Author: Snugglecub

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre – 1948

This was, I’m sorry to say it, a weak film.  It wasn’t a bad film, just a weak one.  It had some interesting performances, fairly believable realism in the sets and costumes, and an un-stereotypical ending for a Hollywood movie.  But the main point of the story seemed a bit farcical.  I know… Hollywood puts out films that stretch credibility all the time, but I hold a Best Picture nominee to a higher standard.

Let me explain.  In a nutshell, the main point of the plot was that the prospect of money is enough to turn good men to murderers and thieves.  That’s it.  The film begins as Fred Dobbs, played by Humphry Bogart, is stranded in Tampico, Mexico.  He has no money, no work, and is forced to beg strangers for a few pesos so he can buy food.  He meets another man in the same situation, Bob Curtain, played by Tim Holt.  Together, they find work doing hard manual labor, employed by a charlatan who tries to cheat them out of the promised wages.

They meet an old prospector, Howard, played by Walter Huston, who agrees to guide them into the wilderness to dig for gold.  But he warns them that gold changes a man.  A good man might do anything for the rare treasure, even murder his best friend for it.  The three men set out into bandit-infested wilderness and set up their mining operation.  They find about $75,000.00 in gold dust and divide it between the three of them.

But this is where the plot really made me roll my eyes.  Dobbs begins talking to himself and becomes wildly paranoid, thinking that his partners are after his gold.  The three partners take their treasure and head for home.  Along the way, Howard leaves Dobbs and Curtain to help a sick boy in a small Mexican village, entrusting his share of the gold to the two men.

Dobbs then starts behaving as if he has completely lost all his marbles.  He changes from a somewhat sane man, to a murderer and a thief.  He shoots Curtain and takes off into the desert alone with all the gold.  I don’t know.  I was reminded of how cartoon characters behave when a pretty girl walks by.  As soon as they lay eyes on her they start panting, drooling, and hooting.  Their jaws hit the floor and in a microsecond, they become senseless morons.  Dobbs’ reaction to the gold was very similar, almost cartoonish in its absurdity.  Does gold really make men act like that? Only in the movies, I think.

Along the way they have to fight off Mexican bandits who are smart enough to rob trains and out-maneuver the Mexican Federales, but dumb enough to not know what gold dust is.  The leader of these stupid criminals, known only as Gold Hat, played by Alfonso Bedoya, has the only line in the movie that actually became a famous quote.  He and his banditos try to convince the three prospectors that they, themselves are the Mexican police, Dobbs asks them where their badges are.  He responds, “Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges! I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ badges!”

Bogart’s performance really wasn’t anything special because he just seemed to play himself.  There seemed to be nothing new about his portrayal, and unfortunately, I am starting to see this as a trend with him.  I liked Tim Holt’s performance as the honest Curtain well enough, but it was Walter Huston that really caught my attention.  As the seasoned prospector, he not only looked the part, but the character was well written.  He was the wise old man who had been through it all before and taught the two stupid young men what real gold prospecting was all about.  He was a likable character and Huston did a great job.

Apparently, according to my research on Wikipedia, the film followed the original book very closely, so I have to give them credit for that.  Also, I learned that this was one of the first Hollywood films to be shot on location outside the U.S.

But I also found something else that lends a little credence to my earlier statement, saying that this was a bit of a weak film.  A Wikipedia quote says that “The film is often described as a story about the corrupting influence of greed.  Film critic Roger Ebert enlarged upon this idea, saying that ‘The movie has never really been about gold but about character.’  However, the ability of the film to comment on human nature generally has been questioned, in view of the fact that Dobbs’ character is so evidently flawed from the beginning.”  That is exactly what I thought!

And then there was the ending.  Humphry Bogart was a pretty big name at the time, and he had top billing.  But his was the only character in the film to die.  I was surprised that Hollywood would kill off their big star, but as the man who tried to murder his friend and steal all the gold, he had to get his just punishment before the end of the movie.  It was the badgeless banditos that did it.  Then, just to prove how dumb they were, they dumped all the gold dust into the wind of a dust storm, believing it to be nothing more than bags of sand.  Oh well.  Easy come, easy go.  Such are the whims of fortune.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Snake Pit – 1948

I have to start this review off by saying, right up front, how incredibly impressed I was by Olivia de Havilland’s outstanding performance.  The movie is about a woman’s struggle to find her sanity while being treated at a mental hospital.

Right from the opening scene, it is clearly evident that her character, Virginia, is bonkers.  She doesn’t know who or where she is.  She hears voices in her head.  She doesn’t recognize the people she is with.  She is perpetually confused and disoriented, and de Havilland really showed off her skills as an actress to perfection.  She was magnificent.

However, the Academy decided to give the Best Actress Oscar for 1948 to Jane Wyman in Johnny Belinda, which I have not yet seen.  But I’ll be honest – Wyman had better turn in a phenomenal performance, or I’ll know that de Havilland got robbed.  The character of Virginia was incredibly complex.  Not only does she have all the problems I have already mentioned, but she had no short-term memory, and a sketchy long-term memory.  She’d had problems in her past that were rooted in her childhood, and traumas in her adult life that would test anyone’s sanity.

