  So, she was just as bad as the rest, even though she was fighting to keep her niece’s romance with Morris alive.  Hopkins did a fine job.

And lastly, I have to say something about Montgomery Clift.  He was handsome enough, but I didn’t feel his acting skills was on par with the rest of his co-stars.  I can’t put my finger on exactly why, but he seemed a little lack-luster next to the rest of the cast.  Whether it makes a difference or not, it is interesting to note that the character of Morris was lightened for the film.  In the original stage play he was apparently a much darker character, but at the time, Clift was popular with Paramount as a leading man.  They didn’t want to tarnish his image too much by having him play such a bad-guy.

I would say that the film was average.  It was good but not great.  In the Best Picture category, it was up against All the King’s men, Battleground, A Letter to Three Wives and Twelve O’clock High, so I think it was appropriate that it didn’t win.  However, de Havilland did win the Oscar for Best Actress that year.  And though Aaron Copeland, a classical composer with a very distinct style, won for Best Original Score, the music didn’t really stand out for me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Battleground – 1949

Here we have the first real example of a war film after the end of WWII.  It also had the significance of a film that portrayed American soldiers as flawed and human.  I’ll say that it was a good movie, despite the fact that I am generally not a fan of war movies.

Still, about the only thing I didn’t like was the fact that for half the film, I didn’t know who any of the characters were.  I recognized faces and what personalities went along with them, but that was about it.  They didn’t do much to introduce any of them.  But after a while, the names didn’t seem to matter much.

The film follows a group of men in the war, in France, who are members of the 101^st Airborne Division, who are defending the town of Bastogne.  They are out-manned, out-gunned, and running low on food and provisions, but they refuse to give up.  Many friends and fellows are killed, but the brave heroes struggle on through a winter of bitter cold and snow to defend the strategically located town.

The film covers the Siege of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge.  There were many men in their company, but there were six main characters which the story follows.  The Squad Leader is Holly, played by Van Johnson.  His partner is the new kid, Jim Layton, played by Marshall Thompson.  Other members of the squad are Jarvess, played by John Hodiak.  He is smart and speaks both French and German.  The man waiting for his orders to be sent home is “Pop” Stazak, played by George Murphy.  Kinny, who is constantly spitting chewing tobacco, is wonderfully played by James Whitmore.  And finally, Douglas Fowley plays “Kipp” Kippton, the guy with the false teeth.

These six characters were all very well written, each with their own personalities, their own good points and bad.  The plot was extremely character driven, so a lot of time and care was given to developing them.  The incredible hardships that the men were forced to endure on the big screen, made me feel for them.  Add to that the fact that the actors all did a fantastic job, and I became emotionally invested in the story.

For example, the character of Layton started out as a green recruit, while the other men were all seasoned soldiers.  But over the course of the film, he dug trenches, took part in life threatening battles, and watched friends die.  His skin grew thicker, as his attitude became calmer.  Thompson, did a wonderful job of showing the transformation, so that I actually gained a measure of respect for both the character and the actor.

But for me, and apparently for the Academy as well, the stand-out was James Whitmore, playing the role of Kinnie.  He really looked like he embodied the soul of the American soldier.  His character suffered along with everyone else, and yet his spirit never seemed to break.  In the end of the film, it was he who rallied the squad one last time to leave the field of battle with their heads held high.  Whitmore was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal, though he did not win.  However, he did win a Golden Globe for the role.

The story was certainly inspirational.  There were acts of heroism to lift the spirit performed by American soldiers set against impossible odds.  Sounds a little too Hollywood, custom made for a patriotic public who had recently seen the end of the war, right?  Well, think again.  Apparently the events that took place in the film were quite accurate with only a few deviations from true history.  The biggest example was that of German soldiers posing as American soldiers.  To be sure, that did happen during the war, but in another location.

The screenplay was written by Robert Pirosh, who based it on his own experiences during the Battle of the Bulge.  The realism of the writing became very evident when nearly every character had his own moment of doubt, of wanting to go home, or even run away from the battle.  None of the characters were perfect, and that is what made them so believable.  Pirosh won the Academy Award for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay.

One of the small touches I liked was something obvious, when thought about, but it might have been easily missed.  The men were on the battlefield, surrounded by German soldiers, surviving out in the open during a harsh winter.  The actors all grew beards and just kept getting grungier and dirtier.  It made sense, showing the passage of time during the seven day siege.

Again, I’ll say, I am not a huge fan of war films, but I guess if they are done right, I can enjoy them as much as any other genre.  And Battleground got it right.  Sure, it didn’t take home the Best Picture Oscar, losing to All the King’s Men, but I think maybe it should have won.  It was a much more engaging film.