At the start of the film, she is already in the mental hospital, though she thinks she is a novelist, doing research in a prison for her next book.  She is frightened and confused when she and the other patients are rounded up from the yard and herded into the hospital which is depicted as little more than a bedlam-esque mad-house.

Screeching and moaning women are kept in overcrowded wards, attended by a staff that is far too small.  The hospital administration cannot afford to hold all the patients, and are doing their best to release as many of them as they can, whether they are well or not.  Some women seem saner than others, like Virginia’s friend, Grace, played by Celeste Holm, whom she does not remember.

There is a doctor who cares about his patients on a fundamental level and truly wants them to heal and grow strong enough to survive in the real world.  His name is Dr. Mark Kik, played by Leo Genn.  Genn’s performance was appropriately calm and gentle, making him a likable character.  As a last resort, and in an effort to make contact with Virginia and bring her back to reality, he prescribes shock therapy.

This is the third Best Picture nominated film I’ve seen that made use of shock therapy on a patient in a mental hospital, and it is never comfortable to watch.  The other two were both Best Picture winners: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1975 and A Beautiful Mind in 2001.  It is always shown as a horribly painful experience that left the victim in a near catatonic state.  This film was no different, however, there was a slight difference.  Here, the treatment actually seemed to do the patient some good.

Virginia eventually begins to remember where she is and why she is there.  She goes through a long period of coming to terms with being crazy, all the while being helped by her husband Robert, played by Mark Stevens.  From there, the movie follows her struggles, her ups and downs, as she strives to discover and deal with the traumatic events in her past which caused her to lose touch with reality.

The film’s title seems self-evident, but there is actually a deeper and more specific meaning.  After the character of Virginia acts out and is punished with a straight jacket and solitary confinement, she is sent to the worst ward of the hospital, Ward 12, despite the progress made with Dr. Kik.  The women in Ward 12 are the violent and mentally deranged.  Virginia called it the snake pit because she remembered a story which said that in the past, mental patients were thrown into snake pits to shock them back into reality.

And that is exactly what happened to her.  Realizing that she had reached rock-bottom, she understood that she wasn’t nearly as crazy as the women of Ward 12.  And even though she was still confused about some of the psychological causes of her mental illness, she was able put herself on the road to recovery.

So the film had a happy ending, which was like a final form of relief for me.  I had spent the entire film in a state of nervous tension.  De Havilland had a face that looked innocent and vulnerable.  She invited viewers to empathize with her and feel sympathetic to her plight.  She effectively portrayed the entire gambit of emotions that the character of Virginia required, and she did it all with a sense of purpose and an intense dedication to the role.

As a result, the film wasn’t always easy to watch, but it was well worth the Best Picture nomination.  In fact, I think it should have won over Sir Lawrence Olivier’s Hamlet.  But that’s just my opinion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Red Shoes – 1948

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of The Red Shoes is the term Art Film.  This was a piece of art.  The lead actress, Moira Shearer, not only had to look gorgeous, but she had to be able to act a very dramatic role, and dance her feet off.

Sure, we have seen other dance films strutting their stuff at the Academy Awards – mostly Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly.  But their style of dance was a very Hollywood style.  Their dancing was jazz dance and tap.  They both used elements of ballet, but neither was true ballet.  Shearer was a real ballerina.  Her dancing was pure ballet.

Now, I have never been a huge follower of the art form, but I must say that the dancing in The Red Shoes was phenomenal.  To my uneducated eyes, the dancing was graceful and fluid, complex and incredibly physically demanding.  And nobody in the cast had a more difficult job than Shearer.  She was wonderful to watch, even for a guy like me, who knows nothing about the world of professional ballet.

The story is loosely based on the gruesome fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson, The Red Shoes, in which a vain young girl loves her red shoes so much that she wears them everywhere.  Even when her step-mother is ill, she wears them to a party.  Then the shoes start to relentlessly dance on their own, forcing the girl to dance herself to death.  So let that be a lesson to all you young girls out there.  Beware of vanity!

But the filmmakers wrote a modern story about Vicky Page, played by Shearer, a ballerina who has the potential to be a great star, thanks to the patronage of and guidance of the impresario of the ballet, Boris Lermontov, played by Anton Walbrook.  He takes her under his wing and molds her into the best dancer the world has ever seen.  The only trick is that she can never marry, for such a thing would ruin her as a ballet super-star.

The plot has also been following the character of a brilliant young composer named Julian Craster, played by Marius Goring, who Lermontov employs with similar promises of greatness.  He commissions Julian to write the ballet, The Red Shoes, as a vehicle for Vicky to attain her stardom.  So what happens?  Of course, Lermontov’s two young protégés fall hopelessly in love with each other.  They marry and Vicky leaves the ballet.

The ballet sequence was really the film’s highlight.  It was a 15 minute long sequence that had surprisingly good special effects, wonderful music that was written specifically for the film by composer Brian Easdale.  Within the ballet, Vicky’s beautiful dancing took her from the stage to various surrealistic landscapes, dancing with figures made of cellophane, making several costume changes, and watching fellow dancers blink in and out of existence, as only the medium of film can do.  It was beautiful to watch.

The trouble was that this was only about half way through the movie.  The ballet was the starting point for the romance between Vicky and Julian.  But it was also the last of the movie’s dancing.  It nearly made the rest of the film anti-climactic.

The rest of the film covered the romance and the tragic consequences of the romance, culminating with Vicky’s suicidal death.  It was a cleverly written, though vague, mirror of the original fairy tale, in which Vicky’s dancing became more important to her than the love of her life.  At that point, knowing that her husband, Julian, is leaving her for good, and knowing that she cannot stop dancing, even for him, she kills herself.

Her death scene was a little more gory than I was expecting, which I totally respect.  In Hollywood, during those decades of filmmaking, when a character is run over by a horse carriage or falls from a high building, there is generally no blood.  No need to disturb the audience with believable blood and gore.

But The Red Shoes took a more realistic angle.  After Vicky threw herself from a balcony to get hit by a passing train, she should be pretty messed up, physically, and she was!  Sure, they didn’t show severed limbs or protruding bones, but she did have blood all over her, bloody scrapes and cuts, and her clothes were shredded.  That’s more than most movies would have shown, so kudos to this one.

Just as an interesting little note:  In the film’s ballet of The Red Shoes, the exhausted dancer is at death’s door and asks a priest to remove the shoes.  When he does, she dies.  In Hans Anderson’s original fairy tale, the girl asks an executioner to cut off her feet, which he does.  But even then, the severed feet continue to dance in the shoes, blocking her from going to church to ask God’s forgiveness for her vanity.  Wow, Mr. Anderson… Wow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Johnny Belinda – 1948

This was a good film that starred Jane Wyman as a young deaf-mute in Nova Scotia.  What made the film so good was the engaging plot, which was easy to follow and well written.  But before getting into why it was such a good movie, I have to have my say about the fact that Jane Wyman took home the Oscar for Best Actress for her portrayal, beating out Olivia de Havilland in The Snake Pit.  Olivia – you were robbed!

But this review isn’t about that.  It is about the virtues of Johnny Belinda, and its exceptional cast of actors.  Wyman, of course, played the female lead, Belinda McDonald.  As a deaf-mute, everyone on the Island of Cape Breton, including her father, Black, played by Charles Bickford, and her Aunt Aggie, played by Agnes Moorhead, thought she was stupid and retarded.

But the new doctor in the town, Dr. Richardson, played by Lew Ayres, doesn’t believe it.  He learns sign language well enough to teach it to her, and establishes communication.  He discovers that she is really intelligent and, goes out of his way to educate her.

But the real drama of the plot begins when the town’s resident bully and womanizer, Locky, played by Stephen McNally, sees Belinda as she is blossoming from an ignorant young girl into an attractive young woman.  He gets drunk and rapes her.  The rape scene was significant on a number of levels, the most prominent of which was that pesky Hayes Code.  Rape was considered an unsuitable subject for the movie-going audiences of the time.  Johnny Belinda, however, is considered the first Hollywood film to get around the Code on the subject.

It also really set up the drama for the rest of the film.  Imagine being a deaf mute whose ability to communicate is not very strong.  If you are violently raped, how do you tell anyone what happened?  You’re still working on signs for “father” and “thank you.”  It made me horrified for her character who had to endure the crime in silence.

But then we learn that the rape produced a child.  This is where the supporting cast of actors, Bickford and Moorhead, really got to shine.  The shock and anger that came out was real and believable.  Moorhead, in particular did a fantastic job in the heart-wrenching scene where she learns of the girl’s pregnancy.  She curses herself for being so hard on Belinda and promises to take care of her.

Bickford also had his moments, like when he learns of the baby, when the baby is being born, and, when he finally figures out who had raped his daughter.  He fights Lockey but unfortunately is killed.

It turns out that Belinda is an excellent mother and loves her son, Johnny (hence the film’s title), enough to kill for him.  When Locky, knowing that the boy is his, tries to take him from Belinda, she shoots him dead.  Then there’s a trial, in which Belinda is accused of murder, and the truth finally comes out.  Locky’s wife, Stella, played by Jan Sterling, who had learned what really happened, breaks down and tells the court everything.  Belinda is released and gets to keep her baby.  But just to give the film an even more uplifting ending, Dr. Richardson, who has fallen in love with Belinda, takes her and Johnny away to live happily ever after.  Yay Hollywood!

The film had a great story to work with, but my problem is that they just didn’t take it far enough.  First of all, there was the rape scene.  Granted, it was new territory for movies and they handled it well enough.  But they could have done a much better job with Belinda’s reaction.  It wasn’t anywhere near intense enough.  Belinda was a young and innocent girl who had just been raped, with no way to tell anyone what had happened.  But all that happens is just that she becomes sullen and unresponsive for a while, until Dr. Richardson shows up and gets her to visit another physician with him.  Then, she is apparently fine.  Even seeing Locky at church doesn’t get that much of a reaction out of her.  She shies away a little and turns her head, but that’s it.  There was so much opportunity for a more intense performance, but it was all missed.

And that brings me to my second problem with the film.  Wyman’s performance was good, but it could have been great.  The whole thing was too calm and demure.  If she didn’t seem to feel strongly about what was happening to her, then why, as a viewer, should I?

Just as a fun little last thought, there was a wonderful line in the film that might have been easy to miss, but it had me laughing out loud.  When the town’s old ladies are gossiping, one says of Stella, “She’s her own worst enemy,” to which another replies, “Not as long as I’m alive, she isn’t.”  What a great line!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Miracle on 34^th Street – 1947

Now, this was a perfect example of a Christmas movie.  It was a story about whether or not Santa Clause is real.  It starred Natalie Wood, Maureen O’Hara, John Payne, and Edmund Gwenn.  It was a fun movie with a feel-good ending.  It was also schmaltzy, and overwhelmingly sweet.  Those two things are not mutually exclusive.

I’ll also say right away that the version I received from Netflix was a colorized version of the film, which is really too bad.  I would rather have seen it in the original black and white.  The colorization was alright, but not terribly bright.  It all looked like it had a slightly gray gel over the picture, giving the whole thing a very faded look.  I find that I don’t really care for colorized movies.  It takes me out of the story when I can’t help noticing how much the images LOOK colorized.

The story starts with a jolly-looking old man in a suit walking down the street in New York.  He stops at a store window as a man is setting up a display featuring Santa and his reindeer.  The old man tells the shop owner that the flying animals are in the wrong order, implying that he believes himself to be the very man he resembles, Kris Kringle.

He is indignant when he finds a drunk man dressed as Santa, getting ready to ride on the float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.  He talks to the parade’s director, Doris Walker, played by O’Hara, and takes the man’s place.  He is a hit, and is so popular that he is given a job as Santa for Macy’s department store.

He is wonderful with the children, and has some strange ideas when it comes to promising them the toys that their parents might not be able to get.  He even goes so far as to send parents to other stores if Macy’s does not have what they want.

 

Back at home with Doris, Natalie Wood played the part of her daughter, Susan.    Doris has a policy of raising her daughter to not believe in fairy tales, fictional stories, or anything of the kind.  That includes Santa Clause.  Doris’s handsome young neighbor, Fred Gailey, played by Payne, is a lawyer who is trying to gain Doris’s affections by befriending Susan.

The leads were all perfectly cast.  First of all, Wood was wonderful.  Even as a child she was attractive, and a good actress to boot.  And I’m happy to say that she did not break the cardinal sin of movie-making.  She was cute, but not because she was trying to be.  She just was.  Her part was well written and well played.  Child actors could learn a thing or two from her wonderful performance.

O’Hara was also good.  She was no-nonsense, but not mean.  She had a sense of humor, and a sense of frustration throughout the film that surfaced when she started getting reports that the Santa she’d hired actually believed that he was the real Santa Clause.  The character was a single mother, though the film never really explained what happened to Susan’s father.

Next was Payne.  The film didn’t really focus on the romance between Fred and Doris, though it certainly didn’t shy away from it either.  Payne played Fred with such a likeable ease that it was easy to imagine love blooming between the two.  He easily bowed to her wishes when it came to raising her daughter, but not when it came to his own principles.

But though all their performances were superb, the real stand out of the cast was Edmund Gwenn.  He was instantly likeable and pleasant.  He had a gentle smile that made you feel at ease.  It was a smile full of generosity and light-hearted good will, just like the man in the red suit should have.  And you could tell that the actor was comfortable in the role.  There wasn’t a bit of angst or malice in him.  Gwenn played the role to perfection.

In fact, he was so good that he won the academy award for Best Supporting Actor that year, though maybe he should have been nominated for Best Actor instead.  Santa Claus was the lead in this film, not the lawyer who defended him.  But John Payne was a bigger name, so they gave him top billing, even though his character was not the central character.  But if that had happened, Gwenn would have been up against other leading actors like Ronald Coleman, Gregory Peck, John Garfield, and William Powell.  Up against those names, he wouldn’t have won his Oscar.

This was a fun movie.  There was much more to the plot, of course, mostly having to do with Kringle being put on trial for claiming to be real Santa Caluse, but it had humor and heart, and it also had a bit of brains as well.  It certainly had an element of fantasy and wonder that was refreshing.  There was nothing heavy, nothing really dramatic except for a few brief scenes.  And the ending was one that made me smile, despite myself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Great Expectations – 1947

Goodness gracious!  Charles Dickens is a one-trick pony!  If I see one more film based on a Dickens novel in which a young boy, usually a poor orphan, is raised by cruel and harsh people, is sent somewhere where he finds great fortune and a pretty girl around his own age, grows up, becomes a gentleman, has a life of big drama, and eventually finds happiness with the girl, who he has never stopped loving, I’m going to scream!

And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen.  That is the plot of Great Expectations, in a nutshell.  It is also the plot of Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and Nicholas Nickleby.  Only the names have been changed to pretend that the stories are different.  True, Dickens has also turned out some unique novels like A Tale of Two Cities and A Christmas Carol.  But I’ll even go a step further than that, and admit that those are about all of his many works that I am familiar with.  Maybe there are more unique Dickens novels of which I am not aware.

But I am here to review the film, not the book.  The movie was made well enough; the actors did a good job, the music was fine, and from what my research has told me, the script was true to the source material, which I appreciate.  In the opening scene, as young Pip, played by Anthony Wager, is visiting his mother’s grave on a foggy evening, he is accosted by the dangerous escaped convict, Abel Magwitch, played by Finlay Currie, who forces him to promise to retrieve food and a file to remove his shackles.  The promise is made, and Pip is too honest to break his word, even if it was given under duress.

Later, he is roughly forced to go to the local crazy lady’s house to play for her – not with her but for her.  Her name is Miss Havisham, played by Martita Hunt.  Many years previous, she was unlucky enough to be jilted on her wedding day, causing her to lose her sanity.  She spent the rest of her life in the banquet hall as it decayed in to a filthy ruin.  Creepy!

While there, Pip meets Estella, played by Jean Simmons, an adopted girl who Miss Havisham has taught to be cruel to all men.  She treats Pip like a bug, but occasionally shows him a wisp of kindness.  Of course, Pip falls hopelessly in love with her anyway.  Then, after a few years, from out of nowhere, a mysterious benefactor sends lawyer, Mr. Jaggers, played very well by Frances L Sullivan, to take the teenage boy to London.  There, he gives Pip a healthy allowance and charges him the task of becoming a proper gentleman.

A few more years go by and he is reacquainted with a grown-up Estella, played by Valerie Hobson.  The only character I have not mentioned is Pip’s best friend, Herbert Pocket, played by Alec Guiness.  He doesn’t really have much to do with the plot, except that he helps Pip with his difficulties in the latter half of the film.

Unfortunately, there was very little about the plot that was unexpected, and I’ve already spent too much time on it, in any case.  Instead, I’ll go over the things about the film that stood out to me as good.

First, I’ll mention the costumes.  It was a period piece, so costumes from the 1850s were called for.  They seemed to get everything right, though there was one thing that looked out of place.  When Pip first arrives in London, he is dress in a gentleman’s clothing with a huge, stiff, white bow at his neck that was as big as his head.  Sure the director wanted him to visually stand out on the screen, but it looked ridiculous.

Second, I’ll examine the performance of Martita Hunt.  She played the spooky Miss Havisham well.  The slow and ethereal speech patterns, the languid movements, and the barely disguised misandry (the hatred of the male gender) all added up to make an interesting, if not likable, character.  Hunt did a good job, making the insanity almost believable.  The crazy hair and the tattered wedding gown, helped to complete the look of one who has lost touch with reality.  Also, her tragic demise took me by surprise.  As Pip angrily leaves her room, a stray coal from the fireplace sets her on fire.  She begins screaming and ignites like a Roman candle.  Pretty horrific, actually.

And lastly, I’ll mention the exceptional performance of Francis Sullivan.  The role of the lawyer is actually one that I wouldn’t expect to be memorable, but Sullivan brought both pomposity and kind, discerning morals to the character at the appropriate times.  He did a good job, using expressive, but not over-exaggerated, facial expressions to convey his dialogue, making him interesting to watch.

I suppose the film was made well enough, but I just wasn’t impressed with the source material.  I don’t get why the literary world is so impressed with Dicken’s rehashing of the same story over and over again.  Well, at least it was only a nominee and not a winner.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crossfire – 1947

Crossfire was a murder mystery… sort of.  It didn’t take much figuring to understand who-done-it.  But then, what was the conflict, you might ask.  The conflict was: would the police arrest the right guy?  Also: what was his motive?

First, let’s examine the characters.  The film starred three Roberts.  There was Robert Mitchum, Robert Young, and Robert Ryan.  Along with them there was Gloria Grahame, George Cooper, Jaqueline White, Steve Brody, and lest we forget, the murder victim, himself, Sam Levene.  We’ll start there.  Leven played Joseph Samuels.  All you need to know about him was that he was Jewish.  Robert Young was Police Captain Finlay, the man trying to solve the murder.  The rest of the men were all soldiers, recently come home after the war.  That leaves Grahame, a dance hall floosy, and White, Cooper’s wife.

Robert Mitchum played Sgt. Keeley, all around good guy and hero.  George Cooper had the role of Corporal Mitchell, the prime murder suspect for half the film.  Robert Ryan played the anti-Semitic Montgomery, and Steve Brody played his idiot friend, Floyd Bowers.

The plot is simple and can be summed up pretty quickly.  Samuels is murdered and all evidence points to Corporal Mitchell.  After all, he was so drunk at the time of the crime, he couldn’t remember what he had really done.  But the police can’t find him.  Sgt. Keeley, Mitchell’s best friend tries to defend him and finds him before the police do.  It becomes evident, before the film is even half over, that Montgomery did it, though his motives aren’t clear.  Eventually, Keeley, convinced that Mitchell is innocent, tells the cops where to find him.  By then, Captain Finlay knows it wasn’t him.  With the help of another army officer, Leroy, played by William Phipps, they trick Montgomery into giving himself away.  He tries to run and gets gunned down.  The end.

If it were me, I’d have kept it as a true who-done-it for as long as I could.  I’d have misled the audience at every opportunity.  But it seems that wasn’t the point of the film.  The real point was hitting the viewers over the head with anti-Semitism.  It all starts with fear of anything different than ourselves.  That naturally leads to hate.  Hate leads to acts of discrimination.  Discrimination leads to violence.  Violence leads to murder.  We have to stop the hate!

The argument was really driven home in a speech by Captain Finlay, as he is trying to convince Leroy to help them trap Montgomery.  He said, “This business about hating Jews comes in a lot of different sizes. There’s the ‘you can’t join our country club’ kind. The ‘you can’t live around here’ kind. The ‘you can’t work here’ kind. Because we stand for all these, we get Monty’s kind. He grows out of all the rest… Hating is always insane, always senseless.”  In that speech was the real point of the film.

He went on to say, “My grandfather was killed just because he was an Irish Catholic. Hating is always the same, always senseless. One day it kills Irish Catholics, the next day Jews, the next day Protestants, the next day Quakers. It’s hard to stop. It can end up killing people who wear striped neckties.”  Do you see how dangerous hate is?  Did you hear that, audience?

The performances were not bad, but not particularly good, either.  The music didn’t stand out as anything special.  The sets and costumes were all appropriate.  There just wasn’t much about the film that stood out to me as above average

I guess that I just didn’t really get what I wanted.  I was all set up to see a murder mystery, and it had a bit of potential at the beginning.  But it fell flat as soon as it became clear who the real murderer was.  A better film would have kept me guessing longer or at the very least, made the evidence against the wrong suspect stronger, making me doubt what I was being told.  But no.  All the film makers really wanted to do was to say their piece about anti-Semitism.

One of the performances I liked was that of Gloria Grahame.  She actually had a little bit of bitter drama about how much she hated her life as a dance hall girl.  She kept trying to say that there was nothing wrong with what she did.  She protested a bit too much, though, making me think that she was the one who hated it.  Her part was small, but she did a good job.

An interesting little thing I discovered about the film is that in the original novel upon which the movie is based, the issue was not anti-Semitism, but homophobia.  Apparently, the character of Samuels was gay, and that was why he was murdered.  But that pesky Hayes Code considered homosexuality to be a sexual perversion and would not allow any mention of it on the big screen.  So it was changed to a racial issue… stupid Hayes Code.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Bishop’s Wife – 1947

This was a film that was cute enough, sure, but it didn’t really go very far beyond that.  It was a bit slow and plodding, but that’s alright.  It never claimed to be fast paced or exciting.  It was a romantic comedy with a wholesome religious angle.  It had a few big names, like Carey Grant, Loretta Young and David Niven.  It even had a few cleverly written scenes.

But it was just a very average film.  For me, there just wasn’t very much about it that stood out as special or unique. The plot focuses pretty evenly on the three main characters, Bishop Henry Brougham, played by Niven, his wife Julia, of course, played by Young, and the mysterious Dudley, played by Grant.

The plot was a remarkably simple one.  Bishop Brougham used to be a nice guy before becoming a Bishop.  But now he is obsessed with building a cathedral.  Having to deal with the difficulties of trying to fund and design the house of worship, he becomes a jerk who makes his wife take a back seat behind his obsession.  He prays to God for guidance, and God sends Dudley, an angel, to guide him through his trials.

Julia is heartbroken that her marriage is not what it once was, and struggles to cope with her estrangement from her husband.  Dudley does little to guide the Bishop through his troubles with the cathedral, and instead focuses on saving his marriage.  By the end of the film, the marriage is saved and the prospect of building a cathedral is removed from the Bishop’s life.  The end.

True, that is a bare-bones synopsis, but there really wasn’t much more than that to the plot.  There were a few sub-plots that were pretty unimportant like Julia’s friend, Professor Wutheridge, played by Monty Woolley, as he is inspired to write a history book, and a cab driver named Sylvester, played by James Gleason, as he is inspired to go skating, which somehow rekindles his belief in the inherent kindness of the human spirit.

There was also a minor plot point involving the primary financial donor for the building of the cathedral, Mrs. Hamilton, played by Gladys Cooper.  She had been in love in her younger days and had refused to marry the man for fear of living in poverty.  Instead, she married a wealthy man whom she did not love.  Now she is old and bitter, and wants the cathedral made to her personal specifications.  When Dudley reminds her of her lost love, she has a change of heart and decides to give her money to needy charities, instead.

The film was a harmless bit of fluff.  But there were a few minor things that I didn’t particularly care for.  One was the idea that heaven is a bureaucracy.  Dudley was an angel assigned to this district, and happened to be available to take the case.  I know I’m being nit-picky, and this isn’t the first academy award nominee to use such a plot device, though while I’m on the subject, I’ll say that I didn’t care for that aspect of 1941’s Here Comes Mr. Jordan, either.  Bureaucracy is always seen as a bad thing and has negative connotations.  Making Dudley part of a district, and implying that heaven might have been too busy to send the help, doesn’t sit very well with me.  Isn’t God is supposed to be without fault and have time for every person?  OK, I’ll get off my soapbox, now.

Still, some of the small miracles that he performed were amusing enough, like decorating the Christmas tree with a wave of his hand, and getting a little girl to throw a snowball like a pro.  They brought a touch of fantasy to the story that I liked.

There was an interesting little scene where Dudley and Julia are talking to the Professor.  He kept refilling the Professor’s brandy glass, using his divine powers.  And even after he left, the Professor was left with a bottle of booze that was always full, no matter how much of it was consumed.  Cute.  Not very profound, since it didn’t have much to do with the main plot, but cute.

As for the performances of the three main actors, I can’t really say much about Grant.  He played himself.  He was easy and charming, like always.  Young did alright, and was pretty enough.  She got to show a bit of acting chops when she played the neglected, depressed wife.  But I think that it was Niven who was the stand-out.  Sure, his character was a selfish, jerk most of the time, but he played the self-righteous anger and frustration perfectly.

There was only one thing I would have done differently.  Throughout the film, everybody kept referring to how wonderful a man the Bishop used to be, a side of the character we never got to see.  It would have made a more interesting film to have him start there, descend into anger and frustration, and then return to the light, so to speak.  But I suppose that if you have a star as big as Carey Grant, you bring him in as soon as possible, not half way through the movie.

The Yearling – 1946

Now, here, finally, we have a film that was completely deserving of the Best Picture nomination that it received.  I’d even go so far as to say that it deserved to win the coveted prize.  The Yearling was perfectly cast, expertly acted, and wonderfully directed.  The sets and costumes were spot on.  The plot was dramatic but not melodramatic.  It worked on multiple levels and had a deep and insightful way of examining a child’s growth from boyhood to manhood.  It was a powerful story that pulled at the heartstrings without being preachy or blunt.  So why didn’t it win?  Simple.  It was up against The Best Years of Our Lives.  There’s no shame in losing to that one.

As the film began, I was put on guard.  Claude Jarman Jr. played the lead, a ten or eleven year old boy, named Jody.  Good child actors are hard to come by, but Jarman really did his job well.  The story took place near Lake Georgia, Florida in 1878.  He is the only living child of his parents, Ezra and Ora Baxter, played by Gregory Peck and Jane Wyman.  They are farmers and hunters in a time when the life of a pioneer was hard and dangerous.

The film spends a fair amount of time in set-up for the real dramatic things that take place in the second half of the movie.  First, we learn that Jody had six siblings who had all died, making Jody’s mother emotionally distant.  Second, we have a loving father who is going out of his way to give his son as much of a childhood as possible.  The result is a boy who knows nothing about responsibility, hardship, hunger, or loss because neither parent is teaching him about such things.

It isn’t until the second half of the film that the faun is introduced.  Jody takes the baby deer into his heart as only a child can, not fully realizing the ramifications of having such an unusual pet.  The bond the boy develops with the faun, who he names Flag, is both powerful and believable because of Jody’s age.  Again, Jarman was incredible in his portrayal.  The scenes of him running through the forests with the wild deer were incredibly well done.

The problem is that the faun grows quickly and is, in all reality, a wild animal.  He continually eats the family’s crops, endangering their very survival.  When Ezra gets sick and cannot farm the land, Jody does a lot of growing up.  He, alone, takes on the responsibility of planting and tending the crops, all the while trying to defend them from Flag.

The coming-of-age theme is a common one in films, and if done right, can be a powerful one.  It is something with which nearly every human being can identify.  It was a time in America’s history where being responsible was a requirement for survival.  People had to start being responsible at a very young age.

Jarman’s character, Jody, was certainly the focus of the plot, and he really turned a wonderful performance, but I would be quite remiss if I didn’t go into Peck and Wyman’s performances, as well.  I think Peck really outdid himself here.  He took on an accent, and kept it up believably.  He also really looked the part of a pioneer farmer.  But what captured me was the wonderful portrayal of the strong, yet gentle archetype.  He was mild mannered, but knew when to stand up for his principles.  The love for his only surviving child was so clear to see that I have to give Peck a lot of respect for his fantastic performance.  Apparently, the academy thought so, too, because he was nominated for Best Actor that year, losing to Fredrick March in The Best Years of Our Lives.  Never-mind the fact that I would consider his to be a supporting role.

Wyman’s performance was also truly inspired, as a woman who had endured incredible loss.  She was often sour, but never mean or spiteful.  But every now and then, her softer side would emerge, and her love for her son became something special to watch.  Wyman was incredible.  The ending scene, where Ora, who has spent three days searching for her own yearling son, discovers that Jody has found his own way home, is the real emotional pay-off of the film.  It was a satisfying emotional release that had been building, really, since the beginning of the film.  Well done Wyman!

The cinematography was also something that needs to be mentioned.  The film was shot in color, bringing out the beauty of the Florida wilderness.  Before I was aware of where the story took place, I was bothered by the fact that there were palm trees all over the place, marking the landscape with their distinctive shapes.  The scenes that took place out in the forests were incredibly well shot and almost magical in their realism.  The flood sequence was spectacular to see on the screen.

The film was directed by Clarence Brown, who was nominated for Best Director, only to lose to, you guessed it, William Wyler for The Best Years of Our Lives.  Sure, the other film seemed to take all the big prizes, but it could have just as easily been The Yearling.  It must have been an incredibly close competition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Razor’s Edge – 1946

The Razor’s Edge reminded me vaguely of the Magnificent Ambersons, in that it followed the lives of young rich people as they grew, falling in and out of love with each other.  There were victories and tragedies, friends and enemies, both wise and foolish decisions, and a span of years which gave the tales being told a slightly epic feel.  It starred Tyrone Powers, Jean Tierney, John Payne, Ann Baxter, Clifton Webb, and Herbert Marshall, all led by the direction of Edmund Goulding.

Powers played the male lead, Larry, a young man who has inherited a little bit of wealth, but who had plans to be a loafer for the rest of his life.  Opposite him is Tierney, playing the role of Isabel.  She desperately loves Larry, but wants a life of wealth and comfort greater than Larry’s small income will allow.  Baxter plays Larry’s childhood friend, Sophie.  She comes from poor stock but is unashamed of her lower station in life.  Payne plays Gray, the man who loves Isabel and is independently wealthy.  Webb played the role of Templeton, Isabel’s fastidious and obviously gay uncle who, at times, was such an old queen that I was surprised the Hayes Code allowed him to be in the film.  And finally, we have Marshall rounding out the cast as Somerset Maugham, Larry’s long-time friend, who just happened to be the author of the book upon which the Razor’s Edge was based.

The movie did a great job of setting up the audience to believe, in the beginning, that Isabel was sensible and good natured, and that Larry was the shiftless lay-about who was in search of something that seemed to be missing from his life.  For most of the film, Larry’s main motivation was to “find himself”, and by the end of the film, we find that he is really the good and noble man, while Isabel turns out to be evil.  On the whole, the film’s overall message was that there are things in life that are more important than money, like honesty, kindness, generosity, and compassion: a simple message, to be sure, but a good one.

Larry, having left Isabel to travel the world, search for his true self, and find meaning in his existence, ends up in a Himalayan monastery.  There he finds peace and discovers the rewards of a virtuous life.  Actually, the scene where he leaves the monastery was a little cheesy.  As he exits the hut on the top of the mountain, he walks through a shot of glorious clouds with the brilliant rays of the magnificent sun bursting through them.  The overly-dramatic music swelled as he ended his sojourn to return to the life he had abandoned, filled with a new-found respect for the universe.  OK, Goulding, tone it down.

Tierney’s portrayal of Isabell was, to me, a bit lack-luster.  She had the potential for a few juicy, dramatic moments, but for whatever reason, the opportunities were missed.  Even in her final scene, when she realizes that the love of her life is leaving her for the last time, that all her schemes to get him back have failed, she could have had a wonderful break-down, maybe even a fantastic tantrum.  But no.  No tears and fearful acceptance are what we are given.  But this spoke more of the writing and directing than Tierney’s performance.

The film’s real stand-out performance was that of Ann Baxter.  The character of Sophie started as almost a background character, but in the second half of the movie, she took an unexpected left turn.  Her husband and newborn child are killed in a car accident, and she turns into a raging alcoholic.  She is found in a seedy dive, living as a prostitute.  She has several wonderful dramatic scenes that had “Oscar-winning performance” written all over them, and yes, she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress that year.

The movie seemed to have a split personality that I ultimately didn’t mind: the difference between innocence and experience.  The characters all mature over the years, some into better versions of themselves, others into worse, and it was interesting to follow the unexpected changes in each of them.

This proved true for all the main cast except one which I’d like to mention for a different reason.  From beginning to end, Uncle Templeton is shown as the same prissy homosexual, a fact that could not be explicitly stated.  He was fussy, vain, overly coifed, haughty, and most importantly, an elderly bachelor.  Some of his lines and the way Webb delivered them left little doubt as to the true nature of his character.  He would say things like, “I admit, he is good-looking, and his clothes fit,” or “I do not like the propinquity of the hoi polloi.”  I ask you, what else are we supposed to think?  Everyone knows.  Just don’t put a name to it.

But though the film was well-acted and fairly well-directed, I have to say that I found it an average piece of work.  It was good, but not great.  By the end, I felt no real emotional investment in any of the characters, with the possible exception of the tragic Sophie.  There just wasn’t enough power behind the story-telling.  Not that it didn’t take itself seriously, but maybe it would have benefited from taking itself a little more seriously than it did.  We got drama, but for a Best Picture nominee, I would have liked to see drama!!